Camping out in the backyard

Every summer after school got out, we'd set up a tent in the backyard. Every night, the boys would sleep out in the tent. Our bedrooms went nearly untouched. Sleeping out there was great for a few reasons. We never had to make our beds; just zip up a sleeping bag and you're done. It also served as a hangout place; we'd play board games and card games out in the tent, and we took my stereo out so we could have radio too.

I really enjoyed sleeping out there with Nick and Shawn. It was a great way for us to build a friendship with each other. When we had a sleepover, the friend would just sleep out with us. It was an awesome tradition.

(Incidentally, I still swear that we saw something really weird flying in the air one night when Jared was sleeping over in the tent. UFO? Who knows. But it definitely was flying, and definitely had lots of big lights underneath it, and it was definitely silent.  Probably some secret military thing.)

Selling cookies on the corner

Mom has a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that she got (I believe) from someone in the ward. When all the other kids were setting up lemonade stands on the corner, we set up cookie stands. It wasn’t long before we got quite a reputation—I remember a time when there were 4 cars lined up to get our cookies at 25 cents apiece.

We must have been pretty young when we started selling cookies on the corner. One day we had a couple cars lined up and the first car wanted 3 cookies. The driver didn’t have 3 quarters, though, so he just gave me a dollar and asked for change. I had never heard of change; despite the fact that Mom had sent us out with a jar of quarters to give change, I didn’t know how to do it. The driver tried to explain how it worked, but I was worried that he was trying to rip us off. So I said “Um… just a second” and ran inside to ask Mom.

Turns out the driver wasn’t trying to rip us off. Mom made sure to explain how to give change before we did our next stand.

Sliding down the stairs

Our house on Northshore Dr. had some L-shaped stairs leading down from right near the front door to the downstairs. Nick, Shawn, and I discovered that if we laid out the couch cushions on the stairs, we could get some decent speed sliding down the ten or so stairs on the long side of the L. On weekends, we’d slide down the stairs over and over with friends. We’d put one smaller cushion against the wall at the end to avoid poking holes in the walls. Eventually, though, sliding on the cushions wasn’t enough, so Nick (I’m sure it was Nick) tried sliding down the cushions on a sleeping bag.

At that point, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between sliding down the stairs and just diving down head first. It was FAST. Somehow, though, nobody broke a single bone and the stairs survived our abuse.

Learning to read

When I was only 2 or 3 years old, my parents started teaching me to read words. Dad got some posterboard and cut it into 4-in-wide strips. On each strip was written a single word with a red marker. Most of the words were fairly simple; cat, ball, dog, and the like. Mom and Dad taught me to sound out the words, and before long I could figure them out.

One strip, though, had a much longer word: refrigerator. I probably learned to read that one just by its length, but it was a good way to boost my confidence in reading big words. Before I turned 4 I was already reading pretty well.  Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Movie standards

One night when I was 8 or 9 years old, my parents decided to rent a movie for a family activity. We went down to the video rental store and they picked out Ladybugs (1992). It’s a movie about a guy who ends up coaching a girl’s soccer team, but sneaks his fiancée's son onto the team. (I didn't actually remember much more than the name; I had to look it up on IMDB today.)

We brought it home and started watching it. The humor and plot were a bit over my head, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the movie. Halfway through the movie, though, I remember Mom and Dad deciding that the movie wasn’t something they wanted to have in our home. They stopped the movie right there and took it back. They explained that the movie had crude humor that they didn’t like and didn’t want in their home.

I’ve always remembered the lesson they taught that day with their actions.

Early-morning scripture study

My parents were really good about holding family scripture study every day before school. Sometimes, however, that meant that we weren’t all quite alert. One morning, we were all a bit sleepy and were reading about the geography of the Nephite lands (maybe Alma 22?). Geography’s great and all, but it’s probably not the most exciting early-morning reading for a 12-year-old.

So when it was Dad’s turn, he decided to see if we were paying attention:

… who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round about on the borders of the seashore, and in the hotel by the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla…

Mom turned to Dad and gave him a funny look, and the rest of us looked back to see if that was really in the scriptures.  It wasn't.

I still laugh about that every time I read about the "borders of the seashore."

Sledding in the summer

The 16th Ave. house, where I lived until I was 10 or so, was up in the Avenues in Salt Lake. The Avenues is a residential area that crawls up the north foothills of Salt Lake valley, so most yards are quite hilly. Our front yard had a bit of a plateau—the sidewalk was at street level, then it sloped up sharply to the level of the house and had a flat front yard.

One summer, we discovered that the slope down to the sidewalk was steep enough to ride down in a sled in the middle of the summer. That was a hit with cousins and friends. We never wore out the grass, so Mom and Dad must have kept us from doing it too often. But still, who else in Utah gets to go sledding in their front yard in June?

Zip line

Nick has always been one to build outrageous things. When I was 12 or so, Nick started getting really excited about having a zip line in our backyard. After he’d been talking about it for a week or so, Mom took him down to the hardware store.  They bought some cable, some cable clamps, a pulley, and some garden hose to use as padding. Nick took the handlebars off a tricycle and mounted the pulley on them. They looped one end of the cable around the swing set in the backyard, and the other end was threaded through the garden hose and wrapped around halfway up a tree in the middle of the backyard. A small rope was tied to the handlebars so we could send it back up to the top easily.

I’m sure it would have been an insurance nightmare if it had ever been found out, but the neighborhood kids all loved it. I was a bit scared to go on it at first, but before long we were all using it enough that we wore a dirt patch into the landing area. We even got the missionaries to go down it once when we had them over for dinner. (As far as I know, “going down a zip line” isn’t forbidden in the Missionary Handbook, but I suspect they didn’t go bragging to their mission president either.) We’d go down flipped upside down or backwards, or try to throw a Nerf ball to the person sliding down. It was awesome.

Face paint rockets

The house on 16th Ave. had a great front yard for kids to run around and play. I remember one day Mom had some face paints out. I don’t know if she just had them sitting around or if we’d just come back from an event that involved face painting. Anyway, I had a few friends over and we wanted to be painted. We didn’t want our faces painted, though; like proper young boys, we wanted missiles and lasers. So Mom gave us missiles and lasers. I ended up with three small rockets on one wrist (blue with a red head) and one big one on the other. I think Jared Moench got a laser gun. We ran around the front yard “shooting” our “missiles” and “lasers” at each other. It was a blast.

Helping Dad with computer stuff

I took an interest in computers at a very young age. I remember working with Dad on the old black-and-yellow-screen IBM, making a chart to track who was supposed to work at what times at our cookie stand on the corner. I was probably 7 or 8 at the time. (It never got used.) By the time I was 12, I was far more comfortable with a computer than my Dad was.

Dad once brought home a family history program for the computer. He handed me the box and asked me to install it and figure it out. A couple hours later, he came down so I could teach him how it worked.

It was fun to know that my dad recognized my talents and let me use them to teach him. It made me feel important and useful in the family.

Family bike rides

When Nick and I had learned to ride our bikes, I remember going on family bike rides often. (Was it for Family Home Evening? I don’t remember.) Dad had a plastic seat attached to the back of his bike, so we’d strap Shawn in there and Nick and I would ride along. We usually rode east along 16th Ave up to where it met up with 18th Ave, then down the steep hill toward North Bonneville Drive. I had a number of friends over in that neighborhood, so we’d usually ride past a few of their houses.

My favorite destination was always Jared Moench’s house. Their driveway was made of three large concrete squares, but the eastmost square had a small 1’x1’ square inside it, as if there had previously been a pole there or something. I liked to pretend it was a button that would do something dramatic (like shooting down missiles), and I’d ride my bike in circles around the button until just the right moment and then ride straight over it.

I’m sorry to say that no missiles were ever launched, but they were fun bike rides anyway.

Treasure boxes

A few years ago, my brother Nick gave my parents a beautiful wooden box with the intention that we would all periodically write down family memories. Every time I walk by that box, I wish it were more full. I want my children to be able to flip through and learn about their aunts, uncles, and father. I want them to understand how we came to be who we are, and I want them to understand how happy we all were together. That box could be a great treasure for our family, but it sits with only a few bits of paper inside.

This year for Mother's Day, Tianna and I decided to record the memories of our childhood. Every day for the next year I'll write up a brief memory and post it on this blog. Tianna will be doing the same on hers.

I hope these memories can begin to fill the empty treasure box.