Surprise!

In the spring of 1979 Shrerry was finishing up a semester at the Y and we decided to take a trip from Cleveland to Provo to pick her up. It seemed like if I told the kids ahead about anything relly fun that they would get out of control with excitement! Trying to get ready for a trip with five little kids who were impossible to control seemed like a nightmare to me. I told Larry that I wasn’t going to tell them that we were going, so we planned our little surprise.
I began preparations in secret…kids are pretty clueless if you can keep a low profile. Somehow was able to get a lot of things done without them getting wind of an eminent trip. The night before we were going to leave we said to them,” How would you guys like to sleep in the Van tonight…You can have a sleepover and pretend you are camping?” Of course they loved the idea. I said, “You can even sleep in your clothes if you want to.” They always loved that.
So we got them all bedded down in the back of the Van. There was Mark, Mike,Vic and David and Christine. James was only one and so he stayed in the house. After they were all asleep we packed the car around them. We put each child’s clothes in a pillow case and stuffed them under the seats.
At the crack of dawn Larry and I got in the car and started driving. It was several hours later that the kids woke up. One by one their sleepy heads poked up over the back seat. We were met with big smiles, and lots of questions. They loved the surprise of going on a trip clear to Utah. They loved stopping in a rest stop for breakfast. It was probably the easiest trip we had taken, and we had taken a lot of trips. What started out to be a break for me turned out to be the best surprise ever for them.

Bikes

Did you ever notice how many bikes it takes to keep a family going? I'll just bet if you added them up they probably would average at least three or four each. And to think I didn't even ever have one! At one point when we had four little boys and their big brother I couldn't even tell whose bike was whose. Not because I wasn't paying attention, but because every bike was transformed periodically. If one bike was missing a seat someone would take one from somebody elses bike that was flat. If someone needed a tire or a tube or a peddal and there was an idle bike, oops there goes the peddal! Sometimes the handlebars on Daves bike would end up on Vics and Jay would need to get somewhere right now so he would repair his bike from whose ever looked broken.

We even, periodically, would take a whole Saturday for dad to just repair all the bikes. That was sometimes extremely interesting! Knid of like a chinese puzzel. Just imagine trying to sort out all the parts and get the right ones back on the right bike in the right order and repaired. You can see why I think my husband is a geneous. He was so patient with all the lost tools, the inspired combinations and the spats over parts. Those were the days myfriend, those were the days.

I had the cutest babies.

Sometimes I just wish I could jump back in time and hold my babies again, they were all so adorable. I know everyone thinks their kids are the cutest but mine really were. Jay had the brightest eyes; sherry had such an adorable smile and was so cuddly; Sandi was such an independant spirit and so determined even as a tiny baby; Mark was such a fighter and was so hard to win over; Mike was an imp with a twinkle in his eye; Victor was such a mommas boy, so loved; David was my only grumpy baby, but it wasn't his fault. We found out when he was still very little that he had ear infections. He had a most engaging smile; Christine was probably the most played with baby of all time! Sandi was 11 and Sherry 12 when she was born and since she was the first girl in nearly 10 years. They had to try on every little outfit she had everyday, and she had a lot! James was number 9 and he was born 5 years after Christine so you can imagine how treasured he was; Valerie was so cute and feminine. She got lots of attention from all her big brothers. Probably more than she wanted.

I really miss holding my babies but I am very blessed to have grandbabies and great grandbabies to fill my arms and my heart.

More on Grandpa Davis

My dad wasn't a member of our church until I had five children and he loved to tell the story of when he and my mother were young marrieds. A couple in their apartment building invited them over for dinner. Dad loved to shock people with the comment, "You know we aren't really married cause we were married by a mormon bishop who was an undertaker, and they can bury you but they can't marry you." He just started the story with "You know we aren't really married..." when the other couple burst out with "Oh really, we aren't either!" In those days that was not something people shared with their neighbors. Dad didn't finish the story and Mom was mad at him for leaving the wrong impression...but they laughed about it for years.

My Dad loved to play the piano. I guess he didn't play all that well, but to me he was a genius! He played rag time and songs of the day and sometimes he played classical music. He and Mom had a deal; If he would entertain us all with music she wouldn't ask him to help with the dinner. I remember setting the table lots of times as I danced to his ragtime music.

He also did posters for people. This was in a day before all the graphic design and things we all have access to now on the computer. He often sat in the front room with a drafting board on his lap making a poster, or a christmas card design for some family. He was a very good artist but all his art was in black and white as he was color blind. He used to draw us stories as he made them up for us.

As I said yesterday, I wish all my grandkids could have an hour or two with my dad!

Grandpa Davis

Oh how I wish all the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Grandpa Davis could have known him as Helen and I knew him. He was so much fun and so entertaining. He had all his favorite sayings and stories that we delighted in and still delight in. Some of you may have noticed how the first generation never eat their pie point first. that is a legacy of Grandpa. He would always turn his pie around and eat it from the crust to the point. If you asked him why he ate it that way he would simply say I don't want the point to stick me. When we were little he would begin drumming his fingers on the table, starting with the index finger to the baby finger and while he drummed he would sing "Hi Ho Pinky!" We would all start to giggle as he intertained us with pinky stories. He loved to sing...incidently he sang a beautiful baritone, and he would regale us all with songs like " I took a trip on a sailing ship with a walloping window blind" or "I had a dog and her name was daisy when she sang the cat went crazy", and many more. When he read stories to us he would have us all in stitches as he changed the words of well known stories and made up his own versions of them changing every thing around. I was so surprised as I got older and heard the real version of such stories as "Alice in Wonderland" and "Uncle Remus"...they were so different than I remembered!

Dad was so fun to be around that when he would meet someone in a line at a bank or a store he would end up with a lifelong friend. He loved to act in community theater and was in many plays including "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and other classics. Because of his parts in plays he had many nicknames. When someone called on the phone for him we would know if it was work or a neighbor or someone from the theater or his lodge by the name they called him. He was known as Dave by the neighbors (his last name being Davis) as Frank by the Lodge as JF or Doc by theater friends as Jack by the people he worked with, my mom called him Franklyn, his sister called him Jackie but I just called him Dad.

Someday you grandchildren and great grandchildren will get to know him too and you will just call him grampa, and he will love it.

Alma 5 -My interpretation

I love Alma 5 and thought I would put into my own words some of the things I got out of his 41 questions.

1. We should never forget what our ancesters and others did to make our lives comfortable and free. We should remember that they were delivered by the hand of God as we are everyday.

2. We need to remember that the savior has delivered all of us from all the bands of death(physically and spiritually) We can only hope for salvation through his atoning sacrifice.

3. We must be spiritually born of God.

4. We must have his image in our countenances.

5. We must have a mighty change of heart. Sometimes everyday!

6.We must exercise faith in the redemtion.

7.We must look forward to the judgement with faith...we will be judged by the deeds we have done in mortality.

8.We need to have clean hands and a pure heart.

9. We must not become subjects of the devil.

10. Now we need to want to sing the song of redeeming love.

11. We must walk blameless before God. ( to do that we must repent everyday)

12.We need to be Humble.

13. We need to be stripped of pride and envy.

14.We must not make a mock of our brothers or persecute others. I,ll have to finish later.

Dogs Dogs and More doggone Dogs!

As in many families, our family dog was an important part of our family. It just wasn't 'one' dog. Over the years we had many family pooches. Different children in our family remember different dogs and 'man's best friend' in our lives was everyones best friends(plural).

When Larry and I first got married we got our first dog within the first year. Jay was a baby and we wanted him to grow up with a dog. Our first faithful pet was a beautiful cocker spaniel. She was rust colored and papered. We loved her, she reminded me of Lady in "Lady and the Tramp". Unfortunately she died before Jay was big enough to remember her. She got distemper.

A few years went by before we got our second dog. Sherry was a toddler and we had just moved into our first house. This time it was a beagle. He was very cute when he was a puppy but since we were not experts in training puppies he soon became a biter and left a scar on my toddlers cheek. We had to give him away. Now I wish I had just taken him to a class and learned how to train him.

After awhile we were offered a beautiful german shepherd puppy. Because of his beautiful color we named him Smokey. He was a sweet dog and didn't have any of the bad habits that lots of dogs have. He didn't dig, he didn't bark needlessly, He didn't jump on the kids or bite. I loved him and had great hopes of his becomming a wonderful watch dog and family friend. Unfortunately my watch dog got stolen. The kids and I were broken hearted and put up fliers and everything but he was never found.

Sometime later we aquired Doby. He was a doberman mix and he had all the bad habits that smokey didn't have. We tried to keep him in the back yard because he was very protective and would bark and bite anyone who came near the kids. Larry even buried chicken wire under the fences so he couldn't dig out of the yard. Then he would either chew his way through or just leap the 6 ft fence. When the mailman reported us because he got bit we had to get rid of Doby.

Finally we got Tramp. She was a cute little poodle mix. We found her running around the parking lot at the grocery store. We checked the ads for weeks but never found her owner. She became ours and was with us many years. We bred her first with a poodle and got adorable puppies. We sold them all but one. He looked like a black miniture poodle. Victor, who was a little guy at the time named him Jaques. We bred her the next to a peekenees and had 'peek a poo' puppies. We sold them all and finally got her fixed. When we moved to Utah we found Tramp and Jaques both a good home together. Can you even imagine trying to move across two states with 8 kids including a screaming 18 month old and two dogs in a station-wagon?

Several years later we got our best friend and the dog most of the kids remember as 'the family dog'. We took the kids to the pound to find a dog and Mike picked out Happy. She was a Basset/Beagle mix and looked anything but happy! She had big sad eyes and floppy ears and she was the sweetest pet we ever had! We had Happy for many years. We even moved her with us across the country more than once. She lived with us in Utah then Ohio, then Washington DC and then back to Utah! When we moved to California in 1982 we left her with a family Sandi was staying with until I came back in a month to pick up Mark. I was going to bring her home with me then. The last week before I was to leave Sandi called and explained that Happy was gone. She used to go out each day for awhile and then she would come back, but one day she didn't come back. Sandi called animal control and tried to find her but she was gone. We only hope that she found a good home. The kids were heartbroken as were Larry and I. We didn't get another dog for years. She was the best doggone dog of all!