Family Traditions

Our daughter Ally was four years old, and it was Christmas Eve. The stockings were hung (on the chair – no chimney in our little basement apartment). The cookies were baked, carefully arranged on a plate, and set out for Santa with a glass of milk and a letter (and a carrot for the reindeer).…

Thanksgiving Day of 2000 did not go as planned. My first wife, Carol, had just been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, devastating news that would change our family forever.   We didn’t know how much time she might have left with us, and she desperately wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family. Our older…

I was in the back seat of my Grandparent’s gigantic boat, well, actually it was a car, but one of those mammoth 1960s full-size four door Fords, the “longest, lowest, widest” cars that had ever been built, and it felt like you were the King, just sailing down the road. Grandma asked, “Anybody hungry?” and…

Sometime ago I was walking to my office on the Brigham Young University (BYU) campus. As I was walking I started thinking about an experience I had with my Grandmother Cazier in 1966. I had just graduated from high school and was preparing to go to Italy for 2½ years. The day before leaving she…

  Every summer Grandpa Call made homemade gooseberry ice cream using his kid powered ice cream maker. We looked forward to eating this special treat, which always delighted our palettes. After everything was ready he assigned the task of cranking the kid powered ice cream maker to his grandchildren. The lucky ones got their turn…

  When I was a young child my grandfather would pick me up, put me on his knee, bounce me up and down, and sing, “Cross eyed baby on each knee and a wife with a wart on her nose, on her nose, and a wife with a wart on her nose.” I would laugh,…

  I remember hearing that the best way to catch a mouse was to shine a light in its eyes, which would paralyze the critter thus making it easy capture. Supposedly, this was more efficient than a mousetrap. One night my parents went out for the evening leaving my sisters and I home by ourselves.…