Here's A Funny Story :o)

‘The Rock’ – Wood fired pizza

Here’s a funny story…

This past Monday my Visiting Teachers had us all meet for a luncheon. They like to do this in the summer sometimes. It’s fun to get together. They asked me if I had a suggestion where to eat in Covington, WA., that’s where we live. I love good New England Clam Chowder! I suggested that we eat at ‘The Rock’ and I told them about the luncheon bar where you can eat all you want for about $9.00 (It’s actually $9.59). None of them had ever been there so we all met there. I’d been there several times.

Now I forgot to mention one little thing to these sisters (ages 50 to 74)- the atmosphere and music. This is the funny part of the story. Kirsten and I are the first to arrive and then one by one the other 4 arrive. Well it was bright and sunny outside and when you first enter ‘The Rock’ it’s lighting is more subdued (not like a bar-not that I’ve been in a bar! The Rock has a bar but it’s separate from the dining area.). ‘The Rock’ is about rock music and artists. Each of their menus has a different rock star on them, Van Halen, etc. The music is soft to medium rock music, nothing hardcore. And, it’s a little loud. The motif is brick walls. The first time I went, my son David took me and I thought ‘The Rock’ meant Alcatraz, as the décor was bleak and dreary. Then David said, “No mom, its rock stars and music.” I said, "Oh.” All these things I ‘forgot’ to mention to these sisters. I had a one-track mind, the food was great! We all got to our table and we’re seated and the 74 year old says, “I can’t see to read the menu, it’s a little dark!” (After a few minutes your eyes adjust and you see fine.) The late 50’s sister said, “Man the music is a little loud in here. I don’t know if I like this or not.” Then I said, “Oh, I guess I forgot to mention the atmosphere and music, but the food is really great! I took Ginger Milam here for lunch one day and she loved it!” Ginger is 61! She’s a high school math teacher and she’s cool too! You’d never guess she’s 61! I love her and she’s so sweet! Then I also added, “You know I just have a way of ‘tuning out’ what I don’t want to hear, whether it is music, conversation, etc. and it doesn’t bother me.”

About this time, they are looking questioningly at me and they said, “Sis. Guptill I had no idea you frequented places like this!” They said it good-naturedly. Well not to be deterred by their comment I said, “Well, now sisters, you can go home and tell your families ‘you’ve been to The Rock!’ Now that’s living!” Then before we got up to get our food, I said I would offer the blessing on the food. The music was a little loud but not too loud so you really had to listen to hear the prayer, we didn’t want to be too obvious. Ha! Ha! Ha! Not be noticed! Five middle-aged women in ‘The Rock’ with a young girl, my daughter Kirsten… Anyway…halfway through the prayer it got really quiet and for half a minute after the prayer ended. The one sister said, “Wasn’t that nice, they turned the music down so we could pray.” The other sister said, “Oh, I don’t think they turned the music down, I just think the song ended.” Then another sister said, “Oh we asked ahead if they would turn the music down.” Then we all laughed! Once we all got settled and got our food and yummy clam chowder and were talking, things went well. After awhile one sister said, ‘You know I guess I don’t mind the music so much and it didn’t bother me after all. Then we looked up and over one of the exit signs was a red neon sign with an arrow that said,” stairway to heaven” The one gal said, “To which heaven, up or down!” She laughed and we all laughed!

Here’s the kicker...we were all talking about seeing the movie “Emma” which most of us had seen. It’s really good. It gives you a whole different perspective about Emma Smith. Then we got off on polygamy, which we know today is NOT practiced and forbidden by the church. However, we talked about how Emma didn’t like it. Well I told the sisters, “Sign me up!” They looked at me and said, “I’ve never heard anyone that was for that! You like it?” I said, “Think about it logically, you get to divide up the work and these younger ones can do the ‘bedroom stuff’ they are young and and oh well, you know.” We all had a good laugh! The one sister said, ‘Well, I guess being in here we really have become little devils! We all laughed. I wondered as we went outside what the ‘young 20 something’ waitresses were thinking! I laughed even harder! I’m sure the next time these gals, my friends, go to the Post office and look across the street at ‘The Rock’ they will always remember what it is! A pizza place for young people and ‘middle-aged!’ :o) Honestly it really is a nice place to take your family.

TAG! I'M IT!

I am only doing this because ‘I love Michelle!’
I have to ask myself—Why do I dislike doing the ‘Tag’ thing???
Hmmm. I could only come up with two good reasons. Just the two.
The answer: It takes time! It also means that you have to be personal and reveal things about yourself! That’s what makes it so interesting. It gets others to know you on a personal level. Sad that I would think ‘time’ and ‘being personal’ are factors. I can certainly spend lots of ‘time’ on the computer and reading ‘other blogs about other people.’ So I climbed down off my private little perch and here goes…

What Was I Doing 10 years Ago?
Let’s see, brush through the cobwebs in my brain…
The year 1998. We were living in Hawaii, two of my children had left the nest and four were still at home. I was serving in the YW as 2nd Cnslr. and teaching the Mia Maids and loved it! A year later I was the YW President. I loved the girls and they were so awesome! Kirsten was 8 years old and health-wise was doing very well!

What Is On My To-Do List Today?
Well I’ll tell you what I did yesterday!
-It only took 2 ½ hours to clean my house from top to bottom, vacuum, sweep, mop, dust, clean bathrooms, and wipe down kitchen. It’s such a breeze with half your stuff in storage!
-I went to a VT luncheon with my Visiting Teachers. We went to ‘The Rock’ a pizza place and the food is great! Now that’s a funny story-middle aged women going to a pizza place with rock music!
-I mailed some letters.
-I returned a book to the library. I decided I did not want to read it; it was dry and not too interesting.
-I went to Costco and did shopping.
-I went to Wal-Mart and did more shopping.
-I came home and put everything away from shopping.
-Doug and Ashley arrived from Utah.
-We chatted until 1AM!

What Are 3 Habits of Mine?
-I’m a clean freak! I don’t like messes.
-I have ‘an inquiring mind and curiosity’ – I like to learn and search out answers!
-I tend to be ‘impatient’ and want those answers now!

3 Things You Might Not Know About Me
-I hate salesmen! I especially do not like it when they call on the phone! Don’t call me, I’ll call you-which will be never!
-I love ‘fairytale & happily ever after’ movies!
-Someday I’m going to own my own l968 or something Mustang and I also want a Vespa, it’s moped-scooter!

4 TV Shows/Movies That I love
-#1 Shenandoah
-#2 The Slipper and the Rose
-#3 Jane Austin movies-Sense & Sensibility & Much ado About Nothing
-#4 The Work and the Glory movies and also Emma
-Okay I have to add all the Harry Potter movies too and Little Women with Winona Ryder! :o)

4 Books That I Love
-#1 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
-#2 All the Harry Potter Books by JK Rowling
-#3 The Ant and The Elephant by Bill Peet (I loved reading this book to my kids!)
-#4 A Heart Like His by Virginia Pearce
(My first love of reading is 'the scriptures and doctrine!')



4 Jobs That I Have Had
-I worked at a Tastee Freeze
-I worked as a cashier at Tularosa Drug Store
-I worked as a teller at Security Bank & Trust in Alamogordo, NM
-I worked as a secretary in a branch of US Bank in Oak Grove, Oregon
My very first job was a papergirl. I delivered the Alamogordo Daily Newspaper.

5 Places I Have Lived
-Tularosa, New Mexico
-Oregon City, Oregon
-Clackamas, Oregon
-Kailua, Hawaii
-Covington, Washington

5 Of My Favorite Foods
-#1 I love to eat all kinds of salads, green, oriental, fruit, etc.!
-I love all kinds of muffins!
-I love a turkey dinner with all the trimmings!
-I love canned sweet peas. I love to eat them cold, not warm and they are good in green salads!
-I love chocolate, candy, ice cream, etc.!

I DON'T TAG ANYONE! :o)

When Grandmas Was A Little Girl - #23

Story #23 - Christmas tree cutting and hot chocolate-Cloudcroft
Do you like to go and pick out your family Christmas tree? Do you get all excited?

When I was growing up we drove up to Cloudcroft, about half an hour away, and would go cut down our Christmas tree. My dad had a friend who lived up in Cloudcroft and he would invite our family up to cut our Christmas tree. We always looked forward to this special trip! I can’t remember my dad’s friend’s first name. I only remember them as Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell. My mom would have us all bundle up in warm clothes and she would bring blankets and several thermoses of hot chocolate. Most of the time when we made the trip there was snow on the ground. Mr. Mitchell had a tree rope that hung from a tall fir tree not too far from his house. You could swing out far and it was so much fun! His home was on a hillside so there was a slope to the ground. You would hang onto the thick rope and then push off from the ground and swing out over the slope and then come back to the to the top of the mound of ground where you pushed off. We would then tramp through the snow up into the forest to find just the ‘perfect tree.’ My brother Geoffrey was not afraid of heights and he always looked for the best treetop. Then he or Douglas would climb up with the saw and cut the treetop off. They always made sure it was at least six feet tall! My mom would also have us cut sugar pine branches. She loved to decorate with the branches of long sugar pine.

One year when we went to get our tree from the Mitchells, it was really cold and the snow was deep and hard to tramp through. The snow came up to our knees. My dad and brothers finally found a suitable tree. Doug climbed up the tree and cut off the treetop. It was so cold; he just fell out of the tree onto the snow. He was so cold. He tried to warm up with hot cocoa but he didn’t really warm up until we got home and he had a hot bath!

My mom loved to decorate and she was very artistic and creative. She would put the branch swags of sugar pine on the top of the fireplace mantel. It was always so pretty. She would add pine cones to it as well. One year she bought several rolls of red velvet wrapping paper and covered the living room doors and used gold Christmas decorations and made a beautiful door arrangement onto the red velvet doors. It was beautiful! My mom would also have centerpieces on the coffee table in the family room. She always made it look so pretty at Christmas time.

When your grandpa and I lived in Hawaii while my kids were young I liked to decorate my front door with wrapping paper and a wreath and decorate the wreath. Our front door always looked pretty. I put lots of strings of small clear white Christmas lights under the edge of the overhang of the roof. I would put garland around the mailbox and post and would put a big red velvet bow on top of the mailbox. I had to throw the garland away every year because the dogs that walked by liked to ‘mark’ the mailbox post! We had Areca Palms along the side of the garage. They grew quite bushy. I intertwined lots of strings of clear white Christmas lights in those. When the wind blew softy the palm branches swayed so gracefully and the little clear white lights looked so beautiful. People that lived in Aikahi Park, where we lived, would walk by at night and always loved our decorations. I guess I took after my mom I that I love to decorate for Christmas!

(This story should be #23- I posted one a few days ago as #23 about a 'finitisimal bite' and that should have been story #24-oops. I corrected that one as story #24-not that anybody would know the difference!)

Have you solved the riddles yet???

Solving the riddles!

Riddle #1 - $100 and 100 animals
Solution-
94 chickens - $47.00
1 cow - $ 3.00
5 horses - $50.00

100 animals
$100.00


Riddle #2 - The farmer, the fox, chicken and grain
Solution
Step 1 -Take the chicken across and leave the fox with the grain, he won't eat it. Step 2 -Come back and get the fox and the grain will be left.
Step 3 -When you take the fox across bring the chicken back with you and the fox will be by itself.
Step 4 -When you bring back the chicken leave it off and take the grain back across to the fox.
Step 5 -Come back for the chicken and take it back across.
Now you have all 3 on the other side of the river.

I Love Riddles! How About You?

Riddles!

I was going through some things I had and ran across two riddles that I heard as child growing up. I thought I'd like to share them with you. Now for those of you who run to 'Google' for searches, etc. Please do not go there to find the solution. This is will be a 'brain exercise' and will be fun to 'figure out' the solutions! Right??? Right!!!

I actually remember being about 12 years old when my dad told these two riddles to me and it took me a little while to figure them out but I got the right answers! You can do it too and probably quicker than I did!

Here goes:

Riddle #1 - $100 and 100 Animals
Chickens are 50 cents each
Cows are $3.00 each
Horses are $10.00 each

You have $100 to spend and you must have a total of 100 animals.


Riddle #2 - A farmer, a boat, a fox, a chicken and a sack of grain.
You are the farmer and you have a boat on one side of the river. With you is your fox, chicken, and a sack of grain. You have to get all three to the other side of the river. You cannot take all three with you at the same time. If you leave the chicken with the grain, it will eat the grain. If the chicken is left with the fox, the fox will eat the chicken. How do you get all three across the river to the other side?

I have the solutions to both riddles. If you want the answers, e-mail me and I will let you know if your answers are correct! Have fun! :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #24

Story #24-You have to eat it – a finatisimal small bite!
Have you ever had to eat something your mom or dad made you eat and you didn’t want to eat it or you thought it would taste yuck?

My mom had a rule in our house when I was growing up. You ate ‘everything’ on the table and on your plate. If you took it, you had to eat it, all of it! Even if we didn’t like something that was for dinner, you had to take at least ‘two bites!’ She would say, “Try it, you may find out you like it. You have to take two bites and they can be infinitesimally small bites, but you have to eat it!” Infinitesimally means that it is a very, very small amount.

My mom and dad, your great grandparents, were born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They loved to eat seafood. My oldest bother Geoff also loved seafood. I did not like it so much. She loved to fix and eat oyster stew. She also loved to fix and eat split pea soup. Those two were my most hated foods! I didn’t mind the soup broth from the oyster stew. It’s just those oysters tasted slimy and awful to me. To this day I can vividly remember how they taste and how they went down my throat. I begged not to eat it. I ate the broth and asked, “Do I have to take a finatisimal bite?” I couldn’t pronounce that word correctly. And she would say, “Yes you do!” I gagged and threw up at the table one night and boy was my mother mad! She said, “How could I do such a thing?! They were perfectly good oysters and what a waste!” I had very large tonsils and I didn’t take much to make me choke or gag. I eventually had to have my tonsils removed and so did my brother Douglas. Anyway, every time that an oyster got near the back of my throat my gag reflex kicked and fought and my mind said, ‘No way that oyster is going down there! Yuck!” I told my mom how I hated those things and I would drink the broth but no way would I eat those oysters! Well, she relented and said, “Well we’re not going waste good oysters; you can drink the broth.” I would crush up saltine crackers and I loved eating the broth with crackers. My older brother Geoff quickly volunteered he would love to have my share! He and my mom would each take an equal share of my oysters. Thank goodness! I told my mom that when I grew up I would not make my kids eat oysters! I never did either!

Then there was the split pea soup. Now I like peas, sweet peas are my favorite. I even like them in salads. My mom would make a big pot of split pea soup and add bits of ham. I had to eat a small bowlful and I would drown it with crackers. I could stomach that soup but I had the strongest urge in my throat to gag! That is another soup that I never made my kids eat. Again, my oldest brother Geoff loved the soup. He could eat a whole pot full! Nasty! Yuck! One day the soup was left out too long and whoever was assigned dish duty that night forgot to put the soup away. My mom had some the next day and got sick, food poisoning. It was because of the ham in it. The pea soup was okay, but you cannot leave ham out as it will spoil. She had to throw away her delicious pea soup. Well, I sure was cheering inside myself, wahoo, I don’t have to eat that again! I felt bad my mom got sick. I was just mighty glad I didn’t have to eat that soup!

There was a third food I hated to eat. It was brussels sprouts! Bleck! They tasted and smelled like bad stinky socks! Eewww! Yuck! My twin brother Gayle hated them too. He would stuff them in his pocket or asked to be excused for a minute to go to the bathroom and spit them out! We both hated them! I remember having to sit at the table one night and not being excused. I had left those two brussels sprouts on my plate and I was stubborn and was 'NOT' going to eat them. My mother was just as stubborn and would not let me leave the table! After sitting at the table for half an hour after everyone else was gone and admitting to myself that my mom was not going to let me leave the table, I finally just held my breath, chewed them up and swallowed them! My mom didn’t fix them often but the next time she fixed them while she wasn’t looking, I pretended to cough and put them in my hand and stuffed them in my pocket! Good plan my twin brother had! He never got caught and neither did I! I told my mom about that years later when I was grown up and she said, “You two little stinkers! I never knew that!” To which I replied, “Good! We hated brussels sprouts and my kids will never eat them in my house because I will never fix them! ” We both laughed about that.

When I had my own family I did have them take ‘two bites’ and at least try all kinds of foods. I don’t think I ever made them eat something that they absolutely hated. I well remember how I felt when I was a kid and I did not want to force them to eat something and get sick.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #22

Story # 22 - Pheffernus and other yummy Christmas treats! It’s magic!

Do you have a favorite dish or treat that your mom makes every Christmas?

When I was a child I loved Christmas time because my mom always made such yummy goodies! Here are a few---
I loved her fruitcake! A lot of people don’t like fruitcake but hers was so good! She would make it right after Thanksgiving. I remember helping her grind and chop up the fruit and nuts. She would put rum extract (Not the alcoholic drinking kind-that’s bad for you!) in it and then she would wrap the fruitcake in a cloth and put it in a cake tin and hide it in her pantry. By Christmas time it tasted wonderful! It’s been a long time since I’ve had really good fruitcake. I’ve taste quite a few but none have ever tasted as good as the one my mother made when I was young. She would make Pheffernus and that was so good. You add molasses to the cookie dough. You shape the dough into balls and bake them. Just before they were completely cooled she would roll them in powdered sugar. They sure were good! I also liked her Tuti Fruity Cookies! She would use a Chocolate Chip cookie recipe and then she would grind up dried fruit-the kind you used in fruit cake-raisins, nuts and then chocolate chips. She would stir all that together in the cookie dough. She would spread the dough out into a jelly roll pan (cake pan) and bake them. Then she would cut them into bars. They were yummy! It was one of my favorites! I also thought the raw cookie dough tasted good too! She also would stuff dates. I loved dates! None of my kids ever liked dates. When I first saw my mom eating them, I thought they looked like cockroaches and so I would never eat them! Dates are a wonderful source of fiber and potassium! My mom would make a fondant out of powdered sugar and condensed milk and make a small candy roll and stuff it into the date and then roll the stuffed dates in plain sugar. Oh they were so good! It probably sounds awful to you, but they really did taste good! My mom would also make sugar cookies. She also made gingerbread cookies and cut them out with a cookie cutter like a gingerbread doll. She also baked pecan, pumpkin and lemon meringue pies! It was a feast! She also made her own cranberry sauce. My mom had a lot of food allergies, especially anything made of cornstarch or corn syrup or dextrose. Those products made her asthma really bad and she would have difficulty breathing. So she made a lot of homemade goodies from scratch.

One particular treat she made and not just at Christmas was gingerbread cake and she made her own lemon sauce. She cooked the lemon sauce in a pot on the burner. Oh my goodness. That was so good! She also whipped cream and we could have whipped cream on it too. I liked the lemon sauce the very best!

When my kids were young we would go to Grandma Valdine and Grandpa Darrell Guptill’s home for Christmas. We had a potluck and everyone brought different parts of the dinner. Grandpa Darrell Guptill usually made the turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and his famous baked beans. Everyone else brought the side dishes and desserts. One time Aunt Ellen brought Buck Eyes. For short, my kids call them peanut butter balls. When my kids tasted those, they told me that I had to learn how to make those! They were really good! Well as of Dec 2007 I have been making those Buck Eyes for 23 years! That is my Christmas treat that is a family tradition for all my kids. You just take powdered sugar, butter, peanut butter and crushed Rice Krispies and make the candy dough. You roll them into balls (Buck Eyes) and then dip them in melted chocolate chips with a little bit of vegetable shortening added to the melted chocolate. I make different flavors of the chocolate to dip the Buck Eyes in and boy they are tasty! I don’t like making the balls so much. I don’t mind dipping them at all, that’s the fun part! I usually make three double bathes every Christmas as my kids love them and so do their children, my grandchildren! Yes, I’ll be making them again this year! What would Christmas be like with out grandma making peanut butter balls ( Buck Eyes)? That would be like having Christmas without a Christmas tree!

9 volt batteries explode! Yuck!

These batteries exploded! Yuck!

Now this is a different experience with batteries I've never had before!
I keep them in a cupboard below my counter between the kitchen and family room. They are stored in a cool and dark place. I was just in that cupboard a few days earlier and never noticed anything odd. This morning I had to grab a phone book out of that cupboard and saw what looked like dried cement inside the bottom of the cupboard door. I keep the batteries on that bottom shelf. I took a closer look at the door and then looked on the bottom shelf and saw these 9 volt batteries askew in their box as you can see in the picture. One battery had the back end complete blown off. There were only three 9 volt batteries in their own package by themselves. I also have AAA, AA, C and D batteries. I checked everything down there. Everything was fine except for these three 9 volt batteries. I cleaned up the mess and threw it away.

I've never had this happen before. I've had toys that had batteries that corroded or flashlights, but never the batteries all by themselves! What I also found odd was that there was 'no expiration date' stamped on the batteries. I bought them from Costco about 2 years ago. Hmmm. Very odd not to have an expiration date.

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #21

Story #21 - Christmas and Curious Diana – shake and rattle!

Isn’t Christmas so much fun! All the excitement of decorations and putting up the tree and making a wish list a mile long! The anticipation of waking up early on Christmas morning to find out what kind of presents you got!

When I was a little girl Sears had a Christmas catalog that came in the mail around the first week in December. My brothers and I would pour over that book and circle all the things we wanted. Usually my list was a mile long! When you are little you get so excited about what kind of presents Santa will bring. I always wrote a letter to Santa Claus! I’m a grandmother and I still believe in Santa Claus! The closer it got to Christmas the more excited I got! My mom would start putting out just a few presents the week before Christmas. My brothers and I would wait until my parents were not looking and we would ‘shake and rattle’ the presents to try and figure out what they were! I would also sneak into my parent’s bedroom and look into their closet to see if there were any presents hiding. I was so disappointed that I could never find any! Miraculously on Christmas morning there would always be more presents under the tree! I don’t know where they hid those presents but I was always so surprised on Christmas morning!

This reminds me of when my children were little. Michelle had graduated from high school and was going to BYU-Hawaii in Laie, Hawaii. We lived 45 minutes south of Laie in Kailua, Hawaii on the island of Oahu. She invited a friend of hers to spend Christmas with us. Her name was Loretta and she was from New Zealand. Loretta was also a student at BYU. We loved her accent. It was a soft British sounding accent. We all loved Loretta. Well on Christmas Eve Loretta slept out on the couch in the living room where we had our Christmas tree. We never put any presents out under the tree until after midnight on Christmas Eve. As the kids got older we allowed them to put their gifts under the tree that was for their siblings. Our gifts never went out until ‘after’ midnight.

You may think this sounds awful, but I gave each of the kids a small teaspoon of Dimetapp before they went to bed. I know what you are thinking: Grandma gave sleepy medicine to her kids! That’s right, I did! They also were not allowed to get out of bed until 6:00a.m. on Christmas morning! Anyway, Loretta was sleeping on the couch. She and I planned to ‘booby trap’ the hallway and the kids’ bedroom door. The younger kids wanted to be together and they all slept in the same bedroom. They all wanted to get up early and go see what Santa brought! Loretta and I put colored cellophane plastic over the kids’ bedroom door. We taped it to the sides of the door frame. There was about a 6-inch gap at the bottom so we taped small bells at the bottom. We did this just in case the kids tried to sneak under the plastic! We would be able to hear the ‘bells jingle!’ Then we turned the plastic carpet runner upside down that ran the length of the hallway. The wrong side had thick plastic poky points. These poky points are what held the carpet runner down onto the carpet so it would stay in place. The carpet runners helped to protect the carpet and kept it cleaner and helped keep the carpet from wearing out.

I always kept our bedroom door slightly ajar, not closed tight, so I could see and hear what my kids were up to! Sure enough about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning I could hear whispers from their bedroom door. Our bedroom was next to theirs. I could hear their door open and then one of the kids said, “There’s something over the door, we can’t get out.” Then they figured out at the bottom there were bells. They cut the bells off. They sent one of the kids under the plastic. Then we heard, “Ouch!” They stepped on the plastic pokies! Grandpa and I were giggling softly to ourselves. We full well knew what the kids were up to! They snuck down the hall and peeked into the living room at the tree where there were piles of presents! They would ooohhh and aaahhh! Loretta asked, "What are you kids doing up?” They told her that they just wanted to peek. After a few minutes, they all went back to bed. One hour later they were up and we all enjoyed Christmas morning!

I’m sure if you ask Julie to tell the story, she tells it beautifully! Ask her to tell you the story sometime!

Kirsten's Dentist Appointment

Kirsten visits the dentist today.
This is a picture of Kirsten. I love her 'happy face!'

The above picture was taken a few months ago. I love it because she has a great big smile! She was also smiling because she had just finished eating her most favorite food - homemade spaghetti! She loves to eat it! If you look closely at the picture you will probably see her 'wearing' it around her face!

I did not have a picture of today's visit to the dentist. I told her today we were going to see her dentist. We have to go to Children's Seattle Dentistry. It takes about one hour to drive there. I always have Neil drive us as I do not like driving anywhere near or in Seattle. The traffic is busy, busy, busy! Anyway, as we got out of the car, she was relaxed and we took a seat in the waiting area. All was well until she heard her name called! Then she got nervous! The best way to seat Kristen is to have her sit in her dad's lap in a chair without side arms. Kirsten faces her daddy and then lays backward in his lap and rests her head in the lap of her dentist. She will not sit in a dentist chair. She freaks! She has abs of steel and sits up so fast and starts to scoot down before you can count to 5!

Considering that Kirsten has been through so much medically in the past 18 years, making her dentist visit as easy as possible really helps! The dentist chair just upsets her and we get no where. So between the dentist and her dad they have set up this 'lap' system and it works beautifully! Today when Kirsten was hugging her dad before she had to lie down, she had a steel trap grip around his neck and he had to 'pry' her hands loose. Isn't that sad? :o( Everyone got through the appointment fine. Zero cavities! The dentist said that her saliva/drool is her teeth's best friend as it keeps her teeth from decaying. Her top row of front 6 teeth all along the very top near the gum line are pure white and the enamel finish is very, very thin and underdeveloped. This area would be the first line of attack for cavities. She doesn't eat junk food and I brush her teeth the best I can. Fortunately she has never had cavities in any of those teeth. She only has 2 fillings, one very small and one medium sized filling and those were on molars. She's had 2 extractions. Kirsten does not have any wisdom teeth and it's a good thing, no room! Her brother David doesn't have any wisdom teeth either! Doug only had the top two and they were removed before he left on his mission several years ago.

Kirsten's appointment lasted for about 10 minutes. It went quick. She had her teeth cleaned and fluoride brushed on them. She gave several comments and used a lot of tongue thrust and lip thrust to discourage the dentist to no avail! She gets' 'E' for effort. When it was all over with she hugged her dad and just heaved a sobbing soft cry for 2-3 minutes. That cry is a heart wrencher! She was a trooper! We go back in 6 months. She was very glad to 'leave' and get in the car and go home! She does have a wonderful dentist! :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #20

Story # 20 - The twins – a fight – and someone got stabbed, me!
Have you ever had a fight with a brother or sister? Did you get hurt in a fight by hitting them or they hit you?

My twin brother and I had a fight one day. I don’t even remember what the fight was about. Isn’t it silly that brothers and sisters fight with each other? It really is silly. I just remember that we were both really mad. Gayle had a pair of scissors in his hands and the scissors were opened wide. He ‘stabbed me in the arm’ with the scissors! It was in my left arm just above the elbow. I immediately stopped and looked at my arm and it started to bleed. I told him that now he was in BIG TROUBLE! I still wear that scar today. Looking back on that incident, I wonder what we were so angry about? Surely it was not worth stabbing a sibling with a pair of scissors. I do remember that my twin brother got in really big trouble for doing that. We were taught never to do that. I also remember that being the only girl and having three brothers wasn’t always easy. I realize now that it was just the opposite for them, have an only sister must have big a real big pain for them! I tattled a lot. It’s definitely not okay to be a tattletale all the time. It’s okay when there is something serious happening, but other than that, it’s not cool. In short, I’m sure I was a brat at times.

This reminds me of when Julie and Lisa, my two daughters were having a sibling fight one day. They were really going at it and pulling hair and hitting each other! Douglas ran out of the room and told me, “Mom! Julie and Lisa are fighting and they’re going to kill each other!” I remember just being so tired of telling the kids to stop fighting with each other and to be nice. I felt like a referee wearing a black and white stripped shirt with a whistle. I told him, “Oh let them go ahead and kill each other. I’ll have two less kids to worry about.” I said it with a very flat voice and with no emotion. I was tired! Tired of kids that couldn’t get along. Doug said, “Mom, you can’t let them do that, you have to make them stop!” Douglas was really worried about them. The next thing I knew Julie and Lisa was laughing and the fight ended.

Grandma’s advice to you grandchildren is, “We’re children of our Heavenly Father and He loves us so much. It makes Him sad when we fight. So don’t fight with your brothers and sisters. Just get along. It’s selfishness when you want your way and enforce others to do what you want. I'll love you grandchildren forever!!!”

Love ya!
Grandma Guptill
-in Washington :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #19

Story #19 - The race on bikes – Glass in my head – ouch!
Have you ever had a bicycle race? It’s so fun to peddle as fast as you can and win at a race!

My dad thought competition between his children was healthy. He loved a good race! We had a circular driveway that went around the front and back of the house. I was about 8 years old. I loved riding a bicycle! I did not have a girl’s bike. I rode a boy’s bike. The driveway that circled our house was dirt and it had small rocks in it. I was very competitive. Everybody likes to win, right? Right! I was peddling as fast as I could and I was ahead of my twin brother Gayle. I made one small mistake. I took my eye off of the driveway in front of me and as I was going around the curve I looked back to see how close behind me my brother was. The next thing I knew I had a bad bike wreck! I lost the race! My brother rode past me on to victory!

I was wearing shorts. It was summer. My bike was on top of me and I was ground into the dirt and rocks! My hands and knees were badly skinned and bleeding. There was blood coming from my head. I was crying and screaming like a typical little girl. My dad and oldest brother Geoffrey came running over to me and picked the bike off of me and carried me into the house. I remember having dirt in my mouth and dirt all over me! My mom cleaned me up. I had a small piece of glass stuck in the right side of head above the temple (ear area). She picked it out with tweezers. I also had tiny bits of rock stuck in my knees where they ground into the dirt. I was a mess! I remember my mom washing my wounds and it just hurt so bad. The soap stung on my hands and knees. It took a few weeks to heal up from those scabs. I remember one knee had a scab over the whole kneecap. Every time I walked the scab would crack open and bleed a little bit. I still have the scar on my knee where I had that large scab. I couldn’t ride a bike for almost a month. Just as soon as I could, I got right back on the bike a rode it. I didn’t look back anymore when I raced. I learned my lesson the hard way!

I remember one more accident I had. This time I was about 10 years old. We had a cotton field across the street from us. Before they raised cotton on it, it was just an old dirt field with a dirt road shaped like a big horseshoe. My brothers and I would ride our bikes on it. My dad bought an old Cushman scooter. It was white and old and clunky but so much fun to ride! The tank held about one gallon of gas. I don’t remember having to shift gears on it. I just remember it having a gas throttle on the right handlebar and a left foot brake. We all took turns riding that thing around the field on that horseshoe shaped dirt road. I kept going faster and faster. My brothers told me that I better slow down going around the curves. Well I forgot to slow down this one time and as I went around the curve, it went over on its side and I had my leg pinned under the scooter and I couldn’t reach the gas throttle on the handlebars to turn it off and it was too heavy to lift up so I could scoot out from under it. So, I just had to sit there until they came to help me. While the scooter was down on its side, oil had spilled on the motor and it made a small smoke cloud coming from the scooter. My brothers came running down the road and yelling to me, “Are you alright? Are you okay?” They were really worried when they saw the smoke as they thought the scooter was on fire and I would get burned. When they got there, I was fine. The scooter was heavy and I couldn’t push it off myself. They turned the scooter off and lifted it off me. They were relieved I was okay. I remember I wanted to finish my turn but they wouldn’t let me. They let me ride behind them and they took me home. They said that I couldn’t ride it anymore because they thought I would wreck it and ruin it. I told dad when he got home and he said I could still ride it! See what a tomboy your grandmother was!

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #18

Story #18 - Say goodbye to the pool…

Well, all good things sooner or later come to an end. Right? Right!
You would think that having a swimming pool in your back yard would be fun forever and you’d never grow tired of it! That’s not exactly true. The first two or three years we swam in it all the time. Then after awhile we kind of lost interest in it. We would swim in it, but then it just sat. We ran the pump when we used it and to save, we wouldn’t run it as much when we were not swimming in it. When the summer is hot, the color ‘green’ likes to grow in the pool. We would have to clean in. When we had not been in it for quite a while algae grew on the walls and that was yuck and not fun to clean. So the pool was emptied. I can relate to that as we have a Jacuzzi in our yard in the home we now have. The first three years it was used a lot and then it got used less and less. It got down to about once a month if anyone got in it.

Douglas and his friends used it the most. But when he left for college, it sat a lot. It cost money to keep it running and buy the chemicals to keep it clean. So we emptied and it’s staying empty!

Now what? --- Now that our swimming pool was emptied.

It was just an empty pool. My dad decided to turn it into a storage room. He had torn down the little barn by the pool. My mom wanted to landscape and improve the look of our backyard. So down came the little barn! My dad dug out steps to go down into the pool. That meant he had to dig into the front of the pool to make steps to go down to the floor level. He poured concrete steps. He put a door on and also a roof. It was cool in there. He also wired it with a light switch and a light to come on. It was pretty dark in there with no light! When he first built the swimming pool he had also built a wire fence along the back of the pool and then put concrete stucco on it to give privacy to the pool when we used to swim in it. Well, that fence was starting to sag and it also came down!

One day I went to get something out of the newly converted pool – now a cellar – and it always was kind of creepy to me. I only liked to go out there when it was broad daylight. Well we found a few ‘black widow spiders’ and they are poisonous. After that, I never went in there anymore by myself. I hated spiders!

If I had a spider in my room, I would call my mom, “Mom! There’s a spider in my room! Can you come and kill it for me?” She would kill them for me. She would tell me, “You know, you are a million times bigger than that little spider. It’s probably more afraid of you than you are of it!” Somehow that did not give me any comfort. I was still afraid of them. As I got older they didn’t bother me anymore. I killed them myself.

As far as our backyard getting cleaned it. We did work on that one entire summer and it was much nicer looking! It also meant my brothers and I had more yard work to do to keep it cleaned up. It was amazing that after a little bit of rain those darn weeds grew so tall and so fast! My very ‘least favorite job’ as a kid growing up was ‘picking weeds!’ I hated it!

Hip Grandma Hoola Hoops!

Hoola Hoop or Hula Hoop?

Who knows how to hoola hoop?

I bought a hoola hoop as I heard it was good tummy and hip exercise. I could use that! I took Kirsten's picture because she is a much cuter model! Sorry I cut top of her head out of the picture!

The first time I tried to make the hoola hoop go around, it took about 3 tries. I actually got up to 58 times! I'll be 58 years old in September so I at least wanted to make the hoop go around that many times! Well two weeks later I decide to try it out this morning. The first two tries I got up to 25 times around.

Ahem! Drum roll! Your attention please! Granmda hit a new high record today! 758 times!

Wahoo! How about that! I was going for 100, then 200, then 300 then I thought, maybe 500, I got up to 758!

This hoola hoop has mineral water in it. Back when I was a kid, the hoops were just hard plastic. What's with the softer plastic and water filled???

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know, I can still hoola hoop! :o)
Love ya!
Mom :o)

When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #17

Story #17 - The Dive off the barn roof and NOT into the pool – is she dead?

This is another story about our wonderful swimming pool!

Do you like to dive off the diving board or off the side of the pool? It can be a lot of fun!

My dad had built what we called a small storage barn. It was like a one room house. We kept our stuff stored out there. It was about 7 feet tall and 12 feet square. The roof only had tarpaper across it. My dad had not put the shingles on it yet. The roof had a slight pitch so that rain or snow would run off. My two older brothers, Geoff and Douglas, about ages 10 and 12, got the brilliant idea that they could run and jump off the roof and dive ‘into’ the pool! On the sloped outer edge the roof was only 5 feet tall. The little barn was about 4 feet from the edge of the pool. They would climb up on top of that roof and then run and jump into the pool! That was fun! I was about 6 or 7 years old and my twin brother Gayle and I could climb and run and jump off the roof too!

The first time I tried it, it really scared me! Wow! I didn’t know if I would make it into the pool. It seemed like I was up too high and the pool too far away. But my brothers encouraged me to ‘go ahead and jump!’ I finally did it! I went down into the water and didn’t quite touch the bottom of the pool and then my worry was to get back ‘up’ out of the water! I was so scared but at the same time triumphant that I did it! After a few more times it just got easier and easier. It really was fun to run and jump off into the pool! We liked to see how big of a splash we could make! Well…my parents weren’t too happy about the water being splashed ‘outside’ the pool. Water was expensive and that was wasteful! When you are a kid you don’t think about how much water cost or that you are being wasteful. You just know how much fun it is to see that water splash!

My brothers were in the pool and I was on top of the roof ready to jump into the pool. Only this time I didn’t make it into the pool. There was a loose gap in the tar paper about 2 feet from the edge of the roof and as I was getting ready to jump up and into the pool, my foot caught and I fell downward. I landed on the concrete sidewalk. Splat! I don’t remember anything for a moment. Also, there happened to be two cinderblocks lying on the sidewalk and my head barely missed those two blocks. I also just missed the one-foot wall around the edge of the pool. I had landed face down smack on the sidewalk. I tell you my guardian angels were watching over me that day. I could have broke my neck and died. My head could have hit either the cinderblocks or the one-foot high wall.

I remember my brothers around me saying, “Is she dead? Is she alive? She isn’t moving! Oh my gosh, somebody go get mom!” They picked me up and threw me into the pool! I guess they thought that would ‘bring me around.’ I went limp and started to sink. Then they grabbed me. The next thing I remember was that I was lying on my back on the sidewalk and my mom was standing over me. “Diana, are you all right?” I moaned and I don’t’ remember what I said! She checked me all over. Apparently I was okay and had not broken my neck or any bones, so that was a huge relief to everyone! She carried me back into the house and I did not go anywhere for the rest of the day. She called the clinic and talked to the doc and he told her to watch for a concussion and see if the pupils in my eyes were dilated bigger. That’s all I remember. I just know I had to lie down and take it easy. They fixed the gap on the roof and we continued to jump off the roof!

My poor mom, I think about all the things we did and the accidents we had and how she had to manage us all day by herself! Good grief! What a fantastic mom! Looking back on my pool accident, first aid tells you ‘never move the victim until you are sure nothing is broken.’ If I had broke my neck or back or anything, picking me up and throwing me into the pool would have been so bad for me or I could have died from being moved. It amazes how the Lord watches over us!

I’m sure my children reading this will gasp in horror over the accident. I guess I had nine lives. I think over all the dumb things I have done and the accidents I had growing up, but this one probably was the worst!