kindergarten

i only went to kindergarten for one week. so it is easy to remember.
kelly clegg and jessica (?) opunui were both in my class. we had mrs. larsen. from what i remember she was about the same size as me and about 97 years old. she was shrunken and wrinkly and looked like she would break. my mom says that this isn't true but it is what i remember.
kindergarten was boring but fun.
i could already read. (i learned at challenger preschool, did i write about that school?) i remember a puppet that sang "be careful when you cross the street" at the end of each day. i kind of remember sitting on the rug, and i remember show and tell and play time.
one day someone came into class and got me while we were gluing a paper balloon and string to a piece of paper. i was kind of sad to leave but i went with her.
she was the school counselor. she took me to her office that was full of posters about divorce and child abuse and sad kids. and she asked me a bunch of questions about letters.
"what letter is this?"
"A"
"and what does it say?"
"i don't know"
i knew perfectly well what the letter A said, but the cards she was showing me had fine print on them that i couldn't read and i thought that is what she was referring to when she said "what does it say"
somehow i still got into first grade. and without any explanation, the next week i went to mrs. lilligran's class.
she had white blonde curly hair. she wasn't old, but she was kind of scary.

write an essay

one punishment my mom tried on us was essay writing.
if we were bad we had to go to our rooms, and write a one page essay on a topic she assigned us.
the only paper i remember writing was one on brigham young. she printed out a page of information on him from encarta (encarta! we thought it was so cool! but now the internet is cooler) and i basically just rewrote it into another paper so i could get out of my room. i don't think this form of punishment lasted very long.

breakfast

i didn't like eating pancakes because my hair was so long and would get all syrup-y

also once i got mad at my mom for putting the syrup on my pancakes before she cut them because i thought they would stick together and not be able to be cut.

once i poured my orange juice in my cereal.

we never had sugar cereal.

pick-pocketing

i had a friend named micah in my first grade class, he lived behind me and had a few older sisters. they would come to church sometimes but i don't think their parents ever came with them, actually i think they only lived with their dad, but i am not sure.
we used to talk to them through the back fence, there was one fence post missing so we could see each other but not fit through.
once they showed us all these treasures they had found; bubble gum, binaca, sunflower seeds, coins, candy.
they said they had gone "pick-pocketing" in the church coat closet during primary.
it sounded like a fun game to me, too bad my parents made me go to primary.

clay pigeon

my dad brought sam a clay pigeon from a scout activity once.

sam put it on a ledge in the garden.

and i accidently knocked it off and it broke (they break easily) 

he was mad

sorry sam :)

flying orb

on winter mornings our dad would sometimes come tell us a flying orb had landed on our porch in the night.

we would run out to the porch and see it there, a frozen orb of ice sitting on the corner. 

we would laugh and look at it until someone pushed it off the porch so it would crash on the ground below.

and wait for the next time it would land on our porch.

i never knew where the orbs came from. i thought that my dad found them or that they really landed there. 

a few years ago i realized that the "orbs" were just the water from sadies water dish, that had frozen in the night.

dog # 2

our neighbors to the south (we weren't allowed to go in their house, i used to think i was because it was messy, later i learned it was because of something..else. but i would sit on the porch with the mom and do "cross-stitch" on those plastic grids)

had a scary cocker spaniel. i was scared of it because it was mean.

once she had puppies, and didn't care about them. i remeber helping one of the girls look around the yard for the puppies that had been dropped. we watched one die, on a heating pad on our front porch. but one survived, and we got it. her name was sadie, and she was crazy. 

she lived in the backyard.

she jumped on everyone.

and chewed off her leash once to get away.

after awhile we had to find a new home for her. 

she went to live with a nice gay couple in salt lake, where i hear she is very happy. and has a different name for some reason.

cl-eggs

they lived next door to us. 

they had every movie ever( including the great mouse detective and thumbelina). 

and a trampoline

and more toys than us

and a giant fish tank

and a huge metal playground that their dad had welded together for them.

and there dogs always ran away, first it was mitzy (the scariest dog i have ever seen) and then a golden retreiver.

their mom did quilts

and was friends with our mom.

their dad drove a frito lay truck, that was parked at the end of the cul-de-sac

so they always had chips, and other chip paraphenalia

also they always had kool-aid

lucky

mr. stringham

before we even moved into our house in orem we had a realtor named mr. stringham. 

i always thought he looked like president monson. he had a fancy car and always wore a suit. my mom, sam, and i would go all over town looking for houses with him.  

the only house that really stands out in my memory was the house with the slide, and the really tall ladder that led to the second floor. 

i was always disappointed that we didn't move there.

entertainment

this isn't really chronological so much as something that was pretty constant for my first 8 years of life. 

i used to look at my fingers a lot. hold one up and close my eyes one at a time and watch it move back and forth when the view changed. i did it with other things in the room too. 

and i used to notice the floaters in my eyes a lot more too. i would watch them float down in front of my eye and then look up to move them back up and let them float down again.

satellite

our house in orem had a huge satellite dish in the back yard, like huge. the kind you pickup messages from aliens from, or watch conference on at the stake center. 

we didn't get basic cable channels but we got a lot of foreign channels. and there was a fence around it where our future dog would live. 

there was also a huge tree in the backyard when we moved in, but we had to have it taken out because it was old and diseased. this was sad for me because i had always wanted a big tree in my yard that i could have a tree house or a swing on. 

either that our cable tv. 

sharon elementary

i should probably say something about my first elementary school. 

it was disgusting. at least thats what i thought. there was only one bathroom that was alright. i felt like it was old and falling apart. and that everywhere smelled bad and was unorganized and was just all really gross. 

according to jon this is a really weird thing for a kid to think

and according to my mom my school was a fine place. 

the lunchroom tables could fold up into the walls though, that was pretty cool. 

science

in first grade we moved from class to class for science and art and music and PE. and did english and math and things like that with our own teacher. 

i was fine with my own teacher, but when it was time to go to science class i was not fine. 

the science teacher was mrs. christiansen. 

her room was hot

her room was very unorganized

and she weighed about 300 pounds.

i was terrified of her. and i never knew what was going on in science class. there were never clear directions on how to do things, and we would start one project without finishing the other. 

everyday i would cry and cry in that class. it is funny to think about it now because i think, well obviously i would cry, i was a tiny kid(a kindergartener) and i had no idea what was going on and my teacher was scary. 

but at that time i didn't think of myself as a little kid, and i didn't like crying, but i couldn't help it. i knew i shouldn't be crying, none of the other kids did. 

one science experiment i remember was seeing how many drops of water we could put on a penny, before the surface tension broke. a kid in my class (jordan?) kept putting drops of water in his mouth even though he wasn't supposed to. and that made me upset and so i was crying and my teacher (who was at least 10 times bigger than me i swear, she was probably 6'10) asked what was wrong and i said i was hot. so she put the fan on me (she was probably a nice lady). i wasn't really hot though, just embarassed that i was crying. 

finally my mom told me that i couldn't cry at school anymore. and to just say a prayer before science class so everything would be alright. 

i did.

and it was. 

and i haven't cried in science class since.  (not even dr. woodfields chemistry class, although he would probably consider it a triumph)

kindergarten

i went to kindergarten for one week. i already knew how to read (with the help of some hep cats) and so i was a little bit bored. 

one day, just as we were starting an art project (gluing a piece of string to a paper balloon) someone came and got me and took me into a room. the room had lots of posters about divorce and about fighting parents and child abuse. i am guessing it was the counselors office. 

they asked me a bunch of questions about letters and what they said. the letters they were showing me were on this printout with lots of other words on it, instead of just a card with the letter Aa. so every time the counselor asked me "and what does this say" i said "i don't know" because i couldn't read what the small words on the page said. apparently they told my mom that i wasn't reading at as high of level as they expected, but somehow she must of convinced them that i did indeed know what the letter A said and so they moved me up to 1st grade. 

only no one explained all this to me. 

one day i was in kindergarten, singing songs and talking about the weather with my teacher (who had to be at least 80! ask my brother he had her the next year) and the next day i was in a big classroom full of kids and i had my own desk and "tote" under it and instead of my nice grandma-ish teacher mrs. larsen i had a poofy curly white blonde scary teacher ms. liligran. 

she really liked bears. 

the first few weeks were a bit traumatic for me. 

hep cat

there you go

some hep cats

challenger school

i went to challenger preschool.
my boyfriend/husband's name was brock and we would sit next to each other on the circle rug.
everyday for art everyone would copy what the teacher drew with a black crayon on white paper (ciricle, now a square next to it, now a line), and then we could paint it with watercolors.
once we drew the bill and hillary clinton at the inaugural ball.

i had two teachers, one with brown hair and one with blonde hair. we learned the alphabet and how to read. they gave us a book to take home called "nat bug", my dad loved nat bug. and we still talk about it today.
there was another book that we got, i only remember one line from it though "kit was a hep cat"
it was about a cat, but what does hep mean? is it just a made up three letter word that they put there because we wouldn't be able to read "happy". i always thought that when i grew up i would figure this out.

orem, people still working together

we moved to orem
into a house that my mom still complains about.
i didn't mind though. we lived in a cul-de-sac and there were a lot of kids in our neighborhood.
the cleggs and the fairbanks lived next door to us. they both had trampolines (or "tramps", can i jump on the tramp? yes.)
life was good. the only downside was having to go to bed at 7, while all the other kids played kick-the-can and hide-and-go-seek and other hyphenated games outside our windows.
i can remember nearly everything about living there, thats probably not really true but it is close. its hard to put everything in chronological order however so random stories interspersed with cold hard facts (1st grade, 2nd grade) will have to do.

utah ,people, working together

we moved to utah
i was probably around 4
i don't remember the move, the drive or anything.
my parents didn't want to move to utah (who does?) but we still did. to provo even!
and lived in a little apartment on 9th east, right past center street.
it was on the bottom floor of the south corner. and it is still there, i have rode past it on my bike many times. and my bus passes it every day.
i have a few memories of that apartment that we lived in before we bought a house in orem.
probably the best one is when we found a kitten. and took care of it until the owners came and got it.
also the little playground by the apartments had two black swings and one blue swing. the blue swing was the best one and we would always race the neighbor kids to get it (the swings are all broken now, but one of the broken swings is blue!)
there was also a "pigloo" there.
once in that apartment i opened up all the drawers in my dresser and it fell over, kind of on top of me.
once i got a hold of the scissors and cut holes in my bedspread, puppy doll, and many other things around my room.
i also remember hitting my cousin keith while he was visiting us from washington.

i have always been a really good kid.

spanish trail

my preschool was called spanish trail. i only went a few times a week, but other kids got to go more, and it seemed like exciting things always happened when i wasn't there. things like nap time, and petting zoos. my teacher was named ms. everheart i think, because we used to draw he pictures of hearts all the time. 

riding in the car to preschool i couldn't see out the window, but i could straighten out my legs all the way so they could touch the air conditioning vents. 

once i got to stay for nap time but i kept getting up and a scary woman kept getting mad at me. 

my class picture is probably the best preschool class picture ever, one girl looks like mini bus driver, one boy looks like he is running for mayor. 

vitamins

once i chewed up my flintsone (or sesame street) vitamin and the spit on the kitchen floor. 

it was pretty colored spit. 

but my mom got mad at me. 

kids

i don't remember too many friends from arizona and i definitley do not remember their names. but i remember a few random playdates.

i remember this brother and sister who would come over sometimes and we would go to their house sometimes. they lived near a dry creek bed ( like everyone else in arizona) and once we made christmas ornaments there by gluing an ornament to a colorful ice cream cone. 

they always had the croup, or talked about having it, and i didn't know what it was. 

there  were some other kids that my mom babysat that said they could have two bowls of sugar cereal for breakfast!i always imagined their breakfast table looking like those cereal commercials, with orange juice and milk and bananas and cookie crisp.

once i had a dream about me and the girl fighting over who got to eat some frozen spinach for lunch. 

ABC

my mom made me an alphabet book out of construction paper and pictures from magazines. 

it was all laminated and bound by these big rings. 

i loved it

my favorit picture was on the Y page. it was some yams in a bowl. i would always look at them and wonder if i had eaten something like that before. and if i ever would again. they looked good. 

IBM

my dad worked for IBM and sometimes when we would be waiting to pick him up we would break small rocks open with big rocks, in the parking lot. 

also i think there was a playground there with an igloo, that my dad called a pigloo.

footie pajamas

my mom always cut the feet off of our footie pajams

i am not sure why  

but i remember looking into one once and being scared to put my foot in because it looked gross. 

living room, bedroom, kitchen

we used to do exercises with my dad every night. we would crab walk across the living room, then worm crawl, then do sit ups and push ups and things like that. 

we had a really big living room i think. one side was all these glass windows and a sliding door. and the other side (next to the front door) had a "stage" it used to be a big planter box ( in the living room... classy) that the lady before us had fake trees in and was also used as a built in cat litter box... my mom covered it and used it as storage. i even remember when she painted it white, i asked if i could help and went and got my very small paintbrush and it made a gray mark on the stage because it wasn't very clean. 

we used to dance on the stage or make it into a covered wagon, using the clothes drying rack, and play pioneers. 

i remember my bedroom very differently than it actually was, according to my mom. 

i remember it as scary. 

it had a picture of a "scary prince"  the room was dark wood and always seemed dark to me, my mom's little ladybug stool was in there, which wasn't scary, but sitting on top of it was a scary doll with curly hair and a cigar. i guess it was a groucho marx. that doll is still in my parent's basement and it is still scary, just ask my sisters, or jon, or anyone. 

once my mom gave me a big box of makeup to play with in my room, by myself. i think it ended up being messy but i don't remember that. all i remember is wondering where that box went and looking for it for a long time afterwards.

our kitchen had doors that swung both ways. i ate pizza in there for the first time. my mom told me that the sauce was ketchup. 

mexico

one day, while we were living in arizona, we went to mexico. 

i brought along an extra hair bow ( yellow with white polka dots) just in case we had to stay the night. 

i don't remember much about mexico except for a little store that we went in, and some tissue paper flowers that i wanted.

i had white blonde hair when i was a baby.

when i was younger my parents had taken me to mexico and a little mexican girl had come up to me and said "rubia rubia!" and kissed me and hugged me. 

so i guess my popularity with people from latin american countries started at a young age. 

:)

mr and mrs powers

mr and mrs powers lived next door. i think they were irish but maybe their cookie jar was just a leprechaun. 

they had a cookie jar and ever day we would run over to their house to visit and to eat a cookie. 

i remember they had green astroturf stuff on their front porch. 

and i liked them just as much as our grandparents but we never got to stay at their house as long. 

when we ran over to their house, across the rocky front yard, it was my job to always hold sam's hand because they had a cactus in the middle of their yard and sam would run into it without fail unless someone was holding his hand. 

animal encounters in arizona

coco our dog lived in the backyard obviously.

and all around our yard we had a tall cinderblock wall. behind it was a dry creek bed. 

there were lots of lizards in arizona and we would catch them sometimes, sam was braver than me and would actually catch them, sometimes their tails would fall off, which is a funny thing about lizards. 

a lady that we knew ( i don't remember her last name but i think her and her husband lived in a house with a big shaggy white dog) brought us a lizard she had caught in her office, in a styrofoam cup. 

once coco caught a little robin, he chased after it and cornered it and tried to eat it. 

we saved it and let it stay in our shed on a pillow ( one of my pillows that had a green edging and little green bears on it i think) 

when it was well my mom took it out to the backyard and we sat down and held it. 

it stayed on my mom's finger for a little while before it flew away.

once i was just walking down the hall, minding my own business when my mom ran up to me screaming "stay right there stay right there!!!!!!" so i stayed. i heard her scream at sam to do the same. i don't think i was scared, i just thought something was horribly wrong like a stranger was coming into our house (strangers are bad). 

it turned out that it was a giant bug, either a giant cockroach or another massive beetle. 

my mom killed it with bug spray. 

and then it sat on our porch for a long time, probably waiting for my dad to come home and clean it up. 

my mom told the story of it forever afterwards i remember, at church and everywhere. 

she always said "and i sprayed it! and i sprayed! and it finally died"

once sam ate a dead cockroach off the ground. 

i don't remember that actually, but i have heard the story. 

sam, coco, and the wizard of oz

i mentioned sam

sam is my brother who is two years younger than me. i don't really remember when he was born, i do remember getting a toy doctor kit when he was born though. 

but after that i remember a lot about him because he was my best friend and companion growing up. 

i always thought sam was the favorite child because he was better at eating than me. he would eat anything, including vegetables and stroganoff, i wouldn't eat anything that was red or green or chunky or anything. 

once i threw up stroganoff into my mom's hands

( i was wearing my white turtle neck with red green and blue hearts on it, i don't think we lived in our house then)

sam also really liked grapefruit juice and old people, i probably liked old people too, just not as much as sam. 

we would play outside all the time with our little dog coco (he took forever to name i remember because my dad thought chocolate was a dumb name and that is what we wanted to call him, this would be repeated ten years later when we wanted to name our cats moon and shadow) 

coco was a chihuahua/terrier mix and was small and yappy and could jump high and eat bubbles. we would drag him around the yard by his teeth holding on to a blanket and we would climb in his doghouse to hide ( i always went in first cause i didn't want coco to get me) 

sam and i would also act out the wizard of oz. i would be dorothy, glinda, the scarecrow, the munchkins, and every other role in the show. sam would be toto and would follow me around on all fours the whole time. 

he was a very dedicated performer

philosophizing

i lived in arizona from when i was 8 months old to about 4 i think. so my memories are just glimpses of time, not very chronological or even full stories sometimes.

i remember living in our house across from the junior high, at night sometimes me and sam would go over to the junior high playground (basketball courts/blacktop) with our dad and he would trace our outlines on the ground with these white rocks and then we would color them in. i think some girls from our ward went to that school and sometimes they would see the outlines we drew at school the next day.

our house was a rambler i believe with a big backyard with an orange and a grapefruit tree and a sandbox and a big awning over the porch. i could climb up the poles that held the awning up and i remember doing it for people more than once, it was my party trick.

the main thing i remember from this time in my life was thinking how strange it was to be alive. i think i was more conscious of being alive than i am now, i would think about how the world was so strange and how do i know if it is real, how did i know we were really alive, and it was so weird that i was a person, contained in a little body, how did i know there were really other people and things outside myself?
i didn't think about it all the time but it would come to me in waves of realization.
this doesn't happen to me much anymore. i am relatively sure i am alive, and i also have a firm base of beliefs assuring me that this is all real. but i still have sudden bursts of consciousness regarding my life, how "grown-up" i am, and stuff like that.
i know lots of people who still feel the way i did. who question, or who can't fathom life. and i can't really judge i guess, i was just on a faster track than them.

i got all my philosophizing done at the age of 3.

rocking chair

my earliest memory is being on the porch in my diaper while my dad was staining a new rocking chair for my mom. i remember knowing it was for my mom, it was a present. this was in arizona and i was a little over one years old i think. in that apartment i was an only child. i remember my pink asian-ish pajamas. and sitting in the sink. and brushing my teeth. i do not remember my room. but i kind of remember the pool outside (but that might be from pictures)