Photos of Mom

Here are some photos of my mom (and Dad) when they were younger. Thought you should see where all of the stories on this blog come from.

Thanks Ra Ra for getting these pictures to me.

Where's Jenny

This story cracks me up so I'd like to share it and hopefully you'll laugh a little too! It involves four of mom's little angels. One morning while mom was upstairs, Eric, Sarah and Becky were watching cartoons like usual. Mom comes down the stairs and finds Becky in the middle of the floor, sitting in a heap of cheerios, right in front of Eric and Sarah. Mom says, "uh guys, why didn't you stop her from making a mess?" Eric and Sarah replied without taking their eyes off the t.v. "we didn't see her". Mom let's out a frustrated sigh, "where's Jenny?" Of course no one knew anything, not even Becky. You see, I had this tendency to have Becky get into things I wanted to but I knew I wasn't supposed to. Becky was too little to get into things herself and mom would always ask her "Did Jenny do this?" and Becky would say "I do it". I'm not sure what I did to make Becky so loyal to me but mom didn't feel like she could get mad at me because she didn't really have proof I did it and Becky would never tell on me! Eric and Sarah weren't very good witnesses as we can tell from the story just told!

Whatch Yourself Buddy!

When we were young, we had a neighborhood bully that lived right next door to us. His name was Joel. He would spend his time tormenting all of my sisters and occasionally me (along with a number of other kids in our neighborhood.) Angie was around 5 years old (I think) when this happened. Angie was out trying to sweep the driveway with a broom that she could barely even hold while a couple of her older sisters watched. My mom was also watching from the living room window, when she noticed Joel making his way over to my sisters. She watched to see what was going to happen and sure enough, he began to tease and torment my sisters. Angie's two older sisters took off pretty quick, but Angie hung back and continued doing what she was doing. Joel kept on bothering her and even tried to take the broom from her. At that my mom thought it was about time to intervene, but as she stood up, she saw something that made her stop to watch a little more. She saw Angie rear the broom back as best she could and then, with all her might she swung the broom trying to hit this bully. Unfortunately, She missed her target, but Joel decided it was too close and moved on to the next poor soul to harass. Here's to Angie, the conquering hero.

MARCHING!

I think this story is adorable and so Becky, however, it is really short. As kids often do, Becky was jumping (or was she?) on the bed. Mom goes in the room and says "Becky, quit jumping on the bed!" and Becky replies very matter-of-factly, "I'm not jumping, I'm marching!" What a cutie!

What would he do with four?

Well, we wer eating with the family and because eric isn't here we often find ourselves talking about him and mom told us a cute little story! When Eric was little dad would give him a cookie, but Eric needed one for both hands so dad would give him another one. Well, knowing the guy dad is he thought it would be funny to see what Eric would do if he handed him a third cookie. So dad held out a cookie. Eric would look at the cookie in his left hand then at the one in his right hand then at the one in dad's hand and did that a couple times then he stuck one in is mouth and grabbed the the third one. Mom doesn't remember how he actually got around to eating them but she said it was so cute to see this little boy with a cookie sticking out of his mouth and one in each hand! What would he have done if dad gave him a fourth one? He's clever, he would've thought of something! :D

Loud Mouth

So Jenny, in a comment to my "Near Death Experience" post, reminded me of a story that my mom likes to tell. I was probably around 5 years old. My mom had taken me and my sisters grocery shopping and I got to sit underneath the cart on the little space where you normaly put big bags of dog food (probably because the other places in the cart were taken by my sisters). Anyway, as my mom turned the corner to the next aisle there was a very rotund lady coming towards us from the other end. My mom kept wishing that she would get through the entire aisle without me saying anything embarrasing. We passed the lady, and I was on my very best behavior. And just when my mom thought she was home free, I couldn't hold it anymore. As we were getting ready to turn out of that aisle, I said at the top of voice, "MOM, DID YOU SEE HOW FAT THAT LADY WAS?" My mom didn't even turn to see if the lady heard because there was no doubt that she had. My mom quickly turned the corner, hurried up the rest of her shopping, and left. THE END.

Poor Eric

Alrighty, I got a good one. And to keep true to the story, i will try to tell it word for word just like mom does. "Eric always took longer in the bathroom then you girls. He took FOREVER to get ready. In fact, I remember his first day of junior high. He took a really long time getting ready and had picked out his outfit a week earlier. After he was finally ready, he walked off to the bus stop. On his way to the bus stop, Eric was walking past a huge puddle right when a car sped by and splashed him. He was so upset. I've never seen him so upset. He came home and cleaned up and picked out another one of his new school outfits, and then I drove him to school. He was really nervous about his first day of school."
I don't know why I enjoy that story so much...I laughed when mom told me and she got mad at me for laughing at you. But I'm still laughing on the inside.

"yes" "no"

When I (Jenny) was little I made up this game called "Yes, No". I would say to Sarah, "You say yes and I'll say no". We would proceed to argue back and forth. The funniest part is that a lot of the time we would actually start to really fight arguing back and forth "YES!" "NO!"

If you plant them they will grow!

I can't remember how old I was but I was probably two or three. One day Dad, Mom, Eric, Sarah, and I (Jenny) were outside working in the garden and playing. I kept getting in dad's way and he was getting frustrated so he threatened that if I didn't stay out of his way he would plant me in the garden! Well, it came time to be done and go inside. I was so upset with dad and mom kept trying to figure out what was wrong but everytime I tried to tell her she didn't understand what I was saying. She would say, "tell me one more time I promise to listen very carefully this time', but she didn't understand me. So I was getting even more mad because I had to keep repeating myself and they were getting more frustrated because they had no idea what was wrong. Finally, mom figured out that I was upset because dad had told me he was going to plant me in the garden and he never did! So, we all went back outside and dad planted all of us in the garden. Of course, I refused to get out until they had watered me and convinced me that I had, in fact, grown!

Stories by Mom!

I have decided to start this blog in honor of my mother. She tells some of the best stories about our family growing up that I thought it would be a shame not to share them. This blog will have contributions from the entire family. I hope that you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed creating them.