Ella

I was working at the Salt Palace Convention Center in down town Salt Lake City, Utah, the 2002 Winter Olympics were set to start in just a few weeks and I was going to be working with the Press from all over the world. We had set up several rooms that would be used for major and minor press conferences along with an office area for Olympic personnel and offices for print media and studios for broadcast media. I had also set up a bull pen area where any reporter could sit and watch live feeds from any event happening at that time with four screens set up in the center of the room with tables fanning out around this center piece. NBC who had the rights to cover the Olympics in the US set up their sound stage and editing rooms right on the trade show floor, complete with fake fireplace and rustic furniture. Maggie was pregnant and the due date was February 2nd, 2002, the day the Olympics were to begin. We were hoping that she would make it to her due date as that would have been 02/02/02. While I was working long hours getting things ready for the Olympics Maggie was at home chasing Patrick, our two year old, around the house while trying not to over due it while being pregnant and all. On January 18th, 2002 Maggie woke up just before six in the morning and said that she thought she might be in labor. I asked how far apart were the contractions and she said about fifteen minutes. I looked at her to determine her pain level and she did not seem to be in any kind of pain. She got up and headed downstairs. I got up and headed to the shower. She did not seem to be in any rush so I thought that it might just be Braxton Hicks contractions. Those are contractions that are getting a mothers body ready to deliver but to a guy it just seems like the body is warming up, nothing to get too excited about. While I showered, Maggie went down stairs and got Patrick some breakfast. I came down a short while latter to find Patrick, Mom and my brother-in-law, Shawn, who had been staying with us while he was working at a job just down the street from our house, all eating cereal. Maggie then told Shawn that she thought she was in labor and asked if he could call in late while we got our parents up from Ephraim or Spring City to watch him. He agreed. I sat down and had some cereal while Maggie gathered up the things we needed to take with us to the hospital. She put it all in the car and I then got in the car and we started our journey to the hospital. Now I do not recommend doing what I had done. From my observation of the situation Maggie was not in any physical pain. She did not seem to be in a hurry so I did not show any care. It was a normal morning from everything I saw. Latter I have been brought to the understanding that I was as dense as a rock. I showered, ate, watched and then got in the car as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I will never hear the end of it. We lived in Kearns, Utah up on the hill close to Kearns High School and the Speed Skating Oval that was to be used during the Olympics. We were about thirty minutes from down town Salt Lake and the LDS Hospital where we were headed was just a few blocks east of down town. We had left the house just before seven in the morning so traffic was not very bad. It had just started snowing when we left the house. Maggie and I had been driving for about fifteen minutes when Maggie looked at me and said that she thought the contractions had stopped. Since we were already headed to the hospital we agreed to continue just to make sure everything was okay. The snow was coming down a little harder and by the time we reached the hospital there was already two inches on the ground. We parked and walked into the hospital. I asked the reception where the birthing center was located and she told us how to get there. We walked to the elevators and went up and then walked down the hall to the maternity ward. We arrived at another desk and Maggie explained that she thought she might be in labor. The nurse asked a few questions about the contractions and the pain level and who her doctor was then with some skepticism, mentioning the Braxton Hicks contractions, escorted Maggie and I to one of the rooms. Maggie was not in any pain and there were no visible signs of discomfort and the contractions had lessened substantially at least that is what I remember Maggie saying to the nurse. The nurse gave Maggie the hospital gown and had her change and then said that she would check to see how far dilated she was. Maggie changed and then got on the bed and the nurse came over and checked. The nurse went pale, said Maggie was dilated to an eight, and quickly left the room. In terms of what that dilation meant in my humble non doctor understanding is that a one is nothing a five is labor will happen some time soon and a ten means that baby is coming out. An eight then means that we should hold on because the baby will be there any moment. The nurse came back moments later and said that our doctor had been contacted and was on her way from the University of Utah Medical Center which was just a few miles away but with the snow coming down she was worried that our doctor would not make it in time and asked if we would mind the doctor currently on shift to deliver if she did not make it in time. We thought that would be fine and the nurse left. When Patrick was born labor lasted a long time, we had spent hours watching TV and reading before the action happened so I naturally assumed that this was going to be the same case. I sat down opposite Maggie and started to read the newspaper figuring that when the doctor arrived I would be ready to do my part. The nurse came in one more time to check and reassure us that our doctor would be there in just a few minutes. Again for all the care and needs that Maggie may have had at the time I was not paying attention and I am still trying to make up for it and will forever. Our doctor arrived and came in to check on Maggie. The doctors cheeks were still red from the cold when she looked underneath the blankets. I watched when the doctor said something that startled me, "Push!" I jumped up to do my little part and Maggie pushed. With just one long push Ella was born. All the doctor had to do was arrive, say push, and catch the baby. I cut the umbilical cord and the baby was cleaned off and handed to mom. Ella came out hungry. She wanted to eat right away. She ate and then the nurses took her away. The actual labor lasted two minutes tops. Once Maggie was cleaned up and Ella whisked away to be bathed and swaddled I sat down to marvel at how quickly it all happened. The nurses and doctors had left the room and Maggie needed the bathroom so she got up and went. The nurse came in while she was in the bathroom and proceeded to yell at me for allowing her to get up out of bed. When Maggie came out she calmly escorted Maggie back to the bed and sweetly told her that she should not get up for a few hours, all while glaring at me. Ella's birth was fast and furious and I am glad that when the contractions stopped halfway to the hospital we didn't turn around and go home. It snowed over eight inches that day.

Map

I have a map of the United States that is pinned to the wall in the hallway leading to the garage. This map is laminated and show all of the major interstates and highways connecting the cities together with the smaller cities and towns. The map shows major rivers, mountains, and lakes along with stars for capitals of states and large dots for big cities and smaller dots for smaller towns. There are some really small towns that are not listed on the map but they do exist. I have driven past many of them as we have taken road trips as a family. Some of these road trips have led to new places to live and even new jobs and opportunities. Some of these roads have led to relatives houses spread out across the country and some have led to interesting things to see or landmarks and history to learn and appreciate. We have drawn lines on all of the roads that we have driven. When we were living in Overland Park, Kansas a suburb of Kansas City, we would take short trips to St. Louis, Missouri. On one trip we decided to stay overnight and visit down town St. Louis. We started at City Museum. City Museum is a unique museum filled with recycled everything. Metal, rollers from conveyor belts, small planes, trains and many other industrial recycling. One can climb on all of it. With Patrick and Ella in tow we went with some of our friends from Kansas. I did not realize just how big a place like that could be. City Museum is in a very old four or five story red brick warehouse. When walking up to the entrance there is metal rings and walkways above and trains and metal animals below. There is so much to see and climb on. Once we payed the entrance fee we started our tour of the place. I decided to start my climb up the metal on the outside of the building to see the plane that was suspended some forty feet in the air. Patrick was young and afraid of heights but we coaxed him along. The challenge with the metal walkways was that although one is surrounded by plenty of metal the whole apparatus sways when being walked on and there isn't any wood to block ones view of the ground. Every step is a step of faith hoping that the metal ribs will withstand the weight of one more person. Once we got to the plane we could climb even higher and enter the building from a window and see all of the things inside. My favorite thing was an old bank safe that had been relocated to the museum. The safe door stood open and one could see that it was almost three feet thick. The safe door was made of brass with a very large locking mechanism of bolts around the middle of the door that went into corresponding holes built into the wall of the safe. The amazing thing about such a heavy door was that Patrick a small five year old boy, could push the door open and shut with ease. Who knew that such hinges existed easy to open a door that weighed several tons and not even a squeak. One of the benefits of City Museum is that everything presented is not blocked off by glass or rope, there are no signs that say access denied or restricted, there is only an atmosphere of please touch, play, run, move, and don't worry. One simple thing that was on the third floor was an old piano. It was a little out of tune but anyone could play it. It didn't matter if you were good at it or not and the plunking and pounding could be heard echoing off of the walls in almost every part of the museum. In the back of the museum there were some caves built into the building. In these caves were metal and cement built up three stories tall. The kids could get in and climb all the way up without fear of falling as it was all enclosed with metal rods between two and three inches apart and the path leading up only two or three feet in diameter. All of these attractions and more to play on or touch or run to and then the culmination of the entire museum are two slides made entirely of conveyor belt rollers. The slides are two and three stories tall and two or three feet wide. Sit down and away you go. In the whole museum this is the only place where I saw a warning sign. It simply said to keep hands and hair up or something like that. There is always a slight risk of pinching fingers or caught hair and they wanted to make sure you were aware, but I think that made it all the more fun as I sat with Patrick in front of me and Maggie and Ella behind ready to slide down from the third floor. What a thrill. There are no bars or side rails to guide just a straight shot three stories down. I held on to Patrick and away we went, down the slide, once at the bottom with me a little out of breath from the trepidation and a little fear that I had, Patrick just said, "Let's do it again." And so we did.

Pools

I love to swim. I learned how to swim at my dad's mom's house. Grandma had a nice pool in her back yard and whenever we visited we wanted to swim. Mom would remind us to bring our swimming trunks and a towel. We always remembered the swim trunks but usually we forgot the towel. Grandma had a green fiberglass covering over the patio next to the deep end of the pool. This had two built in tables both were made of cement benches and cement table top with a rough pebble finish, one was long and could seat ten or sometimes more depending on the size of the cousin sitting at the table, the other was a perfect square with four cement stools stationed at each side. The smaller table was our favorite table to sit at because we were not being elbowed or squished by everyone at the long table. There was also a built in grill that was used to cook hot dogs and hamburgers. Grandma had a few pool chairs that folded up and other loungers that could be laid out or folded up both at the feet and the backrest. These chairs were the favorite because we could fold the feet rest and the back rest up so that it looked like a square missing the top. The older girls would lay out on these chairs to get a tan. The younger cousins would pester these girls with water or towel snapping just for sport. The pool had an electric cover with rollers that would roll along a course set by metal tracks that went down the side of the pool. If there were no adults around we would roll the cover over the top of people still in the pool. I don't think we ever thought about possible consequences of our actions and luckily no one ever got hurt. One day while we were out swimming in Grandma's pool I went to get out at the side of the pool where the metal runner was for the wheels of the pool cover. I put both hands down on the metal and all of a sudden I was stuck to the rail. My body was shaking and it felt like a million tiny pricks of electricity were terrorizing my body. The rail was like a magnet and I was stuck. I couldn't yell or talk and my body was convulsing. I didn't know what to do. With all the strength I could muster I pushed away from the wall with my legs and got free from the electrical trap. I quickly got out of the pool and ran to my dad for help. My body was not hurt and there was no visible injury or lasting pain from my encounter but dad got my uncle Clifton and they quickly checked the motor and the wires leading to the motor. Clifton was more skeptical so he went and touched the metal rail that I was claiming had me stuck. When he touched it he was shocked and quickly removed his hand and yelled at everyone in the pool to get out while they figured out what had caused the problem. They soon figured it out. Some wire had pulled away from its insulation and was touching that particular rail. Dad and Clifton fixed the problem and I and the cousins went right back to swimming. When the family moved from Lehi, Utah to Duchesne, Utah the city had a pool that was open in the summer and mom quickly signed us all up for lessons. We went every morning to our lessons. At the time it was my older sister Chelle, me, then My younger brother Sam and my younger younger brother Matthew. Matthew was too young for lessons but Chelle, Sam and I would walk the two blocks to the lessons with mom carrying or walking slowly with Matthew in tow. She would watch us as we learned and talk with the other mothers that were there. In the afternoons we could go back to the pool and play. We went to that pool so often that all of our dirty blond hair turned green from the chlorine. The pool in Duchesne was fenced in and had an entrance and check in area at the front with a teenager manning the entrance. One had to present their pass or pay a dollar to get in. Once the pass was presented girls went right and boys went left through a dark locker room where we put our sandals and towels. The locker rooms opened to the shallow end of the pool. The pool was shaped like a giant letter L with the long part of the letter having the shallow end and gradually getting deeper as it proceeded to the corner then the short end of the L was where the high and low diving boards were. The depth was twelve feet and as I got braver my goal was to jump from the high dive and touch the bottom. Mom was brave enough that most afternoons she would let Chelle, Sam and I go by ourselves. Matthew was usually taking an afternoon nap. Chelle was nine, I was seven and Sam was five. She told us a specific time when we had to be back home and off we went. There were teenage lifeguards and it was safe. We swam, jumped, played with each other and with our friends who were with us. We dared each other to jump off the high dive. I had no fear and would climb up and jump off without hesitation. I would watch the older kids doing flips, cannonballs, can openers and all sorts of other tricks. Some would go for the biggest splashes or the perfect dives. After watching them I decided I would try a flip from the high dive. I got up to the top and I jumped, tucked and spun. I went around once then a second time and I didn't realize the water would come quite so quickly. I opened up to start the entry process and landed smack on my tummy with my arms and legs wide. I slapped the water so hard that I sat on the surface for a second longer than should have been possible. The pain was excruciating and I slowly sunk into the water. I did not want to show my pain so I slowly swam to the side if the pool to climb the ladder and get out of the pool. As I rose from the water the lifeguard that was stationed next to that ladder looked at me and said, pleasantly, "Your belly is red." I slunk off to the shallow area of the pool never to return to the high dive that day. We moved from Duchesne, Utah to Ephraim, Utah and the local college had an indoor pool. We continued our lessons and got annual passes so that we could swim whenever we wanted. The biggest difference was that here when one checked in one had to use the pools swimsuits and towels. No outside swim suits allowed. All of the swim suits were blue, the school colors. The men's shorts were very short and the women's suits were all one piece. Some of the suits were so old that we would put them on and realize that they were see through and have to go back to the desk for a different suit. By this time Matthew was old enough to come with us. Amy, the newest entry into the family, was not old enough to come with us. We four, Chelle, Sam, Matthew and I would walk the half mile from our house through Snow College's campus and to the Activity Center where the pool was located. We could swim from one till four almost every afternoon. We always came away tired but we didn't care we just wanted to go back the next day. Years later and many different pools, Maggie and I were looking to buy a house in the Salt Lake Valley. We found one, not with a pool but a hot tub. We bought the house and started using the hot tub. Patrick was a baby and he loved the hot tub. We would put him in a baby suit that had a rubber tube around the middle similar to what fisherman use to get out into the rivers and lakes. He would get that on and we would sit while he swam around the hot tub. Patrick loved the water and when sister came along they both enjoyed playing in the hot tub. As I moved to another job in Las Vegas, Nevada I had a coworker who invited the family over for a fourth of July BBQ. He had a pool in the back yard and made sure all of us came prepared to swim. When we arrived our host gave us a quick tour of the house and then we went out the back door to the pool. Patrick saw the water and ran. He didn't slow down when he hit the water. Maggie and I watched and I was thinking to myself in my best chastising voice, "Oh, Patrick, you didn't have your swimming suit on yet." He was also only three and could not swim but I didn't think about that first. The hosts wife quickly jumped in the pool and pulled Patrick to safety while his parents just looked on not thinking about the danger Patrick had just found himself in. Patrick eventually learned how to swim and I am much more careful when I am around pools, especially when a three year old decides to jump in.

Snowboarding

I had never been skiing or snowboarding. I enjoyed playing in the snow but sledding was the fastest I had ever gone down a hill. I was fourteen and I had some money from working as a janitor at Snow College, the local community college in town. My friend Kyle Strate knew how to ski and he and his dad were planning to go up to Brighton, a ski resort in Big Cottonwood canyon about two hours north of Ephraim where I lived. Kyle invited me to come up with he and his dad. He was going night skiing which means that from four until ten the resort turns on a bunch of flood lights on select runs and it costs less to ski or snowboard. I asked my parents if I could go with them and they agreed. Now snowboarding was still a relatively new sport. My friend Kyle had never done it and since I had never been skiing I thought I might as well try this new thing that "everyone" was doing. So I went up with my friend and we got to the lodge bought our lift tickets and I went down to the rental office to get a snowboard and boots. The lift ticket is attached to the coat with a triangle like piece of metal hooked to a zipper or clip on the jacket. The lift ticket is a sticker that goes over the top of the metal and must be visible to the lift operators so they now that you have paid for the right to get on the mountain. I went to the rental area and got set up with boots and snowboard. The snowboards had a front fin shaped like a soft triangle that raised up gradually about three inches and the back of the board was completely flat. I got there and the rental guy asked if I rode straight or goofy. I had no idea what he meant. I stared at him blankly and he asked again only this time he said do I ride with my right foot forward or my left. I didn't know the answer to that either so I just said goofy and let him set up the board that way. Goofy is with the right foot forward. I learned the next time I went that I prefer straight with the left foot forward. Once I had my boots on and the board in hand I was ready to go. I stepped outside and watched other snowboarders to see what they did. My friend Kyle and his dad were already up the mountain and I told them I would catch up eventually. I saw that the snowboarders attached their front foot to the board and left their back foot out of the strap and then they would push and slide with the back foot to get over to the lifts so that's what I did. I strapped in and started to walk. Talk about the most awkward way to walk, I could barely keep my balance and the snowboard kept sliding underneath me and twisting my knee. I finally made it to the lift and watched again as snowboarders got on the lift. They do not strap the back foot in they sit down on the lift and dangle the snowboard at a very odd angle while the other foot just hovers. I was nervous. I had never been on a lift before. I had never been snowboarding before. I got to the top of the lift and watched as others got off. Skiers seemed to get off with ease with poles in hand and ski's clamped firmly in place they slid off with ease and grace. It soon was my turn to get off of the lift. I stood up with the board touching the snow and I promptly fell over. The lift operator had to stop the lift or me while I crawled away from the dismounting area. With me now out of the way it was time to put my back foot onto the snowboard. I strapped in and stood up. Once I had gained my balance I pointed the board towards where the other people were going and started to slide. At first I thought this was easy, just like skateboarding back home. What I did not realize was I was just on a small slope and the fun was soon to come. I followed other snowboarders and I saw several signs with different names of the runs, Whistling Beaver, Christmas Lodge, Tall Pine, or something very similar. The truth is I can not say that I read the names at the time I just saw the color labels. There was green, blue, black diamond and double black diamond with arrows pointing in the general direction of each run. I did not know what each color meant and since I was already pointed towards the double black diamond run I just kept going, no need to try and turn or anything. I was picking up speed. I was trying to watch other snowboarders to see how they steered but I couldn't tell how they got their snowboards to go so smoothly while I was just trying to stay standing. I had overheard one snowboarder talking to another about being careful not to catch an edge so I was at least aware of one issue I might have later. I liked speed. I always have liked to go fast but on this snowboard going down a trail labeled as a double black diamond I was terrified at how fast I was moving. I realize now that the first thing I should have learned was how to stop. I was starting to go so fast that I was passing other people on the run and then I hit the worst thing imaginable for a snowboarder, moguls. Now again I had never been skiing or snowboarding in my life and I did not know what any of these things were I just knew I hated moguls. Moguls are little hills of snow that skiers tend to enjoy. it gives a skier the sense of bouncing and it allows a skier to have fun bouncing over these mounds of snow. Snowboards don't do so well on bumps in the snow all together like that. I hit the first of many moguls and I went tumbling head over snowboard. I landed hard got back up and looked around more embarrassed that I had fallen so hard. I pointed downhill and tried again. Again the moguls made me get air born. I picked myself up half a dozen times before I got out of the moguls and I wasn't anywhere near the bottom. I continued down the hill picking up speed and trying to watch out for anyone around me. I was just starting to feel confident that I would not fall again when the run went into a single track trail through the trees. Now a quick side note. Skiers are traveling down hill while facing down hill. Skiers have poles that they can use to help them gain speed and provide balance. Snowboarders face sideways down the hill and do not have poles to help provide balance or gain speed. On the trail through the trees I was terrified. I was traveling at a very high rate of speed and there was a skier in front of me and behind me. I didn't want to wreck because if I did the skier behind me would wreck into me and if I couldn't slow down I was going to wreck into the skier in front of me. I was so worried about these two skiers that I forgot about the trees. I turned the snowboard slightly one direction and I "caught the edge" what I had overheard before. I went right into the trees. It took me a while to get out of the trees and although my body was uninjured my pride was severely bruised. I went down the rest of the way as slow as I could making sure not to catch my edge. I found the easiest way for me to stop if I got going too fast was to just turn facing the downhill of the mountain and sit down. I used this option a lot and my shirt soon stretched and froze over my backside. By the end of my first run my friend Kyle had gone down three times. He found me down at the bottom and we went back up the mountain. I followed him telling him of my adventures while leaving a few of the details out. I rode up with him and I fell again while dismounting. Once strapped in I told him which way I had gone that first run and he just started laughing. I didn't know why he was laughing. He explained that the colors and the diamonds meant the level of difficulty and that double black diamond is the hardest run on the mountain. Now with that new knowledge in mind I took the blue run next and it really was easier and less steep than what I had just done. I fell a lot more that night and soon had bruises on my bum from all of the stopping. I gave myself a small cut on my chin when I "caught the edge" again and I generally was wet and tired by the time we finished for the night. I tried again just a few weeks later this time with the left foot forward and the right foot back and I loved every minute thereafter. I love to snowboard and I eventually became very good at it. It took me years of practice. I am just glad that I didn't give up after my first run going down the double black diamond.

Breakfast

I love food and breakfast food is my favorite. It can be salty, sweet, chewy, drinkable, dippable, fast, slow, gloppy, runny, soft, crunchy and more. I can eat breakfast food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even for a snack. I rarely miss eating breakfast. When I was growing up breakfast was a very hectic time. I don't think that Mom ever sat down during the forty five minutes between when we arrived in the kitchen to when it was time to start walking or catching the bus to school. Mornings at my house typically consisted of Mom knocking on our door between six thirty and seven telling us it was time to get up and then she would flip on the light. I would race to the shower and could be in and out in less than three minutes most days. I was never one to take long showers when I was younger. I had things to do and so it became a race. Jump in get the water just right then wash my hair with the shampoo, usually suave or whatever was on sale, rinse my head grab the bar of soap wash the rest of me then rinse and get out. No one ever really knew which towel was the one they had used the day before because they all were similar so it was grab a towel dry off and wrap it around the body and run back to my room to get dressed. We never took our cloths in the bathroom with us as the next person in line needed to use the shower and that would have meant more time in the bathroom. Back in the room I shared with my two younger brothers, Sam and Matthew, I would put on jeans and a t-shirt. I was very fashion forward at the time and I don't think I ever wore anything else besides jeans and a t-shirt. As I got older I had a collection on white t-shirts that I had either gotten from the 5k's and 10ks that I was running or I would pick up one from the DI or a local store. When I left home to serve a mission I had over thirty white t-shirts hanging in my closet. Dressed with shoes on, I ran downstairs to the kitchen. I would arrive and mom would give a glance and tell me to comb my hair. I would go to the small bathroom next to the dining room hoping to find one but usually I would yell and say, "Mom, I can't find a comb." She would yell back a possible alternative location to locate a brush or she would tell me that Chelle must have it. My older sister always seemed to have the things that I needed. Dad always had a little black comb in his back pocket and he would sometimes pull it out and let us use it or he would help my younger brothers and sisters comb their hair with his comb or a brush that they would bring to him. Once the hair was done I could sit down to eat. Since I was usually one of the first kids down at the table we would pray with dad and mom. The food blessed we could finally eat. When breakfast was cereal the bags and boxes would be on the table. Our family could go through a box of cereal every morning if it was what everyone chose to eat. Mom would place a stack of bowls and cups with a handful of spoons on the side the milk was made the night before using a powdered milk that we all really liked. For a year or two we bought fresh milk from a lady that lived on the other side of town and that was really good because even though mom would take most of the cream off the top there would still be a little left and that made the milk thick and tasty. We grabbed a bowl picked our cereal and filled the bowl. Dad would look up from the newspaper and if we poured too much he would tell us to put some back. On cereal days mom put a sugar bowl on the table and we would add a spoonful of sugar to our cereal. We would sometimes get clever and add the sugar before adding the milk and then with the milk dissolving the sugar it looked like we had not gotten any sugar so we got another spoonful on top. The bonus with that much sugar is that the milk doesn't quite dissolve all of the sugar so once the cereal was eaten we would slurp the milk out of the bowl and then use our spoon to get every last bit of sugar we could from the bottom of the bowl. One thing to note was that we got a morning newspaper every day. Dad would usually get it when he came down and the first thing he read were the comics. If he didn't get the paper and one of us got the paper we got the comics first. When dad was done with the comics all of us wanted to read them and there would be dibs or next yelled out while we were all trying to eat. Mom never got to sit down with us to eat breakfast. She was usually too busy getting our lunches ready or getting the little ones their food. Mom was the referee. She helped keep things in order while we asked her all kinds of things about where our backpacks were or upcoming projects we had or even that we needed a shoe box or some other odd thing for school that day. Mom handled it all very well and even the occasional spill was met with small irritation and a toss of a rag or towel to clean it up. If it was a pancake day dad was usually the one flipping the pancakes and piling them on a plate. On the table we would find peanut butter and jam, fresh and hot Maple syrup (mom always made her own maple syrup) and powdered sugar. Their would be a stack of plates and cups and a handful of forks and the process would proceed again. Prayer would be offered and we would fill our plates with the pancakes. We always wanted the freshest and hottest pancakes and sometimes dad would try to tease us by lifting up the stack of pancakes and putting the freshest ones on the bottom of the pile. The same process was done for french toast. If dad wanted eggs for breakfast he also usually made them. As we would wander in he would ask us how we wanted our eggs cooked. I liked easy over with a runny yoke but the whites nice and firm. Sam would switch a lot have scrambled more often. Chelle and Matthew had easy over like me. As we got older we would be allowed to cook our own eggs but they never turned out as well. The yolks would break when we turned them over and we would be sad. We ate them anyway. Two eggs was what we got and they were enjoyed quickly. One of my favorites was simple toast and hot chocolate. Mom would make the chocolate in a large pan on the stove. She mixed the sugar and cocoa and vanilla right in the pan with the water and the powdered milk. We would grab a mug and use a ladle to scoop out the chocolate. Sometimes we would be responsible for our own toast but most of the time mom was toasting the bread as she was making the lunches. We would sit at the table with our toast and chocolate and then dip the toast into the chocolate and drip and slurp the now soggy toast to our mouths. We could go through a loaf of bread just for the toast. With so many of us we had a limit of two pieces of toast per person but that was enough. We had chocolate drips in a trail from the cup to our mouths. We had drips on our chins and sometimes if we weren't careful we got drips on our cloths. We wiped it off as best we could and continued. Once breakfast was completed dad would gather everyone up, everyone was awake and showered and down stairs by then, we would kneel wherever we could around the piano and into the dining room and kitchen and dad would call on one of us to pray or he or mom would pray. Prayer time was the quietest that the morning ever was. We asked for safety and happiness. We asked for help at school and at home. We thanked Heavenly Father for our rest from the night before. We thanked Heavenly father for our bodies, our family and our home. Some were short prayers and some were longer prayers. Sometimes the neighbor kids would be at our house to walk with us to school and they would participate with us. Sometimes we would hear the bus coming while we prayed and quickly finish so that we could run to catch it. Once the prayer was done we ran off in our various directions. Walking to school, catching a bus, going to work, or staying home. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day.

Goldie Locks

I was pegged with many nicknames. When I went into sixth grade my PE coach, Coach Anderson, couldn't pronounce my last name so he called me "Grinder" instead. He did this on the very first day and it stuck. Everyone in the school called me "Grinder." Most of the students didn't know why I had gotten the nickname but they didn't care. They thought it was fun to use and most thought that they were teasing me. I was not easily teased. I was glad that coach had given me this nickname and I was proud of it. All through middle school I was known by others as either my first name, Scott, or by my nickname, Grinder. When I got into high school the name didn't stick as well. I had a wrestling coach who tried to use it on me but it never sounded the same. The funny thing is that a few years later when I was a senior and I had a sophomore and freshman brother the nickname stuck with them. In wrestling, the freshman would be called Grinder and I would be called Scott. I have a very loud and bombastic personality. I talked with everybody. There was never any popular kids or nerds that I didn't talk to or with or about and everyone seemed genuine. My junior year I was not being called Grinder because my brother had just come into the school as a freshman and the nickname was transferred to him. I became Scott or Mr. Grindstaff depending on who was speaking with me. Occasionally I would be called Hey You or What's your name or Buddy or Friend. One day while hanging out at a friends house we were all gathered around the small piano in her front room. We were singing, playing, and laughing when it was my turn to sit down I got on the bench next to the girl who was just finishing. She got up from the bench and I slid towards the middle and was readjusting the bench when the back right leg buckled and I went tumbling. The bench was broken and It was me sitting on it. I gained notoriety and fame overnight. Everyone laughed and called me Goldie Locks because she was the one that broke the little bears chair. I laughed with the rest of them. I offered to fix the bench but the dad of the girl said that he would do it. The saddest part was that all of my friends were there to witness my breaking of this bench. I took it all in stride as I always did and thought nothing of the bench again. Until of course the next time my friends and I were over at her house playing and singing around her piano. I could never sit on the bench again without getting teased. Now I thought that this would be the end of it. I broke the bench but it was falling apart anyway and anyone that sat down could have been the one to break the bench. I was at home eating dinner with my family. I sat at one end of the table closest to the telephone. The telephone was attached to the wall behind me and since most of the calls were for me or one of my two brothers I was tasked with answering it during dinner. The chair sat between three and four feet from the wall. Dinner was in progress when the phone range. I scooted my chair back and leaned to get the phone from the wall. I had the phone in my hand when the back of the chair, along with the back two legs decided they had had enough and wanted to take a break. The chair and I fell with a crash to the floor. The floor was tile with the lines of grout that separate the individual tiles. The chair legs had stuck themselves inside the grout line and I pushed back at the same time I reached for the telephone the balance was precarious but it happened so quickly that I landed on the floor with a loud bang kept the phone in my hand and said as calmly as possible, "Hello, Grindstaff residence." My family knew about my experience with the piano bench from weeks earlier and now that I had broken a chair in similar fashion I was done for. Goldie Locks was my new name and it stuck.

Tacos

My family has a tradition. Maggie says that my family has a lot of traditions. One such tradition is a simple slice of heaven found inside a folded hot and greasy corn tortilla, with a pillow of the lightest and fluffiest pink jello ever imagined. Every birthday in my family is celebrated in the same way, tradition. On our birthday mom would let us choose what we wanted for breakfast and most of us had school so we would bring cookies to share with our classmates. My mom's chocolate chip cookies were famous in my school and I learned this early on. I could go to school with two cookies for my desert and trade for almost anything I wanted from my friends lunches. Usually I had two cookies so I would trade one and eat the other. Some days I would get lucky and there would be three cookies for desert then I had more leverage, two cookies for a bigger item, or sometimes I just ate them both with my friends drooling with desire. So because the cookies were so well known I would make sure that Mom and I made some the night before so that I could share with all of the class. After school was pretty normal except that I could smell the tacos being prepared. Now tacos in my family are not like tacos from a Mexican Restaurant and they certainly are not like Taco Bell. Mom would mix two pounds of ground meat with shredded potatoes, spices, and vinegar. This was placed in the oven and baked. When dad got home he would set up the electric fryer and fill up the fryer with vegetable oil until the entire bottom was covered with to about half an inch. Once the oil was heated dad would take the corn tortillas and lay them into the hot vegetable oil. He then used two forks to hold it down waited about thirty seconds and then folded the shell and put the hot shell on a cookie sheet that was lined with paper towels to soak up the vegetable oil. Mom would then spoon out some of the cooked hamburger potato mixture into the taco, one of us older kids would add shredded cheese and then the process would continue until the entire cookie sheet was full, two across and about twenty down. Because my family was so large we usually made sixty tacos. While the tacos were being made and set on the cookie sheet the other brothers and sisters were assigned to wash and break up the lettuce, wash and cut the tomatoes, set the table, and put the hot sauce out. The kitchen was full of people. Everyone in their stations tended to sample their work just to make sure that it tasted alright. We could go through one head of lettuce, a pound of cheese, three or four tomatoes, and half a jar of moms homemade salsa/hot sauce. Now the fluffy jello had been made earlier in the day. To start mom would put a can of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge to get it cold. Once cold she would make jello on the stove just as the recipe says to make it but once it was cooked and all of the powdered jello was dissolved she would set it aside for just a minute while she took out the sweetened condensed milk and put it into the mixer. This was beaten until fluffy and the jello was then added and mixed. Usually she also added a small container full of whipped topping to the mix. Once the beaten sweetened condensed milk turned pink it would be put in the fridge and chilled before dinner. Thus the pillow of pink fluffy jello was ready to be consumed. With the Jello and the tacos on the table it was time to eat. Before the meal began we said a prayer. I think that I was most thankful for this meal over any other ever made. After the prayer dad would remind us that we could only have three tacos. They put a limit on the goodness because there were a lot of us to feed and they also knew that if we were allowed to keep eating we would eat until all of them were gone. Once I was at my dad's mom's house, grandma's, and she let us eat as many as we wanted. I think I ate seven or eight before my tummy almost burst and I had to stop. I am pretty sure that one of my uncles still holds the record for the most tacos eaten at one time and that was fifteen or sixteen. My plate had three tacos piled high with the lettuce, tomatoes, and hot sauce and pink fluffy jello on the side. Pink fluffy jello melted in my mouth. There was never a limit on how much of the pink fluffy jello we could have but we had to move fast because once it was gone it was gone. With the tacos we would occasionally start with one on our plate and try to just do one at a time so that we could sneak a forth one but when caught we would claim we had miscounted and since it was already on our plate beg forgiveness and eat it anyway. The younger siblings always complained when we got one more than they did even if they could only eat two. We had this meal for every birthday. I looked forward to this tradition every time a birthday came up. Tradition!

Hike

I was a scout in a small troop in Utah. 525 we are the best alive. 525 we are the only ones to survive. 525 is the troop that flies. We had lots of other yells that we used when we would go to scout camps and jamborees. You mess with one bean you mess with the whole burrito. We went to several different scout camps including Steiner in the High Uintahs and Thunder Ridge down in the lower part of the Wasatch mountains towards Fish Lake. At Thunder Ridge all of the camping was done in tents. My scout leader would come with his Tee Pee that we would help set up and then we would set up a line of two man tents usually it would take six or seven tents for all of us. To set up a Tee Pee one had to set three main poles first once those three were leaning against each other and not moving one direction or another we would add poles until all sixteen or so poles were up in a circle. There was a rope that was attached to one of the first three poles and that would be weaved a certain way to keep all of the poles together. The way it looked without the canvas covering was similar to a hourglass with one side very big and the other side very small or a funnel that was upside down. With all the poles in place the canvas was put in place. This had a small hook rope attached to the top corner of the canvas that went over one of the poles and then we wrapped all of the poles with the canvas. We had to make sure that the canvas was snug against the area where all of the poles met. Where the canvas came together there was a gap at the top and that was where the smoke would leave with a fire in the middle of the Tee Pee. The entrance was held open by foot long sticks that were straight they held the canvas similar to the look of the lace on a shoe going straight across. We set up an entrance to our camp and had a flag that we would run up a pole every morning and take down every night. We had to set up our cooking area and rope off our chopping area. Scout camp did not have a cafeteria so we had to bring up all of our own cooking gear and food and we had to gather all of the firewood that we would use for the entire week. Because we put the fire in the same place every day by the third day the fire pit was so hot that just putting new sticks on the area and blowing a little and the fire would start again. There were bathrooms and maybe there were showers but we never used those. Thunder Ridge is set in a high mountain valley surrounded by aspen and pine trees and scrub oak. There were trails everywhere leading from one point to another. Some led to the scout craft area, others to the main lodge, still others led down to the lake which was about three quarters of a mile away. I took lifesaving, canoeing, and rowing in the lake. The lake was cold being snow fed it never seemed to get above freezing but I am probably exaggerating a bit as I never really knew how cold it was. It was also not as cold as the lake at camp Steiner. I had to hike to the lake and back again twice a day and It always took a while to walk the trail and get to the lake. Sometimes I would run so I would not be late. The scouts that ran the lake front did a good job of keeping us active even if the lake was pretty small. My favorite thing to do was swamp the canoes. All this meant was capsizing the little vessel filling it with water and then with your boat buddy picking it up out of the water and draining the canoe then getting back in, all while treading water in the middle of the lake. Well one day after our water sports activities for the day a few other scouts and I decided to take a different trail back to camp. It took us up the side of the mountain to the east rather than the trail which went mainly south. We wanted to see what we could see and since we were at eight thousand feet we thought we could even hike up to the ridge which did not look that far away. Not that we could see much of the ridge with all of the trees in the way. We went up the trail and kept on going higher and higher we went and then as it got closer to dinner time we should start heading south towards the camp but with all of the trees we were not sure which way was south. we walked on for another fifteen minutes and felt totally lost. We could not go back because we did not know which way that was. we knew that we had to go down the mountain but we didn't know if we had gone to far past the camp and we would just end up going down for a long ways. We saw a clearing a little higher up the mountain and decided to go to that and then look out and see if we could gather our bearings. We went up and then looked out over the entire mountain valley. It was pretty amazing to see all that we could see. We saw the main camp area and did our best to figure out how to get to it. We made it late to dinner. Probably the only time a scout has ever been late to a meal.

No Bears

I always liked going to my grandmother's houses. At my mom's mom's house we would play outside, inside, through the chicken coup, and in the trees. When we had a large gathering of the cousins at the house my older cousins would be forced to play with us. Their mothers, my aunts, would require the teenagers to be nice and get all of the younger cousins involved. My mother is third youngest so she had a lot of brothers and sisters that were already married. She has some nephews and nieces that are almost the same age as she. These cousins were the cool cousins. The ones that I wanted to be like. They could climb all of the trees in the yard and they could outrun all of the younger cousins. Some of them could drive. I was jealous of their secret meetings as they would talk with cousins that were close in age while I was relegated to talking with cousins my own age. Now don't misunderstand, I loved and liked all of my cousins. I never had a dull moment playing with the cousins that were the same age as me or even with my brothers and sisters who were also close in age with me but I can't say I didn't want to be a part of the older cousin group. Josephine, my mom's oldest sister had eleven kids by the time she was done with most of these several years older than me. Elwin, my mom's older brother had six or seven kids again with most being older than me. Ivin, had four kids, all older than me although the youngest was only two years my senior. Margaret and Lynn both just older than my mom had kids my age and Gayle who was just younger than mom had kids who were also my age. When we all got together grandma's house there was never a quiet place and we all liked it that way. The yard would be so overrun with people that if we got bored climbing trees or chasing each other across the lawn we could easily go inside and play a board game or if the chess board was available we could play that. If we were playing chess, Elwin or Grandma would usually come over and help us play. Sometimes they would play chess against us. This is how I learned to lose. Grandma, Elwin and my other aunts and uncles would play chess with us and beat us every time. They would help us understand how each piece moved but even in teaching the rules they never let us win. The most frustrating thing to hear from Elwin was, "Are you sure you want to move there?" We would over think it every time. I don't think in all the chess games I played with Grandma or Elwin or any other aunt or uncle I ever won a single game. For that I would have to play with the cousins my own age or those younger than me and sometimes I would lose those too because grandma or Elwin would help them, just to make it fair, as they put it. In grandma's house it did not matter who was playing the game from toddler to senior from aunt and uncle to cousin everyone played to win. Grandma was notorious for playing games like "Sorry" or "Trouble" or "Uno" with the littlest of her grandchildren and beat them all and if any of us pouted or cried because we lost she would explain that games are meant to be played to win and not meant to be fair or for someone to let someone win just to be nice. Now the older teenage cousins knew that eventually they would get told that they needed to play with the younger cousins. Josephine would recommend a game called "No bears are out tonight." This game is quite simple. One of the older cousins was the "bear" and everyone else was the kids. The "bear would hide somewhere in the trees around one side of the house and everyone else would line up along grandma's garden. We counted to ten and then we started to walk towards the side of the house where the bear was hiding. We would chant, "No bears are out tonight. Daddy shot them all last night." We would chant this over and over and over again while walking towards the "bears" hiding place. The "bear would eventually jump out of its hiding place and growl and chase us back towards the garden and safety. If the bear touched us we were out. Once those that did not get touched got back to safety the "bear" would hide again and the process would be repeated until everyone had been tagged by the "bear". The last one tagged became the "bear" in the next game and all would line up at the garden to start the game again. We usually played this game at dusk and as it got darker and darker it became harder and harder to see where the "bear" had hidden. This also made it scarier and scarier as we walked up from the garden, through the grass, up the hill created by the ditch and then to the side of the house with all of the creepy shadows and outlines of the trees at the side of the house. I would squeal in delight with the rest of the younger cousins as we played well into the night. As I got older and became one of the older cousins I got to be the "bear" and terrorize my younger cousins and siblings. Maybe tomorrow a "bear" will chase me again.

Weenie Roasts

Uncle Lynn is my mom's older brother. He lived close to grandma's house so I would see him all the time when we would come to visit. Lynn was always taller than me. Lynn had three daughters that started at the same age as me and went down in age almost matching with my two younger brothers. My cousins were used to coming to grandma's house all the time to help with whatever needed doing and Uncle Lynn was the one to do most of the plowing when grandpa didn't want to get on the tractor. When we would go to grandma's in the summer time even when we were little we had responsibilities to do small chores around the house and the yard. Grandma's yard had a lot of trees; walnut trees, cherry trees, willow trees, poplar trees, and other bushes and trees of which I do not know their names. In mid summer one could hide in the shade of one of the many trees. Because there were so many trees there were always broken branches or dead branches and sticks that had fallen from the trees. Lynn would come over and ask us if we wanted to have a weenie roast for lunch. We would all cheer because that meant that Lynn was going to light a fire. This also meant that Lynn was going to get out his old five gallon metal milk jug and make root beer. First the work that didn't amount to work because it meant we would have a fire was to clear off the yard of all of the dead branches and make a big pile underneath the oldest and biggest walnut tree. Now if you have not been around walnut trees they drop a lot of nuts. The husk of these nuts is green and as they ripen on the branches or as they fall to the ground the green turns a dark tan when the husk is removed there is a layer of black that is so dark it will stain anything. Our hands would be black from gathering the walnuts that had fallen from the tree. The branches tended to have some of this black on them as well so gathering the sticks meant getting dirty. I liked to get dirty and I never worried about having clean hands or even a clean face. As we gathered up sticks we would also gather up the fallen walnuts. I would find an old brick or a large rock and take the walnut over to the cement walk that came out the side of the house. There I would smash the walnut with the rock or brick and try to fish out the edible part of the nut. Sometimes I would get large pieces to come out all at once but most of the time we would get little pieces mixed with the shell. I didn't care I ate what I could and spit out the rest. Being thus distracted from gathering the sticks I would have to be chided to go back to gathering the branches. With the branches all gathered into the designated spot under the old walnut tree, Lynn would tell us to go get a green willow switch. The willow made the best sticks to stick the hot-dogs on because they were long and straight. The only draw back was that if I picked a willow switch that was too skinny the hot-dog would cause the stick to curve so it looked like a fishing rod bent from the weight of a catch. Lynn always carried a pocket knife with him and so he would trim off any leaves or small branches on our sticks and then he would whittle down one end to a point. I always wanted to whittle the point by myself but he would just smile and then do it for me. When I got older he would let me borrow the knife but I always used the knife in his presence and gave it right back when I was done. Lynn and my dad were very good friends. They two would be the ones to make the root beer. It is a fairly easy process to make root beer. They would go to the store and pick up the root beer extract, five pounds of sugar, and dry ice. They would take the five gallon metal milk jug and put about a gallon of water in then add the sugar and the root beer concentrate. Once that mixture was stirred and the sugar dissolved they filled the jug up with water to about four and a half gallons. Stirring that one more time they then added the dry ice. Now it is always a mystery as to how much dry ice one should add to get the right consistency. I think they would get between eight and ten pounds of the stuff then break it into smaller pieces and then put it into the jug. The dry ice would cause the water to bubble and boil like a witches brew. We always wanted to breath in the cloud of white that it produced. Lynn would put the lid on the jug at an angle so that the gas could still escape while still covering the contents. I always asked what would happen if he put the lid on all the way and he said it would make the milk jug explode. We never tried to do that although when I got older I did make a few dry ice bombs using two liter bottles and those definitely exploded so he was speaking the truth. The root beer takes about forty five minutes to get fizzy and carbonated so in the wait we would start the fire to get it ready to roast our hot-dogs. Lynn seemed to always be the one to start the fire. He would not bother with trying to build a log cabin or a tee-pee fire he would just push the pile of sticks and branches that we had gathered down a little and use some newspaper and bark or some old weeds and light the fire. I would get to close to the fire and be asked to move back and I would for a minute then I would creep back up closer to the fire again. Even though it was mid summer and hot outside I always loved the feel of the fire and watching as the branches slowly caught fire and then burned. The fire would grow with the red and orange flames licking the sky. Some times the pile of sticks were so high that they would almost touch the large branch of the old walnut tree but the flames never did any harm to the branch. Grandma and mom and the other aunts and cousins would all gather around. The uncles would bring out a table for which to put all of the fixings and we would run to get our sticks and grab a weenier to start roasting. We would stick it close to the glowing coals down at the bottom of the fire. Sometimes the fire would be so hot that we would hold one hand out with the stick while protecting our faces with the other hand, peeking occasionally to see if the weenier was done. The lunch always seemed to start later than expected but no one cared. A clock never factored into the time spent at grandma's house or playing with uncle Lynn. He would eat the walnuts we shared with him even if they had a bit of the shell mixed in. Lynn was always taller than me.

Sandwich

Maggie and I got married at the young age of twenty one. I had a lot of habits and she had a lot of habits that took some time getting used to. I had just returned from a mission to Paraguay. I was around missionaries for the past two years and I before that I was used to a house that was a little chaotic with eleven people all under one roof. Maggie had been more independent than me. Maggie had gone to Guatemala and taught English at the University of Guatemala in Guatemala City. Maggie was also finishing up her degree in Archaeology at BYU and I was just starting my own college career. So we had both built in habits about things like what time to wake up, exercise, what to wear, how to make the bed, how to wash to dishes and many other things. I was used to a loud house and she was used to a quieter one. I was used to plopping in front of the TV after finishing my work and she liked to read a book. Luckily for her we did not have a TV when we first got married. Because we only lived an hour from our parents home we would go home to visit often. If neither of us were working on a Saturday then we would plan a trip down to the parents house. We usually would bring our laundry along for the ride. Quarters wanted to be spent on other things beside laundry. The first weekend after we had gotten back from our honeymoon we stayed at Maggie's parents house. Maggie was ill and I could not figure out what to do with her. I walked in the door of my new in-laws house and basically asked mother-in-law to fix her. Maggie always says that it looked like I was returning her and saying to take her back. I of course was not I just knew that I did not have the ability to cure whatever ailed her and Mom's always know best. That day I sat in the study with Grandpa and watched TV while Maggie, her mom, and her two younger sisters talked in the kitchen. I was still a little uncomfortable with my in-laws so I stayed pretty quiet. I learned from that and many other visits that my in-laws also have certain habits about how things should be done. Every time we came home They were watching me. The in-laws were very nice but I could tell I was still being vetted as to my abilities as a husband. I think that it takes parents longer to get used to the fact that they have a new son or daughter than it does for the son or daughter-in-law to get used to new parents. This is probably because before coming into their family I had parents and I had a certain expectation about what parents do so adding another set was not so difficult. In the parents case they can't discipline their new son or daughter-in-law and they can't discipline their own son or daughter anymore. I think this will be just as difficult for me when my kids are newly married. One weekend while visiting the in-laws it was time for lunch. Now lunch consisted of grabbing all the different chip bags from off of the refrigerator, the bread from the bread drawer, and the meat, lettuce, tomatoes, and condiments from inside the refrigerator. These were all placed on the counter. Everyone gathered around the counter and we had a prayer. After prayer it was time to make your own sandwich I stepped up next to my father-in-law and grabbed two slices of bread and set them on the counter, I grabbed the mayo and mustard and put those on my bread and set the bread back down on the counter. I grabbed some meat, lettuce, tomatoes and I think there was some cheese and started to put these on my bread when my father-in-law handed me a plate. Now in my house making sandwiches was a task, especially on a Saturday. There were eleven of us so eleven sandwiches were needed. Mom would take one loaf of bread and lay them out in pairs on the counter. She would then get the mayo and put that on all of the sandwiches then following the same order would add the mustard, meat, lettuce and tomatoes if we had them. Then it was just a matter of putting the other slice of bread on top and everyone coming and grabbing their sandwich. In my father-in-law's house when making a sandwich one did it on a plate. Not on the counter!

Edge

I am a scouter. I was a scout and earned my eagle rank back in 1994. I was asked to be the scout master again in Overland Park, Kansas. I accepted the responsibility and needed to go and get a new uniform from the scout shop. The scout shop was just a few miles away located on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Instead of just me going to the store we all piled into the car. We got Ella and Patrick into their car seats and booster seats and buckled for the ride over to the scout shop. We always tried to do things together. Maggie and I would almost always do the grocery shopping together and take the kids along with us even if it was harder to have then in the carts or running around the store with us. Well this was no different. We arrived at the scout shop and went inside. I found the uniform that I needed. The challenge with a scout uniform is that once one has purchased the shirt one must buy the patches that go with it. So we had to find the appropriate council patch, unit numbers, leadership patch, and all of the knots that I had earned. Knot patches are worn to signify certain awards received as a youth and as an adult. For example I have one for earning the arrow of light award and eagle scout award. These are youth awards but are represented on my uniform. I also had a knot for specific training. I would continue to earn knots as I continued to work in the scouting program. I also have a patch that says "Espanol" which just means that I speak Spanish and can help scouters who speak that language. Once we gathered up all of the required patches and knots and book we went to the front and purchased all of the items in the basket. I gathered up the two runners and headed for the door while Maggie paid for the purchase. When I got out the door Patrick and Ella wanted to look at some water streaming out of a large cement pipe that went under the parking lot of the scout shop. The drop was about ten feet from the top of the parking lot to the water. Patrick went over to the top of this pipe and looked down. I being the protective father admonished him not to get too close to the edge. Patrick said he wouldn't and then proceeded to get closer to the edge. He was trying to look into the large cement pipe by laying on the ground and sticking his head over the edge of the top part of the pipe. He lost his handle on the pipe or stuck his body too far out over the edge and flipped over the edge to the water ten feet below. Now the water was a little deeper right as it came out of the pipe where the water had pushed the dirt away but there were rocks, cement and other scary things to land on. I watched as if in slow motion as Patrick went over the edge and fell to his death in the rocks and water below. I am sure I screamed as I watched in horror as he fell. He landed in the only safe spot between the ricks and cement and other scary things into the deepest part of the water. After splashing in the water he looked up at me with his eyes wide. I asked if he was okay as I traversed the steep hill to the side of this drainage ditch down the ten feet to help him out of the water. He was soaked. He had no cuts or bruises. He was just shocked from the fall and I was just grateful he had not hit any of the rocks or cement or scary things. I said in as nice a tone as possible, "See, I told you not to get to close to the edge." Maggie was coming out of the store and found Patrick all wet and Ella just waiting. Maggie probably thought of many things to say about my horrible parenting but held off. We stripped Patrick of his wet cloths and I gave him my shirt to wear until we could get back home. I laugh about the experience now but that day I think that some of the rocks jumped out of the way when they saw a little boy falling from the top of a large drainage ditch.

Walking to school

Dad had been injured and was laid up at the University of Utah hospital for a very long time. Since mom wasn't going to leave him for any length of time we stayed at grandma's house in Bountiful, Utah. Since it was during the school year (just after Halloween) mom went and signed us all up for school. My older sister Chelly was in fifth grade, I was in third grade, my younger brother Sam was in first grade and my younger, younger brother was in afternoon kindergarten. The school was about half a mile away from grandma's house so we had to walk to school. The school was an old red brick building multiple stories tall with a huge smokestack on one side of the building. Most of these older buildings were heated using boilers. Boilers are basically what they imply, huge tanks of water are heated to boiling and the steam is then transferred to pipes through the building and into radiators in the individual classrooms. To heat up a room the radiators needed to be opened and then the hot steam would circulate through the pipes. The pipes would get hot and that in turn would heat up the room. I don't think there was any way to actually regulate how hot a room got when the radiators were on it just got hot. The desks in the room closest to the radiators would usually get too hot and the desks furthest away would usually be too cold. I don't think that the middle of the room was any better. The one benefit to a radiator was that when we came in from recess and the cold or snow we could easily dry all of our coats and gloves and hats as they would be hung on top of the radiators. I did not enjoy the school. Chelly did not enjoy school. Sam did not enjoy school. Matthew liked school. For me school was not fun because we had been put into the school in the middle of the year. I was new and everyone else already had friends. I was temporary. Once dad recovered we would go back to our home in Duchesne, Utah. All of this contributed to my lack of desire to do much of anything at school. The teacher tried to be helpful but I was not used to her rules or way of teaching. My family was still trying to get back to a semblance of normality with dad still at the hospital and us living out of suitcases. Grandma's house was always fun to visit but living there was difficult. Visiting dad in the hospital was also difficult. A head injury like my dads had no other visible effects. He had a small bandage on his head but his body functioned like normal he could walk, move his arms and legs, speak and hear us just fine but he could not leave the hospital. He had to stay so that his brain could heal and to make sure there were no other places where blood had pooled after the injury. Dad eventually recovered in every way except for the loss of his sense of smell, that has been gone ever since. It was winter time and Bountiful gets a lot of snow. We would wake up to six or ten or even fourteen inches of snow and sometimes more. Even with all of the snow the schools did not close and we still had to walk. We would leave the house and Chelly would lead the way. We would make a trail out of the front door and across the front yard. We did not try to stay on sidewalks as most were not cleared anyway. We created our own paths as we walked towards the church that was across the street from grandma's house. We went through the parking lot of the church down the street two blocks and turned right. We walked next to a city park for three blocks and turned left and the school was just a half block in on the right hand side of the street. Our jeans would be wet up to our knees, our shoes and socks or our boots and socks would be wet, our gloves would be frozen and we probably looked like Eskimos. We bonded to the snow just as much as we bonded to each other. Every day we got up and walked to school.

Shoveling Snow

I love the snow. I know I have said it before but I really do enjoy everything about snow. When I was a teenager, I worked as a Janitor for Snow College. I had started at thirteen with my older sister. We went into work every night from ten til midnight even on school nights. My sister and I were each assigned a building to clean. I was responsible for the science building with all of its taxidermied animals in a case along the wall of the main floor. The science building was three stories tall and my job was to start at the top and sweep out all of the classrooms to the hallway, sweep all of the hallways and then mop the hallways. Along with this I had to wipe down all of the chalk boards, take out the trash from all of the receptacles (professors would leave their trash bins outside of their office doors in the hall), and clean and restock all of the bathrooms. The chalk boards had six surfaces that would slide up and down as they were used. Occasionally there would be a note on one of the boards to please not erase as it was a math proof that was being solved. Those proofs usually took up three or four of the surfaces available. I constantly wondered what they were trying to solve as I was only thirteen and I didn't understand these advanced equations. When I got older I would come to loath these proofs. A teacher could assign for homework just one or two problems and it would take hours to complete. As I got older I continued to be a janitor and come in every night but in the winter time I was asked to work a little more. The daily janitorial staff showed up to work around six every morning but if it snowed they would show up at four in the morning. The main janitor had a list of additional workers needed to shovel the snow. I and my two younger brothers became a crew. My mom would get a call about four thirty in the morning and she would come in and wake us up. We all shared a bedroom so it was an easy thing to do. We would all get up and dressed then go down stairs and grab our coats, gloves and hats and head out the door. We were usually assigned to work the west campus of the college so we would start walking the four blocks to get to our area. We were asked to show up by five and clear the sidewalks. We never had any supervision and we always worked together. We grabbed the shovels from where they would leave them next to the building and get to work. If there was only an inch or two the work went quickly with each of us taking a walkway and just pushing the snow to the other end. There were hundreds of yards of sidewalk on the west campus so if we were feeling spry we would even run as we pushed the snow. If there were more than three inches, and sometimes we had more than a foot of snow, we would walk together one in front of the other. I would usually be last in line. The first brother would clear the middle of the sidewalk and the other brother and myself would push the snow off of the edges of the walk at an angle. This was always easiest when there was too much snow to do the walk on ones own. Sometimes it was still snowing when we started so we would shovel once in one direction and then have to come back the other direction and shovel again. If the snow was really bad or if they needed additional help on the main campus they would let us know and we would walk the five blocks up to the main campus and we would shovel up there. It was a lot harder at the main campus because there were a lot more stairs that had to be shoveled. To do the stairs one would start at the top and work down to the bottom. The challenge was that as one got closer to the bottom of the stairs the more snow one was having to shovel. Once the two hours were up we were usually sweating in our coats from all of the work and starving from the lack of breakfast. with two hours of work in we would trudge back home we had to get our own driveway shoveled before we went inside to eat.

Foxes

I love the snow. Even snow in March or April. I love to play in the snow, to sled, tube, snowboard, ski, throw, build, eat, and everything else that can be done with snow. Growing up in a small town in rural Utah it was easy to enjoy the simple pleasure that snow brought. School was never cancelled because of snow. In elementary school we were allowed to play outside during recess in the snow. We would build some of the biggest snowballs one could imagine. Because the fields were so big and devoid of trees or other objects that might impede the ability to roll the snow, one could easily roll a ball of snow bigger and taller than even the tallest student on the field. Sometimes it would take two or three or even four people to push the mountain of snow around the field but we did it. Some of those snowballs would still be in the field well into April. At home we would make forts out of snow and have snowball fights with all of the neighbor kids. We never really had teams usually it was one against everybody else but occasionally we would end up with two or three teams battling each other. We always got wet and cold but we didn't care. Sometimes I would lose a glove or mitten when throwing the snowballs because the snow would stick to the ice and snow on the glove. There were occasions when we would lose a glove to a snowball or a snowman and never see it again until the snow melted. One of the games we loved to play in the snow was foxes. This was a game made for the snow. To set up the game of foxes first you had to have snow. First the field has to be created. This is done by walking in a large circle and shuffling the feet to kick up the snow and make a deep track. When the circle is done you make a cross from one side of the circle to the other. Once this cross is made a smaller circle is made at the center of the cross. The snow is all trampled down in that area and another smaller area is created at the end of one of the crosses. The center is where the person that is the fox starts and the place at the bottom of the cross outside the circle is the rabbits den. The game begins and the rabbits run around the circle. There is no place that is off limits but the rabbits and the foxes must stay on the created paths at all times. The fox chases the rabbits and converts them from rabbits to foxes if they are touched. The only safe zone is the rabbits den but as we played we made sure that a time limit was added as to how long one could spend in the rabbits den. The last one to be caught became the first fox of the new game. I with my older sister and two younger brothers and younger sister could play for hours. Running around in the snow being chased by the fox, trying to stay upright while running the circle. Playing with the fox by going into the middle of the circle and waiting. We would slip and slide, jump and dive around in the snow. Our jeans would be completely soaked by the time the games were finished. I think the only thing that would bring us inside from our game was mom calling us for dinner and even then we would protest that the game wasn't done yet and try to get another ten minutes in before she called again. Now the other rule in the house was that we were supposed to come in the front door after getting all wet because we had a mud room in between the front door and another door into the house complete with a closet to hold up all of the coats and mittens and gloves and boots. We made it most of the time but dad would usually have to come in and yell at us to clean up the piles of coats and boots and gloves and hats and scarves from the floor of the closet or even the floor of the mud room. The piles could get so high that the door to the closet would not shut or the door to the house which opened inward would not open because there were too many things on the floor. Naturally when we were called in from the back door we came into the house using the back door which almost always meant a trail of wet coats, gloves, and hats as we took them off along with the melting snow from the back door, through the TV room and living room into the dining room and kitchen. With red cheeks and dripping noses we came to the table ready to pray and eat.

Injury

I was nine years old when dad had an accident. He was helping a friend build a new house. The basement had just finished curing. Early one Saturday morning dad went up to help start getting the floor joists set for the first floor. Mom and all of the kids were going to come up later and have lunch together. Dad was walking across a two by twelve board that was laying lengthwise above the basement when the board broke. Dad fell about ten feet and landed on his head. Now I had been told many times that the hardest thing a Grindstaff had was his head. I guess that dad was just trying to prove the point. The place where dad was working was just a few minutes from town and Mom and us kids were on the road on our way to the place when we heard the ambulance. Of course as kids we were all curious and excited because it was not every day that one saw the lights and heard the sirens of an ambulance. It was headed in the opposite direction of where we were headed. We arrived at our destination and found our friends mom was crying. In short order so was my mom. We heard the tale but none of us knew how badly dad had been injured. Being nine, I did not understand the severity of much of anything. The events of that day are still blurry. I think mom went after the ambulance and I think that we went with her. Dad had been taken to the closest hospital in Roosevelt, Utah but because of the nature of the trauma to his head they could not help him. There was a helicopter arriving shortly from Salt Lake and dad would be life lighted to the University of Utah medical center. Mom could not travel with him in the helicopter and she had five kids in tow anyway. The helicopter would go straight over the Uintah mountains and over the Wasatch mountains and right to the hospital. We were told later that dad was in and out of consciousness during his ride in the ambulance asking the first responders to please let him up and to please help him. They said he was very polite for one who had just had a very serious injury. Once mom found out where they were taking dad we all piled back in the car and drove. The drive to Salt Lake from Roosevelt is over three hours. It winds through many canyons and steep roads with even sharper corners. Mom has probably never driven so fast down these small canyon roads. I don't think we stopped for anything. Every curve flew by. Because of the time it took to get dad from the accident sight to the hospital and from there onto the helicopter it was dark by the time we arrived at the hospital at the University of Utah. Now this happened before cell phones. Before we left Mom had to make some phone calls. Mom had called grandma in Bountiful and told her what had happened and asked her to meet dad at the hospital. My uncle who lived with grandma also came with her to the hospital. I think Grandma made most of the other arrangements to take care of us once we arrived. An aunt who lived in the Salt Lake valley was informed and she met us at the hospital to take us to her house where we would spend the night. When we finally arrived at the hospital we found out only that dad had been taken right away to surgery to relieve the pressure of a blood clot or blood pressure to his brain. They did this by removing a quarter sized chunk of his skull. The surgery lasted a long time. We were sitting at our aunts house waiting for news. The two youngest brothers were asleep but Chely and I staid up watching TV because we wanted to know what was happening. A cousin of ours from mom's side of the family had also come up and was keeping us company. My aunt came back about 4 in the morning and let us know that Dad had come out of surgery and would recover. They did not know much else. Mom would be staying at the hospital with my sister, the baby at the time, and we would eventually move in with grandma in Bountiful, Utah.

Puppet Show

While we were living in Overland Park, Kansas the ward we lived in set up dinner groups to help everyone get to know others better. The groups changed every month and it gave us a chance to really get to know other families and gain new friends. The list was set up so that every month their was one family responsible for hosting the dinner at their home and the other two or three families would come over and usually bring something to share with the dinner. We had been to several dinner groups when it became our turn to host. We had one newly married couple who had moved in recently so that the husband could go to medical school at the University of Kansas. We also had an older widow that came to the house. We had a great meal I am sure, although I do not remember what we ate, and then it was our turn to share a gospel message. Maggie had made the plan with Patrick and Ella so I did not know what they were going to do. This meant that I was just as much a part of the audience as our three visitors. We sang a Primary song that the kids had been learning and said a prayer and then the kids got behind a small cardboard box to block them from view. Maggie then started to narrate a story and Patrick and Ella put puppets on their hands to act out the show. Their were a few times when they had the wrong puppet on their hands and they would slowly lower their hands to put the right ones on. Patrick and Ella put on a great show and through this small and simple puppet show they were able to bring the spirit into the room. The audience including me laughed and smiled and beamed with pride at the message they portrayed. Patrick and Ella really enjoy being the center of attention and they continue to be my center of attention.

Carlsbad Cavern

I was living in Bastrop, Texas and as a family we decided to drive back to Utah to see family and to ride the Slick Rock Trail in Moab, Utah. Well since we were driving we thought of places we could stop along the way. Now Texas is a huge state from east to west on I-10 one can drive for almost nine hundred miles and not leave the state. We planned on taking the I-10 out of Texas and that meant driving south towards San Antonio. We started out early one morning driving towards San Antonio on the back roads that took us towards San Marcos and Kyle. We knew these roads well because that is the way we went to get to the Stake Center or to the Temple. Now San Antonio sits about one third of the way through the state of Texas along the I-10 corridor. So we had a long way to drive. We decided that we were going to drive all day and get to Carlsbad, New Mexico and go through the Carlsbad Caverns the following day. The drive is long and after San Antonio there really aren't any big cities or anything to see along the way. There are hills, fields, sage brush, rocks, small stunted trees, and a lot of nothing else to look at. It is peaceful except for the constant hum of the traffic going both directions, the ever present semis pulling their loads across the state, and the threat of boredom at every straight line. The I-10 is so straight that sometimes it seems it would be easier to get a bar and brace the wheel then take a nap. One positive abut this stretch of road is that the speed limit is eighty so there is little worry of getting pulled over for speeding although there is the occasional car that comes speeding by doing ninety or more. We didn't follow the I-10 all the way into El Paso instead we took a small two lane road north some time after Fort Stockton. We went North for a while then west again and so on until we got to Carlsbad, New mexico. Once in Carlsbad we went looking for a place to stay for the night. Originally we were going to camp here but when we saw that the camping areas were on the other side of town away from the cavern we decided to get a hotel room with a pool. We went swimming that night and relaxed a bit before going to bed for the night. Carlsbad is higher in elevation than we expected and the weather was chilly. We did not bring long pants or jackets and we were told that the Carlsbad Cavern can be a little chilly. So we got up early the next morning and went to the local Walmart to get warmer clothing. The drive up to Carlsbad cavern is a gradual climb all the way to the top of a large plateau. It takes about thirty minutes to get to the visitor center and the start of the Cavern. Once at the visitor center we had to decide which trail we wanted to take. We decided on going right into the main entrance and taking the long way down. I wasn't paying much attention but found out later that there is an elevator that takes people right down into the main area of Carlsbad Cavern. We were part of the first group of the morning on the main trail. We went down and enjoyed the leisure pace that we set. Where the trail begins going into the mouth of the cave it is very steep so the trail is built with a lot of switchbacks and as one travels deeper into the cave the opening begins to get smaller and smaller and the light provided by the opening diminishes. As it gets darker there are lights placed along the trail to help the navigation but not enough to make it overbearing. Once at the bottom of the main entrance the trail travels along a small ridge that is probably the only time that the trail doesn't feel like it is going down. As one looks further back along this ridge there is a small sign that says back in the dark, "this part of the cave continues for a long way but is not accessible by tourists" or something to that effect. The reason it is inaccessible is because back in the dark, a darkness that can almost be felt bulging from the wide opening, is where the bats live. They say there are so many bats that the guano they produce is many feet deep on the cave floor. I hear it is quite a sight to see them as they leave the cave each night but we did not stay for the show. The trail continues down what seemed an endless trail. I was starting to get a little worried as I needed to find a bathroom and there was no where to go along the trail. There are many stalagtites and stalagmites that have grown into amazing shapes and colors. The trail is smooth and one can get right up next to these geological structures and take pictures. Just as I was getting desperate for a bathroom the trail comes to a room, or what I would call a room hundreds of feet deep in a cave. There, in this room, was a concession stand, gift shop and bathrooms. We all went and then took the shorter trail around this huge almost completely open room full of rocks and water and color. It is amazing to see what water can do to transfer minerals from one place to another. We had a great time down in Carlsbad Cavern and I was worried that we were going to have to take the same trail back up again when Maggie mentioned the elevators that I didn't know existed. We took the elevator.

Calamity Jane

My older sister always liked to participate in as many extra curricular activities as possible. She got to high school two years before I did and seemed to be involved in everything. She ran cross country, was in the school musical, played in the band and ran track at the end of the year. As a new freshman I wanted to do just as much as she was doing. I may have stepped on her toes a few times including running cross country with her and being a part of the school musical with her, I even ran track at the end of the school year. The school decided to do a production of Calamity Jane my freshman year. For me this musical involved dressing up in cowboy attire and singing and about love and beauty and dancing around at the local bar or farm (the scenes in the musical). Trying out consisted of showing up and being given a script to read over. After about fifteen minutes we were ushered onto the stage with a group of three or four other people trying out. We read the scene as we interpreted it and then were told that call backs would be listed on the office window the next day. I tried out and was sad when I did not get a main part. It was not obvious to me that juniors and seniors usually got those parts while freshman and sophomores got the crowd roles. Even though this was a musical we were not asked to sing. I was okay with not getting a main part because I was also wrestling so I had to manage the time I had available. At the first practice we learned how to do a simple shuffle step and started to learn a chorus piece from the musical. When the director heard me sing she asked me to sing a song that was to be performed in the bar scene. I tried it out and she liked it so much that she gave me that song as a solo. I was very excited about the opportunity but also a little afraid of what that meant. I would have to sing a solo in front of whatever crowd was present. My older sister was very supportive. She helped me practice my part and never laughed when I would miss a word. The high school orchestra played the music for the musical so I had to learn how to sing the melody without actually having it played. Orchestra's pieces seemed meant to add depth to the music and the song but not the melody. The orchestra director also helped everyone on stage by reciting the words to the songs and sometimes she would even recite the script. Well after two months of rehearsals the performances began. Our matinee was scheduled with the local middle school. They were bused over and sat according to class with teachers constantly telling the students to hush. There was a men's and women's dressing rooms on one side of the stage and all of us crammed in to change into costume. I was dressed in my cowboy attire which consisted of boots with spurs, jeans, old leather chaps that I borrowed from a friend, a long sleeve shirt, my grandpa's old leather vest, a red bandanna, and a hat. The director made all of the lead characters and me, because of my solo, wear stage makeup which consisted of a tan base on the face and neck and eye liner. I looked good! The musical started without a hitch we danced and sang and waited for our parts while repeating every one else's lines. When you hear the play over and over you tend to be able to repeat almost everything. Then my song was up. My solo is a song about a beautiful girl named Adalaid Adams. I sang all about her hair, eyes, cheeks, and other body parts. I sang her name various times as well. Coming into the second verse I forgot the words and stood their while the orchestra kept playing. My mind went totally blank and I stared out wondering what I should do. I looked out into the audience for what seemed an eternity when I remembered to look at the orchestra director. She was mouthing the words and one look down and I remembered my place and sang as if I had not missed anything. In all of the other performances I never forgot the words to the song. I still look good.

Capture the Flag

I was a young scout leader in Overland Park, Kansas and we went on monthly camp outs. Because we were in the city it would take an hour just to get out of town. This meant meeting at the church around six and loading up then heading out. We would arrive at camp around seven then it was time to set up the tents and other sleeping arrangements, getting a fire started and making the assignments for duties. Duties for scouts included; setting up tents, roping off the chopping area, getting the cooking area prepared and lighting the fire. In the suburbs of Kansas City lived a grandma of one of the scouts and mother to several adult members of our congregation. She had a large property complete with house and two large metal barns. One barn was full of old farm and work related implements and leftover gear from her husbands heating and cooling company. It had been filled to overflowing at least ten years before I saw it and no one ever attempted to clean it out. The other barn was sometimes used as a garage and had a few old tools and parts but the cement floor, about thirty feet by sixty feet, was cleared for us when we came to camp. The barns sat about one hundred feet apart on an angle with one slightly lower in elevation from the other. To the side of the full barn was a fire ring with logs and two by sixteen planks surrounding the fire ring used for benches. The scouts would set up the cooking tables behind these benches. On the cooking tables would be placed the five gallon water jug, a propane stove, all of the utensils, and all of the food. Usually the evening meal consisted of tin foil dinners. These were made by chopping up a bag of potatoes, carrots and onions and placing those on top of aluminum foil. A small ground meat patty was then placed on top of these vegetables and then covered with the foil. Once completely enclosed the foil wrapped food would go into the bottom of the fire where the coals would be hot enough but not to hot and then left for between thirty and fourty five minutes. With the fire going and food cooking it was time to play. Since it was usually dark by this time it was easy enough to set up the capture the flag game. The place we were staying in had a large fenced in field that was part of the property where we were camping. All of the scouts and several of the leaders would make their way up to the field and play. Capture the flag is a staple for all campers. Two teams are set and each have a t-shirt or rag that they use for their flag. The field is split into two halves one for each team. Each team places their flag in a hidden but visible location and each team selects a location for their jail. The game then begins with one flag protector staying near their teams flag to protect from the opposing team. This person needs to be fast because they chase and try to capture the opposing team. If a scout is in the opposing sides area, and is touched by the opposing team, he is escorted to the jail. They can not leave the jail area unless one of their teammates touches them or until the game ends. Each team is trying to get the other teams flag and bring it across to their side of the playing field. All of this being played in almost total darkness. The games can last minutes or hours depending on the area and how well each team works together. The game involves a lot of silence and then a lot of noise. Yelling is expected especially when one is in prison or when one finds out the location of the other teams flag. When the food is done everyone is ready to eat.