The Sound of Memories . . . Er, Music

Just like how the smell of freshly mowed grass takes me back to my days as a softball player, the sound of certain songs also bring up different memories.

Today while I was studying in the living room, my roommate was playing music. One of the songs that came on her Pandora was "Fireflies" by Owl City. Suddenly, I was no longer on the couch reading about dialects; I was sitting at a pottery wheel making my very first mug. Now, this was way back in my junior year of high school when I took a pottery class. My teacher would play music while we attempted to mold shapeless mounds of clay into acceptable containers and struggled to keep the clay from flying off the wheel. I remember that that was the first time I had ever heard that song and it reminds me of how much fun that class was.

"Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars takes me back to sparkling and cascading silk and hot, sweaty bodies dancing around me. That was the theme song of one of the high school dances I went to. Whenever "If I Had You" by Adam Lambert comes on the radio, I'm taken back to a volleyball court. It was one of the songs on our warm up CD that helped get us pumped and ready for a game. The first time I heard "We Are Never Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift, I was in the Creamery on Ninth in Provo with my first boyfriend. We broke up the next day. On a happier note, the first time I heard "Beat This Summer" by Brad Paisley, I was having all sorts of crazy adventures with my now fiancee.

Some songs, like "Fireflies," are more than just another song on the radio; they take me back to specific memories. Music takes me on a dance down memory lane.

Food that Talks Back

Last week, the winter season decided I needed to suffer for a while, so it gave me a lovely cough and an ever-flowing nose. With finals coming up, I decided to take lots of medicine to try and get over my cold before I tortured my brain. As part of my treatment, I got my favorite cough drops (the really delicious Breezers cough drops that are good enough to be eaten like candy). However, I got a surprise when I opened the bag for the first time to soothe my burning throat. The wrappers were covered with little words. At closer investigation, I read things like, "High five yourself," "Turn your 'can do' into a 'can did'," and "You've been through worse." My wrapper was giving me motivation! That pleasant surprise pretty much made my day, and I looked forward to finishing one cough drop just so I could unstick another and get inspiration from the wrapper.

This got me thinking about what other foods might be saying to me. Those fries last night might have warned me that eating them was probably going to cost me an extra trip to the gym or that apple a few days ago might have applauded me for eating healthy and promised to give me vitamins. The carrots from work might have screamed, "Pick me, pick me! I'm healthy and help you see!" (Apparently they're good rhymers.) Then they would be frustrated when I choose the smug cookies instead.

Maybe it's a good thing food doesn't really talk, but it sure made being sick a little more enjoyable.

Have an Ice Day!

I absolutely love going to college at Brigham Young University. It's a great place with lots of great people. However, sometimes going to college is dangerous. Now, I'm not talking about singed eyebrows in chemistry lab or broken noses in basketball class or anything like that. I'm talking about the ice.

Coming to college, I had to adjust to actually walking through snow. In high school, all I had to do was drive to school and make it inside the building before freezing. All my classes were in the same building or just across the street, so I never really had to worry about wearing good shoes or making sure to layer up. Everything changed when I came to BYU.

Freshman year I had to learn to wear the right shoes during the winter if I wanted to keep all my toes and to wear as many layers as I could without looking like I'd already gotten my Freshman 15. Every day I had to walk up a hill to get to campus, which was fine until the snow came and it became more of an uphill ice rink. Fellow students linked arms and went slowly up the hill together. If people fell, someone would help them up because heaven forbid we be late to a class. It was hard work trudging up that hill in the snow, but it was kind of fun because everyone banded together to help each other make it to class.

The winter of my sophomore year was the worst. All of campus was a sheet of ice, and students were falling left and right. Some even had injuries like broken limbs from taking nasty falls, all in the name of trying to get to class. But school had to go on, so we buckled down to face the dangerous ice and shuffled, slid, and scooted to class.

So this year as the snow starts to fall and the sidewalks become slick as butter, I'll be strapping on spiked cleats, cladding my knees with volleyball pads, and praying to make it to class with nothing more serious than a red nose.

Magical Memories

In 2002, we constructed Hogwarts Castle.

Winter is when we're all feeling about as hungry as a bear who's been sleeping in a cave all winter with nothing to gnaw on except maybe a few lost field mice. So what do we do? We eat, sleep, eat, and then work out so we can eat even more—or maybe that's just me. I'm not complaining, though. I like food as much as the next starving college student. Appropriately, one of my favorite times of the year is when my family makes gingerbread houses.

I remember Mom running around the kitchen making gingerbread and taking long trips to the grocery store to carefully select only the most festive and colorful candies. I can feel the slippery tube in my hand as I carefully pump frosting out  to glue all the edible pieces together, like a giant, 3D jigsaw puzzle.  We dart around, nibbling imperfect slabs of gingerbread still warm from the oven. Our faces turn white as ghosts' as we slather powdered sugar on the square glass bases that hold the houses. One of my sisters took a little too much delight in acting out snowball battle scenes with the tiny gingerbread men and causing chaos and casualties all across the kitchen table. From under the table, a pair of begging puppy eyes stare me down until, when Mom isn't looking, I sneak crumbs to them.

I loved being an interior decorator for a day and furnishing the houses. There were exquisite decorations, such as licorice rugs and gumdrop reindeer heads (complete with pretzel antlers) above the fireplaces. There have been years where Santa has visited the gingerbread rooftops and little doghouses have been in the yard.

Our most legendary gingerbread house was not a house at all—it was a castle! Because we are Harry Potter nerds, we created a Hogwarts castle, complete with Whomping Willow. We even added little Harry Potter toys to populate it with witches and wizards. Making it was tricky (some might even say magical), but it was totally worth it.

Making gingerbread houses is one of my favorite family traditions. However (and pardon my cheese), my family hasn't just created dozens of gingerbread houses over the years—we also created memories that have lasted a lot longer than the gingerbread did.

Savoring the Holiday Season

As my fingers scrape the bottom of the candy bucket (yes, it's only a few days after Halloween, but I'm a college student who has to eat something to stay awake while studying), I feel a little sad that Halloween is over, and not just because the candy is almost gone. The pumpkins are caving into themselves; leaves are turning brown and falling, making the trees naked; the candy shelves are red and green instead of black and orange; and I can't find Waldo anywhere on campus. However, I feel ok about it all because when I flip the calendar to a new month, Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and now I can start looking forward to that holiday.

That's the way it should be—taking the season one holiday at a time. Lately it seems like all the fall and winter holidays are squished into a giant, blurry blob of candy, pine needles, and stuffing all topped with gravy. Christmas decorations come out so early that it seems like they never even leave the store. Sometimes I feel like I can't even enjoy the holidays because before one has even happened, the next holiday is already screaming in my face, begging for attention.

To read the rest of this blog post, visit the Stance for the Family Blog

Scared of Screaming

Fall is a wonderful time of the year (besides being the dreaded sign that school has started). The air is crisp and cool, the leaves are deep reds, yellows, and purples, and the smell of pumpkins is everywhere. And where there are pumpkins there is also Halloween.

Halloween is coming up so fast, it's scary. I don't usually get way into dressing up for the holiday (my twin and I will wear some pretty clever costumes together, but nothing extreme), but I enjoy traditions like pumpkin carving and eating chile at my grandma's house and convincing people to give me candy because I'm a poor, starving college student. Yes, Halloween is a sweet time, but there is one part of it that I'm not too fond of, and that's being scared.

I know being scared is a main part of Halloween, and I love a good prank, but some things just freak me out. The only way you'll get me to go to a haunted house or corn maze is if I am guaranteed a guy to cling to. Even when I know the chainsaw guy won't chop me to pieces and the blood on the dismembered arm is fake, I still get scared. I am an extremely jumpy person and am prone to letting out little screams when really startled. I don't like screaming in public, and somehow the spirit of Halloween is determined to make me do so.

Hopefully this Halloween will be a hoot, but not a scream.

Learning New Tricks

Technology has never been my grandma's thing, but she is very savvy in other categories. She can rustle up some delicious grub before you can even say you're hungry. Magic flows from her fingers and into the sewing machine as she creates and mends anything within reaching distance. She is really good at coloring with us in coloring books and somehow brings the elephants and mice to life with just Crayons. Her chicken nuggets and French fries are to die for; no one makes them better.

Movies and TV were the only kind of technology Grandma had.

However, this year changed her life forever.

She got an iPad.

I first found out about this when I got an email from her. I almost fell out of my chair in shock. Grandma's email was absolutely darling: she said it had taken her two hours to write it, but she did a really good job with it.

Now everyday I check my email to see if Grandma has sent me anything. I love reading what she sends me. Lines like, "I tried to be sick [so she didn't have to go to the Family History Center] but it didn't work. Grandpa is too smart", "E-mail is the last thing I look at before going to bed, first thing in the morning, and if I've been gone I look again as soon as I come through the back door", and "I spend more time on my iPad than I should. Am I getting lost in a different world, or just joining the world?" make my day.

That's one of the things I like best about my grandma: how much she makes me laugh. We can giggle like schoolgirls about boys or nothing at all, and she pulls faces all the time behind Grandpa's face when he's talking. After a visit to Grandma's house, my stomach hurts, and not only from all the good food but also from laughing so much. She always asks if we're sitting on a feather, but we're really just laughing because she's being hilarious.

Even with this technology Grandma just learned, she can still make me laugh.