Party, party, party

Since school's been out for me, it's just been a big party—or several. This morning was our ward Christmas party and breakfast. And last night Bruce and I went to what has become known as the "often annual Kearns High Christmas party." But actually, the party has nothing to do with Kearns High.

See, when we were cute, little newlyweds (in 1990) we decided to throw a big Christmas party and invite all our friends and their dates. Now a lot of our friends did go to Kearns high since that's where we both graduated, but we invited other people, too. The next year we hosted the party again, but most of our friends who were single the first year were now married. So we kept the party a little smaller—just us and our best friends from school and their spouses. And that's how it went for quite a while, except we rotated who was hosting each year. Our good friend, Scerinda (who did not go to Kearns High herself, although she married one of our Kearns friends) had it in her head that this was some kind of Kearns High reunion/Christmas party, and she expanded the guest list just a little. It's gone from five couples to six, to seven,—all Kearns grads and their spouses. We like all of them, and we've kept up with them, and we have a good time when we get together. But while Scerinda thinks of it as the "Kearns High" party, to us it's just our annual friends party.

Every year we have a nice dinner, lots of visiting and catching-up, and a white elephant gift exchange. It's really fun to get together with these old friends each Christmas-time. And we've gotten some great gifts—like "horny goat-weed" tea, an old prom photo, a Provo phone-book. But the most "beloved" gift of all is the hen on a nest.

See, that first year we threw the party we also started the white-elephant gift exchange. One of our young, single guy friends received a glass candy dish shaped like a hen on a nest—which we all thought he would dispose of promptly. We all had a big laugh when, the next year, David and his wife re-gifted the "Hen on a Nest" to someone else.

Since then that hen has made its rounds with the entire group—still in its original box. And the hen has acquired a friend too—a little turkey on a nest. After 20 years of being passed around, we've all had to disguise the chicken box so that no one knows who will end up with it at the end of the evening.

And guess what? Last night Bruce got the chicken! Yes, the chicken box was very cleverly put into a large box along with a ten-pound bag of potatoes. Bruce never suspected. And now the nesting hen will sit around our house—in its box—for a year. I wonder how we'll disguise it for next year's party?

By the way, I did wrap up my shoes and give them away last night. Ken Johnson got them.

Behold the Handmaid

Lorena Schnebly started the whole thing.

In December of 2006 Lorena was asked to sing a solo for the Christmas program in our ward sacrament meeting. She looked for some music that seemed like just the right thing, and she asked me for ideas, but she just couldn't find what she wanted.

Finally one day she asked me to come over for dinner and a visit; and while I was there she said she'd had a song in her head that she thought she could use for the Christmas program. She'd written the words out, and annotated the melody, and wanted to know if I could write a piano accompaniment and a small choir part. I'd always thought I'd like to write music, but had never really done anything like this before. Still, I said I'd give it a try.

The choir part and a small ornament to the accompaniment popped into my head right away. After that it took a couple of days to figure out and write out the whole thing. I was a little nervous to play it for her, but she loved it! Now she had her solo, but we had to present it to the choir so they could learn their little bit. They loved it too! We had our Christmas song, In Her Heart, a lullaby for Mary, with most of the text being based from scripture.

After Christmas was all over with, Lorena came to me and said she couldn't get it out of her mind to make a second song, using the idea of Mary witnessing the crucifixion and reflecting back on the lullaby she sang to the baby Jesus. She had no ideas for melody or words as yet, but she asked me to think about it. One day, as I was making my bed, the first lines of melody and lyrics came to my head. So I wrote it down, and pretty soon had the entire melody and probably 2/3 of the lyrics—plus some outlined ideas for lyrics—for the whole piece. I played it for Lorena and she really liked it, so I went back to the piano to come up with an accompaniment, while she worked on some of the missing lyrics. The accompaniment for this one was more difficult at first. But soon our Pieta was completed.

As I worked on Pieta, I thought that now we had the birth and crucifixion of Christ—from Mary's perspective—but we really needed a piece to talk about the triumph of the resurrection. And soon the idea evolved into making a series of pieces, sketches of the Savior's life as his mother saw it.

The next piece to be worked on was In the Morning, the resurrection piece (the title was taken from Psalms 30:5 "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."). At first I only had a few basic, incomplete ideas for it, so I asked Lorena to work on it too. She came up with the first part of it, and from there I was able to bring it to life. It was a HUGE piece—beginning with sorrowing, turning to a kind of almost timid happiness, and finally to a triumphant realization of what had happened—full of fanfares and hallelujahs. Very big. It was also the most difficult to work out, the one I felt I'd put the most of my own effort—and the smallest bit of "inspiration"—into.

I felt like we could have stopped with the three pieces and had a really nice set. But Lorena wanted to continue with the idea of the four sketches. She came up with words and a melody for Jesus' growing up and ministry, A Man All His Own. Unfortunately, the melody echoed another song too closely, so I took it in hand and changed it. I found out later that Lorena was a little upset with me for not including her more in that song. But it was written at a time when she just wasn't available to work with me very much, and now we were on a deadline—we had asked to be able to perform the entire piece as a ward fireside at the end of May 2007, and we were still writing A Man All His Own at the beginning of April.

The last piece, Behold the Handmaid, was easy. It popped into my head, I wrote the music and most of the lyrics (asking for Lorena's help with words when I got stuck), and then we rearranged it together for a reprise at the end of the whole program.

Once all the music was written, Lorena and I got together to write out a narrative to go between each piece and tie it all together. And we had decided to put all the pieces together in an art book, with drawings for the title page of each individual piece, so we asked church members, family and friends to do the artwork for us.

When the music/art books were done we soon realized that we just wouldn't be able to get enough choir support from just our ward. So went to our stake presidency and asked if we could do it as a stake Christmas fireside in December 2007. (There are several wards in a stake, so even though a ward choir might only have four to fifteen members, we could probably get a decent stake choir.) The stake presidency reluctantly agreed to it; reluctant because they thought we wouldn't get much choir participation or get a good turnout to see the performance.

I won't give you all the details of getting approval to do the program, advertising for it, putting together a stake art show to go with it, and working with the choir. I will tell you that we had an astounding turn-out. At our first practice we had 72 choir members show up, in addition to the four soloists and the women's trio we'd auditioned for the five songs. We ended with about 60 singers, the soloists and trio, and four men to do the narrations. There were about 500 to 700 people in attendance to watch the performance. That is really incredible for a stake fireside—even one done at Christmas time. And I think it was well received. It was such an amazing experience to see and hear our music come to life.

But since that evening of the fireside,I have often wondered if the music was really that good. I mean, I know it was good, but was it that good? I remember about a year later, driving home alone one night and listening to classical radio. They were playing Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, and it had gotten to the wonderful, lyrical piano, 18th variation (you can hear it in the movie Somewhere in Time—it's probably the most famous variation in that piece) and the melodies and the harmonies in it are just so incredible and so beautiful. I hadn't been thinking of my music at all, but as I heard that wonderful piece by Rachmaninoff I suddenly thought of our Behold the Handmaid suite, and wondered, was it really any good?

I don't aspire to be a Rachmaninoff, or to have the greatness of really any other composer, old or new; and I didn't aspire to it while we were writing the music, either. But our music seemed good while Lorena and I were in the throes of writing it and getting it performed. We'd both always wanted to write music, but never been . . . inspired? . . . with anything; and now, suddenly, music was just flowing from us. So it was very exciting. I think it was good music, but every now and then I wonder, "How good was it? Were we just caught up in the excitement of the whole thing, or was it really, actually good?"

I suppose I'll never really know. But I'd love to be able to hear it performed again and see what I think.

Kiss and Tell

In honor of our 20th wedding anniversary, which was this past week on March 2, I'm going to tell you what Bruce and I did on the first night of our honeymoon trip:

Bruce and I, being kids, decided we would honeymoon in Los Angeles and go to Disneyland together. We borrowed my mom's car—which we thought would survive the trip better than Bruce's '69 Cougar—and drove away. That first night we stopped at the Peppermill in Mesquite, NV (which, by the way, was a new—and almost the only—resort there at the time). So we got a little room, and I went to draw a bath and slip into something a little more comfortable. While I was in the bathroom, Bruce was in the bedroom getting ready for bed. After a minute or so I could tell that he was a little frustrated so I stepped out to see what was wrong. It turns out that he forgot to bring something very important: his contact-lens removing tool.

When Bruce first started wearing contacts, he was given this little suction-cup thing that would pull his lens off of his eyeball. The idea was that he could use it until he learned to blink the lenses out of his eyes, but he just got used to using the suction cup all the time. And now here we were, in Nevada, and he didn't have it. He tried and tried to get his contact lenses out, but to no avail. Pretty soon I was there trying to help. I was poking my fingers around in his eyes, and pulling on his eyelids, and doing what I could to help get the lenses out. No good. We both tried and tried and tried, but couldn't get those lenses out of his eyes. We worked at it for nearly 45 minutes, and we were both getting more daring about how I touched him, but no luck. Finally, during a brief rest, Bruce had a thought: He was used to using suction to get the lenses out of his eyes; what if he got a drinking straw and I sucked the lenses out?

OK. I can totally understand that this is not how he wanted to spend the first night of our honeymoon. (Me either!) But that straw idea convinced me that he'd gone over the edge; that he'd lost his marbles. Still, we were both tired and frustrated and neither of us could think of a better solution. So Bruce went off to the bar and asked the nice bartender for a straw, and then came back with a fat, red drinking straw. He gave it to me and said, "Put one end in your mouth, then center the other end on my contact and then suck." I told him he was crazy, but I figured we'd already tried everything else. What else could I do?

So I've got this red straw in my mouth, and I'm looking down it's length into Bruce's eyeball. And here was Bruce's perspective: He could see my face and the straw in my mouth with one eye, and with the other eye he had a bird's-eye view straight up the straw and into my mouth. I began the procedure with much trepidation; put the straw in place and sucked on it. And . . .

It worked! He says my eyes got wide, and I looked really surprised, and with the straw still in my mouth I squealed, "Ooooo!" and dropped the lens into his waiting hand to be cleaned and put away for the night. And we both laughed and laughed. Then the other eye. Ah, sweet success! Oh, relief! And lots of giggling.

That's how we removed Bruce's contact lenses every night of our honeymoon. When we got back home he practiced—and became very good at—blinking them out of his eyes.

And that is the story of our first honeymoon night—or at least as much as you get to hear about it. ;-)

Thank You, Santa!

Christmas has come and gone, and it was a marvelous one at the North house!

Actually, I think Santa stopped here last and just gave us everything that was left in his bag. When we got up Christmas morning all of the space under the tree was filled, from the floor to the bottom branches, and there were more gifts spread out across half of our living room floor. There was almost no room for the family!

But let me tell you about it, beginning with events leading up to Christmas.

First of all, about three weeks before Christmas Santa brought us a dishwasher!! How's that for exciting? My kids were actually excited about doing the dishes for a week or so. :-)

Last summer we got a My Twinn catalog in the mail. We girls were all very interested; Kaylie, Rachel and Jessica thought it would be good fun to have dolls that were their twins. But, the cost—ouch! We would have to ask Santa.

Well I got word from Santa that he wasn't bringing dolls from My Twinn, but that he would bring dolls that could be twins. He said it's really the clothes and hair-style that make the doll look like a twin—and he was right, of course. With the advance notice he gave me, I was able to make nightgowns, Christmas dresses and an outfit—even matching necklaces, with Lindsey's help—for each doll and girl. That was one of the big projects I'd told you about in my earlier post.

I also made a Pen-Ten-Gee game which is a strategy game I've never seen before, but looks like fun. And I'm still working on the creation of another board game called Relativity. We gave it a trial run last night, but it needs some tweaking.

We also had a treat-fest last week. We made fudge—and more fudge—and lots of banana bread, and mixed gingerbread cookie dough (although we still haven't baked the gingerbread cookies).

While all the projects were in the works we had the radio tuned to KBYU, our local classical station. Initially I had it tuned in so I could listen to my game show, the Piano Puzzler. But then they played great Christmas music all day long every day, so we kept it on. We heard a neat narrative called All is Calm, The Christmas Truce of 1914; we heard the entire Nutcracker Suite—delightful! And we got to listen to The Christmas Chronicles, a true and complete history of Santa Claus; it was a wonderful story.

The kids went to bed relatively early on Christmas Eve—around 10:00, I guess. And Bruce and I went down not too much later, just before midnight. Not bad! I woke up around 2:30 a.m. to find that Santa had filled our entire living room with gifts, and that Ryan and Rachel had taken their blankets downstairs and fallen asleep on the couch.

Well, the kids got us up at 6 a.m (as requested), and not a second sooner or later. But Jason did not play reveille at us this year. We told him he could only use the trumpet to wake us up if he played a Christmas carol. Actually, I think that would be a funny Christmas tradition. :-)

We were astounded at the number of gifts! It was easily over one hundred; it was overwhelming.

Now, you have to understand how Christmas morning goes at our house: We start out opening one gift at a time so we can see what everyone is getting; but pretty soon kids are jumping up and down in front of Bruce's and my face, and asking when they get to open their next present, and generally making a lot of noise. Due to the enormous volume of presents this year, there was even more jumping and excitement than usual. So picture-taking was virtually impossible, and after the first few gifts we pretty much lost track of what everyone was getting. I do remember seeing lots of new clothes and shoes, hot rollers and a hair-dryer; some very pretty necklaces that Sara, our piano teacher, made for us; the latest Harry Potter movie from Michael. We even got a jar of cold, hard cash!

But the biggest surprise of all was a Wii! Wii had no idea Santa would give us one of those—I didn't know we were that good! (The Wii made great leverage to get the kids to clean up the house later.)

About three-quarters of the way through the gift-opening we had all reached a saturation point and decided to take a break for breakfast. We had our traditional Christmas breakfast: yogurt with berries and Cool Whip, breakfast quiche and my fabulous Oven-Baked, Blueberry-Stuffed French Toast. Then everyone was revived enough to get back to opening the rest of the presents.

I can't say enough about Santa's generosity this year. It was really amazing!

After presents and food Bruce and I went back down for a long winter's nap. We got up again just before noon, and then we made the family rounds: Melanie's house, Grandma Johnson's house and Grandma North's house. At the North house we had some nice lunch/dinner, and Brad (Bruce's brother) gave us a TV! Our old, hand-me-down, console TV died around Thanksgiving time, so we'd been watching our DVD's on the computer. Brad was buying his family a new TV for Christmas, so he made us a gift of his old one, which is a nice set. And which we used late that night to watch Harry Potter.

Sadly, Grandma North had to spend Christmas in the hospital, but the latest update is that she's doing a little better now.

And now, tonight, even as I sit here, the family is creating their "Mii's" so they can play with the Wii. We've had a very fun holiday.

Thank you, Santa!

Hooray!

So, at about 9:30 this morning all the guys went out to look at the van again. Yep. It was still stuck, but everything was a little drier.

Plan One was just to get in and see if we could miraculously just drive it out. That one failed.

Plan Two: They connected a come-along to the front of the van and to a tree in the backyard, then Jason ratcheted the come-along while the van was in drive, but Bruce was not applying the gas pedal. It may have moved an inch or two, but the strap was not heavy enough to haul a 3000-pound van, and it kept breaking.

Plan Three: They called the neighbors to see if someone had a chain. Our friend, Joe Rodman, had a chain, and a son (Philip) that he brought along to help us out. It was a little nerve-wracking to see Joe squatted astride that great big tight chain, with the cable for the come-along pulled taut in front of his face as he worked the ratchet-lever. I went in the house for that part. But they decided that wasn't working too well anyway. That's when they looked inside the van door and discovered that the van weighs 3000 pounds, and then looked at the come-along and discovered that it was only rated to pull 1000 pounds. They abandoned Plan Three.

Plan Four: They jacked up the back end of the van and shoveled rocks and dirt and sod into the holes under the tires, then let the van down and tried to rock it back and forth to get it out. But since the trailer was behind the van they couldn't back it up enough to get the forward momentum they needed. Next!


Plan Five: They re-hitched the trailer to the van and tried to back it out. That worked as well as it did the very first time.


Plan Six: They chained the back of the trailer to the Rodman's van; Philip drove their van. So the Rodman van pulled the trailer, the trailer pulled the North van, and Joe (who is a professional cross-country truck driver) backed everything out beautifully—missing both the corner of the house and the big tree in the front yard. Hooray for the Rodmans!!

Joe backs the trailer out.

And they got it done just in time, because this is how the weather was starting to look:





And this is what our yard looks like now:

See the tire tracks?

This is how the lawn looks.

This is how deep the holes got.

It takes a professional to do the job.

But I've got my van out and working! Hooray for the Rodmans!!

Support for Jason

Summerhays Music Store is holding a "Hands-On" contest this Friday (April 24) beginning at 6 PM. Whoever can keep their hands on a saxophone or trumpet case the longest will win a very nice trumpet or saxophone.
The catch?

Apparently this contest will last all weekend (the Summerhays people said that going through Sunday is not unusual). Contestants get a ten-minute break every six hours, and they can have family and friends there to support them (feed them, tell them jokes, help keep them awake), but they must keep both hands—including the thumb and all fingers—on the case the rest of the time. (If even one pinky comes off the case, you are disqualified!)

Well, Jason really wants his own trumpet, so he's registered for the contest. It should be quite the weekend!

Neither Bruce nor I will be able to stay the entire weekend at the music store with Jason. So I'm asking any and/or all of you Salt Lake City friends to pop by Summerhays Music at 5450 S. Green Street (just west of I-15) some time this weekend and help us support Jason! :-)

A Lovely Evening

Well, the Relief Society Birthday Social turned out great! :-)

I worked on desserts all day Monday, getting the ice-cream roulade, the double chocolate cheesecake, the strawberry candies, and the raspberry trifle all made that day. (Is your mouth watering yet?) My kids were out of school Monday and Tuesday, and every time I started on a new dessert, one of them would ask, "Who is that for?" or, "Is that for us?" I felt a little guilty saying that none of the goodies were for my family, but I promised to bring them back anything that was left over.


Yesterday I spent the entire day cooking as well. I started in the morning with a lemon-meringue pie, then the chocolate mousse pie. Yesterday afternoon was a jumble of making the garlic chicken, the rolls, the salad dressings, dipping strawberries in chocolate and arranging the strawberry bouquet (which looked absolutely spectacular!). I was whipping cream and garnishing the pies by 5:00 and made it to the church by 5:20—just in time to reheat the chicken before the social started. We got the dessert bar and salad bar set up and then the ladies began to arrive.

Some men from the ward served the main course to us at our tables. Everyone liked the meal and they raved about the desserts. The only bummer was that almost no one ate the strawberry candies—I think they thought they were those styrofoam, glittery fake-fruit-things you can buy. (One of my good friends actually said that she thought the bouquet was really roses; she had forgetten her glasses.) But after I took a candy and ate it, they all got the idea.

Dessert Bar

About 45 women—and the bishop—showed up for the party, and we had a great time visiting during dinner. Then there was a short, but very nice program. It was a lovely evening.


And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: I will post the recipes on my cookbook blog. So check it out every now and then, over the next little while. Enjoy!

p.s. Unfortunately for my children, there weren't enough desserts left over for them to all try some. Fortunately for them, I am a nice mom and promised to make them their choice of dessert this weekend.

Holiday Fun

No, I have not fallen from the face of the earth. It's just Christmas time! Here's what we've been doing for the last month:

Brandon and Lindsey build the tree

We decorated our house the day after Thanksgiving—a tradition in our family. So everyone spent days making paper snowflakes to hang up; the house was strewn with white confetti for weeks.

making paper snowflakes

And, of course, the tree and the nativity sets and our North Pole sign all came out too. It looked great!

Trim up the tree with Christmas stuff. Like bingle balls, and whofoo fluff.

The next project we took on was our gingerbread house. This is an all-day project, and I really debated not making one this year. But it is a new Christmas tradition for us—this is the third year now that we've built a gingerbread house.

The kids love it because they get to eat lots of candy, and we all spend time together. I do most of the work—all the baking and construction, as well as piping on the frosting glue so the kids can stick their candies in place.

But as they get older and more capable, that will change. (Well, Michael is older and more capable, but he's at school for a lot of the worky part. Maybe we should make it a tradition to do this on a Saturday.)

the gingerbread house is finished!
the gingerbread house one week later

Let's see . . . On Friday the 19th we had our first really big snow of the year; it came almost to my knees in only a couple of hours (I'm kind of short, but that's still a lot of snow). This snow was deep and powdery and slick—you could hardly stand up on it. Let me clarify: If you stand and walk in the deep snow, you'll be pretty safe, but soaked through. But if you're shovelling and have to stand on snow that has packed—even a little—you are in great danger of falling on your butt. Bruce, Brandon and Ryan all fell down more than once. I almost fell several times, but I'm pretty good at getting my balance back before I actually hit the pavement. (Bruce says I'm so graceful at almost falling that look like a ballerina pretending to fall down—whatever!)

Brandon and Bruce shovel the driveway

The roads were a complete mess, and I was a mess just thinking of driving the van in this weather. It has good brakes and good tires, but it's so heavy that it still wants to slide. I can get around on the slippery, snowy, slushy roads, but I don't like to. Fortunately Bruce was around, and he did the driving that afternoon. And, happily for Bruce and me, Brandon really likes shovelling snow (go figure!); so he cleaned up the driveway as best he could. Our house is north-facing, so keeping the snow off of our drive is not easy—it's always in the shade. But all's well. We had a white Christmas, with a fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa and all that other good stuff.

On Sunday, the 21st, we went to my cousin Wendy's house for a family & friends/dinner/singing get-together. Her little 80-something neighbor lady master-minded the party and Wendy was happy to host. There were about 40 people there and we played musical chairs, and then read stories and sang songs. Everyone had some type of musical instrument, from a keyboard to guitars to maracas. It was very noisy, but pretty fun.

Then on Monday (the 22nd) we went to my mom's for a birthday party for my oldest brother, Peter. While we were there Bruce and I engaged in a little petty theft so that I could complete the BIG Christmas project I was working on. But I repented later and returned the stolen goods.

Tuesday night we dipped chocolates. We've been doing this for a few years now too. Every year we make the ugliest (although pretty darn tasty) chocolates you've ever seen. After all the time spent making them (and licking up melted chocolate as you go) I almost can't stomach the actual chocolates when they're done. They taste better a couple days later, when you're not so chocolated out—even if they are lumpy and crooked. Every year I hope they'll turn out nicer, and when they don't I vow that I won't spend the time or money to do it again. But I always do have to try one more time. This year we used some candy molds to help out, but it didn't really help much.

I intended to make the girls some Christmas dresses; I even bought the fabric. But that was a silly idea since I started sooooo late. I may get them done this week, though.

In-between all the other stuff, I was working a Christmas present for my siblings and parents. I took all the old photos I could get my hands on, scanned them, corrected color (when necessary) and then burned them all onto cd's for everyone. I had a box of pictures here that Mom lent me a few months ago, but she didn't want to give up any more. I kept asking her—but not telling her why I wanted them—and she had all these good reasons that I couldn't have them. Finally at Peter's birthday party I managed to get her out of the way and Bruce sneaked a box into the van. I spent most of that evening and the next morning working on that box of pictures. Then I was able to sneak it back into her house in the evening, while she was gone from home. I spent hours on the photo project, and still didn't get all of the pictures she has; but everyone really liked their cd's. And now I think I'll have an easier time getting the rest of the pictures from Mom so I can make volume 2.

And of course we were shopping clear up until the very last minute. It was insane going out on Christmas Eve day, but we needed a few last items and some groceries. Next year we definitely have to plan better than that! We visited a few families in the evening, and before bedtime we read the Christmas story from Luke 2 and watched a video of the Christmas story. We sent the kids to bed with instructions to absolutely NOT get us up before 6 a.m. Then Bruce and I stayed up until 1:30 doing the secret stuff. (Next year we definitely need to plan better!!)

When Brandon and Ryan heard Bruce and me quiet down, they started to head out of their room to check things out. But we were still up and sent them back to bed. I fell asleep pretty quickly (around 2 a.m.), but those two boys (who room next to us) were up every 30 minutes or so, so it was a light sleep. At 5:52 a.m. I heard the kids whispering and milling around. They came up the hallway to our bedroom door about once every minute until 5:59. And then . . . Jason stood in the kitchen, facing our bedroom door, and played reveille on his trumpet! He took a lot of flack for it that day, but really it was pretty funny.

We had a nice Christmas Day. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures. We've discovered over the years that every time we try to take a great picture, one of the kids gets right in the way so we don't capture what we wanted to. And, truthfully, we forgot to get the camera when we went to open presents. But everyone has been really happy with their gifts, and the kids have enjoyed playing together all week.

It snowed a lot on Christmas morning, but we braved the weather and the roads and went to see Bruce's family. My mom had called me and said not to drive in the snow to go to her house that day. So we went to see her the next day when, unfortunately, the roads were more slippery than they were on Christmas Day. But it was nice to break up the visiting into two sessions, and not be running around quite as much on Christmas.

white Christmas

And now, this week we are cleaning house and preparing to get the decorations down before New Year's Eve. My bedroom was the biggest mess, having been the staging room for all the Christmas happiness. There was no clear surface in there—on the furniture or the floor; the bed didn't even get made six days out of seven. I didn't take a "before" picture of my room—you really wouldn't want to see that. But now that it's all clean, I love my bedroom!

my lovely room

All in all, we have had a busy and very happy holiday. And I hope you all have, too. And here's wishing you a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Perspective

"I couldn't love anybody as I love you."
"Oh, Diana," cried Anne, clasping her hands, "do you love me?"
"Why, of course I do. Didn't you know that?"
"No." Anne drew a long breath. "I thought you liked me of course, but I never hoped you loved me. Why, Diana, I didn't think anybody could love me."

—from Anne of Green Gables

When I was growing up, and particularly as a teenager, I never felt like I had friends. Not that I was bereft, or unhappy. I could talk to people; they seemed to like me well enough. But I didn't really have anyone who would come hang out at my house or who I thought would go shopping with me. I knew people thought I was talented, but I didn't know if they really liked me. I felt like I could join in their conversations sometimes, but I was never sure how much I really added. And, unfortunately, before my senior year I was never involved in any school groups or clubs that would have automatically given me a common ground with other kids. I had a few friends in each class that I chatted with, casually—while we were at school, but none that I was really close to.

A couple weeks ago, as I was looking for pictures of Kim and me, I came across some letters and notes that I'd gotten from different people during my teenager-hood. It was kind of an eye-opener. First of all I found a couple of pathetic letters from a boy who had a major crush on me—but that's a story for another time. I also found a note from a guy we'll call "Cliff." Cliff had come to my surprise 17th birthday party [which is also a story for another time]. In his letter he mentioned that maybe he and I could go on a date that summer (I was really surprised when I read that a couple weeks ago—I didn't remember it at all); he also signed my yearbook and gave me his phone number. I also found a letter from a girl named Lori who was a year older than me, and had moved into my ward when I was about 14. I smiled at her and said, "Hi." the first time I met her—I always do that. When we saw each other in church or at school I'd chat with her. I didn't feel like I'd done anything exceptional. But she really liked me. In her letter she told me how much it meant to her that I'd been so friendly and how comfortable I'd made her feel when she moved in. I remember receiving that letter and feeling surprised at the time; I really hadn't done much.

Looking back, I see now that I probably could have had a lot of friends. I think maybe people really liked me. I could have dated a few different guys, and maybe even had another best friend for a couple years (Lori moved away after about two years). It surprises me because those letters and notes I just read don't match my memories at all. Perspective.

But now there's this funny thing going on in my mind, because I kind of feel the same way as an adult as I did then. I can get in on conversations with people; we are pleasant together. I see ladies in my ward who really seem to be best of friends and sometimes I feel kind of wistful—like I wish I had a good girl-friend close by. I don't feel like I could just drop in on someone or ask them to go out and play with me—as if I would be imposing on them. I still know that people think I can do anything—it surprises them when I admit to something I can't do well. This is probably just my own insecurity speaking, but sometimes I feel like people admire me from a distance, but that I'm not really someone you'd get close to. Does that make any sense?

Last night we had a Relief Society friendship dinner. I chatted with everyone in the group and I fit in well enough; I believe I contributed intelligent and sometimes even witty conversation. After the dinner my former visiting teaching partner came and said how good it was to visit with me and how much she'd missed talking with me. I feel the same way about her as I did with Lori—we got along well, but I didn't think I'd done anything exceptional; certainly didn't think I'd been missed. I had another person last night tell me how glad they were to talk to me. Maybe I'm kind of slow; but I am beginning to be surprised by the realization that people truly would be my friends. They seem to really, actually like me.

Friends Forever

When I was growing up, my very, very, absolute best friend of all time and in the whole world, was Kim Shakeri.











[That's Kim in about 6th grade, I think. I think that's me in about 6th grade too. I hate that picture of me, but I guess that's what I looked like.]
I didn't have many friends when I was little. That seems strange when I grew up in a house with eight children, but that's how it was. Melanie was five years older and had no use for a little pesty girl like me. And besides that, it took a long time for her to forgive me for usurping her position not only as baby of the family but also as the only girl in the family. When Melanie and her best friend played Barbies, I'd ask to play with them; they'd say OK—but they made sure that my Barbie's house was as far from theirs as it could physically be. And their Barbies were never home when mine came to visit! It was usually like that when I wanted to play with them. They even made up a song about me once: "Contamination! Contamination! When Loralee comes around, you better run away. Contamination! Contamination!" (I didn't know what contamination meant, but I could tell it wasn't good. And I could still sing it for you, but I won't.) I got over it, and so did Melanie. As she got older we liked each other better and better. Now she's my best friend—after Bruce, of course.

I was popular enough in elementary school; kids liked me. But I have never been one to have a whole group of close-knit friends that I would hang out with all the time; I did best one-on-one. Hilda (not her real name), my best friend through most of elementary school, was difficult. Sometimes we got along great; but lots of times we were not speaking to each other. One time—when we actually were speaking and, I thought, getting along—she made a point to tell me that I wasn't her best friend, some other girl (whom I'd only met once or twice) was her best friend. That hurt! But when we were getting along we had fun; and she was still the best friend I had around.

In sixth grade this new girl, Kim, moved in. I thought I might like to get to know her, but "Hilda" said, "Let's not be friends with that new girl." And she said that she wouldn't be my friend any more if I befriended Kim. Well, that's not a dilemma; it's a no-brainer—for an adult. But that ultimatum was a big deal to an eleven-year-old kid who needed a friend.

It was hard for me to avoid Kim since she and I were in the advanced reading group together—a group of only six kids (and she and I the only girls). We went for a few weeks trying to ignore each other (Kim thought I was a snot—Hmmm. Wonder why?). But I still thought I'd like to get to know her. I finally told our teacher my problem, and she advised me to just try playing with Kim—even suggesting that "Hilda" might not be such a good friend if she behaved that way. So I invited Kim to come play with my dollhouse; we really hit it off and after that we were inseparable. We would walk to school together—which meant one of us walked all the way past the school to pick the other up. Every day after school we were together for hours, either at her house or mine.


Kim and I played lots of silly games together; most often it was Barbies, sitting behind my dollhouse. My Barbie, named Karen, was a wizard and hers was a Nina Ballerina doll; obviously she was a world-famous ballerina. Oh yeah!—and they had a pet tiger (named Kitty—how original!). We played Robin Hood together. Since Kim was a lot taller than I was, she played Little John and I played Robin. We made up our own country; we even had a national anthem (I remember the melody, but not the lyrics; and, no, I won't sing it for you). Kim and I both had little sisters who were three years younger than we were; our country was constantly at war with them. We often had tea with my toy china tea set. We were very proper, and gossiped with "English" accents; her name was Adeline and I was Elizabeth. We had sleep-overs as often as our parents would permit. We liked the same kind of music and books; we could talk about anything, real or invented, and completely understand each other. And we had fun!

Kim's parents were divorced, a novelty in my world then. It was very sad for me when summer came and she spent the entire vacation in California with her dad. But we wrote each other every week; I haunted the mailbox that summer. It was a happy, happy day when she came back to Utah for the school year.

Kim was more social than I ever was and easily made new friends in seventh grade. Again, I was popular enough; I could talk to just about anyone, but I wasn't tight friends with anyone else. Kim and I didn't have any classes together that year, but we did have lunch together and walked to and from school together. Things were pretty much the same between us, The Inseparables.

But at the end of seventh grade, tragedy struck: Kim was going to live with her dad permanently. I was heartbroken. We still wrote to each other pretty much every week, but there would be no reunion at the end of the summer. I remember the first day of eighth grade, when my Health teacher called roll; Kim's name was on the list (the teacher couldn't pronounce "Shakeri"). It was all I could do to keep from crying. No one knew a Kim Shakeri—except me. [That's Kim in her 8th grade year. This is how she looked about the time she moved away. Funny; for as much time as we spent together I couldn't find any pictures of the two of us together.]

My time after school quickly got filled up with dance lessons and piano lessons (I'd done both all along, but now I was advancing and spending more time at them). Soon I got my job at the dance studio; my after-school days were completely packed. Kim and I still wrote each other frequently. I don't know if she truly realizes how important she was to me, but I never had another friend like Kim until I met Bruce. (Except he and I didn't play Barbies, and we never had sleep-overs until we got married.)

Over the years Kim and I have kept in touch. Sometimes we've lost track of each other for a few years at a time, but then we find each other again. Now we email each other kind of sporadically (actually she's very prompt at writing; I'm the sporadic one). She's married and has two darling girls; she still has a wide circle of friends. I'm glad that I'm still part of that circle.

[Senior highschool pictures. Doesn't Kim look beautiful?]

Love Unrequited

“I am mad, head-over-heels, puppy-dog in love!” It was a line from an episode of M*A*S*H (a popular TV show), and Ken was singing it out as he came happily through the door of our third period Physiology class at Kearns High School. I had transferred into the class about halfway through the term and I sat behind Ken. Apparently an announcement like this one from him wasn’t a new thing because Brenda, who sat behind me, laughingly asked, “Oh? Who is it this time?”

I became very busy with homework as Ken bounced into the room, slid into his desk and turned around to face me. For three or four long, uncomfortable seconds our eyes met, while I sat there willing him to not say it. Finally he looked up and said to Brenda, “It’s Teresa."

“Her again?” Brenda teased him a little, and then lost interest. Ken caught my eye again before he turned around and class started. And I wondered a little; did he really mean Teresa? I didn’t think so. Ken was a nice guy; we chatted together during class and dissected rats together in the labs. Well, at least if it was me he was “in love” with, I was very grateful that he didn’t announce it to the whole class—and I was pretty sure that I actually was “the one."

As time went on my suspicions were confirmed—it was me. A couple of times he wandered the lunchroom until he found me, and then sat with me and my friend Rachael. I started ducking my head when I saw him come in, but he always found me anyway. Rachael didn’t see why I was so uncomfortable to have him come looking for me. “He’s cute!” she said. I didn’t usually eat lunch anyway, so I quit going into the lunchroom and just hung out at my locker or in my next classroom during lunch. One time Ken really embarrassed me by finding me and my friends and telling me that he had written a letter for me—and then insisting that I read it right then and there. It was really mushy, and included something about my “eyes as blue as sapphires” and “hair as soft as red satin.” I could have died (and where did the red hair thing come from anyway?)! I was just glad that nobody was reading over my shoulder. When I finished reading the letter he immediately wanted to know how I liked it. After trying to stall a little, I finally gave him some answer that he found unsatisfactory and the subject dropped.

The infatuation did not drop, but to my relief Ken at least became a little more subtle about it.

The funny thing was that I really liked him—we were good friends. Once he came and watched one of my ballet classes at the University of Utah and afterward we went to Trolley Square. (To me that wasn’t a date, just a night out with a friend—same as if Rachael had come.) But he was the only boy I had ever given my phone number; and it was Ken, not Rachael, that I called when I nearly totaled my mom’s car on the day before my A.P. History exam.

I saw him once a few years after high school. He had just returned from his mission and he looked me up. But by then I had already found the true love of my life, and when Ken took me out for a little drive we really didn’t have much to talk about.

Since then I have thought about Ken sometimes, and I wonder whatever happened to him. Looking back, I know that I did love him—not in a mad, infatuated kind of way but, as Eliza Doolittle said, “more friendly-like.” Maybe we could even have gotten married and been pretty happy. But that’s a weird idea! I know I couldn’t be happier than I am with my Bruce, and our eight kids. Still, wherever Ken may be, I wish him to be as happy as I am.