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Tag: memories

Oreos

Oreos

Image from smittenkitchen.com Growing up, both of my grandmas had freezers full of things that little kids love. One of my favorites that my McConkie grandma often had was homemade Oreo cookies. They were so much better than actual Oreos, and not just because they were homemade, but because they had cream cheese icing. When I got older I learned the best part, they weren’t even that difficult to make – all you needed was a cake mix, 3/4 C…

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Moments as Molecules

Moments as Molecules

I love the face of the guy when his son spills the bowl of spaghetti on the floor. I have so been there. Actually a lot of the points in this video really resonated with me today. After a long night with Cooper last night, I was feeling dejected about parenthood. (I really thought he was past the phase of waking up and crying for 2 hours straight.) You know what, though, whether it’s jumping in puddles after a summer thunderstorm,…

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Closing Time

Closing Time

I remember feeling so trustworthy when my parents gave me my first house key. No more ringing the doorbell or waiting on the porch if no one was home. Then there was the sense of maturity when I got my very own set of keys to the family cars on my 16th birthday. I still have the key to the little blue Toyota Tercel I drove, even though we hauled it to a junkyard years ago after I totaled it….

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Other Half

Other Half

Back in my single days I was a cold-hearted-man-hater. Now, I know that when you’re single (and sometimes even when you’re not) it’s pretty natural to express frustration with the opposite sex, but I assure you that cold-hearted-man-hater is not exactly an exaggeration. My favorite t-shirts surmised both my objective: “Professional Heartbreaker” and motto: “Celebrating my independence from boys!”  All attempts to conform to the traditional rules of the dating game were non-existent. When other girls flirtingly laughed at male…

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Happy Groundhog Day!

Happy Groundhog Day!

When I was a junior in high school I found myself in a haphazardly thrown together group for a girl’s choice dance. Other than Emily, my best girlfriend, and her date, I barely knew any of the other group members — including my date. It was just one of those weird circumstances that was destined to be an awkwardly long evening that would be followed by weeks of avoiding one another. Such is high school. The only saving grace was…

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Snow Day and Sleeping

Snow Day and Sleeping

Growing up in Northern Utah, snow wasn’t that big of a deal. I only remember school being canceled once and it had more to do with the structural integrity of our school than the hazards of travel. Our school had hard plastic awnings that were cracking in the winter conditions and the school board decided it was better to fix them and miss a few days of school than have a lawsuit on their hands when a broken awning injured…

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Quarter of a Century

Quarter of a Century

The other day we were invited to play “Would You Rather” with a family we go to church with. One of the questions in the game was, “Would you rather have each monumental birthday (16, 18, 21, etc) be so awful that you never forgot it or so average you don’t remember what you did?” I answered that I would prefer the awful birthdays since they would make good stories for later and half jokingly added, “Wait, I think that…

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Stickers

Stickers

When I was in 7th grade I had a science teacher that decided grades were stupid, irrelevant, and unnecessary. Instead of grading our assignments, she would give us stickers for satisfactorily completing them. As students, we were concerned. We had already spent seven years investing ourselves in the letter grade system and we weren’t sure how stickers would translate to our report card. Despite how juvenile her mockery of good education seemed, we were still barely in the stage of…

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Pomegranates

Pomegranates

Yesterday, I submerged a pomegranate under water and carefully peeled away the thick skin. As I detached the ruby gems, I thought about one of my great grandmothers. I always loved visiting the McConkie residence in St. George, UT.  Situated on a fairly large lot, the backyard was bordered by bushes and populated by pecan trees. We’d often visit during the nut harvest. The adults would shake the trees with tall poles and I would collect the fallen nuts into…

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Cemeteries and Census Records

Cemeteries and Census Records

My parents’ house is a little over a block away from the city cemetery. As a child, the cemetery was  pretty much the best park ever. We raced pine cone boats down the canal, road our bikes up and down the roads, and collected ribbons and petals that had escaped from carefully laid bouquets and become stuck in the bushes. It’s kind of strange, but I still enjoy going to cemeteries. I find them peaceful.* We live half a mile…

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