The Wills Family

Wolverine through and through
For you readers who aren’t familiar
with Utah,
last week was The Holy War.
That means that the holier than thou team BYU
got spanked by the rebellious Utah Utes.

I have a few suggestions for the team’s improvement,
inspired by photos of my kids and their cousins.

Maybe before their next football game,
the BYU Cougars
should go to The Bean Museum
for some inspiration
on their animal instincts?

They could learn to stare down and intimidate their opponents.

Charge like an ostrich.

If all else fails they could just be silly
and hope some laughs could get them some yardage.
Blending in may get them better results.

Or even crouching beneath the other team.

Maybe they just need some glasses?

Or maybe they won’t play any fair opponents at all
because they are just like helpless little mice.

How about this great idea?
We should just lock all the players in the elevator with our kids.
That might give them some better training then they’ve been getting.
Our future BYU cheerleader still looks good
even though she just experienced 
two great defeats in the same week:

BYU’s  54-10 loss,
and a broken arm.

Poor Sophia.

Maybe the Cougars could change their mascot
to something a little more fierce
that can actually beat a Ute?

Did I mention that we aren’t really BYU fans?
Go Utah Valley University.
Everyone knows that Wolverines
are better than Cougars,
and usually a little more humble.

If you agree with me that UVU
is the best higher education
in Utah,
or you just loathe BYU,
how about you like my blog on facebook?
Look to your right sidebar.
You’re one click away from being my newest fan.
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High School
I loved high school.
I really did.

Attending my 20 year reunion
was so much fun.

Almost as fun as digging out the old photos.

Feel free to ignore this post.
There are lots of pictures from the 80’s.
It’s for the family history
after I’m dead and gone.

Softball team.
This wasn’t the coach that checked me out in the locker-room
which creeped me out and made me quit.
My team probably just thought I was a flake
when I quit showing up to practices without explanation.
They now have the explanation
I felt unable to verbalize in 1991.
No, I’m not a homophobe.
Just a fan of appropriate
student-coach relationships.

Chamber singers.
It was an awesome place to be.
That’s me and Jen up front.
We sang together at graduation.

This was my best attempt at the
Julia Roberts look-alike contest.
Dang, I was smokin’ hot.
It broke my prom date’s heart
when I wouldn’t sleep with him.
Has enough time gone by to admit that publicly?
Sorry Ben,
but my husband thanks you
from the bottom of his heart.

The ladies on graduation night
right before we stuffed in a limo
and drove around town all night.

Me, Shelly, and Anna
on New Year’s Eve.

ASB retreat.
We had so much fun.
Have no idea why Kelly and I were trying to seduce a tree.

Me and Travis Parker.
Travis Matthew Parker.
He was quite possibly the person who knew me best.
We could talk about anything and everything
and we always had intellectually stimulating conversations
while simultaneously having a really great time.
I crushed on him forever.
We then dated.
I got freaked out.
I never told him it was because I didn’t want to
disappoint yet one more boyfriend by not having sex.
You now know the truth Travis.
Somehow, I think I should have just been honest with him.
Here we are on choir tour.
I was bloated and we were messing around.
Pretty amazing that I could blow enough air into my belly to look 8 months pregnant.
Poor LeGrand.
I’ve never looked this good for him when I was 8 months preggers.

Jen, me and Kristen on the infamous wave.
It’s amazing to me how people figure out how to screw
teenagers out of all their lunch money.
I wonder how much I forked over collectively 
for the 10 different poses I have in the box out in the garage?
This one means the most because
Kristen is my only high school friend who I wish with all my heart was still alive.
My sister and I with our Christmas pajama dance dates.
Greg later married Jen up above.

Homecoming 1991.
My first date.
It was the day after my 16th birthday.
Anna’s brother Adam took me.
And I still apologize to this day for
ridiculing him with my awful taste in semi-formals.
The ladies I am with in the photo
got into a tragic car accident later in the evening.
We prayed over Stephanie for a long time.
The day she finally came back to school
was pretty much a miracle.
I can’t remember another time in high school
that I was that happy.

The Del Mar Fair.
Check out Todd and Fred
at the bottom.
They were Team Flatulence,
so you can imagine what is going on in the photo.
This is me with Melanie and Angela.
They were my only friends in junior high
and always my best of friends,
even if sometimes we only hung out at church.

On our way out to the dance club.
Yeah, my parents thought I was bowling.
To be honest, I would have rather been bowling.
I hate dancing.
Even that one dance with Chuck Alberton
was completely and totally not worth it.
Thanks to Mike Rice for bribing him into it.
20 years later, as he walked in the reunion,
Jen and I turned to each other simultaneously, 
and replayed the moment
for the 200th time.
Hi I’m Alice.
I know.
(silence)
He was our freshman class president.
I was sophomore class president.
I crushed on him for three years.
I even requested Notre Dame memorabilia
because it was his favorite school
and when given that one moment
to make an impression
that was all I could come up with.
What a dork I was.
And my friends were the best to remind me.

Me and Shelly with her mom and dad.
Rest in peace Chuck Duff.
I want you to know that I am so happy that I am now married to an attorney
because I was always so jealous of Shelly
when she could threaten her way out of any situation
with my dad is going to sue.
In Napa Valley
on choir tour.
What cute boys.
I have no recollection of the guy left of Todd.
I already told you about Travis.
Next to me is Stephen Blake.
He moved to Carlsbad in 7th grade
from Boston.
I would hound him relentlessly
to say the word “car.”
So sexy.
And look at his hair.
All the girls were always jealous.
Facebook has informed me that
Steve is in a popular band.
How fitting.
I wonder if he still has the same hair?
The girls outside the choir tour bus.
Those pearls almost make us look innocent.
How naughty of us pulling down our sleeves like that.

Spaghetti dinner, jr year I believe.
We sang a 50’s medley
and worked out butts off to build our own arrangements.

Homecoming was always the BEST.
We would rent out a warehouse for a week
where everyone would stay all night
building the floats.
Or at least some of us would actually do the work.
These are all working girls
except that girl in the front left.
I have no idea who she is.
Some surfer girl that Shelly sucked into the picture.

The same p.j. dance the next year.
That’s me and Matt Jewell.
We were scandalous.
I was a senior,
he was a freshman.
I saw him singing and dancing with his 8th grade show choir
when I was a junior and knew instantly
that I would make him my boyfriend the next year.
 He was officially my longest relationship
until my husband.
6 months I think.
Man, he broke my heart.
The only boy to ever break up with me.
After him I got smart
and did the breaking up first.
On this very night,
everyone else had to wait on us
because Matt was so late
because he had to play in an away
freshman basketball game.
So funny.

This is Jeff Graf, Chelsea and I.
Chelsea was one of those insanely popular girls,
and I was delightfully surprised when we had ASB together
at how normal and down to earth she really was.
We had some great talks.
I believe she and her blogging bestie shunned me at the reunion though
so I will refrain from linking to their very popular blog.
I may just have been sensitive that night,
but there is nothing like being out of high school
and not needing to be loved.
Pretty sure she doesn’t read my blog
so it’s all good.
I show you this picture
because you just had to see
that I had the coolest  hair of the 80’s.

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Family Feud

Do you remember this post about my family’s appearance on The Family Feud?

Well, LG and I were at a Radio Shack the other day and it reminded me of my brother’s terrible answer in the final round. He will never live it down. What would you buy (other than a radio) at Radio Shack? A wire. I think one other person had actually picked that answer. So funny and fun.

We didn’t win the $20,000 but we did make some great memories.

Go to my brother Adam’s facebook page to watch the video.
And come back and tell me how terrible my hair was.

We are all Pioneers
Who is your favorite pioneer?
Mine is my mother,
who at 16 started searching for the true church.

She attended every church she could find.
It wasn’t until she attended
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
that she finally felt at home.
She says that seeing the families

all sitting together

is what first touched her.
I don’t know why that touched her more
than the families in the other churches she attended,
but I believe it was her first step at
gaining a testimony.
God spoke peace to her heart
through the eternal truth of families
that she had finally found the right place of worship.
I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And for my mom.

Thanks Cally.
Sometimes, I just love my friends even more.
Because I remember that I love them
And real.
And humble.
And they don’t have to be perfect,
and when they don’t act perfect all the time,
it gives me permission to be myself.
I wonder why sometimes
I waste time
building friendships
with non-real people.
You know,
they are made out of cheese.
I guess this is my guest post for the week.
Because Abigail came home with lice on Tuesday.
And I have been laundering,
and mayonaising,
and RIDing,
and laundering some more,
and spraying,
and vacuuming,
and crying,
and bagging everything,
and boiling hair things.
And my brother has been in town.
Thank goodness without his kids.
I would die to give them lice
and lucky for David, he is bald,
and had a hotel room.
Did you ever read my post
(Yeah, I just made that word up.)
Congrats to me.
Therapy has worked.
I’m o.k.
to tell the whole world
that my daughter has lice.
I have arrived.
I don’t care.
Go ahead,
I dare you.
Call me
A-lice.
It won’t hurt.
Have a wonderful Friday.
And know that this completely imperfect person
will never EVER claim to
be anything more or less than just that.
And, yeah,
sometimes my kids don’t shower every day.
But, that’s not how they got lice,
because they’ve been doing that
for 6 years.
And they didn’t get lice
until Abigail went to middle school.
And I have my suspicions
of how she got it.

Large Families
This is an opinion post.
I just want your opinion.

Here’s a disturbing news story about a lady
who was dead for 18 months
and was only found after her house sold.

There are really great promises about having a big family.

One of those is going to be
that I am not going to die
and not be discovered for 18 months.

My kiddos may send me to a nursing home,
but they aren’t going to forget about me.

Just like I will never forget my parents.
And neither will my 6 siblings.

I would love to be able to handle 7 children,
like my mom.
Sometimes 4 feels like my max.
I am 36.
I could crank out a couple more.
Especially when looking at this.

It feels like 4 children doesn’t really define a large family.
I think that 5 is large.
But, 6 seems to be the magic number for large.
What do you think?

Time-Out Time

I just read this article for some great new strategies in disciplining my kids.
After reading the article, I thought that letting the kids play cards with the dog was a really great idea of disciplining with techniques of both distraction and silliness. Let me know if your dog is as good as ours at playing spoons. It kind of runs in the Gold blood. Olive would love to get together with your dog for a card playing play date.

I typically am a go-to time out mom. I am a believer in time-out. We spanked Abigail, our oldest, for a while and found that it did not work for her at all. It just made her more aggressive. I am not saying that spanking won’t work for some children, but for me it wasn’t an option because I could not spank without anger. But, the older my children have got, the more frustrated I have become with the ineffectiveness of time-out. I have found myself trying to remember what my mom did with her seven kids when I have situations to resolve at hand.
My mom spanked so well without anger that it was a standing joke at our house growing up. There was usually much laughter accompanying our spankings, which were preferably given with a wooden spoon. It was much softer than her hand would have been. She’s such a softie. Another good thing my mom did was make my siblings and I sit under the peach tree in the backyard whenever we fought. We had to stay there until we were willing to give each other a hug. How powerful and simple that technique was. I think she may have even used it on some of the neighbor kids from time to time. And, now that I am a mother, I realize how ingenious the idea was for her sanity too. She didn’t have to worry or listen to any bickering once we were outside. She also remained neutral and made us work out our own solutions with this effective disciplining strategy.
I was really excited the other day when I had a good parenting stroke of genius. I think my mom would be pleased. The idea stemmed from her insistence that I write “I love my brother 100 times” at least 100 times in my life.
For the most part my kids behave great, but I have one pretty consistent struggle between my two bullheaded children. Abigail is 11 and wants to always tell 6 year old Bella how to do things. Bella resents it because she thinks she can be her own boss. They go at it pretty good from time to time, mostly just verbally, but sometimes they will push or hit.
Well, the other day, after one of these disagreements, and after Abigail’s 11 minute time-out, that didn’t work a bit, I gave her an assignment. She was to sit at the kitchen table and write down 10 things she likes about Bella. I was adamant that she would not leave the table until she got it done.
I was so impressed and completely surprised that Abigail cranked it out really quickly. She even threw in an extra compliment for good measure.
1. She cleans when asked.
2 She is kind to others. (not me)
3. She doesn’t quit.
4. She likes cool music.
5. She leaves me alone when I ask, which is almost all the time.
6. She loves to play.
7. She is strong willed.
8. She dresses uniquely.
9. She takes charge in doubt.
10. She loves to take care of everything.
11. She is organized.
Later Abigail admitted to me that the way that she came up with the list was to think of all the things that she didn’t like about Bella and turn them into a compliment. So, when it said, she dresses uniquely, that started out with she dresses awful. She likes cool music was really that Abigail hates her music, etc, etc.
At Abigail’s admission, I could have been defeated, but I realized that even though Abigail thought she had the upper-hand, she didn’t. I had just succeeded with a truly inspired exercise in cognitive therapy. I taught Abigail how to change the way she thinks. Isn’t that what we all have to do to love our enemies?

Iron Man Rusty and Renegade Renee

My sister Renee’s husband suffered a terrible fall two weeks ago. He was trimming a tree and cut his own safety rope and fell approximately 30 feet to the concrete street. It’s a miracle he lived. He shattered both of his heels and broke his back. They say that he should be able to walk again in about a year.

Renee gave birth to their fourth child just two days after this horrific accident. Rusty wasn’t able to be there. Renee has been so resilient in holding it all together with a newborn and three other kids who had their first day of school today. She has been running around like crazy taking care of everybody. I wish I could be there to give her some rest or figure out how to clone her. She said she is doing great. She just needs to be cut in half so that she can stay with Rusty and take care of her kids at the same time.

Needless to say, I can’t get them out of my mind and my worries and my prayers.

Rusty had his first surgery today. Here is the X-ray of his hardware.

Man, I am never gonna mess with Rusty again. He will have two killer weapons in he arsenal. That metal is gonna be like Wolverine. Don’t get him mad or it may come shooting out.

Renee and Rusty have been amazing. I am so proud of their resilience and even more proud of their good attitudes.

I asked Rusty how he was doing last week and he told me, “I’m great. If I could just get out of this bed.” You know the man is amazing if he is still able to play jokes on you while being confined to a nursing home facility.

He crank called me three times asking if he could take a survey. I about tore his head off for wasting my cell phone minutes. He then called my house phone and I naively hung up on him again. It wasn’t until he called from Renee’s phone that I even figured out what he was up to. What a jokester. He needs to do phone impersonations for a living. Crazy guy. He does the best Domino’s Pizza voice.

The lyrics to a song come to mind, “I get knocked down, and I get up again, ain’t nothin‘ gonna keep me down.”

Gender Roles

And, these pictures are here for one purpose.
I want to prove that I am teaching my girls the fine art of being a girl.
Here are all of my girls picking out their desired hair do for the school year.


And, Bella demonstrates how a girl just loves getting her hair shampooed.

While in college, LG and I took a class together called Sociology for the Family. We learned that we shouldn’t gender role our kids. For instance, give your daughters toy cars and your sons a baby doll.

I agree to a certain extent, but have been a little relieved that my girls have femininity as well as an ability to hang with the boys. I mean, for example, Abigail can tell you any character in Star Wars, and you know that’s not a normal girl thing. Sophia can kill any of your boys at Mario Kart and Bella…well, I can’t think of anything for her except for the fact that like her mother, she just doesn’t have the energy to deal with the girl drama.

Do you know what my secret wish is? I know it sounds weird, but I would love to have a daughter grow up to be a darling and cute football quarterback. About ten years ago there was one of these girls at a high school in Utah. She was the star quarterback and the Homecoming queen….I just think that is the coolest thing ever. I mean I don’t want a daughter to be a quarterback because she wants to look or act like a guy. I want her to be ALL girl and play ball with the best of the boys. And, if you think that is so crazy, please make your comment really really mean. The mean ones seem to rally even more comments.
Well, the purpose of this post. It’s my first mom’s advice post. And the advice is: don’t gender role your kids. But, please remember that you also have to teach them proper femininity/masculinity. And, if you don’t believe me, go over and read the latest post by my sister Renee.
This oldie but goodie from The Muppet Show supports my point masterfully.

Oh, and just for a bit of fun.
Here are the lyrics so you can teach your girls
(or boys – I guess)
I enjoy being a girl.
I’m a girl, and by me that’s only great!
I am proud that my silhouette is curvy,
That I walk with a sweet and girlish gait
With my hips kind of swivelly and swervy.
I adore being dressed in something frilly
When my date comes to get me at my place.
Out I go with my Joe or John or Billy,
Like a filly who is ready for the race!
When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do,
I enjoy being a girl!
When men say I’m cute and funny
And my teeth aren’t teeth, but pearl,
I just lap it up like honey
I enjoy being a girl!
I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!
I’m strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl… like… me.
When men say I’m sweet as candy
As around in a dance we whirl,
It goes to my head like brandy,
I enjoy being a girl!
When someone with eyes that smoulder
Says he loves ev’ry silken curl
That falls on my iv’ry shoulder,
I enjoy being a girl!
When I hear the compliment’ry whistle
That greets my bikini by the sea,
I turn and I glower and I bristle,
But I happy to know the whistle’s meant for me!
I’m strictly a female female
And my future I hope will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy having a girl… like… me.