Things I Miss #30: Ty Detmer

If anything defined my early adolescence, it was BYU football and Ty Detmer.  I don't remember why I started liking football, but sometime around 4th or 5th grade, I became a fan.  I remember watching Ty Detmer play during his sophomore season when I was in 5th grade.  When my dad somehow scored tickets to the BYU-Miami football game at the start of his junior season (September 8, 1990 - forever etched in my mind) and together we watch BYU take down might #1 ranked Miami, I became a crazy superfan.  Kudos to my parents for supporting this obsession.  My room became a shrine eerily resembling a BYU bookstore display.  I had posters and pom-poms and programs and media guides and all kinds of obscure knick-knacks.  My Aunt Cindy became aunt of the century when she obtained a personalized, autographed picture of Ty Detmer and sent it to me, along with many Daily Herald newspaper clippings.

  I was sick to my stomach waiting for the Heisman Trophy winner announcement that year, and when his name was announced, I jumped so high I almost knocked over the Christmas tree.  My best friend, Brooke, was similarly obsessed and somehow our primary teacher obtained one of his wedding announcements.  She made color copies for both of us (which was pretty impressive back in 1991).  In an impressive display of parental loyalty, my parents surprised our family with tickets to the 1991 Holiday Bowl, his last collegiate game.  On Christmas afternoon, our family packed up and headed south to San Diego to watch him play.  I was over-the-moon excited about it at the time.  Looking back, I'm a little humbled to see the lengths my parents went to for me.  They liked football fine, but they weren't crazy BYU fans obsessed with seeing Ty's last game.  They just loved their kids and knew something that would make them happy.  What a memory. 

Things I Miss #'s 23-29: The Farm

I remember my aunts visiting when I was a little girl and telling me I would miss the farm when I grew up and moved away.  I thought they were silly old ladies.  I remember my Grandpa Max lamenting all the people who had to miss the sunrise since they were still curled up in bed while we were fortunate enough to be out working in the pipe field.  I thought he was crazy.

They were right, I was wrong.  I miss the farm.

I will always consider it one of my greatest blessings to have been raised on a farm.  The life lessons are just so many and so easy to come by.  It's hard to narrow the list down because it's more a way of life than specifics, but here is what I miss:

#23 - Moving Pipe - I never actually hated the moving pipe part of moving pipe, just the bothersome hours it required.  5:30 in the morning?  No thanks.  I remember many dark, cold mornings in the pipe field and that specific part I don't miss.  Same goes for moving pipe in the blazing early evening heat while trying to battle mosquitoes.  But, the sunrise?  I miss seeing that.  And the smell of dirt and mud?  I miss that.  And working together with my family?  I miss that.

#24 - Driving swathers/combines/tractors - I am kind of a loner.  I like a lot of quiet time to myself.  I do not get enough these days.  Driving on the farm gave me plenty of time for that.  It was an ideal job for me.

#25 - Pulling Rye - Pulling rye doesn't even really happen much on the farm anymore, but we used to gather a crew and go walk through the fields looking for wild rye.  It was easy to pull and I usually had some friends on the work crew, so it wasn't really a bad job.  Basically, it was just walking through fields and pulling a few weeds.  Even as a kid, I liked pulling rye in the evenings.  The only part of pulling rye I don't miss is when we would go in the mornings.  It started out okay, but by the time we finished up late in the morning, it was always really hot.  I did not like that part.

#26 - Saturday Night - It was crazy busy around our house in the summertime.  My dad worked loooong hours, usually farming long after the rest of us went to bed.  When I was a teenager, one of my favorite things was to wait and listen on Saturday night for him to come home.  He always always always came home at about 11:59.  My bedroom window was right by where he would park his truck when he came home and I loved hearing that diesel engine come home just in time for the Sabbath.  I'm sure it was tempting to keep working some of those night, but it was a really good lesson for me to hear him coming home on time.

#27 - The sound of sprinklers -  I loved leaving my windows open in the summer.  I probably never closed them from May until September.  One of the main reasons was I loved  listening to the sound of the sprinklers in the field.  I like the sound of lawn sprinklers too, but the nice, even staccato of sprinkler pipe is completely soothing to me.

#28 - Working with my Family - I think most parents want to teach their kids to be hard workers.  Sometimes, I have to invent jobs for my kids just because I want them to learn to work.  There was always plenty of work to be done on the farm {although at the time I was totally convinced that the "rock picking" job was invented just to punish us}.  My best co-workers ever were my family.  I worked with my siblings and parents and grandparents and some cousins that came to stay every summer.  It was fun to be out there with them and laugh together and work together.

#29 - Harvest - This list is getting a little long, but harvest time was just so great.  It was always busy and hard work, but so rewarding to be able to feel like accomplished something.  Even as a little kid, I remember sitting on top of the pile of wheat in the back of the truck and being so proud of how much wheat my dad had cut.  

Just so I don't totally over-romanticize life on the farm, here are some things I don't miss:  mosquitoes, setting up pipe, waking up early every single day of summer vacation, missing activities with friends to move pipe.  And of course, the very worst job on the farm, answering the CB radio and having to call a farm store with some obscure question.  It was such punishment to take those calls.  

Things I Miss #'s 19-22: More Newton Stuff

I knew there would be more Newton memories I would decide to add.  Here are a few:

#19- The Newton Sky.  I took for granted being able to see the stars when I was little.  When I was 12, we had a foreign exchange student from Paris visit for the summer.  I remember how amazed she was at the stars.  She had never seen them before living in the city.  That was unfathomable to me.   When I was a teenager, my dad was a bishop in a USU student ward.  Sometimes some of his students would come to our house to stargaze.  I thought they were strange.  When I moved out, I realized how many more stars you can see there than the small cities I have lived in since then.   I'm always amazed when I am at my parent's house at night and step outside and see the stars.  It's beautiful.

#20 - Softball Tournament.  Until I was a young teenager, Newton hosted a softball tournament every summer and for a week or so, our town park was the place to be.  They borrowed my dad's guitar amp every year to do the announcing and teams came from all over the valley to compete.  We loved hanging out up there and feeling a little taste of independence since our parents just let us be there with no supervision.  I was sad when they stopped the tournament.  There is something so fun about a softball game on a summer night.

#21 -The Beanery.  I guess this is technically a Cache Junction locale, and not Newton, but close enough.  When I was very little, there was a restaurant in Cache Junction.  Yep, the Cache Junction that is now basically a ghost town with four houses and a granary had a restaurant.  It was a big railroad stop when railroad was king and the restaurant was still open when I was little.  I was probably only six or so when it closed, but it made me very sad.  I remember that I loved their chili and that they sold t-shirts and I always tried to get my mom to buy me one.  I also remember that some of the teenage girls from town worked there and I hoped to be a waitress there when I was a teenager.  Big dreams.  I think it was mostly a hangout for old men, maybe kinda creepy old men, so my dad probably would've killed those dreams even if it hadn't closed.

#22 - The Newton Cafe.  For several years, there was a cafe in the back of the store in town.  Greasy, fried food at its finest.  I don't think it was the food I cared about so much as the fact that when I was a young teenager, my parents would let me meet my best friends there with no adult supervision.  I relished those kinds of experiences.  I have good memories of meeting my friends there and hanging out.  Loitering, I suppose you could call it.  No one seemed to mind, though.

Brotherly Love

 When I was in Young Women's, a story was shared about a brother and sister to illustrate the importance of making good choices.  In the story, the brother lived a wild life and justified his actions with the statement, "I'm only hurting myself!"  Later, his sister was diagnosed with cancer and needed a bone marrow transplant.  He was a match, but wasn't able to donate because his blood wasn't clean.

Anyone else remember that little story?  I actually hated it because it seemed overly dramatic, a little staged for teaching purposes, and so dismal.  I hated thinking of the brother wracked with guilt as he watched his sister die.  

But, I've been thinking of that story today.  My dad's older sister was diagnosed with leukemia a few months ago.  She needed a transplant and after testing, they found out my dad was a match.  We feel so blessed that they are a match and I love that Heavenly Father sent those two little babies to earth so long ago with matching marrow so that it is possible for the transplant to take place today. 

It's a long, rough road to recovery, but today, I've been so grateful that my dad has lived a life that allows him to be her donor and that she has lived a healthy life that puts her in a better situation to try and recover from it.  He's much older than they typical donor and far outside the age limit for donors on the national list.  They make exceptions for family member matches.  His own health was closely examined before they approved him to be a match.  It's given me new appreciation for that story I heard so many years ago, but if I ever have to teach that lesson, I think I'll tell the kids about my dad and his big sister and the happy side of obedience to commandments and living a clean life. 

When they were little kids, my dad loved baseball.  She, on the other hand, did not.  As he tells it, she could never hit the ball, so one time, he told her he'd give her a million dollars if she hit the next pitch.  You guessed it - she hit it.  Through the years, they've often joked about when he was going to pay her that million dollars.  He never has, but I think this seems like a fair trade. 

Things I Miss #18: Girls Camp

If we got to choose our church callings, there are two I would rotate between:  Primary Pianist (because you can just sit behind the piano and laugh at the cute things the kids say and not really even have to prepare anything) and Girls Camp Director.  I loved Girls Camp growing up.  I still remember the night before my first camp at Willow Flats.  I did not sleep for a single minute that night, but still showed up to the church parking lot bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning.

In our ward, Girls Camp was serious business.  We camped.  In tents that we pitched ourselves.  And with outhouses that made me dry heave.  And campfires whose wood we split (well, we at least watched She-Ra Summer split the wood).  And we didn't shower for 3 or 4 days (but sometimes we shaved our legs in the river or the water tap).

In my ward today, they usually stay in cabins or condos and it seems bit pampered.  We had a big fundraiser last week because their camp this year cost $600 more than camp usually costs them, which made me wonder if they are headed to California or something because that brings the total cost of Girls Camp to well over $1000 for not that many girls.  I am certain our budget was miniscule in comparison. 

But enough complaining about how soft Girls Camp has become.  Girls Camp was the highlight of my summer.  We had such a good time with each other.  Here are some of my memories:

-Doing the Nestea Plunge at Willow Flats.  That was cold.

-The rain year.  One year at Stake Camp, it poured and poured.  By the last day, all of the wards except us stalwart girls in Newton 1st had gone home.  Our stake leaders were so proud and had a special breakfast for us.  It was a lot of rain.  We sang "Noah's Ark" 1 million times that year.

-How mad we were the year we had to go to Smithfield Canyon for camp since it was all of 8 miles away (and the boys in our ward were headed to Lake Powell).  Camp was still fun though...

-Campfire sing-a-longs.  In our ward, they were epic.  Some of our favorites were "Princess Pat," "Fried Ham," and of course, "Noah's Ark."

-The dreaded camp craft.  Do they still do those?  Ours were pretty terrible and mostly a big joke among the girls.  Maybe our leaders just weren't that crafty.  One exception is that I still have my wildflower press that we made one year at Stake Camp.

-The Clarkston girls always got sent home.  Not the whole ward, but it wasn't Stake Camp without someone in Clarkston trying to sneak boys or alcohol or something into camp and getting sent home.  I bet their ward had to call someone as the sent-home-girl-retriever every year so they had someone available to pick up those girls.  It wasn't really even scandalous after the first time or two because it was so predictable.

I can't wait for my little girls to head to Girls Camp in a few years.  Maybe I'll luck out and be their fearless leader!  They'd be so excited to have me there, I'm sure!

Diez

Boy, ten months really came fast.  I actually caught myself telling people she was nine months this week before I remembered she had another birthday.  Silly girl.

It's been a busy month!  

-She pulls up to anything and everything, but mostly Mommy's legs while she is trying to get something done. 

-She learned to climb stairs.  And how to fall down them.  It was pretty graceful.  She is usually sporting a bruise somewhere these days.

-She learned her first real word.  Not Mom.  Not Dad.  Daisy.  Our dog.  Awesome, isn't it?  I grew her for nine months and spent the next nine doting on her every whimper and she gets most excited about our dog.  It actually is pretty cute.  She goes crazy whenever anyone opens the back door and she thinks there might be a chance someone will take her to Daisy.  Also, she calls other dogs, and pretty much all furry animals Daisy. 

-She's still teeny - just over 15 pounds.  I think Cole weighed like 23 by now.

- She is more interactive and intentional.  The other day, Ben feel asleep in the car so I set him on the couch to finish his nap.  Molly noticed him and crawled over by him and started bouncing up and down and then would call out, "ahhhh" at him.  She did it a couple of times until she finally got him to wake up.  She was so proud of herself.  It was pretty cute.

-She, like all my babies, loves being outside.  She gets pretty excited to go out.  She really enjoys our sandbox, but I try to keep her out of there.  She's too quick!  Cole had a soccer game a few weeks ago that was one of the first really warm days this spring and we realized she tans up nicely.  Less than an hour in the sun and she turned into a little brown banana.  Maybe she got her Daddy's skin.  Lucky girl.

-And of course, her eyes still sparkle.  I had several people stop me at the grocery store yesterday to coo at her and they all commented on how pretty her eyes were. 

 

Happy Ten Months, our little Hot Ta-Molly.

Things I Miss #17: Sharing Clothes

In my younger years, I was pretty lucky to be sandwiched by my sisters.  This made for lots of good clothes sharing.  By the time I was old enough to really care about clothes, Kelli and I were the same size.  All through high school, we would share our wardrobes.  During back-to-school shopping trips, we'd often buy things together.  I remember a pair of penny loafers that we shared that I wish we still had.  They were awesome.  When Karlee caught up with us in size, my wardrobe grew again, and she always had good taste.  Both of my sisters were really good at sharing their clothes - much better that I was.  I think they mostly ended up sharing with me because I remember being a bit of a brat about sharing with them.  It was fun to be able to borrow from them.  When I went to college, I sometimes shared with my roommates too.  

I have been pretty limited in my ability to share clothes the last thirteen years.  Floyd and I are not really similarly sized.  But good news!  Cole and I ran a 5K last weekend and our shirts from it are only one size apart.  Plus, I can fit in his shoes and they are only a little bit tight!  Looks like I might get to start sharing again soon!

Lucky Cole.