Day-in-the-Life Fisher Style

My Openly Weeping Appreciation for Helpers

2011-11-05T07:52:00.000-06:00

The other day I took my little brother Ed out to lunch for his birthday. He was born when I was in the 7th grade.

My mom was 42, I believe, when she had Ed, her final child. She was also teaching at the same junior high I attended. I found out that my mom gave birth to a baby along with all my fellow junior high classmates and faculty. The announcement came over the intercom system:

"Attention: Mrs. Christenson had a baby boy this morning. Congratulations to Mr. Lynch."

What?

A few seconds later, "I mean, Mr. Lynch won the faculty pool guessing when Mrs. Christenson would have her baby."

I loved the faculty at West Minico! They were a bunch of crack-ups!

During lunch, I told Ed that we'd hired a babysitter to watch the girls for a few hours a day. Kulani found a job outside the home, so we needed extra help.

Paula, my babysitter, is AMAZING! The first time I came home and saw how much she'd helped, I fell on my bed and weeped with joy. Literally weeped.

Everyday I come home she's done something more. She does my laundry. She cleans my room. The other day she cleaned out my fridge! Occassionally she'll have a lunch waiting for me.

And she's great with the kids, too. Once I quit my job, I have to figure out some way to keep her on to show me how she does it all.

I know, I know: More than anything else I've ever written on this blog (not my one-eyed dog Jesse or the cat who gets shut up in rooms, so he paws through the carpet all night), you are jealous of my sweet Paula. I'm jealous for you. I tell her everyday, "What can I do for you, Paula, because you do SO much for me?" I want to pay her $50/hour. I don't pay her that, but I'd like to.

So I was telling all this to Ed, and this story, of course, conjured up our memories of Grandma Pete.

Who was Grandma Pete?

Grandma Pete was the Christenson version of Alice from The Brady Bunch. (I don't have to explain Alice to my readers.) In fact, Grandma Pete's real name was Alice (Peterson), but she insisted that we call her Grandma Pete.

She was at least 70 years old when she started working for our family. She'd say that Mom giving her the job was a great blessing straight from Heavenly Father. But really, she was the huge blessing in our lives.

I'm embarrassed to think of some of the things I thought about her, so I won't write about those. She was a bit feisty and a touch cranky, but now that I'm older, I've realized that about 75 percent of people get that way in their older years.

How does that old saying go, "I'm now old enough to not be afraid of expressing my opinion, but now I'm too old for anyone to take me seriously." Grandma Pete wasn't afraid to share her opinion.

For example, she didn't want me wearing makeup until I was 18. My mom let me start wearing makeup whenever I felt like I wanted to start, which was about 9th grade. So every morning when I'd put on makeup, Grandma Pete would give me a frown and a head shake.

But these aren't the memories I want to share about Grandma Pete. Let me back up a moment and tell you a little bit about Grandma Pete's life.

Grandma Pete was married to Grandpa Pete, Al Peterson. He must have been 10 years her senior, but you wouldn't know it to look at them. They'd both lived rather difficult lives. He was much more cantankerous than even Grandma Pete.

They never had children of their own, but they raised five children. My memory is hazy on this one, but a close relative, maybe a sister or brother, died in a car accident, and Alice and Al took the children in as their own.

Al was a farmer, I believe, out near Emerson, a small farming community outside of Paul, which was outside Burley, which is about one hour from the Utah border. Utah? It's in the western United States. Oh, now you know where it is.

Grandma Pete took care of all five of those young children. Later, she took care of some of the grandchildren. She also watched another lady's adult child who was severely mentally and physically handicapped.

Grandma Pete was born to take care of children. And she seemed to love doing it.

When Grandma Pete started working for us, I was in the 5th grade. The youngest child was Wayne. He was just a baby. Grandma Pete also watched Mary for half a day (because she was in kindergarten) and Hetty, who must have been about 3 or 4.

And then my parents had Ed, and Grandma Pete watched him until Ed was in 1st grade. So all total, Grandma Pete was with us for nine years.

Ed told me during our lunch that he thought Grandma Pete was his grandma. Us older kids were always bugged that she insisted we call her Grandma Pete.

"She's not our grandma," I thought. I feel really bad about that now.

When Ed found out she wasn't our real grandma, he was deeply saddened. It was like he found out he'd been adopted.

"But I love Grandma Pete. She must be my grandma!"

And Grandma Pete loved Ed. I think she loved Ed more than any of the rest of the kids she watched.

She would hide things from Ed to see if he would find them throughout the day. Once my dad found a couple of Pepsis in his shoes because Ed hadn't found his treat that day.

As soon as Grandma Pete walked through our doors at 1911 Q Street in Heyburn, she would get to work. She'd help my dad make breakfast. She would start cleaning up dishes. She would start a load of laundry.

Do you know she did our laundry every weekday (excluding summers when my mom was home from teaching)? Can you imagine doing laundry for a household of about 10-11? (A little Christenson fact: We never had all 10 children living under one roof at one time. Either Doug was away on his mission when Ed was born, or when he came back, Amy was gone to college.)

Every day there was more laundry, and lots of it. And she'd do it all. Even fold it and put it into piles for each chld.

Our only job was to take our pile down to our rooms and put it in our drawers. We rarely even got that right. (But between you and me, doesn't every mother know that actually putting the clothes away IS the hardest part about doing laundry? That and the folding, I mean.)

And she'd vaccuum, clean the kitchen, and on very rare occassions, she'd make a lemon meringue pie that was really tasty.

I know my mom appreciated Grandma Pete immensely. Now that I'm a mother, I understand that appreciation on a whole new level. Appreciate is something you put on a thank you card: what my mom felt (and what I feel for Paula) is deep gratitude and indebtedness.

After Ed started first grade, Grandma Pete went downhill pretty quickly. She passed away a year later.

Perhaps she needed to be needed. If so, she picked working for a family who truly needed her.

Brudda, be awesome like kine!

2011-10-08T09:20:00.003-06:00

My younger brother B.J. will be competing in the Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii, in about two hours. I think this is his fifth trip to Kona. Yes, he's that good, and did I mention he's my brother?

What's even cooler about B.J. is how cool he is. People gravitate to B.J. Perhaps it's his 6 foot 7 inch frame; no matter where you're at in a crowd, you can see B.J.'s head popping up amongst the other heads. But his personality matches his tall frame.

Whenever I'm running in a triathlon with B.J., I watch as person after person comes up to talk with him and ask him about his race. He asks them about their race in return. He always seems just as excited about how well they did as he is about his own race.

At many races he stays after to help clean up or do any other manual labor they may need.

B.J. is also super good with kids. He's taught my girls the "snowman" handshake. When someone sticks out a fist to fist-bump you, you add one fist to the top of their fist, and a second fist to the bottom of their fist, and say, "Snowman."

He's just a really cool guy.

He wasn't always so cool, or so I thought. I remember going to school with him when he was a first grader and I was a third grader. He always had on a huge smile and would wave and say hello to me when we happened to be eating in the same school cafeteria.

"Hi, Cindy!" he'd practically shout.

"Oh, boy. It's my little brother and look at how he combed his hair today. I should hide," is what I thought.

I remember in sixth or seventh grade, he declared that he no longer wanted to be known as "B.J." I'm guessing most boys with those initials once they hit a certain age would like to no longer be referred to as that. But he couldn't shake his name. It has stuck with him.

My parents liked to name us after teenagers they'd admired. B.J. was named after two teenage boys in our ward named Bill and Joel. They're still our family friends today, and they truly are great men. I love that B.J. is named after them. (B.J.'s real name is Bradley Jay, though. But my parents wanted the initials of Bill and Joel.)

I probably brought more pain into B.J.'s life than help. In junior high, B.J. and myself both had the opportunity of riding the ski bus. Because of the heavy influence of an older sister in college and having cousins in Utah, I started getting into alternative music, and so did B.J. Getting into alternative music also meant dressing the part and getting a "waver" haircut: two things that didn't mix well in our Wrangler-wearing, boot-kickin' junior high. B.J. became the target of "cowboy bullies." (To this day, I have a healthy distrust of cowboys.)

On one of our ski trips, from my vantage point of the ski lift above, I saw my brother speeding down a hill while being chased by a bunch of cowboys from our school. (How did you know they were cowboys? They wore jeans and a baseball cap when they skiied.)

I was furious. When I got off the lift, I skiied as fast as I could to catch up with them. And when I found them, I gave them a serious shout down about messing with my brother. Gulp. Men everywhere when reading that took in a collective, "Oh, no!" In my adult years I have learned that an older sister defending a younger brother doesn't help matters; it hurts more.

I can see those little Nelson Munzes (the bully from The Simpson's) standing over B.J. and hitting him while saying, "And that's for getting your sister to fight your battles. And that's for your waver haircut."

When we entered high school together, B.J. as a sophomore and me as a senior, the tides had changed. Now it was me saying "hi" to B.J. in the halls while he pretended like he didn't know me. But the bullying hadn't stopped, at least not as a sophomore.

Once I saw B.J. running as fast as he could and hiding behind the English building. A few seconds later I saw a bunch of cowboys running in the direction B.J. was running. (How did you know they were cowboys? They wore tight Wranglers, short mullets, and a baseball cap.)

The tradition in our school was for the senior boys to find sophomore boys, pick them up, and throw them in the bushes. I'm not sure they ever caught B.J., but they tried. Maybe that's where the beginnings of his speed originated.

Because I wanted to get to know B.J. better before I headed off to college, and because I wanted to look good in my prom dress, I joined B.J. on the track team my senior year. It was a lot of fun getting to know him and his friends.

B.J. and his friends invented a game called the "tricky trap." One of his friends would kneel behind an unsuspecting person, while another friend would come by and gently tap the shoulder of the person behind whom the friend was kneeling. This would cause the person to take a step back, not seeing the kneeling person, and fall over. Then they'd all laugh and yell, "tricky trap!"

They tried it on me once. The neighbor boy Lynn Brown was the one kneeling. I think it was Thurman Heiner who gave me the gentle tap. I fell over, and the laughs ensued. I got up seeing red. I chased Lynn down and proceeded to wail on him. I still feel pretty bad about that. Sorry, Lynn! All in good fun. I can take a joke now, I promise.

At one of the last meets of the year, my dad, who made us breakfast every morning, sat us down to breakfast and proceeded to give us a talk that would live in infamy. Lincoln had the Gettysburg Address. Martin Luther King had "I have a dream." This was my dad's talk. I think I'll name it "You're not the only one running that race."

My dad's speech essentially went like this:

"Your mom and I can't make it to your meet, but I want you to know that while you're running that race, you aren't the only one out there. Your mom and I are there. Your siblings are there. Your grandparents are there and your great grandparents. Your teachers and Sunday School teachers are there. You aren't alone when you run; everyone who has ever supported you in any way is with you, too. Don't be like some athletes who claim they did it all themselves. You are representing those who love you. Represent them well."

Later that day as I was running the mile race and heading into the last lap, I saw B.J. and his friends and I heard them shouting, "Do it for the family! Do it for Maytag! (He was our pet dog.) Do it for the Laudromat! (That's where we lived when we were younger.) Do it for the trampoline! (The trampoline was like a second home for us.)"

I couldn't hardly breathe I was laughing so hard. After I got my composure, I picked up my speed and happily ran to the finish. On my shoulders was all of that, and I still managed to run a personal best of 6 minutes 18 seconds. (Slow, but fast for me.) I think those things weren't on my shoulders, but inside my heart fueling the engine.

So today, B.J. will be running in the Ironman Championships. In his heart, I hope he knows that we'll be there, too.

Do it for your family. Do it for the Hawaiian Style Cafe (a place we love to eat when we're on the Big Island). Do it for the state of Idaho. Do it for the University of Utah. Do it for the Salt Lake Running Company. Do it for the little kids who look up to you. Do it for the adults who look up to you. Do it for Will, who looks up to you most of all. Do it for the mountains. Do it for the sea. Do it for America. Do it, because that's who you are. And I love you, little brudda!

Some pictures to humble B.J.:

My dad always took a picture of us before going to school. The following picture isn't great, but it's a picture of me as a senior and B.J. as a sophomore. Proof that we were wavers. (And I think B.J. was a tuba player, and that's a tuba in that red bag.) Little sister Hetty is on the left and younger brother Wayne is on the far right.

I think I was in fifth grade in the following photo. B.J. would have been third grade, and Mary, on the right, would have been first grade. Hetty was at "Grandma-Pete school."

This last picture is of B.J. after the Spudman triathlon in July where he took first for the third time. Photo by Angela S. Nelson.

The one and only feminist article I will write before shoving her back in the box

2011-09-15T07:13:00.000-06:00

Writer’s Note: Still haven’t figured how to get these feeds off Facebook, so for those reading this from Facebook, I’m sorry. I’m sure by now whenever you see a post from me, a gentle roll of the eyes and a, “Oh, boy. Here goes long-windy Cindy again,” comes to mind. Not offended. No I am not. It’s a return to my elementary school nickname: Windy, as in, “Was that you, Windy? Gross!” That only scarred me for a short 10 years. Short. Keep rolling the eyes and ignore my rants. For the rest of you, welcome to my mind!

By now everyone knows what Netflix is best for: catching up on old TV shows that somehow you didn’t catch the first time they aired. To date, we’ve caught up on all Friday Night Lights, Veronica Mars, Battlestar Gallactica (Kulani only), and Sports Night (me only).

TV writing in this day and age is quite good. The stories and characters are complex. The writing is so real-to-life that at times, it makes me think I’m watching something that could have easily taken place in my own home, even though the scene may play out between a druggie and a teacher-turned-meth producer. TV dramas/comedies are the new reality TV.

But we kept hearing rumblings about Mad Men. I’d read enough and seen a few minutes here and there to know that watching that show may not be good for me. And not for the reasons you might think.

Inside me is a raging feminist.

Not because my dad mistreated me or anything. Heavens, no. My dad washed dishes, did laundry, cooked breakfasts, took an interest in our games, wanted to see his girls succeed as much as his boys. No, my dad was/is one amazing dad.

No, I think my issues with men began smoldering in high school. Because I went to a pretty chauvinistic high school. My older sister Amy (who has asked me to be nicer to her on this blog) had a teacher once who told the guys in her class that if they wanted a great show, they should attend the girls’ volleyball games and see how short the opposing team’s shorts were.

Another infamous teacher/coach at our school liked to tell the track girls to “eat from the salad line.” I don’t think he ever told the guys that.

My inner creep meter definitely went off around some male teachers who didn’t mind an ego stroke from a cute cheerleader. To which I can already here some men thinking, “You were just jealous,” and my inner feminist starts growling.

We had intramural sports in my high school, but girls weren’t allowed to play. Well, that’s what we all assumed, because all the intramural basketball teams were made up of all guys. Until me, my cousin, and a friend formed a basketball team to take on the guys.

We lost every game, but we sometimes came sort-of close to winning. We honestly formed the team because we were all basketball players who didn’t play for the school team anymore. Especially my friend and cousin: they were honest ballers. They could play! But part of me also wanted to show ‘em.

One boy told me that it was embarrassing of us to play. It put the guys in an awkward situation: beat the girls or be beaten by the girls: a lose/lose situation. I get that analogy with wrestling, honestly I do. But with basketball? Really? Just beat us already and shut up about it! Or if we beat you, sorry. Practice a little more next time.

Over the years, and perhaps because of my early vocalness, I have learned that being a wear-your-heart-and-feelings-on-your-sleeve feminist isn’t very fun, and it turns people off. Trust me, I lost friends because of my verbal rants, and I especially lost the interest of many guys wanting to pursue a pursed-lipped little upstart like myself.

So I’ve mellowed. Plus, you can’t be thinking, “Men are all jerks!” when you live in a world made up of 50 percent men. And you’re married to one. (Not that Kulani is a jerk, but he is a man. Just keep reading.)

Even more, many feminists seem bitter and lack a sense of humor, as evidenced by this article, wherein feminists take Tina Fey to task for not being feminist enough. Nobody whose company I want to share would talk about my idol Tina that way. If I had a feminist card, I would have sent it back after reading that article.

And now we’ve started watching Mad Men, and that inner feminist, who I’ve tried so hard over the years to keep deep within me so as not to scare people away, is rumbling inside of me.

If you don’t know, Mad Men is about 1950 advertising men and the way they interact with the women around them, from their wives to their secretaries to their mistresses. It’s an AMC production, which means it’s not “rated M” (no nudity, no super-bad swear words) but it’s not for kids either.

I’m not very far into the series, so the characters still have lots of room for growth and improvement (which is why I love TV so much), but currently, the male characters are all a bunch of JERKS! Kulani says they’re worse than jerks, but I can’t print what he calls them. Well, I can, but I won’t.

The most egregious example of the men’s chauvinism is of the main character toward his wife. She is going through a midlife psychological break down, in large part due to her husband. She turns to a psychiatrist for help, and after every session with the psychiatrist, and unbeknownst to her, her husband calls the psychiatrist and asks him what he found out in therapy! And the therapist gives him a breakdown of what they talked about! And he summarily tells the husband that his wife has the thoughts of a spoiled child! What?! Do you think stuff like that ever actually happened?! It seems a little far-fetched, but maybe it was that bad?!

Deep breath. Deep breath.

As we’re watching it, Kulani tells me he really likes the upscale-department store owner. The upscale-department store owner is a Jewish woman who, at this point in the series, is a very smart, savvy business woman. She seems like a champion for women’s rights.

After he said that he liked her character, he said, “I’ve always liked independent women.” I wanted to kiss Kulani when he said that.

My husband, the NRA loving, gun-toting man that he is, loves himself independent women.

He was the one who had to drag me to a Tori Amos, the feminist songwriter of my generation.

And whenever we watch BYU football together and I’m doing dishes because I’m so nervous watching the game, if he sees a great play, he’ll pause the TV and say to me, “Cindy, you’ve got to see this play.” Even if his friends are watching the game with him, he’ll stop and wait for me to see the amazing play of the game.

And when I talk too much about the players and wonder what they are like off the field, and which players served a mission, Kulani doesn’t act annoyed that I’m talking through his football game. He pauses the TV or we just talk through the game about all the good things the football players do off the field. (Three cheers for DVRs! Saving one marriage at a time.)

And when we’re planning our goals and future life for the family, Kulani asks for my input, my ideas. He took out a rather large insurance policy because he said he wanted me to be well taken care of in the event that he should die.

And we have four girls, and Kulani brags to his friends about our girls’ soccer accomplishments as much as if he had a little boy who played quarterback on the little league football team.

And when we’re watching Mad Men, and my inner feminist starts stirring, I exchange looks of “did they just SAY that!” with him, and he looks back at me with his big, brown eyes that say, “I know. They are such JERKS!” (But his eyes say the other word that I won’t write.)

And hopefully he can see in my eyes, when the big gloppy tears well up because of all his awesomeness, that I love him.

And my inner feminist just needs to take a chill pill.

When you know you're done having kids...

2011-09-03T10:40:00.000-06:00

...or maybe we should've stopped one child earlier. Oh, stop. I'm just kidding. Kidding! But this time, I'm pretty sure Kulani and I both feel we are done having kids. I mean, dis-one. Done. You know you're done having kids when even the thought of raising another infant causes you all new levels of dread.

Not to mention, my parenting is lackluster at best. I've said it before, but now I really fear I'm turning into Lisa Simpson in the dream sequence when she marries Nelson Muntz, the school bully. She's lying on the couch while her five children turn the house into a den of filth. She says to the kids, "Quit it. Quit it. Mom's watching her stories."

Don't believe me?

Take a look at this picture:

She'd dropped that rice crispy treat many times in the grass. What did I do?

"Meh, she'll live." I let her keep eating that extra tasty, grassy treat.

But far be it for me to take accountability of my inadequacies. Let's put blame where it belongs: on my child.

It's true that mothers don't remember what occurred with the other children. But even still, I swear my other children weren't into things as much as this one.

Her goal is to climb to the highest point in any room in the house. The table, the counter, the top of the television console. I'm raising Edmund Hillary. She's going to conquer the seven peaks of the Fisher house. Maybe I'll put her to work this winter and have her hang the Christmas lights.

But she's only 1. She turned 1 in June.

We had a huge luau to celebrate. Since she is our last child, we brought out all the stops for her 1-year luau.

Even killed a pig and buried it in an emu.

We've tried this before with always the same result: the pig comes out raw.

But this year? This year was success! Sweet, sweet, porky success!

We had a lot of help from Keoni, a friend of ours who moved here from Molokai, Hawaii. He knows everything there is to cooking pig in an emu. He even once threw a luau for the cast and crew of Pirates of the Carribbean when they were filming in Hawaii.

We also had help from friends and family who hauled the pig up to the upper level of our backyard, and helped give him a proper burial. And helped pull him out of his toasty grave.

Kulani made big improvements to the emu. He added fire bricks to the pit. Here are pictures of the event:

Dead pig.

Keoni, Kulani, and Kuhia clean the pig.

Friends and family haul the pig up the hill.

The emu with hot lava rocks and fire bricks lining it. Received some funny comments from the neighbors above us.

A lot of work, but well worth it for this little ball of energy. We love you, Lehua!

Middle Borns: You're all right in my book

2011-08-26T07:18:00.002-06:00

As I was driving home from work on Wednesday, NPR’s Talk of the Nation was interviewing two women who had recently written a book about middle children. Turns out, middle children are pretty fantastic, as if that’s a newsflash to anyone.

Common traits of middle children include:

Good negotiators
Keen diplomatic skills
Peace makers
Open-minded
Independent
Flexible
Great marriage partners (nudge, nudge, wink wink)
Smell good

To give them their due credit, the book is called The Secret Power of Middle Children by Catherine Salmon and Katrin Schumann. Here’s some great insight from Salmon:

"If you grow up in a family and the firstborn tends to have a certain amount of authority that's given to them by the parents, and they're physically larger, they tend to get what they want or get their way through physical force or the authority parents have given them. [ahemmm, Amy (my oldest sister, or as we like to call her, second-mom)…] While for the last-born, as anyone who's had to deal with a lot of last-borns often knows [oh, we know], they tend to whine to the parents or get very upset if they don't get their way. And so that's their particular strategy for working out what needs to be worked out.

"For the middle child, neither of those strategies are available. So they often get very good at negotiating, figuring out what the other person wants and needs, and then managing to get them what they want and what the middle child themselves want at the same time. And, of course, one of the things that middle children often want is peace and calm and quiet and for everybody to get along. And so those traits then serve them well when they leave the family and go on to form their own families, and in the workplace."

Rings true for me.

As they do on Talk of the Nation, they asked listeners to call in with their input. They wanted to hear from middle children and wondered at what age did they start to value their place in the family.

If I would enter the 21st Century already and get myself a cell phone, I would have called in with the following genius insight:

I remember being out of college and still complaining to my brother-in-law that I didn’t get as much attention as some of the other siblings in my family. I think I was 23. I’m embarrassed to remember that conversation. I think that actually started my mind toward thinking more on the good things about myself and less on the negative.

I distinctly remember at age 29 having an awakening of my mind. It must have had something to do with the looming age 30, because a light went off in my head. I determined that everything in my life up to that moment was due in large part to my own choosing.

I didn’t have the pressures of living up to some unmet expectations, because I had none placed upon me. I was me, and I’d always been me, and I was okay with that. I knew that if I ran a race, won a talent competition, or became a prize-winning author it would be because it was something I wanted to do. If people were there to cheer me on, great. But if no one turned up, not one solitary single person in the whole-wide world of mankind (crickets chirping), I would live. And I would still love whatever it was I was doing.

Middle children get the bad rap of being picked on, uncreative losers with poor self-esteem. Actually, middle children due tend to have less self-esteem than oldest children or those footloose-and-fancy-free lastborns, but they don’t need to look to their bellybuttons anymore. Pick your heads up, middleborns! You are wonderful!

I am the middle of 10, but really, there are quite a few of us smooshed in the middle. According to researchers, anyone who isn’t the first born or the last born are the middle.

But my sister Amy hardly qualifies as a middle. Even though she is the second born, she stole that title away from Doug, the actual oldest born. I think I would put Doug in a class all by himself: identity theft stole me of my firstbornness.

I’ve been mulling the idea of my life choices over in my head lately. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I really like my job. I love it, in fact. I feel like I was born to be a technical writer. That doesn't sound exciting to you, does it? That's okay. What's important is that I love it.

I was moving some boxes up from the basement, and I found a newspaper clipping of when I was in high school and our school newspaper had won an award, so the local paper came out to interview the staff of the high school newspaper. In the article I mentioned that I wanted to be a journalist and that I loved computers.

How could I combine my two loves: writing and computers? Ding, ding, ding: technical writing! It wasn’t a career I necessarily set out to have, but now that I’m here, I fit like a Hand in Glove (the sun shines out of our behinds…a reference for those in the know to the best band of all time).

It was like my 17-year-old self was calling out to my 35-year-old self saying, “Hollah, girl! You know who we are, and you’re making us proud!” I wanted to kiss and hug my 17-year-old-self and tell her, “You are so amazing! And don't take yourself so seriously your freshman year at BYU! And don't live with Grandma; live in the dorms with all the other freshmen.”

You are amazing, middle children. But let’s not let it get to our heads. We know … we won’t. Firstborns and lastborns? They would let it get to their heads.

More Iterations of Me Turning into … My Mother

2011-08-05T06:56:00.004-06:00

As if written from a pioneer journal, circa 1850s:

Today we bid adieu to Kulani at the airport. He was called away to Washington D.C. for an import/export conference.

I traveled with my four young girls to visit a friend in the Sugarhouse area who, at the age of 36, gave birth to her first boy. As my friend told me, motherhood is for the young. She appeared heavily burdened with the duties of a new mother and a husband out of work for these two years.

I left her a small gift and short greeting, as my 1-year-old girl was want to destroy all her belongings.

We traveled east toward Emigration Canyon. I was want to show the girls This is the Place State Park, a place my mother took me when I was young. It's a park dedicated to honoring the memories of the early explorers and Mormon pioneers who settled the Salt Lake Valley.

Across the street from This is the Place is the Hogle Zoo, and young Nohea, who is only 4 of age, expressed a desire to go there instead. But my oldest, Lilia, would not have it. Being Sunday, she didn’t think it appropriate to go to the zoo. However, she thought visiting a monument dedicated to Mormon pioneer settlers was a suitable activity on a Sunday.

She begrudged me when I bought a few trinkets from the Visitor’s Center: rattlesnake poo and Utah rocks. In honesty, the snake poo is chocolate-dipped sunflower seeds and the Utah rocks are made of chocolate. I thought they would be great trinkets to send to Grandma and Grandpa Christenson on their mission in Texas.

I also purchased four tickets so we could ride the train that travels around the pioneer village. It was a great replica to my liking. Every story of pioneer hardship made my eyes tear up with great drops of water. The girls did not share in my profound affection for these early Saints.

I asked the girls if they would like to have their wedding receptions in one of the recreated buildings. “Gross,” is what they thought of the act of marriage. Lilia is age 8; Lissy is 7; Nohea is 4; Lehua is 1. Perhaps they are still too young to think of marriage.

I could have stayed there all day reading all the stories and plaques. It amazed me completely to think of those early explorers traipsing over the vast western land of America, especially considering the hot mess that is the Salt Flats and Wendover area. How did they do it without even a 7-Eleven with which to quench their thirst? In my heart I said a little prayer thanking the Lord for his tender mercies such as the 44 ounce Big Gulp.

At times I could not read the plaques detailing the sorrows of those early settlers, as my voice would be choked with emotion. I received funny looks from the girls, as if I was wearing my garments upon my head. In time, they will take their girls to This is the Place, and we shall see who's weeping then.

As a seed becomes a tree. And on it goes.

Writer’s Note: After visiting the monument, my desire to learn more about my ancestry was peeked. I did a quick search for Edward Partridge, one of my great-great-etc. grandfathers and first bishop of The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints. I remember my mother telling me stories of Edward Partridge, and she even helped me prepare a talk for Primary about him when I was young. I found this great article from the 1979 Ensign, written by Dean Jesse. Dean Jesse, coincidentally, was a next-door neighbor to us when we lived with Lani in Salt Lake City. His wife and Kulani’s mother are great friends.

Some interesting things I found about this article include:

Edward was considered to be without guile. I love that description.
Two of his daughters were polygamist wives to Joseph Smith, before he was killed. Later they became polygamous wives to Amasa Lyman. The article doesn’t say whether they divorced Amasa after polygamy was abolished and Amasa was excommunicated. But I get the sense that the two sisters were great friends, and especially helped each other in times of need. I love this line from the diary of Eliza (the line I am from):

“I thought my trials were very severe in the line and I am often led to wonder how it was that a person of my temperament could get along with it [polygamy] and not rebel; but I know it was the Lord who kept me from opposing his plans although in my heart I felt that I could not submit to them. But I did and I am thankful to my Heavenly Father for the care he had over me in those troublous times.”

I’m grateful for her honesty in that description.

Only one boy grew to adulthood from Edward, and his name was also Edward. He served a mission in Hawaii from 1854-57. Here’s what Edward Jr. wrote in his diary after he was called to be bishop:

“This is something that I have always had an instinctive dread of since I have had understanding sufficient to know what the office of a Bishop was.”

I’ve always believed that anyone who actually wants to be bishop has a screw loose in their head.

Prom in the Age of Plaid

2011-04-08T16:33:00.000-06:00

"My girlfriend always has that feeling that something's missing. She checks her pockets, checks her purse, counts her kids, but nothing's gone. She decided it was side effects from not going to her prom." – Iona, Pretty in Pink

This time of year always makes me nostalgic for … prom. Me? The girl who wore dark eye liner, pale makeup, and deep red lipstick while piping Smiths tunes into her CD Walkman during high school years? The high school newspaper nerd whose wardrobe was made up primarily of plaid, baggy shirts and jeans? The girl who had the “I’m much too cool for this” rolling-of-the-eyes down to a science and could recite the Canterbury Tales in ye olde English? Yes, me.

Looks like Disney will be releasing a movie this month called Prom. This week’s episode of Parenthood revolved around prom. And with horror I am looking at my future with four girls thinking: prom.

Women are completely silly when it comes to prom. As we grow older, prom (or “the prom” as I like to call it) takes on even more meaning. My mother, who once said to me that she would be extremely sad if any of her girls ever competed in a beauty pageant, even encouraged prom. She begged my oldest brother Doug to take a girl to prom. She promised to even pay for the whole thing. He didn’t give in to her pleadings.

“You need to take a nice girl. Not for you, but for her. Every girl should have the chance to go to prom,” she said trying to convince the Gooch.

“Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent,” Gooch would say in his best Dana Carvey impersonation of Dana Carvey’s impersonation of George H.W. Bush.

I’ve seen pictures of my mom at her prom. She was taller than her prom date and wore a quintessential 60s floor-length gown with white gloves. Her sun-kissed blonde hair was done up into a smoothed-over beehive. It made me completely understand why it is the Beach Boys wished they all could be California girls. Her high school had their dance at some posh place like the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was elegant and beautiful.

For a girl, the dress may be even more important than the actual dance. Other than a woman’s wedding dress, girls fantasize, rehash, regret, and forever talk about their prom dress. Where they bought it. Whether it was made. How much it cost. The dress they really wanted but couldn’t afford. The accessories they bought with the dress. The shoes.

Even now I see dresses in stores and think, “Oh man, that would be the PERFECT prom dress. Who do I know who is going to prom this year?”

I went to prom not once, not twice, but … oh yeah, just twice. The first year I went to prom with a guy from my LDS stake. He was good friends with my cousin Chet. Chet had arranged all of his friends to take all of my friends. We went four wheeling before the prom. It was one of the funnest dates of my life, honestly. We ate dinner at someone’s grandma’s house, because we lived in rural Idaho, and nice restaurants aren’t exactly easy to find in those parts.

On the Sunday following prom, my mom was the Stake Young Women’s leader and had to speak in my date’s ward. She mentioned in her talk that she’d bought new underwear for me to wear to the prom. I don’t know why that was pertinent to her talk, but I’m sure my mom found a way to apply that to the gospel. I’m sure my date had wished he’d stayed home from church that day, possibly forever.

For my first prom, I borrowed my oldest sister Amy’s prom dress, which I thought was absolutely beautiful…at the time. Looking back now, it was just way too pink. But Amy went to prom in 1989, the era of Pretty in Pink. Prom dresses were made in only the following shades: pink, red, black, and white.

I thought about borrowing my sister Kathy’s prom dress, but I didn’t want to risk losing my life if I got a stain on it. My sister Kathy’s prom dress was AMAZING—if you were a 15-year-old Latino girl celebrating your Quinceanera. I think the dress cost somewhere around $200, which was a mega-ultra, super-huge amount to pay for a prom dress in those days. (This is the sister who is two years older than me and who puppy-dog eyed my dad into letting her drive an older Porsche he had on his car lot every day to school.) I do think she bought her dress herself, so I’ll cut her some slack. It was all black with lots of lace, and went all the way to the floor, which wasn’t the norm for prom dresses in 1991. Most prom dresses back then barely reached the knees.

My Grandpa McEuen took her to get a makeover at Estee Lauder and told the sales lady, “Everything you put on her face, I’m buying.” Kathy treated that makeup like it was precious, precious gold. I didn’t dare even pretend like I was going to try it on. Have you met my sister Kathy? Then you know why. But she really did look beautiful. She even bought gloves and rhinestone jewelry from Claire’s to sparkle up the look (which in my 15-year-old mind, Claire’s was as good as Tiffany’s).

Her nickname on the high school volleyball team was Brutus the Blocker. I think she saw prom as her chance to show the guys at our school that she wasn’t a brute but a beautiful swan. She was breathtaking.

But where was I? So my senior year I had a boyfriend. And he asked me to prom. This was 1994, and rural Idaho had finally emerged into the thicket of the grunge era. The grunge era, as you recall, started when the Cameron Crowe movie Singles came out and ended with the dot com explosion.

I LOVED the grunge era! It could not have hit at a better time in my life. My family was going through their own personal Great Recession, along with millions of other families in America who were struggling with the recession of the early 90s. If you’ll recall, designers like Marc Jacobs actually fashioned clothes to look as though they came from thrift stores. Plaid and vintage was king!

I asked my mom if we could go to Salt Lake City to find my prom dress. She didn’t say it, but I could tell that I totally made my mom happy asking her to assist me in my search for a prom dress. I hate to shop, whereas my mom lives to shop. And to make the shopping experience even better, my mom invited Grandma McEuen along, who is an even crazier lover of the shopping than my mom. It was an experience I will cherish all my days.

We stopped first at the Crossroads Mall. I had seen a dress earlier that year in a store called Haroon’s that was absolutely perfect in every way. It looked like something Mia Farrow’s character would have worn in The Great Gatsby. It was a seafoam green dress with flowing ruffles.

But the price tag gave my heart a real jolt. Yes, it was perfect, but there was no way I would make my mom pay $230 for a prom dress. And frankly, I wasn’t going to spend my hard-earned Kmart cashier money on a dress that expensive either. Tuition for summer term of college was going to cost me $400, and I’d only managed to save $500. Wouldn’t be prudent.

After looking at the most perfect dress in the entire world and having it fall through my hands, every other dress we tried on at the mall looked lame by comparison. The perfect dress had an old timey look to it, so I suggested to my mom that maybe we could find a dress in a vintage store.

You would have thought I’d given my mom the moon. Her eyes became all sparkly, wet with tears. Her girl was becoming a woman right in front of her eyes. It wouldn’t be long before I’d be hitting the garage sales circuit with the rest of the McEuen women, and she knew it. A chip off the proverbial shoulder.

The first stop on our journey was a thrift store I had come to appreciate on my own excursions to Salt Lake City called Grunts and Postures. I’m not sure if it’s still there, but it was super cool when I was 18. I had my sister Mary try to distract my mom and grandma from seeing the mannequin legs that were wearing tights with the mother of all swear words printed on them. After looking around for a bit, we couldn’t find any prom-like dresses, so my mom stopped to ask the sales lady whether she knew of any vintage dress shops in SLC.

She directed us to a place called Jax. We left the store, but not without Grandma discovering the swear-word tights and becoming flustered, pursing her lips and shaking her head.

Jax had exactly what I was looking for. The sales lady and effeminate sales man had me try on a dozen dresses. Each time I’d come out of the dressing room, they made me feel so good by showering me with compliments, such as, “Oh, honey, that dress was made for you.” It was like having my own personal team of Tim Gunn and Stacy London, along with a beaming mother, cantankerous grandma, and bored-to-tears siblings.

I settled on a flirty, black 1940s cocktail dress that had rhinestones on the sleeves. The dress only cost $30, but I loved it as much as had I spent $200.

I wanted to sparkle up the dress even more, so my mom sewed a line of rhinestones around the middle of the dress.

And to top it off, my date had the great idea of us both going in high-top Chuck Taylors. He didn’t have to ask me twice.

It was a pretty magical night. We went with friends in my date’s grandma’s Cadillac. We ate dinner in Twin Falls, a town 50 miles from our high school, and then drove like mad to make it to the Senior Promenade on time. After taking pictures, the dance was over, but the group of us stayed after and danced to our own singing while the junior class officers cleaned up the aftermath.

Then we had an Easter egg hunt in the blustering Idaho wind, and then we went home. I promise, my young daughters who may be reading this one day, that my prom date drove me straight home. We did not stop and make-out!

Prom was a really great memory of innocence and fun, and I’d really love my girls to have that experience. I hope some future mom convinces her future son to take one of my girls--and treat them as respectfully as my dates treated me. And I hope my girls will ask me to accompany them to find the perfect prom dress. And I hope Grandma Christenson will still be around to come along for the fun.

This was the group from my first prom. My cousin Monica is on the far left with white gloves (sorry about the picture scuff). My cousin Chet is the fourth in the front row. He took my best friend Keri, who is the fourth in the second row. My date's name was Grant Hansen. Hi, Grant, if you happen to Google your name and stumble on this post. Thanks for taking me!

This picture doesn't do justice to my dress, but it does show off the Chucks. I didn't have the patience to dig through my pile of old pictures to find the actual dance photo. This was the photo I got because I won 2nd Runner-up to prom queen, should she and the first runner-up not be able to finish out their reign. Royalty at school dances is so ridiculous when you think about it. The sad part is that the queen pictured in this photo (the one at the top with the crown) actually did die in a swimming accident not even one month after we graduated.

A Night at the Museum

2011-02-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

It's been all sickness all day for the last few days around the Fisher family. We've been managing, but please don't come by the house, because it really is a disaster area.

Because we were feeling slightly better, and since this is a three-day weekend, we ventured out last night to the Lehi Hutchings Museum. They have a special night once a year they call "Night at the Museum." The museum really does come to life, and it is really cool. If you get a chance next year, you should go. It's $3 a person, which is a bargain, really.

Volunteers dress up in costumes and take on rolls of people from the past. We met Christopher Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, an African explorer, Annie Oakley, an Egyptian mummy, native American dancers, Betsy Ross, a Utah pioneer, and many more fascinating people.

When we'd stop to talk to some of the characters, they'd tell you all about their life and what they did. Each volunteer had to learn quite a bit about the history of their character.

Annie Oakley was a really cute woman, who told the girls, "People always told me, 'You're a girl. You can't shoot guns.' But I showed them. Don't ever let people tell you something you can't do. Prove them wrong."

I thought that was great for my girls to hear.

And Benjamin Franklin was great, too. He told us all about living in England for 11 years while his wife had to stay in America. And how his wife died three months before he got home (or something like that). I asked him if he ever remarried, and he said, "No, but I did write a lady in France." He was a darling old man.

Here are some pictures from that night:

Get some shoes on that baby! The girls at the entrance of the museum.

This T-Rex was waiting for us as we entered. It actually moved and everything.

An English African explorer and his helper "Tuk."

Lissy pointing to a Utah geode. Grandpa C. would love that rock, as he used to collect geodes.

"Dumb, dumb. Give me gum, gum."

They had two little girls behind this frame dancing ballet. It was amazing how well these little girls did. Their faces were beet red from dancing for all that time, but they kept at it. My guess is they started out with great gusto, but as the night went on, their dancing faded a touch. By the time we got there, they mostly just positioned their arms differently, and did a plie every now and again.

This guy was hilarious. He was behind glass, but he beckoned for the girls to come near him. Closer, he beckoned. Closer. And then he turned his head, and turned it back around really quick and scared them. He posed like this for my picture.

Afterwards we met up with Kulani for ice cream. Kulani and Dave went to a post-training dinner at Rodigio.

Nono Grows Up

2011-02-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

"I want a Tinkerbell party," Nono told me in March of 2010.
"I want a Snow White party," is what she asked for in April.
"Sleeping Beauty," was what she wanted in May.

Each month it was something else. Until the day arrived, and because I thought I could make a Rapunzel cake, I convinced her to have a Rapunzel party. And she agreed, which is rare for Nohea.

Because Nohea is a contrarian. About everything.

But I had a vision. I could build a cake with a cake tower and pipe long, golden icing flowing down the tower symbolizing Rapunzel's hair. I am not a cake decorator, but I thought I could manage that.

And I could make a pinata of a castle with a doll head sticking out. And the kids would yell, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair!" And I would lower the pinata and the kids could wack at it.

I could do this. I could give Nohea a great 4-year birthday party. Her first party with friends.... And then this is what happened.

I built the pinata two days before the party. Because I didn't trust my own brain, I researched the Internet for pinata-making ideas. Every site I found said, "Put paper mache around a balloon." So instead of just decorating the box and tower I made, I cut parts of the box out and put a balloon inside, thereby weakening the structure of the box. Here are pictures of what I'm talking about.

I was going to combine these two, and wrap them both with pink crepe paper...

but noooo. I had to cut out parts and put in balloons.

I can't believe I don't have a picture of the final product. It actually turned out okay, but I only put one layer of paper mache, and so with one wack, the thing fell apart. It was pathetic.

So then the cake. Easy enough. Make two cakes. One cake would be the base, and the second cake I would cut out round circles and pile them on top of each other to make a tower and place the tower on the first cake. Then frost it all.

Except, cutting out the round circles meant the sides were way to fluffy to frost. Here's what the crumbled cake tower looked like:

Kulani had to intervene at this point. It was not my finest hour. But he managed to think up another brilliant idea. He made the towers out of construction paper, and we frosted those instead. Here is the final cake. Not too bad.

It's supposed to be the top of Rapunzel's castle. The cake did taste good, so there's that.

And then we invited neighbors and friends from preschool. I thought it would be fun to give the boys pirate eye patches and the girls tiaras, and we'd play a game I created called "Princesses and Pirates." I was the alligator in the middle and held a green feather duster to signify my alligatorness. The boys sat on one side of the living room, and the girls sat on the other side of the living room. The goal was for the boys to run across the "ocean" and tag a girl on the hand. Then they both had to run back across the ocean without getting feather dusted by the alligator.

I had Lilia and Melissa show them how it was done.

"I don't want to do that," one little girl said. Then the other girls joined in. And soon, no one wanted to play THAT game.

So then I proposed another game I called the Boat Trip. One person is blindfolded and sits in a chair. I pick up the chair with the child on it and act like she is going on a boat trip. And the waves come, and the chair gets rocked. And the child has to jump off the chair to safety, but by this time I've lowered the chair to be near the ground.

Again, "I don't want to play THAT game."

Almost 10 minutes into the party, and I'm already running out of ideas.

Thankfully my friend Lindsay and her boys show up at this time. I ask the girls if they'd just like to play with Nono's dollhouse and dolls. Yes, that's what they want to do. And the boys just want to play Wii. So they do that. And me and Lindsay talk.

And it was a pretty lame party, but turns out, 4 year olds don't need a lot to be entertained.

We had cake, opened presents, and generally actually had a good time. Nohea said she liked the party, and that's all that counts.

The week before her birthday, Nohea took the scissors to her hair. She said she wanted a haircut like Dora's. After scolding her about her personal haircut, she ignored my insistence in not using scissors anymore and gave her Dora doll a haircut. She wanted to make Dora look like her. I really don't think she'll do that again, because I can tell she hates her haircut. She says she "looks like a boy."

Nono and Dora with matching haircuts.

But you can't keep Nohea down. She seems to be our most resilient child. She does as she pleases and she doesn't care if you like it or not.

She tells us that she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. I thought that was odd. What 4-year-old wants to be a doctor? So I asked her why.

"Because doctors work really hard."

What? Our other daughters wanted to be artists at this age or singing teachers.

I don't know what goes into Nono's head most the time. She has this look when she's concentrating on something. Let me see if I can find a picture somewhere...oh yes, here it is. She's digging for fossils with her sister Lissy. That's Nono in the bottom, left corner. Look at her concentrate.

Always with that furrowed brow.

We love our little bug. She's metamorphasizing into a unique little butterfly.

Social Butterflies

2011-01-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Kulani took a call from Lissy’s teacher telling him that Lissy was talking too much in class.

We were a little surprised by the call. Talking in school is something kids do, isn’t it? Sticking tacks on the teacher’s chair, fooling around in the bathroom with lighted firecrackers, bringing exotic pets to school: these are unusual. Talking too much in school with your classmates? That’s the American way, or maybe you haven’t heard about a little program called Facebook?

Of course, we outwardly backed the teacher and when Lissy got home, we told her to mind her teacher and to not do it again or there’d be consequences. Luckily, Lissy was already shook up enough over it. She was crying, and we could tell she felt bad—whether she was crying solely because she was getting scolded or whether she was crying out of sincere sorrow for disrupting the class didn’t matter to us. We just wanted her to not want to do it again. Another of our children, Nono, would probably be like, “Yeah, so what? I was talking. Deal with it.”

Kulani and I were both social butterflies growing up. For me, it was an extension of being the middle child of a large family. There was always someone to talk to at home or at school.

I used to tell my best friend Keri, who was the last one in her family, and whose next older sibling was five years older than her, that it must be so great to be her. When she came home from school, she didn’t have to deal with noise and chaos and craziness.

But then I was able to experience her life for a short weekend when my parents left for a trip with all my younger siblings when I was a senior in high school. (No, I did not recreate the scene from 16 Candles, mostly because I didn’t think of it at the time, and I wasn’t sure anyone would come to my impromptu party, sniff.) I was alone in the house. It was approximately 15 minutes before I was calling Keri and asking if she’d like to come over and hang out.

“I thought you said it would be cool to have the whole house to yourself,” she asked when I called her up.

“Oh, yeah, but you know, I just thought it would be fun to hang out.” She totally saw right through me. She was right. I couldn’t even stand being by myself for 15 minutes. Looking back, I think that was honestly the first time in my life, at age 17, that I’d been completely by myself for longer than an hour.

It’s true you can’t go back, and that’s a really good thing. If I had to do elementary school all over again as the person I am now, a teacher’s stern warning wouldn’t get me to stop talking to my classmates.

Call my parents? You call my parents, teacher. I’m finishing this riveting discussion with Mary Beth about what she saw on the playground during recess.

And that is why Facebook is like crack-cocaine to a person like me. Looks like Lissy might struggle with it too when she gets older. I hope she friends me and we can talk about it.

Parenting Missed Opportunity

2011-01-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

It’s no secret around here that I get cranky at night. But don’t bring that to my attention while I’m cranky, unless you like being barked at.

“I don’t need to go to bed. I’m FINE. It’s this family that is making ME cranky!”

Placing the blame on everyone but me—a fault that manifests itself brightly at night.

Last night for Family Home Evening, we read some of the Sermon on the Mount. Now, I’m no Bible scholar, but if you were to look for the best scriptural passages to sum up why you believe in Christ, and what passages you’d most want to teach your children, the Sermon on the Mount would be very high up there, if not the Mount Everest of scripture verses.

And so we began each reading three verses. Kulani and I took turns trying to explain to the girls what each verse meant.

“A mote is a very small piece of wood, like a splinter. A beam is a huge board. You need to work on your own problems before you can help others with their problems,” Kulani told the girls.

“Do we feed Jesse our finest dinners? No. So we don’t need to share things that are important to us with people who won’t appreciate it or who are just going to make fun of us,” is how I tried to explain the “pearls before swine” concept.

Afterwards I gave the girls a quick quiz. They didn’t get one question right, so either we didn’t do that great of a job explaining, or they weren’t really paying attention.

Then we had cookies, and it was time for bed.

Before Lilia goes to bed, she asks me, “Will you come read scriptures with me?”

Stop right there. What parent wouldn’t love to hear their child show an interest in learning the scriptures?

Yeah…….. but here’s what I did.

“We just read scriptures. Why do you want to read some more?”

“Well, I’m supposed to read eight verses on my own,” Lilia said.

“Fine. If you have to do it by the book, then read them yourself in bed. It’s late. I need to get up early in the morning.”

Reading what I said in the full light of day…well, all I have to say is, “Oh, heck.”

I watch Lilia walk to her room dejected. I tell Kulani, “Why does she have to be such a pharisee about these things? She can read the scriptures just fine on her own. Why does she need me?”

In the middle of the night, I awake realizing what I’d done. I hear Kulani rolling over and I say to him, “I think Lilia wanted me to read with her, so she could better understand what she’s reading.”

“I know. She came to me a little later and told me she needed help understanding the scriptures. I told her I would read with her.” Kulani answers me.

Gulp. Don’t stand too close to me. You might get wacked by the beam sticking out of my eye.

Study: Sisters AREN'T Blisters

2011-01-09T17:37:00.000-07:00

Check it out, yo: According to a new BYU study, we'd be worse off without sisters. We'd be worse off without our brothers, too, but we'd be even worse off without our sisters.

I had four fantastic sisters. From time to time I would borrow their clothes, and from time to time I would get stains on their clothes, and from time to time they would get upset with me, and from time to time I acted as though I didn't care. I wasn't always the best sister.

But now my girls have each other to lean on, borrow clothes, laugh over incredibly silly jokes, cry over lost loves, support one another, and generally be better off having one another.
To sisters!

Sisters before their dance recital.

Sisters in their new pajamas on Christmas Eve.

Sisters climbing Grandma and Grandpa's tree in Blanding.

Sisters with our mom on a bench last summer in Lafayette, Indiana.

A Cringe-Worthy Christmas

2010-12-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Stop me if I’ve told you this story before, but this is probably one of my most gut-wrenching Christmas stories that I’ve ever personally witnessed. I’m not sharing this story for sympathy, although, I have been known to tell stories for that end. I’m telling this story because it’s just plain, good storytelling.

After I graduated from high school in 1994 (to me, years are important), my family moved from our small home in Heyburn, Idaho to my dad’s car lot in Burley, approximately three miles away. Yes, I said car lot.

You see, my dad was a successful car salesman at a Chevrolet dealership in Burley in the early-to-mid 80s. But then the owner of that dealership wanted to move on, probably due to lagging sales brought on by fierce competition of the Japanese auto markets. So my dad partnered up with a fellow co-worker and friend, and they started another used-car business.

Yada, yada, yada, they built a big building, yada, yada, yada, the car business didn’t do so great, yada, yada, yada, the partner left leaving my dad with a huge mortgage payment on the building, yada, yada, yada. So after years of trying to sell the business, my parents had the brilliant idea of moving the family into the car dealership and selling our Heyburn home so that they only had one mortgage to pay.

It sounds worse than it was. I left for college the week they moved into the car dealership, but from a girl coming home to visit, living in the car dealership was pretty cool. There was a pop machine readily available at all hours of the night. That’s probably where my youngest sister Hetty developed her deep and abiding love for Dr. Pepper. And we were within walking distances to grocery stores and video-store rentals. Ah, the good ol’ days before Netflix.

My parents had divided the show room into half car office, half living room. There was also another living room behind the main showroom. There was a kitchen, three huge bedrooms, a laundry room in back by the shop, and two bathrooms. Really, it wasn’t so bad. It was probably nicer than our Heyburn home, which had red, shag carpet and popcorn ceilings. Seriously, don’t feel bad for us.

And it was good for my parents to move from Heyburn. Don’t get me wrong: I love Heyburn. My grandpa started the first Heyburn Garage and was one of the first school bus drivers for Heyburn Elementary. But there’s something great about getting a new start somewhere else, where hopefully people don’t know you as the irresponsible family whose dog escapes all the time and wreaks havoc on neighbors’ lawns; or whose children wander the streets looking for welcoming doors and refrigerators full of food.

We left our old baggage in Heyburn, but as everyone knows, there are bags waiting for you in new towns, too.

The first Christmas in the car lot was interesting. For a church youth group activity, my younger siblings were asked to bring gifts for a needy family for Christmas. I can already see you cringing. Just wait for it, please. Shall I continue?

So my sister brought a rubber ball. I don’t know what my brother brought.

I was at home from college for Christmas. One night as we sat around playing solitaire on the computer or watching old movies, we got a phone call. I think it was my sister Mary who answered it. The person on the other line said, “There’s something at your door.” The car lot had four different entrances, and it took us a while to figure out which door exactly they were talking about. At any rate, we found the goods, and yep, there on top was the rubber ball my sister had taken to the youth activity to give to the needy family. I remember there being a turkey, too.

I can still see my dad’s face. It wasn’t so much sadness as it was bewilderment mixed with anger. I’m still perplexed as to how to think about this act of service. On the one hand, good for them for helping a needy family. On the other hand, I really didn’t view us as the needy family who needed help. Trust me, I’ve seen MANY needier families.

It was interesting being on the receiving end of something like that. It’s actually not that great of a feeling. I’ve always thought about that incident when I pass Giving Trees or Sub for Santa. Will these gifts go to truly needy families, or will they go to families who are just struggling like the rest of humanity? Will the kids see the tag that says, “Boy, age 5?” I don’t want to sound ungrateful, nor do I want to encourage NOT giving at Christmas time. Please continue to give. However, I’ve learned that it is almost harder to receive than to give.

To wrap up this already long story, the next day we took that box of food and presents to another home not far from our home. The family lived in a home that was patched up with tin siding. We knocked on the door and introduced ourselves. We asked if they would like some things for Christmas. They were smiling and couldn’t speak English, but they took our gifts.

I just mention this last part in passing, mostly because I love my parents like nobody’s business. On a few occasions, my mother has spearheaded us to give Christmas to another family. I remember in my youth, my mom taught us the first verse of “Silent Night” in Spanish. Then when we went to the people’s house to give them our Christmas gifts, we went in smiling and singing. My parents tried to communicate to the family who we were and to leave them a warm welcome. I remember another time, I think I was a junior in high school, when we did the same thing. And my mom in her very broken Spanish tried desperately to communicate love.

I’m not sure I have the guts that my parents had to actually go into a family’s home and bring a feeling of love, as well as physical relief. I’m fonder of the anonymous Christmas giving, purely because it’s easier.

That night when we received those gifts was a true defining moment in my life. That’s when it really hit home that we don’t need presents for Christmas. What we need is a communication of love. You are loved. You may not believe in Him or even have a desire to know Him, but I know that He loves you. In those moments in my life when I have felt the lowest emotionally, that is the one truth that has brought me back to my proverbial feet. I am loved.

How Divorce Affects Friends and What it Means to Me, Me, Me!

2010-12-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

Recently, Kulani visited an old friend who is going through a rough patch in his life. His wife has decided she doesn't want to be married anymore. They have three young children.

Because we never know what to do in situations like this, we brought them some dinner. It's the Mormon way: "You feel like you're at the worst emotional low in your life? How about some spaghetti to bring you out of the abyss." I personally think it works.

I waited in the car while Kulani delivered the dinner, so he could talk with him privately. After visiting for a short while, Kulani came back to the car.

"The guy's not doing well. He's lost a lot of weight," Kulani said.

"Well, it's good we brought him some food," I said.

And then it was kind-of silent. There was small talk about the kids and how the guy is going to handle it from here. But inside, Kulani and I were both thinking: "Could this happen to us?"

This couple was married only five days after us. We left our honeymoon to make it to their wedding at the Salt Lake Temple.

We don't know what goes on behind closed doors, and we aren't judging or blaming. (Well, we could and we do, but that goes on inside our heads, and I wouldn't speak it openly. Just like you wouldn't mention how snug my clothes have been fitting lately.) But when an announcement of divorce is made, especially from close friends or family, it does make me pause and look at my own marriage.

After we came in the house, Kulani says to me, "We're implementing date night around here." I was all on board for that.

So for that, my divorced friends who probably already have so much guilt, sadness, frustration, unpeace, embarrassment, and consternation, perhaps it has helped me have a better marriage in a small, little way. I don't want to end up divorced, so I'll work harder to not succomb to that end.

(Sorry for the selfishness of this post. In times of divorce, the least people to worry about are how friends are affected. But this is the Fisher blog, and what you will likely read about on here is how world events affect the Fishers, not the Brownstones down the street with their dog that yaps all night and how on earth they think that's acceptable?!)

My Sister Amy turns 40

2010-12-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

Writer's note: Sunday is a special day it's the day I catch up on my blog posts. This is long overdue, as my sister turned 40 in October.

My oldest sister is a mixed bag of everything wonderful in life. Already I've rubbed people the wrong way just for writing that, because if you've met my sister Amy, you either hate her or love her. I am in the latter camp: I love her like I love my right arm.

Amy is opinionated, bossy, no-nonsense, a Democrat in Utah, compassionate, a justice fighter, strong, strong-willed, and tough. But she's also incredibly thoughtful, sweet, and when I say she'll do anything for anyone, I mean it. She has the HUGEST heart of anyone I know.

Amy is a lawyer and has always wanted to be a lawyer. Her patriarchal blessing even mentions her being a lawyer. Currently, she works for Hunstman Corp., but I fully expect she'll be a judge before she's dead. She used to say she would be a Supreme Court Justice. Who knows, that could still happen, maybe eventually.

For Amy's 40th birthday, my brother-in-law Nathan and husband to Amy, threw Amy a big family party. He was able to video record each of her siblings sharing a few stories about Amy and wishing her a happy birthday. It was fun to hear what all my siblings had to say. He even managed to get a recording from my parents serving their mission in Texas.

But I didn't get to share some more personal stories I have of Amy that I likely wouldn't ever get to actually speak, because had I shared these, I would have been a complete bawling mess of a person. So I'll share them on this blog.

One of the first examples I witnessed of Amy's toughness was when I was in first grade, Amy was in sixth grade. We were walking home from school, and these scary looking fifth-grade boys waited for us to pass, and then they started throwing rocks at us. Amy turned around and berated them with her voice. She picked up some rocks and started flinging them back at them.

"How do you like how it feels." The boys started running. "Yeah, run, you chickens. I better not see you throw rocks at my sister ever again."

It was a small thrill for me when elementary school teachers would call me "Amy" instead of "Cindy." I loved it when people would stop me and ask, "Do you have an older sister named Amy? You look just like her." Of course, it also made me try to work harder and live up to her reputation. But I've always had a slight case of the lazies and the dumbies.

When she was in high school, Amy worked at Kmart part-time, kept straight-A's in school, and played on the varsity volleyball and basketball teams. I remember seeing her study after she came home from work at 9:30 p.m. I remember thinking, "It's too late to study. She should go to bed." And then when I got up in the morning, she would be the first one up and studying.

Needless to say, she graduated as the valedictorian of her 260+ class, and in her graduation speech, she berated some of the male teachers for being sexist. (One of her high school history teachers had made the remark that if the guys in the class wanted a good show, they should go check out how short the girls' volleyball players' shorts were.) And she told her rural Idaho classmates that they were as good as any other students graduating from any other high school in America.

She went to BYU based almost solely on her love for BYU football. She later served a mission to Sweden, where she met her now husband. She is fiercely loyal to the LDS faith, and will serve in any calling she is asked. She reminds me of Marlin K. Jensen, the LDS general authority, historian, and loyal Democrat.

Amy wasn't able to have children, but in typical Amy fashion, she didn't let it get her down for too long. She and Nate have adopted four children, and she loves being a mom.

I have personally witnessed a few incidents that Amy likely wouldn't want me to share, but I will anyhow.

Amy and Nathan lived in a small condo in Taylorsville for many years. I lived with them for one summer. Late one night, Amy heard a knock on her door. She went to the door, and a lady was there who said she'd just been beaten by her husband.

Amy had her come into her home, and not long after the husband banged on Amy's door. Amy told him to go away or she would call the police. He kept pounding on the door. So Amy started to lecture him about how he thought it was cool to beat up women.

I don't remember what ended up happening. I just remember Amy not being afraid of the guy, or maybe she was, but she didn't let on that she was.

On another occasion, Amy asked Kulani if he would do her a favor. She had a big black sack full of stuff and an envelope. It was Christmas time. She asked Kulani to take the sack and the envelope to a house in her neighborhood. She never told us what was in it, but we knew it was a lot of money and gifts for kids.

Amy is like the second mom in our family. Whenever I was low on money, I would ask Amy first with explicit instructions not to tell mom. Ten minutes later I would get a call from mom asking, "Do you need some money?" Amy could never keep a secret from mom. Plus, she confessed to me, that she didn't have any money either.

I have many more stories of Amy I'd love to share, but time is getting away from me. The following is a picture of Amy holding the gift I gave her for her birthday: Michael Jackson's Thriller CD. I remember when she got the original album in 1985 for Christmas. She screamed like a little girl.

She is an amazing sister and rare human being. I'm not sure the world could take more like her, but one is plenty awesome for me.

Lilia's Baptism

2010-12-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

Writer's note: This is more of a journal entry, and I know Facebook will pick up this feed, because I haven't figured out how to turn off the automatic Facebook feed. If you don't like reading people's journal accounts, then please stop reading now. But all that disclaimer did was probably peak your interest more and now you are determined to read this, aren't you? Just know that you've been warned.

We had a wonderful day yesterday participating in Lilia's baptism. She has been preparing for this day for a long time, and she was very excited for it. Everyone seemed to be in an unusually great mood, and for once, we weren't late.

Aunty Sisty came over before the baptism and braided Lilia's hair. She looked so pretty.

Lilia was baptized with two other children from our ward: Austin and Claire. When I'd see Austin and Claire around at school, they seemed just as excited as Lilia. "I'm getting baptized on Saturday," they'd tell me. They all seemed very prepared for their baptism day, and they all looked so sweet.

Kulani and I both don't think we were as prepared as Lilia when we were baptized. In preparation for the baptism in the LDS faith, you have an interview with the bishop to make sure you know what it means to be baptized and to be sure you are ready for that commitment.

The days leading up to the interview, Lilia was nervous about meeting with the bishop. Sister Crosier, who is the primary president, tried to help calm their nerves.

"Think of the bishop as the ward grandpa," she said.

Lilia went in for her interview with the bishop and came out smiling.

"That was fun. I'd like to meet with him again. It was just like Sister Crosier said."

Lilia had a lot of family come to support her on her big day. We cooked for 50 people, which is small compared to the luaus. I'm glad it is over, and now I can concentrate on getting ready for Christmas.

Kamika took some great pictures of Kulani and Lilia standing by the baptismal font, but he hasn't given me the pictures yet. So these are pictures my sister took with my little camera.

Lilia wanted pumpkin pie for dessert, and she wanted me to spell out "Lilia's Baptism" on the pies in whip cream. I did my best.

Lilia has a big desire to choose the right. It's like she was sent to us with her switch set on angel mode. She's kind hearted and sweet to her younger sisters. She is also a great helper. I'm so thankful to have her in our family!

My Brother's Account of his First Black Friday Shopping Adventure

2010-12-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

My oldest sibling Doug is possibly the funniest, most postive person I know. He wrote my parents, who are serving a mission in Texas, an e-mail recently describing his first Black Friday shopping adventure with his wife Sherri. I'm copying it to this blog without his permission, so I hope he isn't angry. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

"Mom, I do have to report on the Black Friday shopping adventure. I had never partaken in this long-standing tradition, so I thought I had better check it out just to see what the hubbub was about. Let me see if I can put into words this transformative experience.

It all started with the Wednesday before the Friday sales. We received all the ads from the stores in Logan. We also learned that this year Walmart and some of the other stores were splitting their sales. Many of the Black Friday sales would begin at 12:01 AM and the electronic stuff would begin at the traditional 5:00 AM. As you can imagine, this bit of information changed the whole shopping plan. Now we would not have to get up before the roosters--we were not going to go to bed at all. It was going to be an all-nighter.

All day Wednesday and Thursday we worked over the ads formulating the game plan that would give us the greatest bang for our buck. We knew which stores we would visit first and who was in charge of getting what bounty. Finally at 10:00 PM, Thursday, we put the kids to bed instructing them that if there was an emergency, give our phones a call. At 11:10 PM we left the house, game plan rehearsed and in hand, ready to do battle for the ultimate prize of the best deals in the world.

We arrived in Logan at 11:45 PM and to our astonishment had to park about a half a mile away from the front door of Walmart. Apparently others had found out our secret that Walmart would be open early. There was not a parking spot in the substantial Walmart parking lot. We finally found a place to park the car, then walked our 1/2 mile to the store and received our map as to where all of the great deals were located. What Walmart had done was put all the crates of the door-buster deals in the aisles. They then covered them with black plastic with a note that said 12:01 or 5:00, indicating the time in which the treasures would be unveiled to be purchased by eager shoppers.

I was told to get DVDs and games, so I found where I should go and headed over to that spot. To my chagrin there were about 200 people who had the same plan. The poor clerks at the center next to the black plastic-covered crates of deals must have felt like Daniel as he was sent to the lion’s den. Actually they probably would have preferred the lion’s den to this mob of people. I was now faced with a problem. My prize was within sight but there was a multitude of people between me and pay dirt. I decided that I would just wait until the items were uncovered, and then I would make my move. As the clock ticked down, the crowd began to quiet with anticipation.

Finally the 12:01 time struck and the workers removed the black plastic. It was simply jaw dropping what happened next. You know in the movies when everything goes into super slow motion, and you can see the stream of the bullets that had been shot from a gun? Well that was what it was like. All of the air in the whole store rushed toward the aisles as thousands of people inhaled at once. I think I could see Oxygen atoms being sucked out of the air and into people’s lungs as they began to reach for the magnificent deals. The air began to buzz with the sound of people pulling at the sale items. I had never been in a mosh pit before, but all of the sudden there I was: hundreds of people pressing against each other trying to get to the DVDs.

I realized that I needed to move into action...well, it wasn’t really action; I kind-of pointed my body in the direction I wanted to go and swayed back and forth. The crowd then just kind-of moved me along. I got over to the crates and started pulling DVDs. Sherri had given me good direction. She said it doesn’t matter what the DVD is. Just grab them, then we will meet and decide which ones we would keep. Initially I thought that was not a good idea because I would waste time trying to grab something we did not want. Now that I was in the battle, I realized that Sherri’s strategy was the best. I began grabbing every DVD I could put my hands on. I noticed that there were some DVDs still on lower shelves, but I dared not put my head down as I was afraid that I would be shoved to the ground and trampled by the herd of value shoppers.

I soon had quite a pile, and so headed out to meet Sherri and decide which were keepers. I got out the same way I got in by pointing my body in a direction, rocking to and fro, and letting the crowd push me along. I called Sherri on the cell phone (great invention these cell phones), and we met in the women’s clothing.

Another of Sherri’s great strategies was to not get a shopping cart at the start. We had the Walmart bags. That way you could knife through the crowds and not have to try to move the bulky cart. That was a genius move. Once we got together we found a cart and started filling it with our wonderful trophies we had won in our hard-fought shopping battle.

We still had stuff to get so Sherri started shopping for some of the other gifts that were not part of the Black Friday sales. I was instructed to go meander through the store and see if I could find other Black Friday things that people had decided not to get. I thought that was crazy as all the great deals had been taken from the aisles. But to my surprise, almost everyone uses the same strategy of taking everything and then figuring out what they want later. They then just discard the things they do not want in whatever section they are standing in. I walked around the store finding DVDs in automotive, bakery, toys, cosmetics, and other crazy places. It was like an Easter Egg hunt.

I would find something then run over to Sherri with prize in hand.

“Do we need this?” I would ask. Many time she would say, "Oh yes. That’s a great find." I felt like a dog that had finally learned not to defecate on the carpet. I got my pat on the head, and I was off to find another item. This continued on until we had about everything we wanted.

The next instruction was to get in line for the electronics. Again I consulted the map to see where they were and headed to that part of the store. For these items, they had us stand in line until a little before 3 AM, then they handed out tickets so that we could leave the line and shop, and then return at 5 to claim the prize. It was great fun standing in line with all the people. We laughed and talked about all the great shopping we had done. Told stories about our kids and just got to know some neat people.

Once I had my ticket I again found Sherri by use of the cell phone. When I got to her she had the cart filled. It looked like the Grinch’s sled after he had taken everything from all the people in Whoville. I asked her if there was anything left for the other people to buy. We then checked out and loaded our booty into the van and headed to our next destination which was Kohls.

We arrived a Kohl’s to a more traditional Black Friday opening. There was a line of people who as soon as the doors opened rushed in like a great ant horde devouring everything in its path. I went in to the store worked my way to the back, went to the restroom, took care of business there, and then left. Kohl’s is not my kind of store, to many clothes and not enough toys. We then notice that it was getting close to 4 AM and JC Penny was going to be opening up soon. So back in the van and over to Penny’s we went.

We got there before the doors opened, but because the line was not real long, we waited in the car until one minute before it opened. We then jumped out and rushed in. Here I was commanded to go get the pillows. I went quickly there and picked them up. Now I was stuck walking around the store with four giant pillows in my hands. I had to be careful, because if I turned too sharp I would knock something or someone over. I am glad that I did not try to pick up one of those free snow globes, because I had nowhere to put it. I guess I could have stuffed it in my mouth, but that would have looked dumb.

Once the Penny’s shopping was done it was back to Walmart to get the electronic stuff. This was nice. I just stood in line with my ticket, and then when the 5:00 hour chimed I got my stuff and checked out. We then went to IHOP for breakfast and finally home. I must say that it was an amazing adventure. I am sad that I had not had this experience before now. I cannot wait to do it again next year. We really did enjoy it. Mom I think you and Grandma would have been proud to see the way we fought for the good deal.

Love,

Your son Doug"

Editorial note: My mom, aunt, and grandma are LEGENDARY bargain shoppers.

A Note of Encouragement to Entering College Freshmen

2010-10-25T07:36:00.004-06:00

Nearly two decades ago, I considered myself “smart.” I put “smart” in quotes because, well, I’m not that “smart.” Words don’t usually need quotes, but to illustrate that I thought myself “smart” but really I wasn’t, I put “smart” in quotes.

At any rate, I took a college placement exam called the ACT, and to put it lightly, I bombed it. Fluke, I thought. So I took it again. Same – exact – score. See? Not so smart. I’d reveal the score, but it’s really embarrassing. And one time I overheard my husband, who scored something like a 31 on the ACT, remark to one of his smart friends something about another friend who scored a 24 on the ACT and how he was really dumb. I have never told my husband my score, but I’ll sheepishly admit now that it was actually lower than a 24 by two points. Think you know my score? Well, you probably scored higher than me too. Rub it in next time you see me.

Nevertheless, I applied to BYU. At that time, BYU was at its height of being selective. It’s a touch less selective now, as Ricks became BYU-Idaho and allowed more students, thus, less students applying at the “real” BYU. But when I applied to BYU, the rumor was that if you didn’t score at least a 28 on your ACT, don’t bother applying.

But who was I to listen to rumors. And crazily enough, I got in, but with one caveat: I had to start in the summer. If I did well in my courses, I could stay for eternity…or until I got my degree. Whichever came first.

I provided this background to illustrate that nearly my entire adult life, I have had this dark cloud hanging over me. I’ve scraped by somehow on my Forrest-Gumplike brains. Every job post college that I’ve had, I’ve been grateful for. I’ve never been the one who is complaining that at “such and such job, we got to do such and such.” Are you kidding me? You know those people holding the sign telling you that $5 pizza is this way? That should have been me.

It’s a miracle that I’ve found a job I love and appreciate that’s indoors and out of the elements of Utah weather.

And for you college-age freshmen with a similar background, I had a huge ah-ha moment the other day at work.

I was talking to a colleague about her being salutatorian of her 1,000+ class in California, and how she scored a perfect on the language part of the SAT.

And I looked at her. And I looked at me. And her desk is a lot like mine. And her job responsibilities are a lot like mine. And her pay scale is a lot like mine. And you know what?

She thinks her job is beneath her. I think my job is heaven sent. Guess which one of us is happier with our station in life?

Hallah for the Forrest Gumps of the world!

The Defense Rests, Your Honor

2010-10-17T11:08:00.001-06:00

It was Fall break for the Alpine school district, and all week we psyched the girls up for a camping adventure on Friday.

Each night, Lilia reminded us of the countdown: "Three more days to camping...two more days to camping...one more day to camping."

The day arrived. We're a touch rusty when it comes to camping, as we haven't been for close to three years. Kulani has been busy due to his employment at a firm we lovingly refer to as "Work'em Night and Day." But now that he's working from home, time is on our side.

We had forgotten how long it takes to get things ready. Around 4 p.m. we set out for Cabella's to get some attachments for our camp heater and a carbon monoxide detector, so we could sleep soundly but not too soundly, RIP.

Then we took our propane tank to get it filled up, as well as secure some firewood. Finally around 6 p.m. we made it back home and started throwing the camping supplies into the BMW (Big Mormon Wagon):

Cots, check.
Lantern, check.
Camp heater, check.
Tent....

We found the tent, but upon closer inspection, it appeared that the pole strings had been cut. It was 6:30 p.m. and we were just finding this out now. It gets dark here around 7:30 p.m., and we still needed to travel to our camping destination about a half an hour away.

We were (deep breath, deep breath) mad.

"Girls! Get down here right now!" I shouted. Family meeting was in order.

"Who cut these tent poles?" Kulani asked in a stern voice.

After hemming and hawing, Lilia said she'd cut the tent poles, so she could use them for a magic wand.

Kulani dismissed them to their rooms telling them we wouldn't be camping tonight and to think about that the next time they wanted to ruin our stuff.

The girls went up to their room and cried and cried while Kulani assessed the damage. After some time, Lilia came back downstairs.

Fearing that we didn't hammer our point enough, Kulani said, "Lilia, I don't think you've ever seen me this angry. I am really upset by what you did."

Lilia meakly answered, "Dad, I was five when I did it."

Kulani stopped in his tracks. "That's a good argument. In fact, that's probably a winner."

The prosecution threw out the case, and the scheduled camping trip was back on.

Using some fishing line, he tied the ends of the tent pole elastic and strung the elastic through one pole and connected it to the other. He managed to fix the poles except for one. One pole was missing two sections.

I called Recreation Outlet in American Fork, and it turns out they sell replacement sections for around $10 for four sections. You can also buy the elastic for $.15 a yard. It was now 7:30 p.m. I hurried to the store for the replacement sections and more elastic.

I also made a stop at Macey's for some s'more supplies and batteries for the lantern.

By 9:00 p.m., we had all the poles fixed and the camping supplies loaded.

We crammed into the mini-van and rushed up the canyon to find a spot. Surprisingly, all the spots at Salamander Flats weren't taken, so we cozied up next to some car campers, and set up tent.

By 11 p.m. camp was set up and we were roasting marshmallows by the fire. Even though it was very warm in Cedar Hills, it was cold in the mountains. I was very glad for the camp heater, as we slept very soundly that night.

In the morning we went for a short hike.

It was a memorable adventure. Even though getting ready to go camping is a lot of work, I'm really glad we didn't lose our heads completely over the small hiccup. We all lived to camp another day.

Kulani fixing the tent poles.

Kulani and Lehua snuggling by the campfire.

Lilia and Melissa roasting marshmallows.

Lilia, Lissy, and Lehua enjoying the flames.

Girls reading in bed.

Nohea and Lehua settle down for a brisk night of camping.

Jesse finds a place to lay his tired head.

Up early in the morn' for a hike.

Scenic stop on the hike.

Lehua hitching a ride on dad.

Making the Best of It

2010-09-22T22:57:00.002-06:00

It seems a lot of heartache is flying all around me these days. I have friends who are going through some hard things, and my heart grows heavy just thinking about it.

But tonight my heart was light as I watched a bunch of 10-year-old boys swirl around a swimming pool singing nursery rhymes. The boys, around 20 of them, walked in unison in a quick pace to their pre-pubescent singing causing a boy-made whirpool that catapulted them around faster and faster.

On and on they walked and sang: "Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-OOOOOO!" The lifeguard, not much older than the boys, asked them to keep it down. I wanted to shoosh the lifeguard. Their singing was giving me back my Norman Rockwell America; naivete, sweetness, joy.

It gladdened Kulani and me. Usually when we go swimming at the local recreation center, Cub and Boy Scout groups are crowding out the lap lanes where Kulani is trying to swim, not apologizing or caring if they bump into swimmers. Other young boys seem much too young to have their tongues hanging out while watching young girls in swim suits. (I could never even repeat the nastiest thing that was ever said to me by a 10- or 11-year-old boy at the Orem Rec. Center.)

Kulani said the boys were making the best of it; making do with what they had. Boys being boys.

I wanted to take them all home with me and raise them, feed them, and read them stories. For a split second, I even thought that maybe Kulani and I should try one more time for that boy.

But then I held fast to my Lehua, not quite four months old. No, girls are just as great with their own sweetness and light. Four children is plenty enough for me. Boys will be boys ... at someone else's house.

The Christenson Family Vacation of '82

2010-07-11T10:32:00.007-06:00

I'm writing about my Christenson family's super, extraordinary vacation trip of 1982 for one reason: my dad recently purchased this:

I think it's a Chevy Traveler van. It may not be a Chevy, but knowing my dad, it is. My dad was a Chevrolet dealer in Burley for many years when I was young. He later bought his own used car dealership, but his heart always remained with Chevy.

In 1982, my mom's family, the McEuens, had their first ever family reunion. Well, the first reunion that I remember. It was to be in Redding, California.

My dad had use of any car on the Don Ovitt Chevrolet lot, so he brought home a new traveler van for our road trip to Redding. How many people do you think can safely travel in a traveler van? Here's a picture of the inside of one of these vans:

Four bucket seats and a bench in the back. So does seven sound about right? Well, my parents had seven kids at the time, so that answer would be correct. Except, we still needed to fit Mom and Dad in the front seats. Oh, and Grandma and Grandpa Christenson needed to come.

So what does that total? Eleven. We crammed eleven people into that traveler van. I was six at the time, so that meant that I almost never got to actually sit in a seat of my own. I sat on my mom's lap, or Amy's lap (my big sister), but mostly I sat on the floor. I think it was Mary, the baby at that time, who got to sit on Grandma's lap for nearly the entire trip. Mary! Mary! Mary!

But it was a glorious trip and ranks in my memory as one of the best trips ever. If you know my parents, you know they like to take the long way to anywhere. Did we take the direct route to Redding from Idaho? Oh no.

We first traveled south through Utah. Stopped at Bryce Canyon. Then we meandered to southern California to visit Disneyland and Grandma and Grandpa McEuen, but not without stopping for Indian jewelry along the way.

I remember it being very hot through the Arizona desert. The car had air conditioning, but with that many bodies in the car, it still got hot, especially in the back. We would dip our paper towels in this big pitcher of water my mom brought, then wring the paper towels over our heads.

And my mom taught us a song that we sang during the whole journey: "California here I come, right back where I started from." That's all I can remember.

And I'm sure we stopped for treats at gas stations along the way. And I'm sure my dad grumbled about it being so expensive, but still allowed each of us one treat. You can bet that my oldest brother Doug always chose jerky as his treat.

After visiting Gma and Gpa McEuen, we took Highway 1 as far north as we could. Highway 1 is very winding but beautiful. It follows the California Coast. I remember stopping in Carmel for one night.

Mary threw up during one of the winding parts of the journey. We stopped to take pictures every 50 miles or so (maybe a slight exaggeration, but maybe an under exaggeration as well. I don't remember all the details).

And we finally made it to Redding for a memorable reunion complete with a tandem bike, a trampoline, a pinata, and all the makings for a great family reunion.

And it's always been my dad's dream to actually own a traveler van. And now that he has it, he continues his travels on the road east. He and Mom took my sister Kathy's family on an unforgettable journey east through Nauvoo and Indiana, through Pennsylvania where he served his mission, and up to Palmyra, New York. And then they're traveling through West Virginia to visit Kathy's mission, and somehow they'll make it back home.

I hope the van doesn't break down. Or luggage doesn't fly off the top.

Toader

2010-07-11T09:55:00.008-06:00

As a parent of more than one child, it's a juggling act to make sure each child is given a fair dose of personal attention from mom and dad. Even on this blog, I fear I've written about some of my children more than others.

So this post is all about Lissy, my second child and who we refer to as "the Toader." Why do we call her Toad? Check out these pictures:

Lissy has huge, bulging eyes, like a toad's eyes--or like two martini olives in James Bond's glass. But we went with Toad.

Lissy will start first grade in the fall. If I were to predict what career choice Lissy will pursure based on her interests of today, I would guess she will either go into forestry, farming, veterinary science, food sciences, art, or child development. She is our domestic goddess. She loves everything "domesticky."

When I work in the garden, she's the first to help. When we find earthworms and bugs, she gets excited and grabs her bug collecting jar. When we go on hikes, she stops to pick the wild flowers and comments on the beautiful scenery. She is the first to volunteer to hold Lehua.

When Jesse our dog was hit by a car and scraped up his back legs, Lissy went into full-on emotional meltdown. Jesse almost went to doggy heaven, but Lissy's tears saved him. We couldn't put him down and dissappoint Lissy, so we paid the $750 veterenary bill to keep him alive.

She can also be very emotional and cries more than any of my other kids. In that respect, she takes after me. We've tried to help "thicken her skin" and give her tools to help her control her crying. Sometimes I'll ask her to do 10 jumping jacks. Her kindergarten teacher told me that she had Lissy get up and get a drink of water when crying ensued. One time she tried to mask her crying by saying, "Something is in the air. My eyes are watering."

She likes to follow whatever Lilia is doing, but she doesn't like Lilia or us to know she's secretly following Lilia. For example, I asked Lilia what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her answer was an artist or a chef. Then I asked Lissy what she wanted to be.

"Well, either a chef or an artist."

Lilia says, "That's what I said."

Lissy: "No, it's not."

Here's a picture of Lissy holding a feather. We were waiting outside Hot Doug's in Chicago, and Lissy and I went for a walk around the block. Leave it to Lissy to find a multi-colored feather in the grass.

This is a snack Lissy made me. I think she thinks I'm a rabbit or a gorilla or something. Grapes with cut-up vegetables. I like how she tried to make the food look pretty by spacing the grapes around the vegetables. It was delicious!

We love our Toad!

Meet Lehua

2010-06-29T13:13:00.012-06:00

It's been a crazy busy summer. Mostly, I feel like a bus driver taking kids to swimming team, swimming lessons, the incredible E&J summer camp, family reunions, parades, etc. I'm almost looking forward to the start of school. Almost. But I'm loving this sun and weather, and I'm loving on this little baby:

For friends/family who haven't met her, this is our newest (and last) baby, Lehua. How do you pronounce that? First say lei, as in the flower you wear around your neck, and then say the same phrase Marines say to each other: Hua!

Lehua! Lehua! Lehua! Hooray!

Kulani's even created some arm movements to the Lehua cheer.

So what does it mean?

Lehua is a flower that grows on a tree in Hawaii.

In Hawaiian mythology, ʻŌhiʻa and Lehua were two young lovers. The volcano goddess Pele fell in love with the handsome ʻŌhiʻa and approached him, but he turned down her advances. In a fit of jealousy, Pele transformed ʻŌhiʻa into a tree. Lehua was devastated by this transformation and out of pity the other gods turned her into a flower and placed her upon the ʻōhiʻa tree. (Other versions state that Pele felt guilty but was unable to reverse the change, so she turned Lehua into a flower herself.) Separating these united lovers is not encouraged, and it is said that when a lehua flower is plucked from an ʻōhiʻa tree, the sky fills with rain representing the lovers' tears. (From Wikipedia)

I can already hear her saying 18 years from now, "But Mom, I love him! I'd rather die than be without him." Drama coming our way.

In a previous post, I wrote about how all my kids come out looking like Kulani. Well, Lehua came out looking like me, poor little thing. She was 8 pounds 13 ounces at birth, but she's packing on the pounds and is now close to 11 pounds.

She's very sweet at times and very colicky at times. I'm looking forward to being past this stage, honestly. But I do love holding her when she's not crying. And snuggling her. And breathing her in.

Since she is our last, I really want to enjoy every moment. If only I could get a little more sleep. Oh well. I can sleep when I'm dead, as they say.

Lilia Likes to Write

2010-06-29T09:56:00.005-06:00

Lilia is a writing machine these days. Everyday she writes something new for me to read. At the end of her first grade year, the teacher awarded her "Best Writer" for the class.

So I've created a blog for her postings. It will be private, but for this first week, it's public. She wrote a great piece about the birth of her sister:

http://liliaswritings.blogspot.com/2010/06/lehuas-birth.html

A love note for my girls

2010-06-29T08:10:00.002-06:00

Your dad says I have the memory of an elephant, or is it that elephants have GOOD memories? I can never remember. I think I read somewhere that we think one thing about elephants, but it's actually the opposite, so now I always think the opposite, which is bad because I don't remember what the opposite actually is.

Your dad says I have a bad memory. I have an especially bad memory when it comes to the birth of you precious girls. You'd think one of the most life-changing moments of my life would cause my mind to easily retain each minutia and detail, but sadly, it doesn't. Your dad is better at remembering than me.

People will ask me, "How was it with your first child?"

"Oh, not too bad," I'll answer.

And your dad will say, "No, it was bad. You were cranky all the time and frustrated and basically a zombie."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot that part."

So I'm writing this down for your sakes. I'm not sure you'll have the exact same experience as me when it's your time to have children, but if genetics plays into it, maybe you will. And maybe it will be nice to know your mom has experienced feelings you have had.

Unless, of course, you find yourself unable to have children. Or maybe you don't find someone you'd really like to marry. In the case of any of these situations occuring in your life, I will seek out some very good mentors and cull their brains for advice and comfort to give you. Aunt Amy would be a good starting point. And I'll put my arms around you and love you regardless.

So let me tell you about what it was like to have Lehua. It was generally the same for all of you, but maybe your dad can correct me on that. However, with Lehua, I was induced. Being induced was very similar to going into labor naturally, except the nice nurse anesthetist hooked me up to the wonderful anasthesia before the pitocin reached my blood stream and the heavy contractions set in. Therefore, I was on a happy cloud for the whole delivery. With you other three, I experienced moments of strong contractions and even made it to 8 1/2 cm dilated with Melissa before finally getting some anasthesia.

Maybe you'll decide to have your children "naturally," but don't feel guilty if you don't. Your ol' mom was too chicken to try birth without pain medications.

From the time the pitocin was injected to the time of Lehua's birth was approximately two hours. A couple of pushes and she was out. Dr. Watabe was the doctor who delivered Lehua. Dr. Watabe is a great doctor, and we share a common bond: triathlon. He was the doctor who gave me the go ahead to train for the Hawaii Honu Half-Ironman after Nohea was born. So mostly we talk about triathlons on my doctor visits.

Dad says Lehua came out very peacefully with a smile on her face. All the nurses agreed that it really did look like a smile was on her face. I find it a beautiful analogy for the Plan of Salvation: a soul filled with joy after finally arriving with her earthly family. But it didn't take long before her lungs filled with air and she was crying. Perhaps another analogy of how sad and harsh this world can be.

Immediately after Lehua was born, the nurses placed her on my chest for skin-to-skin contact with mom. There's nothing like the feeling of having a wet newborn on your chest. It's glorious. After some time, the nurses took Lehua and dried her off and weighed her and gave her an apgar score of 8.

And then things quieted down and congratulations and greetings were said as nurses and the doctor left us alone. I nursed Lehua while Dad took a nap.

Nursing:

The hardest...thing...I...have...ever...done. And that includes my half Ironmans. For some people, nursing comes easy. For others, it's completely awful. For yours truly, it was the latter. Lilia, unfortunately, took the brunt of my nursing learning curve. I was cracked and bleeding and in pain for a solid 2 1/2 months, and on one of the most sensitive parts of the female anatomy. The only thing that kept me going was this idea that for some people, it doesn't hurt. I wanted to get to that point to see if it really was true; that nursing actually doesn't hurt. That stubborness is what kept me going. And I did get there. With the other three of you, I was more experienced and kept myself from cracking, so the pain only lasted around three weeks.

I tell you this so that if you have to quit nursing because of the pain, don't beat yourself up. Your Grandma Christenson and Great-Grandma McEuen didn't nurse all of their children. But if you keep it up, I understand your pain. Call me up and I'll be there with lanolin and comfort.

Grandma Christenson

Which brings me to my mom, your Grandma Christenson. If there's a reason I'm half way sane today it's because your grandma is a saint of all womenhood. She came to help me out for each of your births.

With Lehua, I really put Grandma to work, and Grandpa too when he came down to visit for a day. We rearranged furniture to fit Lehua's crib into her room; fixed the garbage disposal (via a plumber that Grandma paid for); planted some roses and peppers; and basically just caught up with things I needed done. Grandma was very cheerful throughout it all, and she paid for everything. I always feel a little bit bad when Grandma pays for things, but your dad asked me, "How would you feel if you tried to do nice things for your girls and they just felt bad about it? Just be happy and grateful for her help." And that hit home for me. So girls, if I offer to pay for things after you have your children, just take it and be grateful, and that will make me very happy.

No one knows how to comfort like Grandma Christenson. She made me any meal I requested, and no one makes fried chicken like Grandma. She joyfully watched you girls when I needed a nap after a long night of nursing and crying. And she especially showed compassion when the postpartum depression set in.

I remember the depression setting in longer with Lilia. Because Grandma was still teaching, she could only stay with me for a few days. But after she went home to Idaho, she would call me everyday for two weeks to ask how I was feeling. Sometimes I just cried a lot on the phone. But other times I felt strong.

Postpartum depression is a pretty crappy feeling. I tried not to affect others when I felt its dark tenticles creeping into my psyche, but your dad always knew when I was off, and he'd offer to take us out to dinner or take you girls somewhere so I could get a break. I think he was secretly fearful of me hurting you.

But for me, postpartum depression didn't bring on thoughts of suicide or hurting you girls. I was more just fearful and hopeless. I also felt overwhelmed. Sometimes having people visit helped, and other times I just wanted people to stay away. I also wanted Kulani and you girls close by as if we could all be wrapped up in a cacoon and push the rest of the world away.

Luckily with Lehua, the depression only lasted about a week. Having her in the summertime really helped my mood.

Normalcy takes a while to set in after having a child. My cousin Carol used to say, "If I can make it to the baby's first birthday, than it's easy sailing from there." Carol has had seven or eight kids while living in a 1,000 square foot apartment, so I believe anything she tells me about raising kids.

Plus, as you know, Hawaiians like to celebrate a child's first birthday with a huge luau. Historically, Hawaiian babies often times died before reaching the one-year milestone, so making it a year was cause for celebration, and also an indication that the child would live until adulthood.

And so the circle of life goes. In each of you I can sometimes see glimpses of your grandmothers from my side and your dad's side. I love to think of our ancestors rooting for us on the other side: Go Team Fisher Girls!

Seeing you girls grow up is the most joyful thing in the world to me. I want you to know how much your father and I love you and want the best for you. I hope to be able to watch you and care for you as you traverse this life and reach milestones far greater than even you may dream.

Back on the Skag

2010-06-21T13:13:00.002-06:00

I've been a little consumed lately with my yard and my garden and, oh yeah, a new baby. I've been wanting to call friends and family; visit neighbors; write thank you notes; send out baby announcements; etc. Instead, I've just been being. Human being.

But I'll start bloggin' and postin' here for reals one of these first days. But today is a short post about my baby.

I love the way she smells.

She smells like Kulani.

But here is the kicker. Ever since I've known Kulani, even before we were married, whenever I got close to him, I thought he smelled like a baby.

"You smell like a baby," I'd tell him.
"Is that good?" He'd ask.
"Yes, very good."

And now Lehua, my newborn baby, is here, and she smells like Kulani. And yesterday I caught Lilia lifting up Lehua's arm and smelling her armpit.

"You're right, Mom. She does smell like Dad."

Bottle that stuff up and it'll sell millions.

Incubated Rivalry

2010-04-27T06:11:00.002-06:00

Last night Nohea started crying in her sleep. Kulani tried consoling her, and then she scooted over by me to see what I could do for her. I snuggled her in close to my belly and stroked her hair.

Wouldn't you know it--the little lady inside of me turned into Mia Hamm kicking like crazy. I think she was saying, "Get away, big sis! This is my territory!"

Already it begins. Oy vey.

My Idaho Sistahs

2010-04-20T07:30:00.005-06:00

So I've admitted my fascination over an incredibly stupid reality show on Bravo called "The Real Housewives of Orange County/New York City/New Jersey/Atlanta." I think there is some correlation between the television shows we choose to watch and the kind-of people we are.

However, my fascination with this show runs almost completely perpendicular to the kind-of person I think I am. Maybe I'm just not self-aware enough, but if you were to look up "high-maintenance housewife" in the dictionary, I like to pride myself into thinking my name would appear under the antonyms.

I've had exactly ONE manicure in my whole life, and zero pedicures. Call them a "mani" and "pedi" and I'll want to scratch your eyes out with my chewed-on nails.

I get a haircut once or twice a year whether I need it or not.

I own about five pairs of running shoes, three pairs of flip-flops, and two Sunday shoes. No Minola Blaniks (or however she/he spells her name).

I blame it on my rural-Idaho upbringing. Perhaps this is a news flash for some of you, but Idaho girls, at least the girls I grew up with, were as tough as they come. Put a hardened gangster girl from the streets of L.A. in a ring with an Idaho farm girl, and I'd put my money on the farm girl.

I didn't actually grow up on a farm. My dad was a used car salesman, and my mom was a teacher. But I had friends who lived on farms, and I was hired with them for summer help starting at the age of 13.

Most of the farm girls I knew had to move pipe right alongside their brothers. They also picked rocks and hoed and thinned sugarbeets. There was no line between "girl's work" and "boy's work." Well, except for maybe hauling hay. But I'll bet some girls even did that. It was all work, and it all needed to get done, and everyone in the family pitched in to help.

My friend Jana's dad was one of the farmers who hired me for the summers. Jana's poor dad had four girls before finally getting a boy. So did his daughters just sit at home getting manis and pedis? No, they were out in the fields working.

It's not to say that we didn't WANT to dress up and curl our hair and have expensive clothes. It just wasn't an opportunity that was readily available to us. We had too much work to do, darn it! Daylight was burning!

And we had tons of fun, too. After most of our days of working in the sugarbeet fields, we'd drive to the nearest canal and go swimming. And we'd slather ourselves with mud as if we were at an expensive day-spa. And then we'd jump in the canal to clean ourselves off.

At the end of each summer, we'd take our hard-earned money and go to Lagoon in big-town Farmington, Utah.

One year I also saved enough to buy me a "fancy" pair of shoes. I bought me a pair of Birkenstocks. Maybe there is some high maintenance in me afterall.

And when I'm outside working in my yard and hauling big rocks around, I think of the Pussycat Dolls song, and I sing it loud and proud, "Don't you wish your girlfriend could move rocks like me? Don't you wish your girlfriend could mow the lawn like me?"

This was part of our beet-hoeing gang. Pictured to the left in the back are Jana Baily (now a realtor and business woman in the Boise area), Jaime Catmull (now a fashion marketer and model who bounces between L.A. and SLC), me (mom and yard maintenance extraoirdinaire), Carol Cueva (mother and school counselor), Stacey Schafer (landscape designer in the Boise area), and Keri Anderson (mom to four girls, just like me, in Colorado). My two cousins, Monica and Wendy, also hoed beets with us, but they weren't there this summer.

Taxes

2010-04-18T21:48:00.000-06:00

Anytime I take a bite from my children's food, or drink a swig from their drinks, I proclaim it "Mom tax." Not that I do it THAT often, just every meal or so. Especially if it involves french fries from the Golden Arches.

Well ask not for who the tax man comes for he comes for all.

The other day I asked Lilia to get me a can of Squirt. She did, opened it, and took a swig. After taking her share she told me, "Lilia tax."

Touche, tax lady, touche. None of us ever escapes death or taxes. Or lessons of "what goes around comes around."

Some reflections on the life of Grandma

2010-04-05T08:06:00.019-06:00

"Mother could be both extravagant and frugal, generous and somewhat stingy, loving and exasperating, full of praise and full of criticism, thoughtful and impulsive, diplomatic and tactless, in other words, just like the rest of us. But when we look at the finished tapestry of Mother’s life, it is rich and beautiful, and I wouldn’t want to change it a bit." -- Karen Christenson McEuen, from a talk given at Grandma McEuen's funeral

I've been wanting to post something about my Grandma McEuen since her death on March 17. But the words haven't really come. I'm not so much in sadness or overcome with grief. By this stage in my life, I've experienced enough of the life cycle to know that everyone does die eventually. And Grandma's death wasn't catastrophic or unexpected.

But even still, like my father said after my 97-year-old Grandma Christenson died, "We prayed for my mom to be able to leave this life, and now that she's gone, I miss her." And I miss Grandma, and it's hard to sum up my life experiences with this lady, because my feelings for her are so diverse. Like my mom said in her talk, Grandma exhibited attributes from all over the human psychological spectrum.

I've tried to add up all the months I spent living with Grandma. Between me and my sister Mary, I think we lived with Grandma the longest of all the grandkids. So I do feel justified somewhat in telling a little bit of Grandma's story, but from my perspective.

Grandma and Grandpa were the "cool" grandparents who lived in Southern California. So during my grade school years, visiting Grandma and Grandpa McEuen's meant the beach, Disneyland, and all the glories of Southern California.

Grandma liked to send us small newspaper clippings from her favorite newspaper: The National Enquirer. She'd always include a few lines of advice and instruction. My mom unburied a small piece of advice she left us:

“I believe getting along with people is important to our personal happiness. And the only way to live happily with people is to overlook their faults and admire their virtues. This is a tall order. Faults and virtues are both real, but we can become skilled in the art of human relations and people (loved ones especially) become more valuable in our eyes. There is always something good in all people, if—we look for it. And when we find it, we ought to express sincere appreciation. The poor human ego gets quite a kicking around.…It is grateful for any expressions of admiration.”

Grandma and Grandpa moved from their home in Montebello, California to Orem, Utah in 1987. They had both retired and wanted to live closer to their children. They built a brand-new house in an upscale neighborhood in Orem. To us, their house was a beautiful, extravagant place.

Grandpa died in 1993, but Grandma continued living there. I graduated high school in 1994, and was determined to go to BYU. I wasn't accepted for fall attendance, but at that time, BYU allowed students to come during the summer, and if your grades were good, they allowed you to stay for the fall, winter, and beyond.

Because I didn't have that summer to work and save, I asked Grandma if I could live with her rent free. She allowed me free room and board, with a constant supply of cottage cheese in the fridge.

Grandma didn't cook a whole lot, but what she did cook was good. She made really good chicken. Cooking chicken is a bit of a dark arts for me. It can either be burnt or too dry, but both my mom and my grandma could and can cook great fried chicken.

Living with Grandma had its pluses and minuses. Grandma expected a lot out of you. Perhaps its that pioneer stock that seeped from her very core.

Her great-great grandfather had been pulled by a Missouri mob from his house at night, was tarred and feathered, his health ruined, and was considered to be one of the first martyrs of the restoration.

Her great grandfather was with Brigham Young in the first pioneer company into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. He colonized San Bernardino and spent years away from his family doing missionary work. Her grandparents left relative ease and comfort in Sweden to join with the saints and come to the harsh desert environment of Southern Utah. Her own mother was the Relief Society President for many years as she cared for her family of 11 children in difficult circumstances. Grandma Johnson instilled a fierce loyalty in her children.

As if magically, this heritage of sacrifice and faith could be intensified down into one look from Grandma. The look that said, "Me and all of my ancestors have sacrificed everything for YOU, and if YOU disappoint us, there will be hell to pay." Never, never, did I want to disappoint Grandma. (Side note: My mom also inherited that look, and luckily for me, I have too. One look and my girls know I mean business. It's a top-secret weapon I only use sparingly so as not to lessen the affect.)

Grandma didn't need to yell or browbeat. It was just that look and we knew she expected greatness. To which more than anything else she taught, I'm grateful for that expectation she had for us to rise above ourselves and be great. (Not that I'm great--far from it. But the goal is there.)

She didn't make it easy to live with her. She wanted me in bed and asleep by 9:30 p.m. I had an early morning custodial job, and she wouldn't allow phone calls to reach me past 9 p.m. While other college kids my age were partying it up and wasting their parents' money on flunking grades, I was chilling in Grandma's basement or watching reruns of Matlock with her. At 18, I was atrophying into an 80-year-old.

That summer I moved back home with my parents in Idaho and worked two jobs to be able to afford college in the fall. I saved enough that I was able to move into my own apartment.

I moved from Grandma's upscale basement apartment to the cheapest apartments near BYU. There were six girls living in three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and buckets full of hair everywhere. And I loved it. I loved my independence. Living with Grandma helped me to value independence.

And in the end, isn't that what a good parent does: encourage the kids to leave the nest, to live on their own ... to make their own way in this world? Not one of Grandma's 24 grandkids lives with their parents or relatives. All have managed to make a spot for themselves in this world, some in nicer living arrangements than others. When times were hard, we may have leaned on Grandma a bit, or our parents, but it was only a temporary stop.

Grandma was quite the lady indeed.

Some pictures of the ones she left behind:

My sister Hetty sporting some of the bling Grandma left behind. Grandma loved jewelry and all of us granddaughters inherited at least one piece of her bling-a-ling.

Pallbearers, from back to front: Bryce McEuen, David McEuen, Kenny Greer, Keith Greer, Anthony Thomas, Dan McEuen, Edward Christenson. You can't see Wayne in this picture.

Edward and Amanda Christenson. Ed is the youngest of Grandma's grandchildren.

Family members listen for the family prayer. From left to right are Liz McEuen, Kathy Christenson Heslop, Hailey Heslop, Liz's daughter, Nathan Smedley holding his son Ty, Amy Smedley, Sarah Smedley, Grace Smedley, Brian Christenson, Kelsie Christenson, Carson Christenson, and Dan McEuen.

Mom and Aunt Kathy sharing a story of Grandma, while Uncle Pat tries to listen in. Cousin Kenny is also in the picture.

When Kulani graduated from law school, we lived with Grandma for a short time while he looked for a job. Lilia was about five months old in this picture. Grandma loved little babies.

I wanted to find a picture of me and Grandma on my wedding day, but this was as good as I could find. I was probably thinking only of myself to take the time to get a picture of me and Grandma. Both my Grandma Christenson and Grandma McEuen are pictured in the left of this photo.
Grandma's four children from left to right: Fred McEuen, Karen McEuen Christenson, Kathy McEuen Greer, and Patrick McEuen.

Me and my girls next to Grandma's casket.

Grandma's Decline

2010-02-24T07:18:00.002-07:00

Judging from both sides of my family gene pool, I will likely live to be older than dirt. My Grandma Christenson lived to be 97. My Grandma McEuen is nigh unto 88.

But sadly, these look like Grandma McEuen's waning months. I'm not sure she has a whole year left in her. She may surprise us, though.

The Johnson women, Johnson being my grandma's maiden name, are sturdier than an amish barn. Living with Grandma in my late teens, Grandma and I would travel around the state of Utah visiting each of her sickly sisters. I watched her sisters peel off one by one. Aunt Effie and then Aunt Alice. Aunt Hazel held on like her life depended on it. All in their 90s before leaving this life for the next.

Grandma McEuen, in her not-so-delicate way, would say to me after we'd visit Aunt Hazel in the care center, "Why doesn't she just push off?" Sweetness doesn't exactly roll off the tongue of Grandma.

And now it's Grandma's turn. Grandma's been inflicted with Alzheimer's for the last six or seven years. The first thing to go was Grandma's ability to drive. It was very hard on Grandma, and especially hard on her children as Grandma made it known in a not-so-quiet way how upset it made her that they would take away her car.

Then Grandma had a bad fall that broke her arm and hip and bruised her face. After that, she needed better care and she sold her house and now lives in an assisted-living apartment.

And up until recently, it's been a great place for her. Her Alzheimer's actually made her rather nice. She didn't have any worries. Her apartment is very pleasant. Her needs are met.

But she's lonely. Yesterday while Kulani took the girls out for their weekly culinary appreciation dinner, I visited Grandma.

No less than 13 times did Grandma ask me who I was, who I was married to, and how many kids I had. That was the okay part. I don't mind answering her questions again and again. Thankfully, Kulani took a continuing education class on Alzheimer's and gave me some tips on how to interact with people suffering from it.

Firstly, you don't say, "Do you remember me?" You just tell them who you are, again and again.

Grandma has a super sweet care lady who checks in on her in the morning and at night. I'm not kidding you when I say this woman is getting a free pass to the heaven of her choosing. She is so sweet to Grandma, and before she leaves each time, she says, "Goodbye, Helen. I love you." And I definitely feel like she really does mean it.

Grandma's helper lady said that Grandma hadn't been out of bed for two days, and she gave me a run down on everything Grandma had eaten. After the care lady left (shame on me for not remembering her name!), Grandma started asking me if she could come home with me.

"Sure," I said. And then she'd call my bluff.

"Let's go," she'd say, and make a gesture as if she was getting out of bed.

I stopped saying "sure" when she'd ask, and instead said, "I'll talk to your kids about it in the morning." And then Grandma would get upset with me and give me the gesture that says, "Forget you!" Well, not that gesture. It was more of a wave-of-the-hand gesture, but I got her meaning.

Another lady came in and administered her some medicine. I asked her if it would help Grandma sleep. She said that was one of the side effects, but that it was for anxiety.

Grandma asked if I'd like to stay the night. I told her I'd stay with her until she fell asleep. (Mind you, you don't talk normally with Grandma. You have to yell so she can hear you.) That didn't make her very happy either.

We watched some basketball, Grandma's favorite sport to watch. And then we watched part of the Olympics. I think I was keeping Grandma awake, as I would catch her nodding off.

She asked me if I had someplace to be. I told her no. Then she asked where my husband was. I told her for the dozenth time that he was on a daddy-daughters date. She told me they would be waiting for me.

I got the hint. She was ready for me to leave. I kissed her goodbye and told her I loved her, and I left.

I'm not sure my visit did any good. It seemed to bring her more disappointment than anything.

Next time I visit, I'll bring my kids. Seeing the little girls always cheers Grandma up. And she likely won't ask to come home with me, because although she loves seeing kids, she doesn't like living with kids.

And when looking into my future, it's nice to be surrounded by those I cherish most.

Compliments and Complaints

2010-02-20T08:34:00.008-07:00

Kulani bought me a new pan. It's the Turbo X3000 Calphalon Super G 12-inch non-stick pan, melded from hot coles burnt from rocks brought back by the astronauts who landed on the moon.

Check out the side-by-side comparison between the new and the old pan (which we bought at Shopko for what we thought was really expensive ($20) when we were still students):

See how the egg in the old pan on the left is sliding and not staying uniform? When I flip that baby over, half of the egg stays stuck to the pan. On the right is the super deluxe new model. No egg slipping. It all stays nice and uniform. The new pan also has no Crisco or buttery coating to aid in unsticking, and when you flip the egg over, no sticky-sticky. I'm no scientist, but I think it has to do with moon-rock vaporage condensation and the planetary pull of waves that gives the pan it's awesomeness.

I'm Not 80 Yet, But I'm Doing My Darndest To Complain Like It

My bellah is getting huge. I'm not kidding. It's like Sputnik; a virtual planetoid. It's got it's own weather system. I'd cry myself to sleep every night on my huge pillah...except...

Every pregnant woman knows you want to get the best sleep you can get before the baby comes, because once it gets here, your sleeping nights are over. The only problem is, sleeping with a huge belly isn't all that easy. You shift in the middle of the night and you roll around and your hips hurt and you have to use the potty every two hours. And then you have the following crowding you out of the bed:

More Misadventures of Nono

When it's only me and Nohea at home, she likes to play house while I work on the computer. I'm always the dad at work and she's the mom, but she brings me the baby to show and hug. She's started to entertain herself better, too, which doesn't always have the best results. I won't hear her for a half hour, so I'll go looking for her to make sure she is okay. I found an exploded pen on my comforter once, and her body was covered with ink.

And why do I even bother putting pillows back on the couch? She's just going to take them off again and build herself a house.

Lost Teeth and The Toad

Lilia lost another tooth. That makes two teeth in the last few weeks. This last tooth was pulled out by a girl at school. This girl is known for her teeth-pulling abilities, and she had Lilia hold two other girls' hands while the Tooth-Puller yanked out her tooth. Lilia then lost the tooth later while at school.

Being the tooth fairy is more difficult than I thought. I kept forgetting to write her note and stick it under her pillow with some money. So one morning while she was getting ready for school, I snuck the note into her room with the money. I put it behind her bed, as if it had slipped between the cracks.

I asked Lilia if the tooth fairy brought anything. We went to her room to look under her pillow. I told her to look all around her bed, because sometimes those things slip off the bed. Then she found the jackpot. Tooth-fairy gold.

And here's a picture of my Toad in all her rainbow-drawing glory:

Fishers out.

For the Po' Folks

2010-02-14T07:15:00.004-07:00

"Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and you’re going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything, but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it." -- Herman Blume from Rushmore.

I'm coming clean with a terrible habit I have of disliking and distrusting wealthy people. If you've never been the po' kid, I'm not sure you'd understand. Just as I probably don't understand how hard it would be to be the rich kid (poor little rich kids!).

In all honesty, where I grew up, most kids were the poor kids. We probably only had a handful of rich kids, and even they weren't really all that rich. Remember Napolean Dynamite and that "popular" girl's house? That's about as rich as they got in my town--maybe a touch richer.

Growing up in rural Idaho, we didn't have the disparity of classes as viewed in popular 80s brack-pack movies like Pretty in Pink, or the differences seen in an uber-wealthy private school setting like in Rushmore. But even still, in high school I found myself limiting some of my friendships because they would go out to fast food for lunch, and all I could afford was the 90 cent school lunch.

Nor was I able to afford to go snow skiing more than once or twice a year, and when I did go skiing, I brought my D.I.-discount boots and skis that didn't really fit me all that well. And I wasn't as poor as others, who I'm sure probably do view a bigger dividing class in south-central Idaho. And they never EVER got to go snow skiing, not even with used skis that cut off the circulation to the toes.

And while watching the Winter Olympics last night, Kulani summarized why it is I don't really care a whole bunch about the Winter Olympics.

"It's like watching all the rich kids compete."

He got an "amen" and a head nod from me with that comment.

When I'm watching the downhill skiiers, I think, "Dang! How much money did their parents spend to get them to this level?"

Still, I watch the Winter Olympics, but I don't have a love for them. These are people I just don't relate to. I'm glad for their accomplishments, really. Like I'm glad when I see someone winning an Oscar, or when someone tells me about a new boat they bought. It's nice for them.

And if they're happy, I'm happy.

Like Max Fischer said, I guess the secret is, you've gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life. For some, that's snow skiing. For others, it's a stable job that pays the mortgage and puts food on the table.

Thursday Nights

2010-02-05T13:21:00.006-07:00

This is Kulani posting.
This year one of my Christmas presents to Cindy was Thursday nights off. She can do what she wants with it. So far that has included some time working out, shopping, going out to dinner with friends, stuff like that. On previous nights, I would have done my best to buckle down and endure it. A few weeks ago I decided to take a different approach. Now, Thursday nights are Culinary Nights at the Fisher household.

We're now on the third week. The first week I taught the girls about how to read a recipe, measuring, and mise-en-place. We started off nice and easy with the girls giving me a hand while I steamed some shrimp and cooked rice. The following week we went to Rooster. On the way, we talked about the five flavors and various textures. As we ate, I talked with them about which flavors and textures they noticed and what they liked about it.

This week, we moved on to cooking methods and a brief discussion of temperature/time. Then, we got to cooking. The result was this:

They were both pretty excited about cooking their first meal from start to finish. So was I. Culinary Thursdays are here to stay.

Our real-life brush with Goodfellas

2010-02-01T06:28:00.003-07:00

There was a time in my life when I loved American gangster movies. Couldn't get enough of them. Once I started having children, the appeal of the American mafioso no longer gripped my heart. Though the movies were stylistically wonderful, the lack of morality of the characters started to grind on my mommy-sensitive nerves.

But I didn't leave the genre without finding out something I already knew: the Providence, Rhode Island division of the mafia are some of the scariest, meanest Goodfellas you'd never hope to meet. Without a baby in my arms when we visited the Federal Hill district in Providence, there's a good chance Kulani and I would now have cement on our feet as we sit waiting to be discovered along the bottom of the Pawcatuck River.

It was 2003, and post-911 America was experiencing an economic recession. Nothing like what is going on today, but it was still a tough job market. Kulani would be graduating from law school in April, and by February, he still hadn't found a job.

So being Kulani, he decided to increase his schooling in a much-wanted field in order to secure a job. His undergrad background was in mechanical engineering, but where the patent jobs were especially plentiful was for people with a background in electrical engineering. He decided that if he couldn't find a job, he would pursure a master's degree in electrical engineering.

When Kulani was in high school, his dream was to go to Brown University. Though he was accepted, his parents didn't feel they wanted to spend the money to send him there. After time and having kids, Kulani does not begrudge his parents that decision. However, now that it was him calling the shots for himself, he decided to give it another try.

Excitedly, Brown accepted him for his master's degree in electrical engineering. However, we knew that we had other, cheaper options if we stayed in Utah and he attended UofU. We decided to fly out to Providence and meet with the professors to see if he could get a scholarship and stipend.

Brown University, and Providence at large, has a very old-world feel. It had the feeling of an Edgar Allen Poe poem. It was cloudy and overcast when we visited, so maybe that had some bearing on my impressions. Nevertheless, it was an amazing place that I would definitely like to visit again.

While on our trip, we knew we had to experience some local cuisine. We hit up a nice restaurant and had Rhode Island clam chowder. Kulani also tried the Rhode Island-type of oysters. I had the lobster bisque.

We'd read in a brochure about Providence's "little Italy" called the Federal Hill district. We looked on the map to see where it was in the city and drove there. We didn't research exactly where to go, but we figured we'd find a good dive easy enough.

We found a little dive of a place that looked like it would have some good food, and we parked the car. When we got out of the car, I turned to Kulani and said, "This feels like a Scorcese movie." Though there was no one on the street, and the town almost felt empty, Kulani shooshed me. He could feel the change in this place as well.

Lilia was only six months old at the time, so she hung out of my front Baby Bjorn as we walked around Federal Hill. While walking to the restaurant we wanted to try, we passed a store that looked like either a butcher shop or an old grocery store. The walls were all bordered up, but I looked inside the front door to see two old men sitting on chairs. We made eye contact with each other for a brief second before Kulani snapped, "Don't look in there." I quickly looked away as if I hadn't seen them.

I'm pretty sure they were "made" men waiting for inconspicuous packages or something. They did not smile. Had I not had Lilia hanging off my personage, I would not be writing this post right now. (Maybe an exaggeration, but for a few moments there, trust me--it was real and it was scary.)

Note: If you ever find yourself traveling on the East Coast with a baby, you'll find you get treated very well. It's like people don't see enough babies there. Not like here in Utah, obviously.

We went into the restaurant and tried to enjoy our meal and calm our nerves. The restaurant was more of a pub. The food was pretty good, but the people inside the pub were even better. They had the thickest Rhode Island accents we'd heard on the trip. And they were so friendly. It was like eating lunch at "Cheers," where everybody knows your name.

The waiter was fascinated by our baby, and calls out to a guy at the end of the bar, "Hey, Paulie! How old is your baby? He sleep through the night yet?"

To which Paulie says, "No, he's keepin' us up every night. It's drivin' me crazy."

Just delightful. Except for the whole almost-getting-killed part.

Post Script: Kulani did get a scholarship to Brown, but in April he also got a job offer. He took the latter. Maybe one of these years he'll make it to Brown.

Faith-inspiring Rumors Gone Bad

2010-01-18T05:24:00.004-07:00

Kulani and I are skeptical anytime anyone tells a story or forwards a story about a "faith-inspiring story" that just seems too convenient or crazy. When I really get my skeptical meter running is when a name is attached to the story, as in, "So-and-so's daughter is in my mother's ward, and my mom told me herself that this daughter of so-and-so really did say this."

Kulani can be especially brutal if someone forwards e-mails that are blatantly wrong. Like the e-mail that went around about not microwaving plastic because it causes cancer. Kulani does a quick search on Snopes, then forwards an e-mail right back to the person forwarding the research from Snopes. Leave it to a lawyer to just cut someone's e-mail forwarding habits down to their knees.

I'd like to do that sometimes, but I haven't the guts. But there are a few things that when someone quotes them in Sunday School, it's all I can do to not raise my hand and yell "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" But I don't, because my explanation of something not being true sounds just as crazy as the person telling the crazy story. Speaking is NOT my strength. (Kulani says my strength is losing things.)

The quote that drives me craziest involves a quote that my little brother had hanging up in his room for the longest time. The quote was fairly popular in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and it involves the youth of today (or, the youth back in the late 1990s, early 2000s--I'd hardly call them "the youth," you know what I mean. Passed 18? Passed your prime!). The quote is usually attributed to one of the 12 Apostles, and here it is:

You were in the War in Heaven and one day when you are in the spirit world you will be enthralled with those who you are associated with. You will ask someone in which time period he lived in and you might hear, "I was with Moses when he parted the Red Sea," or "I helped build the pyramids," or "I fought with Captain Moroni." And as you are standing there in amazement, someone will turn to you and ask, "Which prophet time did you live in?" And when you say "Gordon B. Hinckley," a hush will fall over every hall, every corridor in heaven and all in attendance will bow at your presence. You were held back six thousand years because you were the most talented, most obedient, most courageous, and most righteous. Are you still? Remember who you are!

You can read the response to this quote from the General Authorities here. Basically, it says "We don't know who said that, but we know that we didn't. The youth of today are great, but let's get serious here. Are they really THAT great? Psha!" Oh, and uh, that's not a direct quote from the Brethren, just one I made up.

But recently at a delicious dinner at the Johnson's house, I found myself retelling a faith-inspiring story that sounded even too crazy to my own ears. Kulani and others, of course, didn't believe my story and gave me the ol' "I'd have to see it for myself before I can believe THAT one, Liar-Liar-Pregnancy-Pants-on-Fire." I felt like a fool saying, "No, no, it's true! It's true! I read it with mine own eyes!"

So in case I repeat this crazy story to you, and inwardly you're thinking, "Oh boy. Here goes Cindy with another one of her STORIES." May I please just refer you to the link where I found it? I read about this from my favorite Mormon gossip girl, Emily W. Jensen's column on Mormontimes.com called "Today in the Bloggernacle." For my benefit (and mine alone, I'm sure), she peruses many LDS blogs and highlights articles she thinks her readers (me) would enjoy.

This story was told here. It's about a woman in Tonga who gave birth to a baby in the Tongan LDS Temple. Mysteriously, all the phones and Internet weren't working, but they needed a nurse to help deliver the baby, so the temple president prayed to get someone there. Within minutes, a nurse showed up. If pictures didn't accompany this story, I would have had a hard time believing it too.

Crazy, but true. How do you like my stories now?

Party Like It's 1999

2009-12-31T09:44:00.006-07:00

There was a reason Prince admonished everyone to "party like it's 1999." When I was growing up, there seemed to be a general "feeling" (warning: FEELINGS!) that the end of the world would take place in the year 2000. Here we are about to jump headfirst into 2010, and the idea that the world was supposed to end 10 years ago seems crazy now, right?

Not so much in 1999. I'm not kidding. I was a reporter for a now defunct and very small daily newspaper called The Orem Daily Journal from 1998 to 1999. At one of the business press junkets I was attending, the head I.T. guy from NuSkin predicted that the Y2K scare would be "real and worse than any of us could imagine."

Those were his exact words; I am not making this up. Consequently, all the NuSkin founders and heads would be spending their Christmas and New Year's in Jamaica that year. Jaimaca? Somehow that's safer than Utah?

For our New Year's edition of the paper in 1999, I was given the assignment to interview the Parowan Prophet. He'd been predicting the end of the world since the 1980s (not unlike my mother-in-law, bless her heart. However, Alzheimer's has unfortunately taken away much of her end-of-the-world prophecies.)

Today I was curious to see if the Parowan Prophet is still predicting the end of the world. He sure is. You can read all about his prophecies on his Web site at http://www.parowanprophet.com/.

He's a bit of a nut job, but I feel sorry for the guy. He was in a terrible plane wreck in the 70s that capsized his father's head, who was sitting next to him. He miraculously lived and spoke of being with Christ while he was in a coma. He came back from the brink of death a self-proclaimed prophet.

From his Web site, his stuff seems no different from any other White Supremecist, Communist hating, super-right-wing conservative nut job.

Back then, he predicted that the end of the world would take place before Y2K because of tracing and blocking devices implanted by the Communists that would render all computers inoperable. I actually talked with the guy on the phone, and he was pretty passionate. I don't know why he'd be so specific about times and dates of the end of the world, but he would.

I think it was "fun" for newspapers to interview this guy for years, but I haven't seen his prophecies in the news for a long time. His rantings got old with each passing year his predictions never came true.

The changing of the year from 1999 to 2000 actually came without hiccups. At my then new job as a technical writer for a banking software company, we were given a bonus just for sticking around close to Provo that year for New Year's, just in case Y2K would turn out as bad as some suggested. I was never called in for "emergency documentation."

Sidebar thought: Great idea for a television series, don't you think? "Kent Chauncey: PhD."
Programmer: Mr. Chauncey, we need you to document the latest release of the software bug we just found.
Chauncey: Mister? I'll have you know I have my doctorate and post-doctorate degrees on the misspellings and errors of the Holy Bible NIV version, as well as why the complete works of Shakespeare are really not so complete. It's Doctor Chauncey.
Programmer: Dr. Chauncey, can you do it?
Chauncey: Did Dante rise from the inferno only to reach mediocrity? Of course I can, you knave! Send it to me in an e-mail stat!

Of late I've listened to the most recent doomsayer, Glenn Beck. His rantings I've heard before in my junior history class in high school. Our teacher, Mr. Cazier, taught from the same books Beck has been pounding. I like some of the ideas, but listening too much causes me grief and consternation. For the following hours and days I'm in a state of paranoia. I generally try to avoid being paranoid, especially when in a state of pregnancy. (Pregnant women worry enough as it is: Will my baby be deformed, fully function? I haven't felt the baby kick! I didn't take my prenatal vitamins today; this baby is doomed! With the amount of evil in this world, why in the heck are we bringing another child into it?!)

As the predictions come and go, I don't get as rialed up over the end of the world. And it's not like it's just the conservative side crying "the sky is falling." The liberal side has their bent too, or haven't you heard about a little movie made by a one Al Gore called An Inconvenient Truth?

Still, every time I hear an end-of-the-world theory, a small part of me flinches and wonders. Like Lisa Simpson in the episode where the town people think the end-of-the-world would come at a certain time and hour, and it turns out that it was all just a hoax by promoters for the opening of the new mall. She held tightly to her mother's hand when the supposed hour arrived. And so do I. Every New Year: I hold tightly to Kulani's hand. If this is the end, I'm glad I'm with him. (Plus, the dude has a huge stash of guns and ammunition, so we'll be ready for those God-hating Commies.)

Video of the Week

2009-12-30T12:17:00.004-07:00

Back on that total time-suckage of all hobbies: video editing.

I present a new music video starring my kids and their favorite dancing partner, neighbor-boy Matthew. Nohea says dancing to New Order is dancing to "robot music."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some more important things to do like laundry since we've been without clean underwear now for at least a day.

Sassy Grandmas

2009-12-28T07:39:00.005-07:00

Those of you who really know me know that I have been yearning to be 70 years old since I was 19. I lived with my Grandma McEuen for a year when I moved away from home to go to college. I adapted very well to her retired-lifestyle pace. I traveled with Grandma to her hometown places of Oak City, Lemington, and Delta (population of all three places combined: 2,000 and all are related to me). I went with her to a few meetings of the DUP (Daughters of the Utah Pioneers), and I even attended some Orem Women Club meetings with her (motto: must be over 70 and love boring meetings). Through my associations with older ladies, I somehow found it within me to conjure up a killer Carol Channing impression, an alter ego you might say. Even today, any time my brother-in-law Nathan sees me, he says, "Hello, Carol Channing." To which I sing, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend...raspberries!"

We'd eat a lot of chicken, not so much red meat. And we watched a lot of mystery/detective/ lawyer shows like Matlock. I retired to bed no later than 8:30 p.m. every night, much to the consternation of my friends partying it up at that party school, Utah State University. (AKA: Dixie College North. Ouch! Keri, you know what I mean.) My friends at USU would call Grandma's house around 9:30 p.m. with plans for the upcoming weekend, but Grandma would give them a not-so-friendly lecture about me having to work at 5 a.m. and that I shouldn't be disturbed. The woman always had my best interests at heart. This was before cell phones and Facebook.

But living with Grandma gave me an appreciation for old people, in particular, old battle axes. Grandma wasn't some wilting violet. Grandma was rather stern, with some choice phrases and comments. She scared a lot of my friends, and she could even scare me. But she also had an underlying warmth and her house felt very homey to me. At least, that first year. As time went on, and we lived with her a second time when Lilia was first born, her ability to cope with unexpected stimuli wasn't as great as it had been. But that's another story.

So I was caught off guard this Sunday when I sat near the back row with a bunch of the retired ladies in my ward. Being in nursery for the last two years, I'd missed my homeys, my peeps: the over 70 set.

The teacher at this particular Relief Society meeting was asking the question, "Why does Heavenly Father love us?"

Silence followed her question, as it normally does as people reflect and try to come up with a good answer. One of my over-70 sisters said in her inside-whisper voice, "Whooooo knows." It was so sarcastically wonderful and said like only a woman who's traveled life's winding roads could say it.

I burst out into laughter. Why would God love a bunch of yahoos and dingbats like us? Oh how I love the humor of old ladies!

Kulani's Late Nights

2009-12-26T10:30:00.007-07:00

Something that is made clear to anyone wanting to be a lawyer is that you must prepare yourself for long hours and heavy workloads. Not all lawyers work a lot of hours, but most do. And I know Kulani does.

When he has to work very late on projects, I take the kids to his office and we all have a sleep over. It's an adventure that may not be available to us once our fourth child arrives in June. (I don't think I've mentioned that I'm pregnant yet, so if you've been wondering, now you know.)

The great thing about Kulani's work is that it's in downtown SLC. Many adventures await us in downtown. We can walk to Temple Square and visit all the museums. We can catch TRAX and travel to the Gateway and take a visit to Build-a-Bear. All activities are free, unless the girls break me down at Build-a-Bear.

Kulani's office also has all kinds of drinks, including hot chocolate and V8 juice, my personal favortie.

We can stream Netflix over Kulani's computer, so the girls can also be entertained that way. Over Christmas break, Kulani let each of the girls take a half day with him at his office. I met him at the food court in the bottom of his building to have lunch with him, and then we switched girls so each could have a turn with Daddy.

Here's Lissy at Dad's work.

Here's Lilia at Dad's work.

Here's Nono monkeying around at Dad's work. Her attention span could not have endured four hours in his office.
Here's where Nohea and I sleep when we have a stay over at Kulani's office. We bought this couch at Costco. It's pretty sweet, as it looks like a couch, but it's really a leather daybed. The girls sleep on blow-up mattresses. Kulani works until about 3 a.m., and then he'll take a snoozer on the hard floor.

I'll miss these adventures.

A Photo Recap of the Last Several Months

2009-12-26T08:56:00.019-07:00

I haven't downloaded the pictures from my camera since September, so I thought it would be fun to remember a few choice moments such as these:

Hugging Lissy on her first day of Kindergarten, Nohea secretly plans her takeover of the entire Fisher household. Sweet and innocent is just a ploy to her evil ways.

Walking Lissy to school and stopping to feed the horses. I miss these warm days.

Lilia plays soccer for the Purple Turtles.

Kulani finished his fastest Telos Turkey Tri ever on one of the most unseasonably warm November days.

Lilia turns 7!

Lilia on crazy hair day. She said she looked like someone on The Brady Bunch. Alice?

Lissy on crazy hair day sporting the school's colors.

Nohea falling asleep in one of her unconventional places.

Lissy and Nohea visiting with Glenda the Good Witch after watching American Fork High School's production of "The Wizard of Oz." Lilia was spooked by the Flying Monkeys who walked right up to her during the intermission and scared her. She refused to have anything to do with taking pictures with these people.

The family before the Pleasant Grove Turkey Trot. Lilia took first in her age group. Lissy even ran the whole thing. Nohea, not so much. She was cold, tired, and cranky. Kulani ran it in 28 minutes. It was a really fun race put on by a Scout trying to earn his Eagle. The race cost each of us five cans of food and $1.

The Thanksgiving table at the Kuhia and Susan Fisher house in Lindon. The entire Fisher clan, except Uncle Kawika in Nevada, made it to the dinner. I don't know why I didn't take a picture with people actually sitting in the chairs. I think I was grumpy and hid from everyone.

Kulani giving his mouth an amuse bouche of baked brie.

Nohea playing in the first snowfall of the year.

Honesty of a First Grader

2009-12-16T03:35:00.002-07:00

Lilia hasn't quite mastered the art of knowing what information to share and what information to keep to herself. Her mom doesn't always have that one down either, so it's not very fair to expect a first grader to be savvy about such matters.

The other day, Lilia revealed to me that during lunch recess she peed her pants "just a little bit" because she thought she wasn't allowed inside during recess. Later, after she came home, she got so busy building a snowman that she again didn't take time to come inside the house and take a potty break. She was playing with her good neighbor friend Matthew. She finally did excuse herself, and she decided to take a quick bath to clean herself up.

After about 10 minutes, Matthew knocked on the door.

"Is Lilia here?"
Lilia shows up at the door with new pants on.
"Sorry, Matthew, I peed my pants just a little bit and had to take a bath."

Matthew didn't look phased from this pronouncement of honesty. They went back outside and continued playing. Happens to most of us from time to time, I'm sure. Might as well shout it out on this blog.

Sometimes she's so like me it kills me.

Constructive Criticism

2009-12-04T04:50:00.002-07:00

I received some honest feedback on my blog by an anonymous poster recently. Who doesn't LOVE honest feedback, I ask you? I mean, when was the last time you really took the time to care enough about someone to say, "Your stories are boring me to tears." Or, "You lack the social graces of a cow." Or "Honestly, if I you look up 'dork' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you."

This caring annonymous poster basically had two complaints about this blog: 1) it's boring and (2) Kulani and myself are dorks. And he/she was passionate about both opinions, leaving comments on every post all the way back to June. I question how boring he/she really thought this blog was if he/she continued to read posts clear back in June.

But I can buy it. We are a bit boring, and I'm okay with that. This blog isn't for everybody. I'm not really sure why I created it in the first place. Yes, it's about my family. But it's also about just random thoughts. Mostly I just like to write. And I like reading about other's people thoughts and families, and maybe someone would like to read stuff that comes out of my head. But maybe not either. It's a free country, and a free blog service. Take it for what it is.

I wouldn't really want the life that is non-stop 24/7 high drama and/or FUN, FUN, FUN! When I was a junior in high school, we studied the play "Our Town." It's a rather boring play where nothing really happens, and that is the point. We're so busy living life that we don't always pause to enjoy the essence of life--the boringness of it. I remember our English teacher telling us that most of us would grow up to be ordinary people, not celebrities or extremely rich billionaires. Our lives would be simple. At the time, I thought, "Not me. I'll show 'em." But here I am: Boring Mayor of Boringtown.

It reminds me of a quote by Gordon B. Hinckley: "Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."

Sure, I love me some celebrity gossip from time to time. I like a good People reading as much as the next person. But you're not going to get that here. You're going to read about a barbecue we went to, or how the girls are changing with each passing year. For me, it's nice to re-read happenings from our lives, and I hope as my girls get older they will especially appreciate random, lame stories of day-to-day living as expressed from their mother and father.

As far as us being dorks, I'm pretty sure I know now that the anonymous poster was my big brother Doug. After he left on his mission, I stole his shirt with the following quote on the front: "I'm Okay, you're a Dork." Doug, I'm sorry I stole your stupid sweatshirt.

(Note: The comments have been erased and this blog is now officially closed to anonymous posters, which makes me kind-of sad. It's like going from an age where you trust everyone and never lock the front door, to being paranoid of everyone and double locking everything.)

A love note from my girl

2009-11-28T08:56:00.004-07:00

Lilia is heading head first down the super highway of growing up. If I'm not mistaken, preteens may be the new teenagers. Would you consider age 7 a preteen? Maybe not so much, but in some ways, I'd say yes.

Recently, Lilia has discovered the tactic of ignoring her parents. We ask her a question, and we get no response, or a half-glance of death. It says to me: "Leave me alone!" For example, she received a phone call from a boy in her class named Zeke.

"Hello," I answered the phone.
"Hi, is Lilia there?"
"Yes, who may I tell her is calling?"
"Zeke."

Me to Lilia: "Telephone for you. It's Zeke."

Lilia's face turns red, and she takes the phone.

"What do you want?" Lilia says to Zeke on the phone. "I'll play with you at recess." And she hangs up.

Me: "Lilia, who was that?"
Lilia: Blank. Nothing.
Me: "I won't make fun of you. I'm just asking who it was on the phone just now."
Lilia continues to write on a piece of paper about heaven knows what, but by the look on her face, it was very important.
Me: "Is he someone from your class."
Lilia continues to ignore.
Me: "He sounds like a nice friend."
Lilia acts like she's the only one in the room.

So I drop it and talk to Kulani about it later that night. He says it's because I tease her about boys. I didn't think I'd teased her that bad, if ever...maybe. Gees.

Lilia also gets squirmy whenever a kissing scene comes on TV.

"Turn the channel! I don't want to see this!"
Me to her: "But Lilia, this is the best part. When you get older you'll understand."
Lilia: "Never."

I think this awkward stage lasted until I was about 18, so I think Lilia has a long road in front of her as well, which is good. I'm very glad for her shy ways.

I did get a love note from her the other day that absolutely melted my heart. I've never been super fond of my name. I like it okay, but it's ... Cindy. I took a communications class in college that included a chart of names that evoke respect, confidence, and class. Cindy was not among that list. It was among the list of names that evoked airhead, commonness, and plainness. I reflect much of those characteristics, as does my name, but still, there are days I wish my name was exotic and mysterious like Abigail or Victoria.

And then Lilia gives me this note (please ignore misspellings):

It says: "Mom your name is vurey pitey to me. I can sae it 100 tims: Cidey! Cidey! Cidey! And you are a grate Mom."

I love my name so much more now, misspellings and all.

And I love my little girls.

The Iron Curtain

2009-11-09T05:36:00.003-07:00

It was 20 years ago today that the Berlin Wall was yanked down by East and West Berliners in a symbolic fall of communism. It doesn't seem like it would be that momentous to a teenager in rural Idaho, but like most important news stories of the world, somehow we all feel affected and connected by great human events.

Ever since I was very young, I remember our family praying in our nightly prayers that "the Iron Curtain" would come down. My mom explained to us that freedom existed for one side, but not the other. Countries, cities, and families were torn apart because of this curtain. My mom explained that the Iron Curtain was a border made of high fencing of barbed wire, and anyone caught trying to get over it would be shot and killed.

My mom, who would like to sneak in educational films into our diet of completely inane cartoons and movies, once rented a movie about a family who escaped over the Iron Curtain in a hot-air balloon. It was based on actual events. That movie made it more real for me, and I had a fascination with the Iron Curtain for many years. I'd wish there was a way I could find a hole in it and sneak people across.

In late 1988, my oldest brother was called to serve an LDS mission in Hamburg, Germany. About nine months into his mission, we received a telephone call that he would be transferred to East Germany. East Germany? That's communist. They're letting missionaries into East Germany?

Within another year, the wall came down. When Doug returned home, he told us of the stark differences between East and West Germany. East German people had met relatively few Americans and were eager to talk with him. They loved giving stuff to the American missionaries, and a lot of the stuff they gave was communist medals and World War II medals. He picked up a lot of interesting souvenirs. Because in communist East Germany, rather than bonuses for good work, they got medals.

And the people lived more simply and poorly in East Germany, Doug told us. In most houses he usually had to shovel coal to feed the furnace in order to have hot water.

I remember watching news events of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the joy on the people's faces as they braced each other once again; brother to brother and sister to sister. An Iron Curtain hadn't existed in their hearts. It was like a huge dam had been broken and love came gushing out. And through prayer, I joined them in a long-distance bear hug.

Doug even brought home pieces of the Berlin Wall. It really just looks like a chunk of sidewalk. Symbolically, of course, it means much more.

An Insomnia Post

2009-11-07T02:48:00.003-07:00

I have a serious case of insomnia. I woke up at what the clock in my bedroom said 2:30 a.m., but we usually don't get around to setting our bedroom clocks to the correct hour until a few months AFTER daylight savings ends and begins. So, I tried going back to sleep until the bedroom clock read 3:25, but I still wasn't asleep.

Jesse (our dog) needed to go outside, so I got out of bed to take him outside, and now I'm officially awake. I have eight 7-year-old children arriving here in about ... let me think about it for a moment. My math skills are sorely lacking even when my brain is fully functional ... 10 hours for Lilia's birthday party. She wanted a Wii-themed party, but I thought I'd throw in some REAL games like egg races and wheelbarrow races. And then they can go bowling on the Wii. Old school meets new school.

I'm feeling bad about something I wrote in yesterday's post. I have many faults, but the habit I have that drives me the craziest is when I generalize about people, places, or things--nouns. Generalizing is okay in very small doses, perhaps, like my belief that everyone from Wales is kind based on my meeting of three real Welsh people who I count as some of the kindest people I've ever met. See, that's not taking it too far, right?

But it's bad when we generalize about the sexes. "Men are all pigs." "Women are bad drivers." You get the gist. So in my post yesterday, I wrote this when referring to the guys at BYU when I was attending school there over a decade ago:

"But truthfully, the guys sometimes acted a tad immature, and there was game playing to be played fah shah. For example, a guy could never act too interested in you in case there was a bigger fish to fry, if you catch my meaning."

What the heck? The girls could be just as bad as the guys when it came to holding out for a better catch. What a lame statement! It sounds like it was written by a fed-up college co-ed who sits on the couch sulking while her roommates are out dating.

And it brought me back to my idiotic junior high days when I borrowed a shirt from my sister that had the statement "Men are scum!" in black letters on the front. I wore it because it was a neon green color, and it was 1991, the height of neon and Information Society and all that. And I didn't own very much neon, if any. So I was drawn to that shirt! And I wore it ... to school.

And it was also the last time any guy from my school and my age was ever interested in me ever. I wasn't using my brain 3/4ths the time back then. It's at half capacity now.

Still not sleepy.

How Kulani Won My Heart

2009-11-06T06:31:00.006-07:00

I always get sentimental and love-dippy this time of year. It was around late October/November that Kulani and I started dating 13 years ago.

I met my Polynesian hunk-of-burning-Johnny-Lingo love while living in the old and cheap Miller Apartments in downtown Provo, Utah; a hop, skip, and jump away from BYU campus. It was the institution Kulani and I were attending for purposes of higher education with the side hope of finding a spouse.

Of course, that's not what I was thinking back then, no sir. I was a liberated woman who had her eyes on a mission and career. Getting married? Psha! That's for suckers, saps, smarmies. (I love the word smarmy: def., smug, falsley earnest, ingratiaing. Maybe it doesn't work here, but I have found few places the word doesn't work. Dang, I've got smarmy laundry to do!)

And I was having one of my best dating eras of my life. For a girl who dated maybe four previous times her whole college career, in my third year of school I found the guys coming out from the cracks in the sidewalks. I was living the life, baby, and you can tell that to Telly Savalas. All was going according to my plans, which would culminate in me breaking everyone's heart to leave for a mission at age 21.

And then put the brakes on, folks. I caught a wave of southern Utah heat that beated in the chest of a raven-haired brilliant man. That would be Kulani.

Here's a picture of him back in the day when he still had a full head of hair and right after he came back from a mountain bike ride that ended in one of his famous crashes:

As if the picture isn't convincing enough as to why I chose my man. But he had other redeeming qualities besides just Polynesian good looks. For purposes of this post, let's say he had me at lobster and honey-curry chicken.

Kulani was not the typical BYU suitor. I love my BYU and don't you go around bad-mouthing it, now, you hear? But truthfully, the guys sometimes acted a tad immature, and there was game playing to be played fah shah. For example, a guy could never act too interested in you in case there was a bigger fish to fry, if you catch my meaning.

But I never got that sense with Kulani. He was genuine and earnest from the get go. I could tell fairly quickly that he was really into me, and I liked that. He wasn't shy about it, and he didn't play any games. He was who he was. Not a playa.

And to impress me one night, he made me dinner. The first dinner he ever made for me. And for those of you who know Kulani, the man can cook. He'd cooked me a burrito before that when I stopped by his apartment at lunchtime once. Most college students just put bean and cheese in a burrito, right? Well, Kulani had Mexican rice, peppers, some tasty meat, etc. in his burritos. Seven-layer burrito of heaven.

But he wasn't the cook he is now, mostly because of the busyness of school and lack of money, but he was still a great cook. And he loved to cook. I'd never met anyone who loved to cook. And the cooking the dinner for me would have been great on its own, but he also cleaned his apartment. And Kulani HATES to clean, and neither did any of his roommates, as their apartment was pretty much a giant trash can. He also borrowed some nice dinner plates and tablecloths and cloth napkins from his sister in Spanish Fork, and he set a beautiful card table for our first dinner. The man was trying to impress ME--girl raised in a family of 10 whose family regularly used paper towels as napkins. SO cleaning AND cooking? Ladies, I know you're with me when I say, "aaahhhhhh."

But that's not all, oh no it's not. The meal Kulani cooked me, up to that night in my life, was one of the best of my life. He cooked me slipper lobster tails and honey-curry chicken. I'd had lobster tails once before at a cheap restaurant in Las Vegas: not impressed with it, really. But the slipper lobster tails Kulani cooked me with melted butter, fuhget about it.

And honey-curry chicken: easily one of my favorite recipes. I'm posting it on our sister cooking Web site, so you can make some for your honey tonight, and maybe you'll get some curry later in bed (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). (I've never heard IT be called curry, but what hasn't IT been called? I mean, really, heaven knows we need more code words for IT to keep the little ones in the dark.)

So there you go. Maybe I'm easy to please, but really, my bar was set pretty high, and Kulani flew over it like he was a pole vaulter going over a high-jump bar. Honestly, if it weren't for Kulani in my life, I'd be doing the $5 Footlongs every night. And hosting a luau and quarterly food appreciation dinners? That's all Kulani's doing. He's the life of my party. I'm just holding on for the ride.

The Halloween Tradition

2009-11-02T04:58:00.008-07:00

While talking with my dad on the phone yesterday he let slip that my mom had a rare "pity party" expressing sadness that she didn't get to see any of her grandchildren dress up for Halloween. My cousin Becky and her kids stopped by their house, and it made her yearn to see her own grandchildren.

Well, never fear, Grandma C.! Here are the pictures from our traditional Halloween.

Lilia and Lissy snarling over the candy snake given to us by the Hornes atop a piece of tasty Texas sheet cake.

Lissy: Cinderella.
Nono: Dinosaur.
Lilia: Dorothy.

Another view of the monster.

Displaying the loot. Candied popcorn balls, are you kidding me? Only from the amazing James family (they left out the razor blades .... this time).

The customary jack-o-lantern pizza.

And then we watched a scary movie: The Proposal. It didn't look like Sandra Bullock would get her man, but in the end, she did. Belated spoiler alert.

The Indomitable Nono

2009-10-28T14:31:00.002-06:00

This is Kulani. Last night as I sat watching TV with my brother, Lissy approached me and asked me for a glass of milk. I poured one for her and as I handed it to her, she asked me if I wouldn't mind heating it up. Which I did.

Moments later, Nono (who's 2) ran into the room and asked for some milk as well. I told her to ask for some of Lissy's. Rather than wait for me to finish or ask again, Nono headed straight for the kitchen. Before I realized what was going on, she'd pushed a stool to the refrigerator and retrieved the milk, pushed another to the cabinets to retrieve a cup, returned to the island to pour the milk, and was in the process of putting it the microwave. We definitely have our hands full with this one.

Fans of Cycling and Cuisine Fall Harvest

2009-10-21T09:44:00.024-06:00

Kulani and his friend Pat have created a club they dubbed "Fans of Cycling and Cuisine" or FCC. It's a chance to put together a multi-course meal on a quarterly basis for people who love food.

I'm queezy about announcing this on my blog, because I can already hear people saying, "How come I haven't been invited?" Maybe with time, you will be.

Your chances for being invited increase if both you and your spouse/date love to eat. And you should love to eat just about anything, including meat and seafood. Many of the dishes we attempt are experimental, so if we make something you don't like, pretend like you're eating it anyhow and somehow choke it down. We do have a dog, so maybe when no one is looking, you can feed it to him.

We are a very pro-children house, but for this particular event, no kids are invited. However, our kids roam the house, so it seems unfair, but you know, it's our house and we're cooking the food, so deal with it.

Also, being able to check your politics at the door will more likely get you an invitation. Nothing spoils a good dinner like crazy political talking.

With each meeting of the FCC, we get better and more organized. Our apologies to those first groups who had to deal with our disorganization. And hopefully in the future, it will get even better.

And with that, I give you the menu of this quarter's FCC Fall Harvest. Anything marked with an asterisks means it was a new dish we tried for the event. Lani provided a menu for the drinks. Guests brought a variety of drinks, which really made the meal more like a "food and wine" dinner, only all the drinks were non-alcoholic, but so very tasty.

One thing we're learning is like pairing good food together, it also takes effort to pair good groups together. Some of our groups have worked, and some haven't. This quarter's group was particularly great. Most everyone had a connection to law, so maybe the key is grouping people with commonalities.

Left to right, clockwise: Pat (co-founder of FCC), Matt Bates (law school buddy of Kulani's), Rachel Bates (wife of Matt and mother of three boys, soon to be four), Kulani, Dan Harper (law school buddy of Kulani's; wife was on vacation), Patrick (general counsel for Xango), and Lani (Kulani's brother).

Left to right, clockwise: Patrick, Lani, Pat (med student; met Kulani at Workman Nydegger when he was a clerk there), Chelsea (mother of Charlie), Matt, and Rachel.

"Real" History

2009-10-21T08:28:00.003-06:00

A colleague recently challenged me to read a Utah history book not written by a Utahan. What does that even mean? The implication is that Utahans who write history books get their facts wrong or gloss over the "real" history of Utah.

It got my ire up in a big kind of way, but also in a good kind of way. If I were to attempt a research paper, I think I'd like to analyze who writes history books.

For example, are the best history books written by people inside a given state, country, region, group, etc., or are they best written by an outsider? If I want to learn more about Mississippi, for example, should I make sure to read a book written by an Alabaman about Mississippi? Or would an Alabaman also have an "axe to grind" and trump up all of Mississippi's dark history as part of a grudge the two states have endured over land parcels? (I don't know if they actually have a grudge between the two states; I'm just speculating.)

If the theory holds true that history books are best written by outsiders, it would have to be a WAY outsider, like from someone clear across the state. But then, how accurate can they get? I remember reading our family's World Book Encyclopedia's entry about the state of Utah, and it said that Joseph Smith had led the Latter-day Saint people west to Utah. In reality, it was Brigham Young. The set was published in 1980. Hopefully the editors have caught THAT error by now, but it makes me wonder how many other historical facts they got wrong.

And it surely makes me wonder what historical facts would be included in a History of America book written by that neutral country Sweden. It would probably play up the HUGE anti-war movement of World War II in this country. Haven't heard about it? Well, you're just reading history books from people BORN in America. Free your minds, people.

The Way Back Machine

2009-10-08T23:17:00.003-06:00

Kulani is sleeping. The girls are sleeping. I can't sleep. I'm wide awake at 11 p.m. So my mind starts to drift. I haven't had any bursts of inspiration to write about my current life lately, so tonight's story is retrieved from the recesses of my mind. And as my mind can lead toward the self-deprecating and negative--especially at night, this story involves one of my not-so-finer moments.

My junior year in high school was the year I was finally old enough to date and attend school dances. A good friend of mine, the notorious Aaron Monson, asked me to the Homecoming dance. I accepted and was anticipating a great event.

The only problem was I didn't have a dress. Well, truthfully, I had a closet full of dresses, but I thought I needed a new dress. This was the time in my family's life when Dad's car business wasn't doing so great, and Mom was working herself ragged with teaching school, trying to raise children, and helping Dad in his business. They had a lot on their plate.

And then you throw in an ungrateful teenage daughter.

I laid the guilt trip on my mom pretty thick. I remember crying a lot. And then this:

Me to Mom: "I'm just embarrassed of our house. Aaron will come by to pick me up, and the house will be a mess, and I'll have on an ugly dress."

Ouch! It hurts to even think that I said that, but in all honesty, I probably did say it that harshly.

The Friday before the date, my mom took me to the nicest store in Rupert to buy me a dress. It cost $100. I think the dress is still somewhere in my parent's house. There's nothing special about the dress, really. I had a dress that looked similar to it already hanging up in my closet. It was just new (see picture below). And besides my wedding dress, it's still the most expensive dress I own.

I left for my job at Kmart the Saturday morning before the date. I came home around 4 p.m. to a completely spotless house. Mom had worked all day cleaning. While she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the shower, she slipped a disc in her back which caused her extreme pain. She couldn't stand up all the way. She lied on her back for the next few days, eventually needing surgery to fix her back.

I don't remember having a super great time on my date. Aaron was a great friend, but my mind was elsewhere. I couldn't believe I'd acted like such a "teenager." Remembering that night still causes me a ping of pain in my heart because of my bratty behavior.

But as my dad puts it, what goes around comes around. I have a feeling one of my girls will likely go "teenager" on me, too. And when they do, you'll be hearing about it on this blog.

Luau '09

2009-09-15T15:13:00.028-06:00

(This is Kulani again). This year was the biggest luau so far. We'd planned on around 300 people and between 350-400 people showed up. It wasn't without incident, but by and large it seemed to go pretty well. While we did get behind a few times on the various proteins, we didn't run out of food. By the numbers, we turned out 8 Costco packages of Italian Sausages with the corresponding sauce and argentine bread, a 10 lb bag of rice, 15 lbs of potato salad, 70 lbs of kalbi sirloin, 100 lbs of Kalua Pork, and 120 lbs of chicken.

So, here's how it went down:
(Cindy here now. Kulani has been too busy to finish his post.)

Kuhia - sous chef and Haupia Master

Ben helped man the grill station (with help from his son Jaron).

Alika and Brittney helped with initial prep on Friday, and allowed us the use of their dad's kitchen with Wolf appliances. (Maybe we can get Wolf to consider sponsoring our luau next year.) Kehaulani brought it up a notch this year with decorations.

Lani (and Patrick) made the Chicken Long Rice and brought the poi, as well as bringing Cindy and the girls fresh leis back from their recent trip to Hawaii.

Kamika was the official luau photographer. But I also saw my neighbor Ellen with her camera, and I can't wait to see what photos she took.

Brian helped cart stuff up to the park with his truck. Jon and Delena helped with whatever needed helping. And many more of you chipped in when a command was barked or things needed cleaned up. Many thanks!

And the last great component was our fine friends, colleagues, neighbors, and associates. We can't take you all to Hawaii, but we can bring a little piece of Hawaii to you.

Elyssa, Stephanie, and Ellen. Friends from the neighborhood.

Racer and Maren and their dog. Racer is one of Kulani's first friends from the biking world, and now Racer owns a great little bicycle shop in Provo appropriately named "Racer's." In fact, it was Kulani who dubbed Racer, "Racer." Racer's real name is Jared, but at Gourmet Bicycles back in the day, three Jareds worked at the shop, so Kulani gave Jared the name of Racer to tell them all apart. Racer has since legally changed his name to Racer.

This is Mackenzie my niece holding my sister Kathy's new baby. Mackenzie is only 9 or 10, but she's going to make a great babysitter soon (as she is already). Grandma and Grandpa Christenson came down from Idaho and scooped up all the grandkids along the way to give the adults a night off. Mackenzie lives in Bothwell, Utah.

This is the Lorimers. Pat is attending UofU Medical School. They are founding members of the FCC--Fans of Cycling and Cuisine. The club is known for enjoying fine food and fine bicycle rides, mostly between Kulani and Pat.

Kulani taking a well-deserved break. I know you all think it looks like a lot of trouble to do this every year, but let me tell you that it is the highlight of Kulani's year. He loves it.

Next year, I'll make sure every family gets a photo. Wait ... Kulani, will there be a next year? Tune in to find out!

Enthusiastic Listener

2009-09-14T06:49:00.003-06:00

A post about the Luau will be on its way, but I've felt inspiration this morning.

I know I won't be winning any awards such as "Best Mom of the Year." I'm okay with that, really. Besides, the attention one would get from such an award would probably cause me to become a hermit. In my older years, I'm starting to seriously get why J.D. Salinger has been hiding for nigh unto 50 years (perhaps he's dead).

"Won't you come to speak to our women's group?" The phone calls wouldn't stop if you were to be mother of the year. Then there's the speaking engagements, the book deals, the paparazzi trying to take a picture of you at your least "mom-of-the-year" moment (think: Kate Gosselin). You know, when your 2-year-old runs out the front door sans clothes and diaper. Not that I'd know anything about that...

When I was younger, when asked the question: "Which would you choose: fame or fortune?" I'd always choose fame. I think it's a commonality amongst those of us stuck in the middle of a large family. We seek outward attention wherever we can get it.

But on Saturday after the luau, I decided fame is not for me. The luau was fantastic and it was great seeing everyone. The only problem was, it wasn't long enough, and I was on working duty, so I didn't get to say "hi" and chat with more people that I wanted. Some of the people who show up to the luau I only see once a year. I like to see how people's children are progressing and growing. I like to hear people's "stories." But fame (not that the luau makes me famous, there's just a lot of people there) doesn't allow one the time (nor the energy) to really connect with people in the ways one likes to be connected. I understand Dave Chappelle stepping away from the spotlight. Maybe there is such as thing as too many friends? (NO! NEVER! LET THE FRIEND REVOLUTION BEGIN!)

But what I'm getting at in a very odd and roundabout way is that I felt inspired today to help me become a better mother.

Lilia has been struggling with reading. It hasn't come naturally for her at all. I think a big part of it is because of her speech delay and hearing problems when she was a baby. The ripple affect has moved out to her reading comprehension. I can see on her face when she sounds out certain words, in her head all these years she's been hearing the word wrong. For example, the word "asked." She thinks it should be spelled A-K-S-D, so when she tries reading the real word, she gets confused and then frustrated. And my coaxing with little ryhmes she's heard a million times, such as "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" does not help.

So I've been thinking what I could do to help her better. Usually when we read together, it's late at night, and I'm tired. I'm listening to her read with my eyes half closed. What kind of a message am I sending her? "You bore me to sleep, little girl."

So the next time we read together, it will be (a) earlier and (b) I'll act like I'm interested in what she's reading.

"Oooh, this story is good. Keep reading! What's going to happen next?"

Wouldn't that make you want to read more rather than seeing your mom nod off to sleep? Like I said, maybe not Mom-of-the-Year, but More Improved isn't a bad award either. Please, no phone calls.

Murray Youth and Family Tri

2009-09-07T18:04:00.008-06:00

(Fair warning, this is Kulani posting). Lilia did her first triathlon today at the Murray Youth and Family Triathlon at the Murray City Park, which included a 100 yd swim, a 2.6 mile bike, and 0.6 mile run.
The night before the race, Lilia was already starting to get nervous. It didn't get much better in the morning. This is Lilia's nervous look. As we sat waiting for the pre-race meeting, I asked her what she was most nervous about. "I'm a little scared I might not be able to finish it all," she confided. I then explained to her that her rides and runs with the family were each several times longer than the race, which calmed her down almost immediately. Then she told me her strategy - "When it gets hard, I'll just do like in the book. I'll say, 'I think I can, I think I can.'"

The thing I was most nervous about was the swim - Lilia only learned the freestyle stroke about two-three weeks ago. And that was in shallow water. I was amazed by her tenacity. She swam the entire time, passing several kids along the way.

As she came out of the water, she had her game face on.

I hadn't planned on riding with her along the bike route, but brought a bike just in case. After I saw several parents riding out with their kids, I pulled out my bike and rode after her. I was surprised that it took me nearly a mile to catch her. She explained to me that her strategy on the bike had been to pick out a kid further ahead and then try to catch them. Doing so, she'd been moving along pretty quickly. After walking part of the second of three hills, she powered up the last hill. As she was coasting down toward the bike finish, she shouted, "I can't believe I'm doing it. I'm almost done. This is so awesome."

Lilia started out quick, but steady on the run. After passing a couple of kids, she came upon a girl who was walking. The girl took off sprinting, and Lilia rose for the bait. Both tired quickly, and Lilia had to walk for about 50 yards to recover. Once she did, she kept it steady and picked off several more kids. She stayed steady until she saw the finish line, then sprinted for the finish. In the end, Lilia showed a lot of toughness, seemed to have fun, and picked up a blue ribbon as the fastest in the six and under category.

Just me and my hillbilly

2009-09-04T12:51:00.009-06:00

Nono and I are getting some quality one-on-one time now that the older two are in school. Lissy for just half a day, but it is still great.

Nono is at that stage where she wants to do everything herself. Forget about trying to dress her. "I do it myself," is her over-used phrase these days. That's an outfit she picked out herself: overalls and no shirt. Who am I to judge? I'm just her mother. I tried coaxing her into a shirt, but she'd have none of it. And because she can take her clothes off and put them on by herself, I don't bother with the battle. I was raised in southern Idaho, afterall. Overalls with no T-shirt is a cultural statement.

Her independence borders on driving me crazy. She must brush her teeth herself, including applying the toothpaste to the toothbrush. Consequently, I find toothpaste in various places on the carpet all over the house.

I read a headline recently (didn't bother reading the story, just the headline, so I may be totally off base) that read children can understand the needs of their dogs. I could have told you that. (Yeah, I'm that know-it-all you despise who ruins every magic trick, every trivia game, and every Lifetime Movie plot twist with "I knew that.") Melissa was especially adept at being able to let Jesse, our family dog, outside when he needed to do his business in our yard, which I later get to pick up myself. Now it's Nohea's job to open the front door to let Jesse outside, whilst I lazily lay on the couch watching my "stories." If only she had the ability to also pick up his "business" and throw it in the garbage. And mow the lawn while she's out there too.

Hillbillies. What can I say? They never were the brightest tool in the shed, or some mixed metaphor like that.

Luau '09

2009-09-03T13:06:00.003-06:00

It's almost here. This is the reminder of the scheduled Fisher Family Luau on September 12 starting around 5 p.m. and going until everyone rolls out. It's at the Timpanogos Cove Park about a block and a half up the mountain from our house.

If you didn't get an official invitation, consider this your invitation. More details on Kulani's blog:

perseveratingpineapple.blogspot.com

Here's a reminder of how to behave at a luau:

http://fisherstyle.blogspot.com/2008/08/luau-etiquette.html

Can't wait to see you there!

One of the best nights of the year

2009-08-28T04:48:00.004-06:00

Kulani and I experienced yet again one of our favorite nights of the year, the annual J. Reuben Clark Law School's Founder's Day Dinner. This would make it our tenth year of attending. It's a night dedicated to remembering why it was that more than 30 years ago, the LDS church authorities thought it important enough that BYU have a law school.

Seems rather strange to some that the LDS church would be encouraging "more" of its followers to become lawyers. If you are to believe as a sister-in-law of mine believes, all lawyers are going straight to hell. But at the Founder's Day Dinner, you get a glimpse into that vision, and it makes you so excited and proud to be part of it. And it always leaves me wanting to be a better person.

They always give an award to a distinguished alumni. This year they gave an award to an R. Keith Perkins, class of '93. Perkins is a lawyer in Arizona who founded the Never Again Foundation, which provides free civil representation for women, children, and senior citizens who have been victims of physical or sexual abuse in civil actions directly against their abusers. The Foundation has collected more than $170 million in verdict awards on behalf of its clients. The services are free to the victims, and 100% of all judgments that are actually collected are provided to the victims to help them rebuild their lives.

Perkins was present to accept the award that night, and he started his speech by getting choked up over his love for BYU. I, of course, also started to cry, because that's who I am. Kulani again reminded me that I was a big ball baby. In vintage Kulani speak, he says to me: "What's wrong with you, Larry Miller." This caused me to start laughing pretty hardily. Larry Miller, rest in peace, is a bit of a running joke in our family. My father, who is certifiably probably one of the biggest criers of any man I've ever known, said to Kulani once, "I don't like Larry Miller. He cries too much." Well if that isn't calling the kettle black...

The night also features a speaker with close ties to BYU law school. Last night's speaker was the Honorable Dale A. Kimball. He taught at BYU from 1974-1976. He now serves as a Federal Judge.

It was a great speech sprinkled with funny stories. One story he included was about him and his friend being fired from hoeing sugar beets on his father's farm in Draper because of his poor sugar-beet thinning skills. That hit home for me, as I saw my father fire my two oldest brothers from our family custodial business for "horsing around." He allowed them to come back, however, just as Judge Kimball's dad for him.

The part of his talk I hope to remember and infuse in my life, however, was how in his role as judge, the one character trait more LDS people and people of the world could use is honesty. I don't have the quote with me directly, but it was very powerful and made me want to make sure that honesty was very much a part of my moral fabric.

I'll share one more story, because it's a classic law school story that always makes me very fond of Rex Lee, the law school's first dean and also a huge reason why the law school is such a success today. I've heard this story before, but last night it was shared to us by Elder Bruce C. Hafen, also a past law school dean.

LDS church president Harold B. Lee died in 1978. Soon after, Spencer W. Kimball was called to be president of the church. Judge Kimball called Rex Lee on the phone and said, "The Lees are out, and the Kimballs are taking over."

Years later, after President Spencer W. Kimball died, President Ezra Taft Benson was called to be prophet. Rex Lee called up an old student and now judge, Dee Benson, and asked him to call Judge Kimball and say, "The Kimballs are out, and the Bensons are in." As soon as Dee Benson said that to Judge Kimball, Kimball said, "Benson, Rex put you up to this!"

Just a great night that I thought I would record for history sake. Oh, and this blog got quoted by the BYU Web site, so that was cool:

http://www.law2.byu.edu/news/item.php?num=445

Ed's Wedding

2009-08-18T22:57:00.013-06:00

You can imagine that after marrying off nine children, my parents were done with the "pomp and circumstance" of weddings. The contrast between Amy's wedding reception (the oldest girl in the family) and Ed's (the last to marry) is very contrasting.

Amy's wedding had four bridesmaid's with hand-made dresses. Amy's wedding dress was also hand-made by my aunt Kathy. Mom prepared hundreds of daisy-shaped mints. There was a big wedding line popular amongst the Mormon culture, with a backdrop draped in white fabric. And tons of flowers.

This was Ed's wedding reception:

A big bouncy house in the backyard for the kids.

Grilling hot dogs and hamburgers out of the garage. No line.

But we still had a chance to visit with some of the best people in the world.

People like:

My Aunt Norma (pictured below). And Uncle Fred (pictured behind me in the picture below). Absolutely some of my greatest heroes.

Neighbor girl and long-time friend Melissa Crockett Clark.

My parents, with oldest niece Kelsie. By all calculations, Kelsie will be the next wedding, hopefully not for another six years at the least.
Not pictured are some of the old Paul 4th Ward regulars: The Andersons, Fred and Judy, and other aunts and uncles who are much loved in my heart.

My parents did finally get rid of their old couch. I think it was older than me. It was the type of couch that would have sat comfortably in Napolean Dynamite's home. Now my parents have this upscale sectional model:

Out with the old, in with the new.

Mrs. Jensen the Heyburn Music Teacher

2009-08-16T23:58:00.003-06:00

While in Idaho for my youngest brother Ed's wedding, I ran into the now-retired music teacher of Heyburn Elementary School, Mrs. Jensen. She looked EXACTLY the same as when she taught us in school. (That's a picture of me and her my cousin Jill took for me.)

We never appreciated Mrs. Jensen much back then. Music class seemed so much more boring than P.E. or even library.

And Mrs. Jensen was a stickler.

"Get up in your high-singing voices," she would sing while tapping the top of her head with her hand.

We sang songs out of these old books from the 70s. Ever heard of the gospel spiritual "Ezekial Saw the Wheel?" Well, I have. And I can still sing it to you. He saw the wheel wwaaaaay up in the middle of the air. Does mamma 'low banjo playin' 'round here? No she don't, according to another song we sang in Mrs. Jensen's class.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think children in public schools today are learning the same songs Mrs. Jensen taught us. "Where have you been, Billy Boy?," "This Land was Made for You and Me," "Candy Man/Salty Dog," and "If I had a hammer" were regulars on her song list.

After I had my first child Lilia, I noticed those old songs making a comeback in my singing-goodnight repertoire. When we were kids, our absolute favorite song to sing was "Senor Don Gato." We'd beg Mrs. Jensen to let us sing that one.

I remember holding Lilia and "Senor Don Gato's" lyrics came flooding back to me. Kulani had never heard that song before, and he laughed whenever I'd sing it to Lilia. A rush of emotion flooded me, and I was grateful for a music teacher who taught us the oldies but greaties.

Lyrics to "Senor Don Gato"
Oh Senor Don Gato was a cat
On a high red roof Don Gato sat.
He went there to read a letter,
Meow, meow, meow
Where the reading light was better
Meow, meow, meow
'Twas a love note for Don Gato.

"I adore you," wrote the lady cat
Who was fluffy, white and nice and fat
There was not a sweeter kitty,
Meow, meow, meow
In the country or the city,
Meow, meow, meow
And she said she'd wed Don Gato

Oh, Don Gato jumped so happily
He fell off the roof and broke his knee
Broke his ribs and all his whiskers,
Meow, meow, meow
And his little solar plexus,
Meow, meow, meow
"Ay, Caramba!" cried Don Gato

Then the doctors all came on the run
Just to see if something could be done
And they held a consultation,
Meow, meow, meow
About how to save their patient,
Meow, meow, meow
How to save Senor Don Gato

But in spite of everything they tried
Poor Senor Don Gato up and died
And it wasn't very merry,
Meow, meow, meow
Going to the cemetery,
Meow, meow, meow
For the ending of Don Gato

When the funeral passed the market square
Such a smell of fish was in the air
Though his burial was slated,
Meow, meow, meow
He became reanimated,
Meow, meow, meow
He came back to life, Don Gato

Smokey the Bear, I'm Sorry!

2009-08-07T09:42:00.005-06:00

Today is Smokey the Bear's 65th birthday. Well, maybe not TODAY, but around this time 65 years ago he was created to help kids prevent forest fires. He's the longest-running public service advertising campaign in U.S. history.

Even though he is steeped into the psyche of every American boy and girl encouraging us that "only YOU can prevent wildfires," I didn't help prevent an almost-wildfire. But in my defense, it wasn't really me: it was my cousin who begged me to go on a double-date with two bozos.

My cousin Monica grew up a couple miles from me. She's the same age as me, and we attended the same schools. For about four years, her family moved to Illinois, only to return when we hit junior high.

About our junior or senior year in high school, Monica fell head-over-heels in love with this attractive, older guy from Burley, our cross-town rival school. I think he was graduated and waiting for his mission call. Monica was gaga for him. Complete nutso over him. I didn't get the appeal, but when do friends ever understand the beatings of another friend's heart? He was attractive, I'll give him that, but I got the sense that he KNEW he was attractive. I can never trust people who KNOW they're attractive.

Monica wanted me to tag along on date with her and this dreamboat guy. The dreamboat guy even invited his best friend to obligingly go on a date with me. A double date, as they call it. Only my date was much more interested in Monica's date, if you get my meaning. He didn't seem so much as a best friend as much as he did as a closeted admirer of Mr. I-Know-I'm-Good-Looking-Cousin-Monica's-Dreamboat Guy.

We need to assign names. This is getting too complicated if I keep referring to these people with these long names. Let's say Monica's man's name was Jason, and his friend was Freddy. We need good horror sounding named for this story.

Jason and Freddy owned a Jeep and loved to take the Jeep offroading. If you didn't know, Jeeping is a whole, blood-pumping sport adored by pockets of people all over the United States. They take it seriously, and they like challenging their Jeeps to go up and down mountains and hills, willing their Jeeps to beat common sense and scientifically based "theories" such as "gravity."

Since it was Freddy's Jeep, I got a front, right-side view of all the Jeeping activity. Freddy drove the Jeep up a steep mountain to a little place in the mountains where we were going to have dinner. There were moments that I was sure the front wheels would lose the grip of the mountains, and we'd tumble backwards, end over end. Monica seemed oblivious to our impending doom, as I think she was playing grab and giggle in the back with Jason.

We miraculously made it to our dinner destination in the mountains. It looked like an old homestead home. I think the plan was to roast hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire. It had been a rainy summer, and I didn't see any firewood in the back of Freddy's Jeep.

On the drive up the mountain of death, Freddy was bragging about his exploits as a summer intern with the Forest Service. I wouldn't repeat it in a court if pressed, because my memory is getting fuzzy, but I think he told us of guys in the Forest Service who would start small, manageable fires, so they could get overttime pay. The problem, however, is when the small, manageable fires get out of hand and become huge, sweeping wildfires. He said that happens from time to time, but not that summer. Too wet, he said.

Let me pause here a second and evaluate my conscience. I'm not sure the statute of limitations has passed. I'm 33 and this happened when I was about 17. Yeah, I think it will be okay to continue. (Maybe I should consult Kulani. What about civil repercussions? Ah heck. Caution into the wind and all that.)

Freddy brought out a gas container and started pouring gasoline all over this old homestead house. Then he brought out a match. The boys encouraged us to stand back. Then Freddy lit the house on fire!

I asked, "Isn't this someone's home?"

There answer seemed true enough, "Nah. It's been abandoned for over 50 years."

We watched it burn for a while. I don't remember roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. I wanted to get the heck out of there, even if it was in that blasted deathtrap Jeep. We left while the fire was still burning, but it started to rain very soon afterwards. I'm pretty sure the fire didn't spread, or it would have made the papers.

We made it back to Jason's house, where they showed us home-video footage of them making homemade bombs.

The worst part about this whole story: I actually went on a second double-date with these yahoos. We went spelunking where I rammed my nose against a rock because the guys wondered what crawling around in a completely pitch-dark cave would be like. I still have the scar. That scar is like Karma's way of getting after me for not trying to stop those guys from burning down the house. Sorry, Smokey.

The Mighty Snake

2009-07-26T08:13:00.012-06:00

We've made our way back to the Wasatch Front to our little nook of a town edged in the side of Mount Timpanogos. We enjoyed another fine year of Spudman, the best triathlon race in the world. My two younger brothers took first and second overall, and you can read more about it here.

B.J. has been chasing the dream of winning the Spudman since he was in high school. As every year, I passed Ed on my way toward the run. By the time I start the run, they're usually finished. So I asked Ed the usual question, "How'd you do?" Ed answered enthusiastically, "I got second and B.J. got first!" I let out a loud holler. I was so proud of B.J.'s dogged accomplishment, and of Ed's fine performance as well. Ed is 11 years younger to B.J., so if he can keep improving, he can match or even beat B.J.'s triathlon prowess.

They insisted in racing in only Speedos, much to the complaint of my mom and dad. It must have worked, though.

Kulani bested his previous best time by about seven minutes. His master's swim class has really paid off. He'll likely be writing a hilarious post on his blog about the various spellings of "triathlon" he saw around town this weekend. But he's currently sleeping, as it's early on Sunday morning, and though we've been encouraged by the bishop to "get back to basics" and make it to church on time and not late, the Fishers will probably still be rushing due to my sleeping beauties and my long-winded blog posts.

I also had a good race. I passed my oldest brother Doug, age 40, at mile three on the run. He was suffering mightily. He started about 10 minutes ahead of me. As I passed him, he says, "I'm just going to take a quick break and look at some of these rocks here. Don't tell anyone you passed me!" He's the funniest person I've ever known.

After the race, I was talking to a competitor who parked his bike next to ours. I asked him how he liked the race. Most people are pretty happy after the race, but this guy was rather sullen. He didn't look especially happy, despite his team taking first place overall. During the awards ceremony, I found out this guy was part of the team of the Don Moorhouse Memorial. I assumed he was somehow related, perhaps a son, to Don Moorhouse, who died last year during the swim of the Spudman. It made me reflect on how the Spudman, and specifically the Snake River, must hold a sad part in this family's life.

The Snake River is a glorious thrill for those of us who grew up in the Mini-Cassia area. In other parts of the state, the Snake is shallow and rocky, but as it winds through Rupert, Burley, and Heyburn, the river is wide and perfect for water skiing and water-associated sports.

I took the girls down to the boat docks to drape their feet in the cool water. Nohea, the daredevil of all the girls, quickly wanted to get her feet wet and squirmed to try to get me to take my arms off her. Lilia timidly scooted to the edge to feel the water. And Melissa was content to sit on Dad's lap far from the water's edge.

Kulani is a great daddy bear, and kept warning me to keep a hold of Nohea. He reminded me of the river's heavy current and the murkiness of the water. If she went under, we may never find her again. The thought chilled me, and I didn't loosen my grip.

When I think about it, it's amazing there aren't more reports of drowning in the Snake River. I fell into the river once when I was 5 or 6 years old. I fell between the gap between the sidewalk lining the park and the boat docks. A stranger fished me out almost immediately. Stories of near death on the Snake are rampant.

My grandma would tell us to stay far from the river, because there were "mysterious undercurrents" that would pull us down to our deaths. When my grandma would talk about it, I imagined this great pull on my legs that would drag me to the bottom and not let go. Now that I'm older, I realize the undercurrent wasn't mysterious at all; it was just the big, huge current of the Snake. But the "mysterious undercurrents" did strike fear into our hearts, and we stayed far away from the Snake River unless we were boating as a family.

In my high school graduating class of about 300, three people have died from drowning accidents. One died in one of the canals connected off the Snake and used to water farmers' crops. Another died cliff jumping in an area of the Snake we've all been known to frequent. And a third died in a lake near Logan.

Thank goodness the Spudman didn't take any lives this year. We live for the next Spudman, which for me is just an excuse to be with the best people in the world: my family.

All the Christensons (and spouses) who competed this year. Left to right: B.J., me, Kulani, Hetty Gower, Jeff Gower, Doug, Ed, and Wayne. Hetty, Wayne, and Jeff took first place in their team division.

Left Out

2009-07-10T12:32:00.003-06:00

Question: Who would you consider to be the middle child in a family of 10? Would it be child #4, #5, or #6?

In the family I grew up, the middle-child-syndrome crown landed squarely on the head of my older sister Kathy--child #4. I believe I was ACTUALLY the middle child (#5), but she definitely took the title from me in attitude.

Our friend Ben's mother did her graduate work on the affects of birth order on people's personalities. As you can imagine, the middle child is comfortable in a victim's roll: perceiving that she never gets as much attention as the oldest child nor the youngest child. Ben's mom told me that in big families, you see the oldest-, middle-, youngest-child scenerio repeating itself, often many times. In popular culture, Miss Jan Brady exemplified this phenomenon best with the following phrase: "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!"

For a long time, I had few sympathies for this sister. If she thought she was lost in the shadow of our oldest sister Amy, I was completely hidden by the redwoods of Kathy and Amy together (and don't even get me started about poor B.J., child #6,--who was once left at a water park because we simply forgot about him; a half hour later someone remembered). It personally thrilled me, actually, when people would stop me in the halls and ask if I was Amy or Kathy's sister, or when a teacher would accidently call me "Amy." I didn't have the brains of Amy or the brawn of Kathy, but I liked who I was, and I liked being associated with them.

Kathy, on the other hand, seemed to be annoyed to be my sister. I would pass her in the halls at school and instead of "hi" or "hey, little sis," I would get a look of scorn and avoidance. I really can't blame her, though. I could barely be my own friend back then. I was the type of girl that went around talking in a British accent and wearing too much make-up and really loud clothes. A total misfit.

And Kathy was NOT the picked-on one, from my point-of-view. My dad was sucker punched by her big eyes and pouty attitude at every turn. He once got a used, black Porsche on his carlot, and he let Kathy drive it to school for a whole semester ... during the winter months. Have you seen my sister drive? Worst ... driver ... ever--even worse than my mom. And Grandpa McEuen dubbed her his favorite and took her to the Estee Lauder counter at the University Mall and ordered her a facial, telling the esthetician "I'll buy everything you put on her face."

However, recently dealing with my own three girls, I've had a small change of heart towards my sister. Nohea, my youngest, is 2 years old going on whatever age the older two are. She wants to do everything like them. She likes to say that she "goes to kindergarten." And she thinks she should be able to go to friends' houses like the other girls.

Yesterday I dropped the girls off at Tiana's house, and Nohea wailed and wailed about also wanting to go. It brought me back to a memory I have of Kathy.

It was the summer the first Batman movie (the one starring Michael Keaton) came out. My three oldest brothers and sister made big plans to go to the opening showing of Batman. They all bought Batman shirts and spoke non-stop about the plan. Kathy, who was just two years younger than the youngest of the oldest siblings, felt she should be included in the plans. My mom put her foot down and told her she couldn't go with them: this was their activity.

My sister Kathy was heartbroken, and I think in a lot of ways, it was the last straw. She always wanted to be included in the going-ons of the older siblings, but she was excluded often with the excuse of "she's too young." After that, I think Kathy just stopped trying. She started cruising Overland in Burley and found her own clique.

Years later she famously had a break-down at Amy's wedding. After a lifetime of wanting to be able to be old enough to hang out with the "older kids," she thought she'd finally get an opportunity when Amy got off her mission and would be finishing up her last two years at BYU. Kathy hoped they could be roommates or live in the same area, and they could finally hang out. Her dreams were once again shattered when Amy decided to get married instead. Kathy was pretty sullen and uncomforted during the whole wedding. My cheerful words of "you can be roommates with me" didn't help.

Watching and listening to Nohea cry made me more sympathetic towards my sister. It's hard to be left out. I've always been of the opinion that if a group didn't want me in it, than I'd find new friends and make a new group. But then, I'm not the "middle child," and playing the victim roll is not where I'm most comfortable.

And now Kathy has her own posse of three girls, soon to be four. I'm sure she'll be more sensitive to her middle child. I smell a Porsche in the future of one of those girls.

Cleaning Adventures

2009-07-01T04:40:00.004-06:00

Growing up in a family of 10, you can imagine that most summer days were filled with ... cleaning the house, cooking, and cleaning the house some more. My best friend Keri, who was over at our house like Eddie Haskel was to the Cleavers, says that our house would stay clean for all of 10 minutes, and then it would be back to its original chaotic mess. You know, take the cushions off the couch, build a high tower, and play "king of the hill," sprinkled in with popcorn and a smattering of shoes, books, and puzzle pieces all over the floor.

We'd always try to make games of cleaning. Sometimes it was "clean during commercials." Other times we'd put on music and try to clean to the beat of the songs. (I've always loved cleaning to the Bee Gee's Saturday Night Fever album.) We'd try dividing and conquering: sister would clean living room while I cleaned the kitchen. We'd try the team effort: we all clean one room then advance to the next room. I don't remember my brothers helping much, nor do I remember where they'd be. I know they were in charge of the lawn, so I'm not complaining (too much). I mostly remember it being just Mary and me. My older sisters had "real" jobs. We'd try to make Hetty work, but she was under the age of 6 and not the best help.

Another technique we used a lot was to pretend a certain drink was a "power" drink, and if we drinked it, we'd have the energy to clean the house. I've enlisted that idea with my girls as of late to get them to help me around the house.

Patrick works for Xango, and he dropped off a few bottles at our house. Kulani loves the stuff. The other day I poured some Xango in a special teacup and told the girls that drinking a swig of it would give them ultimate powers to clean. I demonstrated for them by taking a swallow, then proceeded to clean like a mad woman. The trick worked.

Then yesterday, Melissa swaggers into the kitchen with boots on and a red cowgirl hat saying, "How can I help ya, ma'am?" I almost died of laughter.

So I answered her: "Well aren't you the rootinest-tootinest little cowgirl I ever did lay eyes on. By golly, you'd better take you a swig of this here power juice and get ta cleaning up your room, you gun-slinging rascal."

Worked like a charm. After drinking her power juice, she goes off to clean her room. She comes back to tell me her room was clean and says, "I cleaned my rootinest tootinest room, ma'am."

So, yeah, I'm teaching the girls that "power juice" will help them with their performance. I'm sure Barry Bonds' mom did the same.

McEuen Family Reunion '09

2009-06-29T00:22:00.004-06:00

For those that didn't make it: we missed you! For those who made it: it was great seeing you!

I give you a highlighted video of the McEuen Reunion of 2009. I'm sorry I didn't include every great moment of all of you. Thanks for the memories, and we'll see you in 2011 hosted by Aunt Karen!

Redemption Tour '09

2009-06-22T00:56:00.003-06:00

For Fish:

Boise be cool! But keep in on the DL. True Dat!

2009-06-18T08:08:00.014-06:00

Even though I am a born-and-bred Idahoan, I know relatively little about my capital town. I grew up in Heyburn, a small town about three hours to the east of Boise.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times my family visited Boise. The summer of my junior year in high school, I attended Girls' State, but we only had one day to spend in Boise at the capital. The rest of the time was spent in Nampa at Northwest Nazarene College's campus. Note: Nampa is not Boise.

There was another time when some friends and I decided to do our school shopping there, because we were going to be seniors, and we wanted to bring out all the trends. Stove-piped pants were a definite must. But I only made it to the mall, and granted, the Boise mall is pretty cool, but a mall does not make a town.

Probably the most memorable Boise visit was when my mom was attending BSU during the summers to get her master's degree. One summer she was there, Idaho was celebrating its Centennial. My mom took us to the lazer light show and fireworks in downtown. I was 14. I think I had to help cart around one of my younger siblings who would have been the baby at the time. (Kulani thinks my family tells time according to who the baby was during any given story. "Well, let's see. Hetty was the baby at the time so it had to be around 1984.") It was pretty cool, but it was dark and my feet were tired. My hips were probably tired too from holding a younger sibling. I didn't actually "see" much of Boise.

But I never had a hugely favorable opinion of Boise. My family was a Utah family. We watched KSL news. (Our community had three news stations: Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, and KSL. Trust me: KSL was by far the best produced.) All of our vacations were directed southernly instead of westernly. I always had the opinion that Boise was a town "butt" rockers would like. You know, the kind of person who isn't ashamed to wear a Budweiser T-shirt that has scantily clad women holding a cold Bud. And to be honest, they still don't have very good radio stations, with the big exception of classic rock. They have some great classic rock stations.

But my opinion has changed thanks to our most recent trip to Boise Town (as my friend Laura likes to call it). We traveled to Boise so Kulani could compete in the Boise 70.3 Ironman. If you have't been to Boise in say 10 years, it's changed a ton (or I never really got to know the town in the first place--probably the latter)!

Firstly, downtown Boise is no longer called "downtown Boise." It's called "BoDo." In the heart of BoDo is the Grove, where a big walking-level water feature is located. On Saturdays, the Grove is host to a Farmer's Market similar to what most major cities have nowadays. On Wednesday and Saturday nights the Grove usually hosts bands as well.

The girls on a bench in BoDo:

Much of my information comes from my dear friend Kara, who moved to Boise right after high school, and was the first of my friends to purchase a house--in Boise. Kara married her high school sweetheart Patt, and they have two kids: a feisty cutey girl and a toddler, snuggly boy. Kara and I played basketball together from 7th grade until juniors in high school, when we both got cut from the team. Ouch! We started out as the only girls even playing basketball, but in time, others caught up with our mad skills--or the coaches just didn't see our hidden potential.

Kara is also very kind and compassionate and just plain cool. I enjoyed visiting with her at her house. But I forgot to take a picture of her and Patt. Instead, because my yard has been fixated on my mind, I took a picture of her yard, because her husband is a landscaper extraordinaire and he has done a bang-up job fixing up their yard.

Kara has witnessed the changes in Boise and knows what a great town it is, but like all good Idahoans, she told me to keep it a secret: don't want outsiders overrunning the place. So I'm posting it on this blog where the five of you will also be sworn to secrecy.

What I also found surprising was what a hopping nightlife exists in BoDo. I haven't seen the likes of it in Salt Lake City or Portland. Because Boise is made up of short blocks, walking to various locations is quite easy. Many bars and clubs had lines of people waiting to get in.

And it's a super friendly biking town, as they had plaques that said the city was awarded as a "super friendly biking town." But some of the people on bikes were a bit surly and pushy, as if they had more rights to the sidewalks than people on foot. But I saw a bike that would have been welcome on the Pioneer Trail. A big basket sat in front of the bike, and in the big basket was a sleeping baby in a car seat. Western ho!

One of the very first things most Boiseans I know like to brag about in their town is the green belt trail that runs along the Boise River (which runs through the middle of Boise), and rightfully so. The trail is paved and runs for a good 10 miles on either side of the river. Many iron bridges run across the river, and unique parks are dotted all along it. One such park was the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, that had quotes engraved on a cement wall from leaders around the world. They even included a quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley.

The girls at the Anne Frank Memorial:

The girls at one of the walking bridges over the Boise River:

Much of the run during the 70.3 race took place along the river trail, with a long finish shoot up 8th Street. People lined the entire finish shoot, which made the race quite magical. It was probably one of the best triathlon races I've ever seen.

We stayed in the Owyhee Plaza on Main and 11th Street. The girls were great troopers, as the race was rained on from start to almost finish. And it wasn't a little Northwestern sprinkle: it was desert rain that comes down in buckets. We came equipped with rain panchos, towels, and blankets. And making a quick stop into Coldstone also helped brighten their mood.

Another thing I loved about Boise, and most Idahoans I think can relate, is that the street leading to the capital is lined with little plaques from all the different counties. Idahoans KNOW their counties. A little county mark is on each license plate, and in 4th grade, all Idahoans are taught a little rap to help them memorize each of the county names. "Ada is the first with our capital town. Adam's seven devils go straight up and down. Then 10 counties that start with B: Bannock, Barelake, Bennewah, three. Bingham, Blaine, Boise, Bonner, Bountiful, Boundary, Butte make 10..." Sorry for any spelling mistakes; my mind just remembers the rhyme not how to spell. Also unique to Boise is that many of the streets are named after other cities and famous Idahoans. My friend Kara lives close to Malad street. It's like a big welcome mat for Idahoans. I'm sorry if this all sounds boastful: Idahoans are terribly proud of their state. Perhaps you can't possibly understand why, but believe me, those who know, know.

It reminds me of a sister-in-law who was very nervous about moving to Idaho after her husband finished his residency. She'd say to me, "I'm sure it will be fine, but it's ... Idaho, you know?" Uh, I don't know. I think she was trying to say that being from Idaho is like being from Hicktown U.S.A. Kara would have me encourage you to keep believing that notion. My sister-in-law later changed her tune after living there for five years. Like a Smiths tune: you learn to love it, and then you can't get it out of your system.

Lilia proudly holding up her "Beef" sign she made for Dad. The race was sponsored by the Beef Council, and they had Beef girls passing around signs to make and samples of beef jerky.

Kulani and the girls before the race waiting for the bus to take him up to Lucky Peak Resorvoir:

Girls exhausted in the van:

Judge not, lest ye be judged by a preteen

2009-06-17T15:02:00.002-06:00

Earlier today I made a quick stop at the local Wal-Mart for some cereal and other sundries. I gathered my purchases and proceeded to the checkout line.

A girl between the ages of 10 and 12 stood in front of me in line. She had on a dancing outfit, her hair was pulled back into a bun, and her skin sparkled with glittery make-up. My imperfect mind instantly made a judgment about the girl: probably a spoiled little dancer girl who's never had to do a day of work in her life. Of course, I never said it out loud. I'm one who believes that you can think whatever you want, but acting on those thoughts is another story.

The girl turned around, looked me in the eyes, and said to me, "You have really pretty hair."

My self-absorbed judgmental thoughts immediately fled from my mind.

I blushed, and answered, "Thank you so much! That's very sweet of you to say."

I kid you not, it was probably the best, most sincere compliment I've had in a long time. I teared up while reaching into my cart and putting my items on the register treadmill.

Next time, my thoughts will be fixed on returning the compliment to sparkling girls and not-so-sparkling girls. Heaven knows a little less judgment and more compliments is what girls and women of today need. Thank you, spoiled little rich girl, for your example.

Oddity

2009-06-10T10:21:00.002-06:00

This is Kulani, so direct your hate mail to me not Cindy. And also, fair warning.

Cindy and I have had many discussions about doing what you love versus doing what you like or don't hate, but that provides a decent living. I was raised in a family in which the priorities for work were that 1) it allows you to provide a good living for the family 2) its honest and 3) you can do it long-term, which means that you don't hate it. Patent law is not my passion. I enjoy it, but I love to ride bikes, fish, and cook. While some people make a living cooking, I know I don't have the skill set to be a successful restaurateur nor the talent to fish or ride for a living. So, I write patents.

The other night Cindy and I were at the Rooster Rehearsal Dinner. Joseph and Colton of P712 fame, and do make a living doing what they love, were at our table and we were talking about work. Joseph asked me if like what I do, and I answered honestly that I do like what I do.

As Joseph thought on my response, he reaffirmed his thought, "You have to do what you love."

My response was less than appropriate, "Unless, of course, you're a pedophile."

My Long-Winded Gardening Story

2009-06-06T08:42:00.022-06:00

Each year I try to tackle a new project in my yard. My yard is basically just a mountain. I'd like to make it into a molehill. When we bought our property, we didn't think about the whole building-a-house-on-a-mountain. We just saw that it was the cheapest property in the area we wanted. Being first-time home buyers, we didn't really grasp the difference between a flat piece of property and a sloped property.

When we inspected the property after the house was being built, we started to realize the work we had in front of us. When we walked to the back of the house, we were greeted by a 15-feet wall of dirt. We invested another $7,000 to have the builders put in some retaining rocks in the back of the house.

The first year we lived in our house, we paid someone to move dirt from the back of our yard to the front of our yard, and Kulani and his brothers and a few friends built a retaining wall in the front.

To have dirt moved: $2300.

Retaining wall built by ourselves and cheap family and friend labor: $1500.

(Forgive me: I'm a numbers person. I like to know how much stuff costs. I record these numbers not to brag; because believe you me, I know people spend A LOT more on their landscaping. If anything, this will prove how cheap I am. But for those thinking of doing their own landscaping, I think the numbers will be helpful.)

Later that year we also paid someone else to put in grass and a sprinkling system. Well worth the money, because I don't think Kulani and I could have ever done it by ourselves, and you can only take advantage of so much friend and family labor.

Landscaping cost: $6,000.

The next year me and my little brother Ed worked on getting the sides of our house done. The landscapers never finished one strip of land that they started. Luckily, they did put in all the watering tubes: I just had to figure out how to connect it all. I bought some topsoil and paid someone to do the hydroseed. Me and Ed put in the sprinkler tops. A neighbor had a skeetsteerer and carted all the topsoil up my hill. My brother-in-law Kuhia figured out how to connect the sprinklers with my system.

Strip of grass total cost: About $600

On the other side of the garage, we wanted to put cement. We hired a guy and paid him half the money, but then he never came to do the job. $1200 down the toilet. So instead, me and my little brother Ed covered the area with mulch. The neighbor to the right of us assumed the whole area was our responsibility, due to a long story that involved the developers in the area taking out the surveyor's stake, because they had to redo parts of the sidewalk concrete. Luckily, Kulani's dad is a surveyor, and he put the mark back in the ground, so my neighbor could better see where her property started and our property ended. At any rate, we still haven't done much to this side except the mulch. But my neighbor hasn't done anything to her side yet either. Next year we will likely put in the cement driveway.

Cost of driveway so far: $1700.

In the picture above near the bottom, you can see some irrigation boxes. When we put in all the mulch, one of my irrigation boxes had no cover. I didn't think it was a big deal to have it covered or not, because (a) I'm stupid and (b) first-time home owner. Oh, it is important. So much debree and gunk got in there, that I could no longer turn the secondary watering system off or on with my long turnkey (my turn-off switch is approximately seven feet underground inside a 2-inch PVC pipe). Because I wanted the ability to turn my secondary water off and on, I had to dig to where the switch is at. It took me at least three hours of digging to get to the bottom. I made sure to have not one, but two, covers on that thing. I don't want to have to do that again. The importance of having the water turned off will be clear later when I explain my garden.

In May, I fixed my planting beds. I bought some plants and bark mulch, which I haven't had in the front of our house because I've been working on other projects, and because the watering was always a little hooey. The planting beds still need work, but it's a good start. Total cost: $50-$100.

So there's this small PVC pipe that was hidden behind a very large rock at the side of my house. I knew it would give me access to a water supply and was put there by the landscapers years ago, but I didn't know if it would be connected to my sprinklers. My parents were visiting last weekend, so I solicited my dad's help in helping me figure it out.

Using a crowbar, we pushed the rock far enough away from the PVC pipe to saw off the top.(After turning off the water source, of course. That's why I needed access to that darned on/off switch.) I turned the water back on manually using the on/off key, and nothing came out. So then I tried turning it on via the electric-watering gridbox. Bingo! Water that's connected to my sprinkler system! So I decided to build my garden on my retaining wall steps, so if we happen to leave town, the automatic sprinklers will still water my garden.

I glued a longer piece of PVC connector pipe to it, then connected the funny pipe to that. I drug the funny pipe around to my garden boxes, which are a sort-of "square-foot" gardening technique, but I built the garden boxes with stuff I'd collected over the years: old railroad ties, some wood the Mitchell's (my neighbors) didn't want anymore, and some leftover retaining wall bricks. I don't think my soil content is great this year, as all I did was use manure mulch and till it into my rocky ground (using a tiller my neighbor Ellen let me borrow, bless her heart). I'm afraid I don't have enough actual soil. Anyone out there know how to help me amend my soil post planting?

The water source. I have a whole new appreciation for old-world aquaducts and whole civilizations being built around water sources.

My mom brought me some raspberry starts from her garden, but they went into shock almost as soon as we put them into the ground. I've been praying the little fellas survive.

Another picture of my garden.

I've had many problems figuring out the right fixtures, etc. for my garden. I found this handy little contraption that's supposed to ease the flow of water to 25 psi. Before finding that, the water pressure would blow off my tubing.

A view of the garden from the upstair bedroom--look to the bottom left. You can also get a nice view of the work I have in front of me. Yes, that's all my yard and not the neighbor's. My goal is to take out a sagebrush bush a day with my pic axe. (It's the only tool that can get rid of those eyesores.) My dad says I should keep the sage brush, because they're "perrty."

Cost of garden and various watering features (drips, sprayers, etc.) and multiple trips to BJ's Plumbing Supply for the right connectors (I kept trying to fix 1/2" connector pipes with my not-quite-1/2" tubing. Turns out there are connectors for those smaller tubings.): $100.

My next project to be done in July or thereabouts is to install my pavers. I bought these pavers off of Craigslist from a family in Alpine. I hauled each of those pavers from their yard to my house via my multi-use and versatile mini-van (a mom's best tool). It took four trips. It was a very good workout. Perhaps I could get some cheap labor by marketing my weeding as a chance to "workout." Join my outdoor gym now for free!

Cost of pavers off of Craigslist: $140. Future cost of sand: $100-$150.

A Celebratory Dinner

2009-06-06T07:45:00.003-06:00

Kulani's found a new friend nearly 10 years his junior who could pretty much be a long-lost cousin. Pat and Kulani have a lot in common. They both like to ride bikes of all varieties. They both like uncommon music. And they both LOVE to cook and eat. Because Pat works for the same firm as Kulani, they are frequent lunchtime adventurers always looking to achieve greater culinary appreciations.

Recently, Pat was accepted to the University of Utah Medical School. His wife, Chelsea, also birthed their first child a few months ago. Kulani thought it the perfect excuse to try to cook the best meal he's ever cooked for Pat and Chelsea.

Kulani thought about the menu for literally months. He'd run things by me to see if the menu sounded good. Anything Kulani cooks is good, so I wasn't the best for input as all I ever said was, "That sounds really, really good!" I'm like the friend you can't trust when wondering if an outfit looks good on you: I'll always say it does--and I sincerely believe it. (Unless, of course, you're trying to pull off wearing a tube top. Icksnay on the ubetoptay. Why does saying it in pig-latin always soften the blow?)

Since I knew this was a special night for Pat (and for Kulani because he was so excited for the dinner), I decided to do a little spring cleaning in my kitchen. I cleaned out the pantry, the fridge, the kitchen junk drawers, the oven. I worked for three days in preparation for the dinner. I put out a "Congratulations" sign. The girls love it when I do little things like that, and I ask them to help. And I even decorated our BYU-lovin' table in red, black, and white. One of my favorite meals of my life was at my friend Carol's house when we were advancing from junior high to high school, and her mother decorated the table with our high school's colors. I remember feeling so special that her mom would go to that much trouble to make us excited for the adventure of high school.

But for the actual dinner, my assignment was easy: make creme brulee and Amy from Chicago's salad. Our friend Amy, who is actually from Highland but lived in Chicago for a time, and that's how I now define her on the WWW, makes the best salad.

Kulani, had all the hard work. All-day Saturday he prepped. As designated sous chef/dishwasher, I just tried to keep up with the dishes behind him.

We decided to also invite my brother-in-law Mahana and his wife to the dinner as well. Mahana is a graduate of the U of U Med School, so we figured he could give Pat some pointers, if needs be. Plus, Mahana was in town, so we told him to join the party.

We'd try doing a multi-course dinner when we lived in BYU married-student housing. Our mistake was that we served gargantuin portions for each course (and we were much poorer, so one of the courses was potatoes). By course two, we were basically done. This time, we kept the portions small.

Appetizer - Tuna Sashimi with Fresh Ponzu, Tuna Tartar with Wasabi Aoli

Salad - Amy's Salad (Spinach, Bacon, Walnuts, Feta, and Poppyseed Dressing)

Bread - Whole Grain Bread, Vanilla Whipped Honey-Butter (Pat and Chelsea made it.)

Fish - Garlic Shrimp, Sticky Rice, Fresh Ginger Soda

Palette Cleanser - Fresh Fruit Smoothie

White Meat - Apple Cider Babyback Ribs, Potato Salad with Homemade Lemon Mayo

Entree - Filet, Potato Waffle with Fresh Horseradish Cream and Port Pan Sauce, Seasonal Vegetables

Dessert - Vanilla and Chocolate Creme Brulee

We were all too full when we were done with the entree so we skipped the cheese course, which was supposed to be Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese with D'Anjou Pears and went straight to dessert. (The above two paragraphs I borrowed from Kulani's blog.)

Whilst doing the dishes, Pat says, "After having a good meal, Chelsea and I like to discuss it in sort-of a 'post-game' manner. What was your favorite part of the dinner?" That's the difference between a true foodie and someone who just sort-of likes food. If you can actually have a conversation about the dinner even after the food is being nicely digested by God's hand-built sewer system, you know you have a passion for food.

I am still dreaming about that meal. Pat and Chelsea stayed after and did ALL the dishes to show their gratitude. It was very sweet of them. We could not have had two more appreciative guests.

By the way, I think my favorite part of the meal was still those ribs. He used Ben from Chicago's recipe, but because of smaller portions, he used babyback ribs. Oh ... my ... goodness!

My apologies about not having pictures of each course. I was just so excited about eating that I forgot to bring out the camera. But I did get a picture of Pat and Chelsea doing the dishes. I'm sure they'll appreciate this.

For My Benefit

2009-05-22T09:43:00.002-06:00

One of the reasons for this blog is to document things that have happened in the past. As my memory fades, I forget what I've done when, so this post is for my benefit - to document which triathlons I've done and when.

2005
AF Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2006
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Hillman (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2007
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Lehi Legacy Hop Into Spring (Sprint)
Ironman Hawai'i 70.3 (Half Iron)
Provo Tri (Olympic)
Echo Challenge (Olympic)
Spudman (Olympic)
Jordanelle Tri (Olympic)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)

2008
Vikingman (Half Iron)
Spudman (Olympic)
Utah Half (Half Iron)
American Fork Splash N' Dash (Sprint)
Telos Turkey Tri (Sprint)
Ironman Arizona

2009
AF Icebreaker (Sprint)
Ironman California 70.3 (Half Iron)

Registered for:
Ironman Boise 70.3
Spudman
Utah Half
Ironman St. George 2010

Tentatively planned:
Ironman Arizona

The Pine Hollow Biker Gang is back!

2009-05-15T08:49:00.005-06:00

Lili learned to ride her bike without training wheels, no training wheels, no training wheels.

A Facebook friend gave me some tips about teaching kids to ride bikes.

Lower the seat so that the child can easily touch the pavement.
Remove the pedals so they won't impede the child from scootching around with their feet.
And remove the training wheels.

For two weeks I had Lili scootch around on her bike. At first, she had no balance. But by the end of two weeks, she could pick her feet up and glide. I added the pedals back on, and seriously within three tries she figured it out.

I need to post a picture of the AMAZIN' dinner Kulani cooked me for Mother's Day: broiled lobster tail, peas, salad, and filet mignon with a shrimp topping. I love you, Sweetie! And as a gift for myself and you, I bought a tool set at the Ace Hardware grand opening, so I will no longer have to borrow your set and leave them out or hidden where you can't find them. It even came with a fashionable tote bag. Tote, tote!

School Lunch

2009-05-11T14:43:00.003-06:00

To better prepare Lilia for first grade, I decided to take her to lunch at the school cafeteria at her elementary school. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were serving ... schloppy joes, schloppy, schloppy joes! And chicken-pattie sandwiches.

I loved school lunch growing up. The nice old lady would put a check next to our names in her ledger book for everytime we came through the line. Sometimes my mom would forget to send a check, but the lunch lady would still let me have lunch, giving me a stern face and telling me to remind my mother to pay the bill. Today they have computers for that.

And working in the lunch room was the "cool" thing to do when I was in elementary school. If you were chosen to work in the lunchroom, it meant you were allowed to leave class 15 minutes early to be a server or help with clean-up. My favorite job was helping in the dishwasher area. that way I didn't have to wear a hair net and ruin my straight-as-straw hairdo.

Lunch ladies never change. They're a mix of fiesty and sweetness, much like a grandma. They want to give you all the food you'd care to eat, but they don't want you wasting your vegetables. We had a teacher, Mrs. Batista, who would guard the garbage cans and make you turn around and sit back down if you didn't eat your vegetables. I always made sure to leave room for the veggies. She was well-versed in the teacher stare: the type of stare that could scare children into obedience on a sunny day in a crowded room.

Lilia's school had fresh, cut-up veggies like carrots and cucumbers, and they even had cherry tomatoes--a favorite of young children for their explodability. They also had whole apples and pears to eat, as well as salad and canned pears. Today we had our choice of orange juice, chocolate milk, 1 % milk, or 2 % milk. In my day, we only had the choice of white milk, until high school. Then we could choose between white or chocolate milk.

We sat at the first grader's table. We got lots of stares and whispers in front of our backs. I've forgotten how non-sly elementary students are. Were they whispering about us? Uh, well, they would look at us, and while looking at us, they'd put their hand against the other person's face and whisper behind the flesh curtain. I can guess at what they were whispering about:

"That mom should not be at our table. This table is reserved for the 'cool' first graders. She is so not cool."

Lissy felt uneasy being at the 1st grader's table, so we moved to a different table that had no one sitting at it. When the fourth graders started filing into the lunchroom, Lilia said she was getting scared as well. But then her "buddy" reader came in and waved at her. That made her feel better. She really likes her "buddy" reader; an older child assigned to the kindergartners to help them with their reading.

My heart grows nostaligic at the end of school year and at the beginning of school year. Fear, joy, excitement, sadness, happiness: all those emotions bawled into one. And now my girls will be able to experience all that school has to offer.

I asked Lilia after we left, would you like to eat school lunch or have me prepare you a lunch and eat it at school? Her answer is she would prefer the school lunch. I guess that doesn't bode well for my cooking skills. Or maybe it does?...

A Short Reflection on my Mothering

2009-05-10T08:20:00.003-06:00

My middle child just told me her boogers were running down her nose. This is the child who still insists on telling me when she has to go potty, even though she's been potty trained for close to three years. Her boogers running down her nose means I am to get her a tissue and help her wipe her nose. So I told her to take her shirt and go like this, and then I show her what a shirt is used for in southern Idaho when working in the sugarbeet fields. That's the type of mother I am.

Half-assed.

If I had to give myself a report card for my mothering efforts, I would probably earn a C in teaching them proper hygiene; D in consistency in bedtime hours; C in healthily prepared lunches; and D in proper amount of television watching.

Areas where I'm better perhaps are playing with them at the park. I get a solid A there. I'm Captain Hook to their Peter, Wendy, and Schmee (Nono is Schmee because she's on my hip most times). And I get an A for being good at wanting to scare them, but only an age-appropriate scare. Sometimes I push the scare-line boundary, however, like the time we watched Jurassic Park III together. My dad loved to push the scare-line boundary with us when we were little. His stories always involved one of three topics: old bums (beggars was an appropriate substitute, but not homeless man), rabid dogs/coyotes, and hook-armed men.

Yesterday while Kulani was teaching Hekili how to mountainbike, we went on a hike up Provo Canyon. My big mouth had to mention what scary things are found in the mountains. Lilia got spooked thinking about the rattle snakes I told her about. She wanted to turn around and go back home.

"I was just kidding! There aren't snakes in the mountains!" I barked at her, not wanting her to ruin our hiking adventure by making us turn around and go back. We continued up the trail. I get an A for being a taskmaster.

On our way down, we passed by some shady characters wearing a lot of black and smelling of a sweet smoke. Nono, the 2-year-old, was riding on my shoulders and she says, "I'm scared. It's a witch." She's into witches these days. Anytime she sees anything scary she calls it "a witch." Luckily she didn't say it loud enough for the coven to hear. I think they would have welcomed a chubby little Nono in their witches' brew that night under the full moon.

I love being a mother to these little lumpkins. I hope I don't ruin them for life.

Drawrings

2009-05-04T09:07:00.003-06:00

The title is not a typo. Think of Mike Myers in the bathtub singing, "Well, you know my name is Simon, and I like to make drawrings."

My girls like to make "drawrings." And now that Lilia is learning to write, she likes to make stories and recipes along with her drawrings. When Kulani and I went on our anniversary date last week, Lilia created this for us:

It's a recipe for chocolate-dipped bananas. It reads:

"Bananas and Chocolate. You put it in the microwave and eat it and wash your face." (I took out the spelling mistakes.)

Then there is a pictorial of the process with a microwave, a person with a dirty face, and then a person with a clean face. At the bottom, she wrote:

"Elissa helped me." Allysa is the babysitter.

The girls are also super easy to manipulate into helping me clean the house. It's embarrassingly simple. It requires an abundance of overexuberant praise.

First I ask them to do just one simple job for me.

I'll say, "How old are you?"

And Lilia will say, "6."

Me: "Okay, since you're 6, pick up six toys from the living room."

Then Lissy will say, "Should I pick up 5 things?"

Me: "Five is a lot. Are you sure you can do it? Let me see if you can first."

They'll each pick up there designated amout, and I'll say, "Holy cow! I did NOT think you guys could handle that, and you did it like you were 7 or 8-year-olds. I wonder if you could pick up 8 things?"

The girls: "I can! I can!"

Me: "Well, let me see first."

Girls get to it lickity split.

Me: "Oh my goodness! I am calling the newspapers to tell them I have two of the best cleaners in the world here at my house! Seriously, you guys are the best!"

And then the girls keep picking up the living room and showing me what else they are cleaning, while I make a pretend call to The Daily Herald.

But seriously, in the whole-wide world, you could NOT find two better cleaners. Now if we could only get Nohea to pull her 2-year-old naughty weight around here.

Happy Dozenth Anniversary, Kulani!

2009-04-27T08:33:00.001-06:00

Fisherstyle Recap Reduxed

2009-04-20T09:38:00.008-06:00

It was Spring Break last week, which wasn't much fun for the kids, because we mostly helped out with Alika's wedding and it snowed a ton, so we stayed indoors.

So on Friday and Saturday, I wanted to do something fun with the girls. On Friday, Lilia went to work with her dad. Here's a picture of her eating breakfast before heading out for her big day as Dad's secretary/helper.

Then on Friday night we went swimming at the girl's favorite swimming pool: The Lehi Legacy Center. It's better than our American Fork Rec Center in the winter because it has an indoor water slide and a toddler area, as well as a big bucket that pours out every 15 minutes or so. The girls love that. It's as great as Seven Peaks to them.

On Saturday I did some yard work, and then we went swimming again, but at the A.F. pool because we have a pass. Then we went to the Sticky Shoe dollar theater in A.F. We watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The girls loved it. Nohea actually stayed in my lap for the whole movie, but not without some help from me. I had to keep her distracted by lots of face snuggling, tickling, and coddling. That's why we always go to the Sticky Shoe, which is what the locals call it. It's pretty old and run-down, and people who generally go are families who tolerate squaking babies better than if we went to a full-priced theater or the dollar theaters frequented by college students.

Sunday Kulani played Fisher Test Kitchen. He made a new taste sensation he adapted from Bon Appetit. It was a coconut curry shrimp dish, and it was heavenly. Here's a picture:

We had Maren and Racer over. We also made garlic steak and shrimp.

The following are some more random pictures. We invited over our old neighbor's family for Easter dinner and egghunt.

And Kulani and I turned a year older last week. My angel neighbor Ellen brought me these amazing chocolate cake bites from a new bakery she found in Provo.

Alika's wedding

2009-04-20T05:38:00.011-06:00

The beloved Alika, Kulani's nephew, and his sweetheart Brittney were married in the Mount Timpanogos Temple on a very snowy day. The famed George D. Durrant officiated the ceremony. He gave poignant and sweet advice to the young couple. Possibly the best wedding I've ever attended. Brother Durrant was in Kulani and my ward when we were first married, and he is easily one of the best humans I've ever met. I didn't get a photo of them in their official wedding get up because it was too snowy and cold!

Afterwards, Kulani and his siblings prepared an AMAZING meal for all of Alika and Brittney's family and friends at Mahana's new house in Provo. Here are some photos:

This is one of the centerpieces Kehaulani created. So cute! She did a great job. Alika and Brittney met at BYU-Hawaii. Britney is from Wyoming and Alika is from Blanding. After the dinner, Kehaulani gave all the granddaughters the centerpieces, as well as a beach towel.

Kulani manning the grill for the garlic shrimp.

Here was the main table for the bride and groom and their parents.

What up, bruddahs! Hekili and Kanaue throwing the shakah your way.

Grandpa getting a plate full of love. Grandpa was loving it the most. He loved seeing all his kids working together creating great Hawaiian food. He was in heaven.

All the Fisher siblings contributed to the wedding feast. It was like the Justice League coming together. The food was AMAZING! They fed about 170 people, with tons of leftovers.