Familial Research and Development

AFTON'S SUGAR COOKIES CREAM TOGETHER: 1 c. margarine 1 1/2 c. sugar 1 tsp. vanilla Add one at a time: 2 eggs Add alternately with dry ingredients: 1 c. sour cream Dry ingredients: 5 c. flour 2 t. baking powder 1 t. soda 1/2 t salt Chill overnight, roll out. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 350 deg. for 10 to 12 min. (don't over bake) PEANUT BRITTLE Butter large cookie sheet or spray with Pam. Arrange wax paper under cookie sheet for stretching brittle later. Measure peanuts; have butter, soda and vanilla measured and ready to add. 1 c. water 2 c. sugar 1 c. white Karo Syrup 2 c. raw spanish peanuts 2 t. soda 1 t. vanilla 1/4 c. butter In heavy saucepan, combine first 3 ingredients. Cook to soft crack or 250 deg.; add 2 c. peanuts, cook to 300 deg., stirring constantly. Remove pan from heat, immediately add 2 t. soda; 1 t. vanilla and 1/4 c. butter. Beat with wooden spoon un til mixture foams up and mixed well. Pour onto prepared cookie sheet. (Optional - You may stret...

A family who lived in our ward when we first moved to Salem had a boy-their youngest-about the age of our oldest. He may have been a year or two older, but I thought he was close to our oldest child's age. He suffered an accidental death. But he had written this really cool story before-hand and his dad, who had been our home teacher for a while shared it with us. I love the story. Maybe you will appreciate it too: WHY CHRISTMAS IS SO NICE Once upon a time in the days before anything much was organized, and when people were all pretty much alike and had not yet learned to be doctors or politicians or secretaries or movie stars or optometrists, there were never any holidays, because everyone was too busy. What they were busy doing was...TAKING STUFF! They spent all of their time either taking stuff, or trying to take stuff, or planning to take stuff from each other. Or fixing the walls and fences and barbed-wire in their section of the village so no one could take stuff from th...

How could she possibly have known the one thing that I'm struggling with more so than anything else? Of all the 'empty-nest' syndrome pains this has to be the biggest. There were few to none of the Christmas traditions in my life as a child. And when I found out you could make some I did. We would start on a Sunday after Thanksgiving with a Family Home Evening lesson on what can we give the Savior for Christmas. We would each write a letter to Christ, seal them in envelopes and put them in a wrapped box. The box would be open on April 6-Christ's true birthday and we'd read through them and see how well we were doing. I loved this tradition. Another tradition was to pick out one new ornament every year for each child. I'd buy some and let them choose which one they wanted to keep. When they moved out of our home to be on their own, they'd have a dozen and a half (or more) Christmas ornaments to bring back memories of their Christmas's past. Another tradit...

Our dishes were interesting. Dad had been given some aluminum (gold tinted on the outside) 12" round dinner plates from his parents. There were four of them. They (his parents) ran the motel/diner in Buellton and we lived in one of the rooms (had a kitchenette) while dad searched for a job. We were there for several months (remind me to tell the story about the field I inadvertently set afire). There were also about 3 oval pewter plates (these were thick-about 1/4" thick) that were about 12" wide and 8" tall. I have since found out that neither of these are good things to use for dishes-because of the aluminum that gets into your food. But hey, they didn't know that back then so, we survived anyway AND the plates never broke. I recall being about 9 years old and was learning how to do the dishes. I was supposed to be working with Bob (it was his chore and I was supposed to help-do what he told me to do). Well, it didn't take too long before I wasn't doin...

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL 13 December 2008 THE reason for the season. We have celebrated Christmas as a married couple for 35 years now. It’s an interesting journey. Many symbols represent Christmas-many from marketing born of commercialism. Others are deeply seated from the scriptures. Many Christian symbols are being attributed to non-Christian worship (paganism, druids, etc.). To this ‘new’ knowledge I say, whatever. Christ existed before druids and paganism and He will exist after. If puny mankind thinks he knows better and knows all there is to know about religion (purportedly created by man to explain the unexplainable), well, they’ve got another think coming. I’m certain that many in mortality who were so sure of their ‘absolute’ and ‘perfect’ knowledge have had and will have quite a rude awakening when they pass to the other side of that thin fragile veil between mortality and both pre- and post-mortality. We crossed it once getting here, we’ll cross it again returning home. Ch...

Riddley, Riddley Ree, I see something you don't see. And the color(s) of it is(are): (list goes here). My mom used to spend hours (it seemed like to me) with us kids playing this game. She'd pick an ornament on the tree and start the game. Sometimes the other kids would play for a while. I would keep playing and playing. I loved the game. When I became a mom I would play this same game with my kids. I found it fun to continue the tradition and I found it useful to keep the kids entertained. Of course with my kids we had to come up with rules. They pushed all kinds of boundaries. So there were rules like the lights don't count, the stand doesn't count, only the ornaments count, you can't switch which ornament you were thinking of just because someone guessed yours on the first try. The only rule my mom ever had to use with us was if no one guessed it after a reasonable time, then you got to pick another ornament and do it again. Mom seemed to have infinite patience w...

I was 11 or 12 years old (so 5th or 6th grade) when my parents decided to be kind and throw a birthday party for me. I don't know where they got the hare-brained idea-just that they did. I don't recall them throwing one for Bob, and maybe they did for Barbara but I don't remember one for Chipper either. For two weeks before 'my party' anytime they wanted something done and done now it was, "If you don't get it done, do it right, do it right now... ...then we can call everyone and cancel your party. You don't have to have one you know." By the day of the party, with mom sitting in her chair like normal, and telling me to come here and do this and go there and do that, I was ready to call everyone and cancel it and save them the trouble-well if I knew their phone numbers or how to get them. I hadn't been allowed to use the phone. It was a tool and belonged to my parents. During the party I was allowed to play the games but not allowed to win the ...

Sometimes I feel really torn. Torn between the little girl, "I want..." and the grown-up woman "I don't need that..." I was walking through Wal-Mart the other day and saw this comforter set: Oh, man. I just love the colors, the way it's put together. The richness it portrays. The warmth. It looks like how I feel in my bedroom. I stopped. Looked. Coveted/sinned. Looked at the price tag and then left it and walked away. It wouldn't match my carpet, the paint on my walls-I'd have to spend even more money fixing up the rest of my bedroom to make this one work. That night, as I laid down to sleep I looked at my comforter. It's made of blue jeans, Levis, silver tabs, etc. Worn out jeans from my kids as they were passing through their teen years and working hither and yon. One square has bike chain grease tracks across it. A black square has bleach spots from cleaning up at the Taco Time. I made a square from the Silver Tab jeans and the Nuovo jeans and...

My boss is a micro-manager-sometimes. This management style drives me barely to the edge of this side of normalcy from nuts. She said she wanted all of our Cricut Cartridge images to be standardized. An example of what they do, the cartridge, the overlay, and idea book when applicable (Solutions cartridges do not have an idea book. I spent weeks redoing the images on the 60+ cartridges (while still doing my other tasks). Never a comment of how it was looking. Nothing. I put the images together EXACTLY the way she dictated. She drew an example and I made the images look like she said and showed she wanted. Now she pulls a chair up next to mine and starts looking at the images with me and says they’re so mechanical, so sterile, so much the same. Duh! What was she thinking? What was she really asking for? What was she trying to get at? She was talking about how she had been checking out our new store front-which we should be able to go live with in mid-December. I brought up the new stor...

Monday David was still on vacation-let’s face it. He’s put in 10 years with Qwest and so has more vacation time than I do so of course he could take an additional day off. Me on the other hand-not even a year with Provo Craft/Creative Xpress so less vacation and yes, it was back to work on Monday for me. Well, David had stuff he needed to do for the Stake. They want wireless and hardwire Internet connections in the Relief Society and YM/YW room. That meant he had to run data-com cables and make connections and then check those connections to make sure they were live and functional. These things take time. Once he actually begins a project like this he wastes little time. It’s all the other little things that he wades through before the initiation of the project that determines the time when he completes the project. We choose to be a one car family. It’s more cost effective (since he can ride the bus to and from work) so of course I had no issue with him driving me to work, dropping me...

Monday night dad pulled the car into the garage and half busted off the passenger side view mirror. Early rise Tuesday morning and drove (with said side view mirror tied down) to the airport. During the flight I pulled out the Oreos. The little one ate the stuffing out of the middle and left me with the cookie. Strange-he left the best part. Ah well-guess the saying is true, "one man's trash is another man's treasure." Rode a plane to Florida. Rode a bus to the resort. Yeah-that's right. The seats are red and have gold stars-reminding you of pixie dust on them. Rode a monorail to the park. Rode a steam train around the park. Rode a boat back to the resort. Yippin' that's right. That be mouse ears made of towels on the bed! We had fun. Celebrating dads 10th year anniversary at work. Celebrating my fulfilling a lifetime dream/goal of getting a 4-year degree. Celebrating grandson's baptism. Yeah-I think this is a t-shirt occasion... On take off the little...

I believe I was in Junior High school when this event happened. Although our home was such a pretty bright yellow on the outside mom and dad had gotten it into their heads that they should paint the inside walls gold. It was a dark gold. It darkened in time. It made our home feel and look more like a cave than a home. The side of the house facing the street had NO windows to the front room. There were two bedroom windows facing the street. The one window for the living/family room was a glass sliding patio door with a curtain on it and a smaller window over the dining area table. That was it for natural lighting into our home. Fewer curtains. Fewer windows. Less heat loss. Lower maintenance. You get the picture. Mom and dad were both smokers. At one point in their lives they were very heavy smokers. I'm talking a full pack a day, each. Needless to say the smoke particles go somewhere--not just into their and our lungs. I don't know how many years (literally-not joking-mom had t...

Last Saturday, October 11th and the ‘exciting’ event of the day. It had turned winter cold-lows in the low 30’s and highs in the mid 40’s with a bitter cold north wind and a lot of clouds spewing forth sporadic snow flurries. Knowing the weather was going to turn bad, I had decided several days earlier that I would get the flower beds taken down for the winter. So Saturday morning when we got back from the Temple, I got my clothes changed and outside fairly quickly to begin the task. Since Ruth was in the house (David was preparing to come outside and mow the front lawn) I felt I didn’t need to lock my office door. Ah yes, you see where this is going I suspect! I grabbed the wheel barrow to put the trimmings and clippings and pullings into, trimmed the peonies down, the ‘Just Joey’ rose in the center of the yard, the miniature roses by the front porch and pulled every errant weed I could find as I went along. Well, just as I was beginning on the front porch flower bed out popped Ruth t...

Mom needed to take a trip to the neighborhood grocery store. Hey-back then that's what there was. There was no big super store and no chain grocery stores of any significance. So don't be thinking why not just a trip to a big store-back then most city dwellers did NOT have their own ride-they relied on a bus or even cheaper than that-shoe-leather express. I was small enough and we were going to get groceries she would have to carry so with Bobby and I in tow she used (I don't know if we had one or if she borrowed a neighbors) a little red wagon. I was so slow afoot, I got to ride in the wagon to the store and back again. I was sitting toward the back of the wagon and hung my right hand over the side. Somehow I found the wheel with the inside of the far side of my right middle finger and I let it drag against the wheel. There were a couple times I twisted my hand and my finger kind of got stuck. There were a couple times she realized what I was doing and yelled at me to stop...

One holiday when we visited Grandma and Grandpa Nelson they gave each of us kids a 50 cent piece. That was LOT of money to me and I was totally unaccustomed to having any. It was nap time and I had no choice but had to lay down to take a nap (tired or not-that was the protocol-I understand now, it wasn't so much that the kids needed naps but rather the adults needed a break from the kids) and was told to put my money on the nightstand so I wouldn't lose it. When I awoke Grandpa had replaced it with 2 quarters. Also I hadn't remembered the 50 cent piece and hadn't noticed it had been traded out. Finally the teasers couldn't bear it any longer and began their comments of, "Well, maybe it doesn't matter to her. Maybe she doesn't really care. Maybe she wants to just let whoever wants it take it. Maybe I ought to just take it back. See, she still hasn't remembered about it." Then when I did get the hint (2" X 4" reminder) I was all in tea...

On three separate occasions I went to school with a black eye. The last time sticks in my memory most. Dad had tried to help me with my reading words. He got impatient and hit me. Not must once but multiple times. Every time I didn't read the word right or remember right or stammered or hesitated I got whacked upside the head. If I flinched he'd snicker and come at me with his other open hand. The next day as I was leaving for school mom stopped me at the door-her chair was only 6' away so it was easy for her, sitting there, to say just a minute... She asked me to look her in the face. I did. Then she asked me to bend over and act like I was picking something up off the floor. She had to re-explain it a couple of times because I was too close to the door to bend over safely and I had back away (problem one) and I was angled to slip out the door-not open it really wide (second problem). Then she said, yes I guess if they call I can tell them you accidentally hit the door kno...

In 5th grade Dr. Boaden (PhD) talked the Kiwanis club into sponsoring 4 elementary students to Disneyland. I was one of them. I had a ball. I rode a mule train. No really-they had one. There were like six or eight mules daisy-chained together and you rode on them in a saddle along a trail which had miniature houses and villages-it could easily be where Storybook land boat ride is now. I rode the Matterhorn. I rode the tea cups in Alice in Wonderland's the Mad Hatter ride. I loved It's a Small World and the Submarine ride. I never had dreamed of an experience so wonderful. To say I was overwhelmed is an understatement. About a month after this event I was invited to go to the Kiwanis Club luncheon and tell them how much fun it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. I was 11 years old and could NOT articulate how much fun I had and how great it was and how grateful I was for the opportunity. The spaghetti lunch was good!

I remember going to mom one morning and telling her my tummy hurt. She looked at the clock and said, "It's probably that you're hungry. It's only another hour until lunch time. You can wait that long." I hadn't had breakfast. That's the way it was. Every day. She took really good care of her babies, but when we started growing up a little (started to 'ugly up') we didn't get the same care. We weren't old enough to do some things for ourselves and she wasn't doing them for us either. It's not like there was cold cereal in the cupboard. The market was just coming out with all the fun stuff (Cheerios, Alpha Bits, etc.). Dad didn't believe in feeding cereal to humans-cereal is made from grains and grains are animal feed. Whatever. So she couldn't even fix us a bowl of oats, or Cream of Wheat, or Germade without suffering dad's wrath. By the time I was in grade school I went every morning with nothing in my tummy. That's ...

Sometimes you just don't want to say something out loud-especially if someone listening might hear it from their perspective and not from yours-else ways they may take it wrong, or hard or something like that. I just want to say some things and not have anyone take it a wrong way. This is presented from my perspective-my opinion-my "I feel" statements. We went on vacation this year. We've been doing that more than we ever could before and it feels absolutely wonderful. Our main impetus was to go see Jacob and Sharon as he was returning from Afghanistan. I wanted him and Sharon to know how important to me they are and hopefully by finally being able to make it out there we could show them. Also, I had a horrible nightmare just after he left and I wanted to know it wasn't so. So from my perspective, the most important part of our vacation (the focal point) was to see and hold Jacob and know he was safe and to see and hold Sharon and know that she was doing okay. In ...

Purportedly because I had good grades in school dad wanted to take me to the County Fair and experience the carnival rides and games. Looking back-and after talking with mom-I know that wasn't the full truth. In all actuality he wanted to go (that's the reason most parents have for doing fun things with their kids) and mom knew that if she went with him he'd want to ride the rides and terrify her. So, he took me, we rode the rides and he terrified me instead! The Ferris wheel-looks innocent enough, but when we were at the top waiting for the Ferris wheel to finish loading dad started rocking it. I did what any normal human being would do-I screamed, grabbed the bar across the front, ducked my head to the back of my white-knuckled hands and held on for dear life. He was laughing so hard-I don't recall hearing him have such a good time before. Then there was the threats of I'd better look up and see the city. It took all the courage I could muster to do so. Yes, it wa...

I had a horrible infestation of warts on my fingers-around the cuticles. The kids at school would tease me. It's not as if there weren't enough other things to tease me about (Smellson-play on my last name as Barbara wet the bed EVERY night and left her wet, stinky, un-laundered PJ's on the floor and of course I left all of my clothes on the floor so they soaked up the aroma). To 'help' me dad would use his pocket knife and shave off my warts every week or so. It was very painful-and I think at my young age it was very frightening to have someone using a pocket knife on my fingers. My warts eventually went away. Whew! But my fingers were going to experience another trauma. Maybe that's why the warts went away. On at least two occasions I stupidly let my finger get closed in the car door. Both times it was pretty bad. The nail fell off-it was a bloody mess. Dad would actually-again-use his pocket knife to clean up and off the debris and then would have me soak it...

I'm certainly hoping that my adult children don't share this with their children-they may read it the wrong way-like permission to break the commandments despite what their parents teach them. In second grade I figured out that other kids (it seemed like ALL of them) brought pocket change from their parents to buy their hot school lunch. They ate something different every day-in the lunch room. I got to sit out at the wood picnic tables outside my classroom and eat my Velveta American Process Cheese sandwich and sometimes there was an apple chaser. I still like cheese sandwiches and apples-I just don't like Velveta cheese. Well most of the kids would leave their lunch money in their desk ('cause it might fall out of their pockets when they played during recess). I discovered that I could be 'late' leaving the classroom and take a nickel here, a dime there, until I had enough to buy a school lunch. Can we say d-u-m-b-o? One of four kids in the family, all attendi...