The Wills Family

Motorcycles


Me and Fast Eddie – Dec 31, 1994 Posted by Hello

I love motorcycles. I used to have this boyfriend and we would fantasize about how someday we would both buy a Harley Davidson and cruise around the Country. I don’t think that this scenario will ever play out in my deck of cards, but every time I see Roadsters I wonder what it would be like to be “free”.

A few years back (try 10 – WOW time flies) a bunch of friends and I went to The Rose Parade. If you have never experienced sleeping on the street with thousands of people in Pasadena, CA, you haven’t lived. We had a blast! The streets were one HUGE party.

All kinds of vehicles would cruise up and down the street, and all kinds of people would run back and forth to greet them. Different objects (ie., candy, confetti, marshmellows, items of clothing, drinks) would be thrown between the cruisers and the spectators. I say cars, but I mean, cars, bikes, busses, scooters, motorcycles…anything that you can imagine with wheels.

Well, of course I was so envious of those motorcycles. Every time they drove by, which was countless, I knew that their goal was just to taunt me. At one point, a big group of cyclers parked close by to take a short break. I ran over and asked this group of upper middle age men if one would let me tag along on their next cruise. They were more than compliant. The problem was which one was going to be the lucky one to take me. I was a cute 21 yr old lively girl. Who wouldn’t want me on the back of their motorcycle?

My friends thought that I was crazy for jumping on a bike with a complete stranger. I have to admit that at one point during the ride with Fast Eddie I had a panic stricken feeling that he could take me to some back alley and I would be completely helpless. Jumping on a motorcycle with a complete stranger was completely irresponsible, especially since we were some of the only people not drinking at the party, but I wanted to prove that Mormons could have fun too, and prove it I did.

Well, Fast Eddie, (shown above) was the winner among his friends. He was so COOL! We rode up and down the strip for as long as I wanted. All the people that I had come to the parade with and all of my new friends that I had made throughout the night would shout my name as we cruised by. What a blast. I was on HOG heaven.

Rewind to ten years previous to 1994. I was about 11. My dad had inherited some old dirtbikes from a Great Uncle who had passed. One Saturday, he was in the front yard tinkering with them. Throughout the day, my dad and my brothers would each take a turn going through the front yard and up and down the street.

I approached my dad and asked him if I could have a turn. He said, “Sure” and gave me all of the pointers about the clutch and the brakes, how to stop, accelerate, and steer. I was ready. My dad seemed a little reserved, and kept asking me if I knew how everything worked. I was overly confident (imagine that). I waved my dad off and told him I would be fine.

I accelerated as hard as I could and I choked trying to remember where the brakes were located. I took off so fast that I felt like steering was an impossibility or if I tried to take the sharp turn toward the street I would surely dismount. I hung on for dear life going a good thirty miles an hour or so. I crashed head-on into our front door. The whole door frame came tumbling down, leaving me sitting on the bike bewildered. The bike had finally stopped; I was staring at my mom just two feet in front of me. She was standing in our hallway with a horrified look on her face screaming at the top of her lungs.

I know, after hearing this story, you would wonder why I still have a thing for motorcycles. I guess I am a gluten for punishment. I also give Kudos to my mom and dad. They handled the situation perfectly. They laughed at me for hours on end. All the neighbors came over to get a good laugh too. Back then, all I could think about was how bad I hurt between my legs, but looking back now, I am glad that I could promote good laughter….it is quite funny!

My Dad


“Here I come to save the day!” Posted by Hello

This story will be a shining example of how my siblings and I viewed my dad when we were kids. He was and still is Superman.

My dad worked construction until I was about nine at which point he changed his career path to building maintenance. One of our favorite things to do when we were young was to go with dad on Saturdays while he “checked out” different construction sites.

Our house used to be the most east in Carlsbad. Behind us were miles and miles of dirt hills. Those hills are now ALL developed and you can drive the actual paved roads into Vista instead of taking the long way around on the H-78, like we did.

One Saturday, my dad decided to take my sister, Shannon, (18 months older than me) and I out four-wheeling in those hills. He wanted to go beyond the construction sites that we had been exploring. This adventure was much more fun than it should have been considering we were in the family station wagon. Well, Carlsbad had gotten some rare moisture previously and the hills were somewhat muddy.

Lo and behold, we got stuck! My dad decided to play out Superman. He told my sister and I to “stay put”, and he “would be back to get us out of the mud”. Great plan in theory, but Shannon and I were terrified. We were in the hills with nothing in sight. We knew that these hills were full of mice, rattlesnakes, and the coyotes that always ate our cats.

At one point, I voiced my fear to my “wiser” sister. She reminded me that we had just learned a song in Primary about faith and believing that God would answer prayers. (I recently taught this same song, Faith, to the children at church. When I relayed this story from my childhood to them, I realized just how absolutely absurd it sounded.)

Well, my sister and I decided to sing this song. We thought that if we could sing it loud enough, God would hear that we had faith and somehow He would save us from the Coyotes. It seemed like a lifetime. We decided that we should pray too. We did. We prayed. We sang. We prayed. We sang.

All of the sudden we spot something moving over the horizon. It was over this same muddy hill that my dad had disappeared over minutes if not hours before. As this thing edged its way over the hill, we saw that it was a TRACTOR. It was coming straight towards us in all it’s glory. (It was just like the one in the picture above.) As we looked closer, we saw that my dad was driving. He had found it at some construction site, hot wired it, and drove it back through the mud to SAVE THE DAY. (Hopefully enough time has passed that no one can press charges)

My dad easily pushed the wagon out of the mud, using the front scooper, while Shannon and I watched in pure amazement. Not only was our dad really Superman, but just like our primary teachers had told us, “God had heard our prayers.” He had answered our pleas with one REALLY COOL ending.

Shut Up


Eskimo Man Posted by Hello

This picture provided by utask

My mind has been racing with experiences from Alaska. If you haven’t read “a piece of the action”, I highly recommend it. This is another “Tatitlek” story when I felt that my life was in danger.

The Eskimo people in Tatitlek were more than ecstatic to get their town rebuilt for “free” by the U.S. government and couldn’t wait for their new homes and school. My dad, of course, was among these government paid construction workers. This village was normally very divided but now they were finally in 100% agreement on one issue: they hated the white men that had been sent to do the building.

Many people in the village drank A LOT. Because of the excessive drinking, there were all kinds of crazy things that happened all of the time. The summer of our stay, my family had STRICT orders from Dad as to who we should not associate with. We all understood that we needed to stay away from certain locals for our own well-being.

My dad had strategically placed our shanty about a mile from the town on our own private peninsula. It had been “jimmy-rigged” together by my dad in the evenings for the month before we arrived. We had no running water or electricity and a biffy out to the side of the house. We took a path along the shore to town when we wanted to see dad and we often got stuck in the mud.

On this particular day, in was more wet than usual and my dad decided that he would give us a ride home in the boat. We all walked down to the harbor where the boat should have been anchored, but it had been let out to sea. My dad was FURIOUS. He found a friend and they left immediately in hopes of getting our boat back, which had been let free to the currents by some hateful local.

While we all kept busy on the shore (what else did we have to do) my dad went and rescued our pathetic piece of sea transportation. We all cheered when he got back. My mom had loaded in the boat as well as a few of the kids. We were finally on our way home. A group of “locals” rode up to the side of us.

At first my dad ignored the locals, but they kept pestering him. So the “words” started to fly. From what I could gather from the conversation, the ring-leader of the Eskimos (he looked much like the guy in the picture above) was the man that had let our boat out to sea.

This Eskimo wasn’t happy with my dad for one reason or another. (It could have been as simple as someone else’s house got sheetrock before this mans…who knows) Well, the vocal altercation became more and more intense. The Eskimo pulled out his shotgun and pointed it at my dad. He insulted my dad repeatedly and made some kind of threat that he would shoot my dad right here in front of his family.

I guess my dad wasn’t too worried because he knew that the guy was just showing off for his friends, but I was terrified because I knew this man was on our “Black Dangerous” list. He was aslo drunk, and he had a shotgun.

While my dad had it out with this man, he was trying to get the rest of us in the boat, so that we could get onto the safe waters. I was the only one left on shore when this man pulled out his gun. As an eight year old kid with obnoxoius tendencies, I saw this moment as my chance to prove that I could be like my hero, Laura Ingalls Wilder. And, prove myself I did. I freed myself from my dad’s grip as he was trying to push me into the boat. I stood all four feet of myself as tall as I could between that mean eskimo and my dad and I gave him a peice of my mind, “If you want to shoot my dad, you will have to go through me first.”

This brought howls of laughter from all of the local men on the boat. My dad turned his anger towards me and quietly said, “Alice, shut up, and get in that boat.” The urgency of his voice made me think that I earned my dad a bullet in the head. I was devastated. I was very surprised that my dad jumped in the boat after me and off we went. I guess the Eskimos were either too entertained by me or distracted laughing that they had let my dad go without any kind of harm.

I got the lecture the whole 4 minute ride home. I don’t know if my dad was more embarassed that he couldn’t keep his eight year old in line or that she had just saved his life. He said,”Alice, you have to learn when to keep your mouth shut.” My mom said,”You almost got your father killed.” My 14 year old brother,”You aren’t supposed to talk to that man, especially when he is drunk.” My 10 year old brother,”You are a big mouth.” On and on, the insults came…all the way home.

I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t understand it. All of the sudden everyone in my family was MAD at me. I had just SAVED all of us from death by gunshot wound. Why wasn’t everyone thanking me?

A piece of the action


A floating piece of The Prince William Sound Posted by Hello

I have already established that my parents are kinda crazy. They are where I got my craziness from. Well, the Native American’s in Alaska would call my dad “Insane”. The reason…..he got out of his boat and climbed onto a floating piece of an Alaskan Glacier, just like the one above.

My dad spent two years in Tatitlek, AK rebuilding an “Eskimo” village. My family had the great fortune of visiting him for a whole summer. I was about eight, and I have many fond memories of Alaska, as do most of my family members. I think that God knew I was destined to by the wife of a “professional student” and gave me a lot of wonderful adventures as a kid, to make up for the first ten years of geographical monotany in my marriage.

One of the memories, that I do not like to think about from my stay in Alaska was the day that my Dad took us to Prince William Sound. It was a stormy day and my mom refused to come with us. She stayed home with the baby. I think her and my dad had some kind of arguement about whether or not we should go, but my dad won, like usual, and he loaded the six of us into our little “skipper.”

Touring the Prince William Sound in a skipper is unheard of. On a stormy day, it was a suicide attempt. I do recall some of the MOST beautiful scenery. A glacier is truly AMAZING! As we crept closer and closer, we heard the cracking of the ice breaking of the glacier. We spotted many seals, Bald Eagles, and Polar Bears. We also witnessed a few Cruise ships go by.

We also saw the HUGE pieces of glacier, like the one above, popping up from all parts of the ocean floor. Call me a BABY, but I was scared! It was so hard to have so many emotions at once: I was in pure AWE at the beauty, yet terrified that I would never live to tell anyone about it.

As if just being there wasn’t enough sensory overload for us kids, my Dad had a better idea to ensure that we would all get the MOST from the experience. He anchored the boat to a floating piece of ice and proceeded to climb out onto it. This thrilled my older brothers who begged for their chance at it. The rest of us children were content to just observe, but my Dad cajoled us each to take a turn.

We all got up on the floating ice without being tethered to anything. Dad made sure that we each ventured to the middle to see the “Black Hole”. This was a hole big enough for any one of us kids to fall into and never come back, because we would be stuck under the water that lay under the iceberg. This was when I called it quits. I begged to get back in the boat. My dad relented, and for what seemed like a year, I sat in the boat wondering that if the rest of the family died, would I be able to drive the boat back to some kind of civilization.

Well, everyone, by some miracle of God, made it back into the boat. A few minutes later, dad stopped the boat about 100 feet away so that we could look back on the iceberg that we had “conquered”. My brother got a bad feeling and told my dad he needed to move the boat NOW. My dad did, and we were on our way. Not more than 10 seconds later, a huge piece of the glacier popped up right where we had stopped. We would have been like a sitting minature Titanic.

The way home was the worst part of the trip. The storm was in full blast and we were being tossed to and fro (like it says in the Bible) by the storms of the sea. My brother and sisters and I all bunkered down in the part of the boat the was jimmyrigged by my dad with a plywood shelter. We were all being tossed to and fro and as I lay down close to my sister Shannon; both of us holding on for dear life, she got sick to her stomach.

I can’t really find any humor to this story, except that it is no wonder that I have huge issues about PROTECTING my children. Looking back, I have to say, it really was a piece of action that was ONE OF A KIND.

Holes
A hole in the middle of two studs….hmm. Posted by Hello

I am not talking about the critically aclaimed book. I am talking about holes in drywall. It wasn’t until 1999 that I knew how easy they were to patch.

You see, growing up, my brothers and sisters had a favorite game to play. Remember how I talked about that long hallway in The Home of the Free entry. Well, besides lining up for our Grand ol’ Flag March, there were a few other things that we did in that hall on a regular basis. Our absolute favorite of all time, was scaling the walls. The hall was just wide enough that when our legs and arms would get to a certain length, we could jimmy ourselves up the wall, like regular mountain climbers. We would place our left arm and leg on one wall and our rights on the other and up we would climb all the way to the ceiling.

Well, as you can imagine, once in a while, there was some damage. It was the COOLEST when someone’s foot would go through the wall. This happened several times, mostly to my brothers. My dad is a contractor and so you would think that the holes would automatically be repaired, but NO, they weren’t; those four or five holes stayed in those walls until we sold the house 10-20 years later. I always assumed fixing holes in walls was a difficult thing to do until….

Move ahead to 1999. My husband’s sister and brother-in-law had just bought their first house. Everyone in LG’s family was bursting with pride because they were in their early 20’s and were so RESPONSIBLE. LG’s parents came out from TN, and we all went to have a house-warming party. Amy and Tyler didn’t know it but, our main mission was to break in their house, literally.

LG and his younger brother Jordan, just had to be boys, and at one point they were monkeying around in the dining area. Jordan jumped on LG’s back. LG, because of his “man gene”, for who knows what reason, decided to play out some kind of move he learned watching WWF. To make Jordan regret jumping on his back, he lunged backward, with Jordan on his back, smashing Jordan’s backside into Amy and Tyler’s brand spanking new wall. You can imagine Amy and Tyler’s absolute HORROR at the sight of Jordan’s gluteous maximus impression, and I mean, MAXIMUS, in the middle of their wall.

Amy came at LeGrand will all her vengence (this was her BRAND NEW HOUSE). LG put his tail between his legs and went, beside his dad, like a disciplined child to the local Hardware store. They bought a Drywall patch kit and fixed it up as good as new. Amy says that she can still tell where the bum went through the wall, but I think it looked fine (then again, my bathroom is 1/2 way remodeled and I am OK with that).

Well, on the way home LeGrand was on the virge of tears. (He is going to kill me for writing this) It wasn’t that he felt so bad for his “man gene”. No one can explain that! He mostly just felt so bad because Amy was never going to forgive him. I thought that his WWF wrestling move was impressive, and I tried encouraging, reminding LG that he had been successful at getting Jordan off his back. I, being the bistander, saw the hilarity of the situation and I tried to make light of it as best as I could. I reassured him that the wall was as good as new and that Amy would eventually see the humor.

Eventually, was the right word. It wasn’t until this past year, 2004, that I FINALLY heard Amy laugh when replaying the scenario for friends. She still emphasized, “It was our BRAND NEW HOUSE.”

No turning back


August 15, 1997Posted by Hello

Don’t we look so happy? Well, we were. And we still are. I am a very lucky woman. Will you please remind me of that on the days when we are fighting?

Unfortunately, everyone has to come home from their honeymoon and deal with each other. (We didn’t really have a honeymoon and so our “dealing with each other” started from day one) For us, the whole first year was a veeeerrrrrryyy long process of figuring each other out. When we look back on our lives, staying married for that first year will definitely be a “greatest accomplishment” for both of us. LG and I are so different and I am willing to admit that I am hard to live with, and he admits that he can be too sometimes. Part of the reason that we have made it in one piece for the past 90 months is that usually we both think that we got the better end of the deal. And, we also both came into this marriage with the attitude that there was no turning back.

Well, one time, during this year from H – E – double hockey-sticks, we had one of our “discussions”. We were not happy with each other at all. This still happens, but just not every day like it did that first year. I had been thoughtless towards him and committed the unpardonable sin of demeaning him in front of other people. And, he had struck back in the car on the way home with a thoughtless remark. (No need to share the details…I am already sharing way more than my VERY private husband would like) Well, I was shocked and hurt because as far as I can remember this was the only time LG has ever said anything hurtful to me. (And, even though we hadn’t been married that long, he knew exactly what to say that would hurt me the most.)

LG had let his passive-aggressive side OUT, and it came OUT with a vengence. I was so angry, hurt, shocked, broken-hearted, and depressed all in one. I retreated to our bedroom with the cordless phone. (This is what I do when we fight; I call in all my troops…my sisters, friends, mom, even his mom sometimes) Well, usually my support group just listens and gives me small tips of how they would work out the situation. Well, this time my mom had some WORDS to say to me. I called her in tears and told her what he had said. Instead of defending me and telling me that he had acted like a jerk and I shouldn’t forgive him until he came groveling, this is what she said:

“Alice, that is the best man that you are ever going to find.”

And although I hate to admit it, she was right!

Home of the free


Land that I love Posted by Hello

Since the 50’s the Mormon Church Leaders have encouraged Mormon families to set aside Monday nights as a Family Night. Monday nights are called Family Home Evening, we turn down outside commitments and spend the night at home with our family. We can read, pray, hold family meetings, sing, or do other fun family activities. In my family, Monday nights has to include a song, prayer, lesson, game, and treat. Because my family is very patriotic, we also have another tradition: The Flag Ceremony. The girls act as a color guard and we have The Pledge of Allegiance, and afterward we sing “She’s a Grand Old Flag“. It is really fun to watch the girls march around the family room with their flags every Monday night. Come on over and see what I mean.

This flag tradition started when I was a child. My parents were patriotic. Much like most people in this country, my great-grandparents, on both sides, were immigrants. My mom and dad started the flag thing during family home evening when we were kids and it slowly escalated into a full-blown production. We had a very long hallway in our house (all those kids + all those bedrooms = that long hallway) After, the flag ceremony, we would all march up and down the hall singing, “She’s a grand old flag”. After a while, my brothers got bored of just marching and they decided to surprise my parents, who always waited in the family room until we all decided to come back.

One night, my oldest brothers encouraged us younger kids to find a creative object from the bedrooms and to put it on top of our heads. Like in The Sound of Music, we always lined up, oldest to youngest. Of course, we did as we were told. We all got our objects, lined up in the hall, and marched out to the delightful surprise of mom and dad.

The objects started out: shirts, blankets, hats, toys. But the longer this game went on (which was quite some time) the objects got much more creative: underwear, laundry baskets, furniture, wastebaskets. (You get the picture) Looking back on this, we probably didn’t display the most reverence for the flag, but through this simple consistent tradition, my brother and sisters and I all formed a great love of the flag and of our mighty country.

Last summer, I was the Assistant Director, of the Knoxville Cumberland Stake’s Girls’ Camp. The Director was a good frined of mine and we worked REALLY hard at preparing a rememberable camp for the 100 girls that would attend this week-long camp at Pickett State Park.

One item of business that was especially important to me was the Flag Raising and Lowering. After reading my family’s history with the flag this won’t come as a surprise to you. My friend also knew of my love for America’s flag, but she didn’t seem to share my sentiment. I have been a leader for The Boy Scouts of America, and so I have witnessed how boys were taught about the flag. I felt like this camp was a rare opportunity to bring the girls up to speed.

Well, as the camp went on, it became more and more obvious that teaching the girls how to handle the flag was not a priority. I tried not to get frustrated as I wasn’t in charge, my friend was. One day, toward the end of camp, we were sitting together during a cheap attempt at a flag raising. I said to her, “What is the deal? Why don’t you care about this flag stuff?” She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Hello, I’m Canadian!”

Both of us just cracked up. I had forgotten that she was Canadian born. She is so “American”. When dealing with 100 teenage girls for a week, it is needless to say that this small bit of humor provided us with just 15 seconds of much needed laughter.

Moral of the story: Unless you are talking to Tom Brokaw, don’t expect your Canadian friends to love the flag as much as you do, and don’t try to have flag raising ceremonies with a Native Canadian leader.

The Dilemma


Tupperware…no housewife can live without it Posted by Hello

For about four days, we have had the rankiest smell protruding from the hallway where our office and bedrooms are located. Of course, it was my job to figure out where in the world it was coming from. I searched and searched to no avail.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to stay home and do nothing but take care of my household duties, not because my house was a sty, but because it was time to tackle the laundry. Well, even after I tidied everything up, emptied the garbages, and cleaned the laundry there was still a REALLY bad smell.

It was time for my built-in mother detective skills. I started my search with the little bed that is constantly made on the floor next to ours. It is made of an egg carton mattress, three or four quilts, and a bunch of pillows. We refuse to let the girls get in the bed with us because we want to get SOME sleep.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in the kids’ makeshift bed. I then moved my search on to the other side of the bed and looked underneath. Jackpot….under the bed was a sippy cup turned over sideways and Serafina. (one of the girls favorite stuffed kitties) Now, what you have to understand is that there are different types of sippy cups. The one under our bed was the kind that I use when I give the girls juice. (the sippy part has a constant open hole, making it possible for orange juice pulp to get through) This also makes it possible for ALL of the juice to get through, especially when it is tipped on its side.

IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, consider this a warning. So, I push the bed aside and pick up the cup; there was a little curdled OJ inside (how does OJ curdle…who knows?) It SMELLED SO BAD. And, then there was the kitty……can you say the smell of maggots rotting in the sun? Serafina must have soaked up a bunch of the orange juice and she sat there waiting for someone to come and relieve her and the rest of the house from the stench. Who knows how long she had been there. So, I smiled with pleasure, knowing that me, Supermom had saved the day again and I moved quickly to take care of business. I wiped the wood floor with Clorox wipes (thank goodness it wasn’t carpet); I then washed the cat with Clorox (thank goodness it was white), and washed the cup with Clorox.

Later, during the day, over the phone, I relayed this story to my sister, Shannon. Shannon asked me why I didn’t just throw the cat and the cup away. I explained that the cat was their absolute favorite and they would have died. I had washed it and it was fine. (a little less fluffy, but fine nonetheless) I also told her that I could have thrown the cup out, but, why? If I dealt with the cat then I knew I could deal with the cup. So, Shannon says, “You have to throw the cup away or then it becomes like ‘the blue cup’ ” This brought instantaneous laughter……

So, here’s the last part of my story. When we were kids, my mom had a bunch of colored Tupperware cups, much like the ones shown above. I grew up in the 70’s and so, of course, we had the colors that are shown above, but we also had primary colors. Well, one day, my brother decided to urinate in the blue one……Who knows? Brothers do the weirdest things. (maybe you males can understand, but we sisters sure didn’t) So, we ran and told my mom that he had peed in the cup, hoping that she would remedy the problem. Well, all she did was pour out the urine, rinse out the cup, and wash it with some bleach.

To us kids, there was NO WAY that cup was rid of the pee. Every night, my mom would set the table and all of us kids would await which color cup we would get. We knew better than to ask for the one we wanted because we all wanted the same one. My mom would just go down the table and put one down at the top of each of our plates, one at a time. Every night, you could hear the howl of whichever unfortunate kid got the blue cup. How cruel, huh? It’s no wonder I need therapy.

So, if you haven’t caught on to the dilemma yet, it is this: When a mom is faced with a DISGUSTING situation, should she clean it up or get rid of any offensive matter? I think that the answer to the dilemma is this: you can clean it, as long as the kids don’t see whatever it is while in the gross state. If they do, you better just throw it away to save yourself the therapy bills.

Fortunately for me, yesterday, our girls never saw Serafina in her worst state. No howls of undelight for this MOM.

BIG BABY


brayden rymer (the newest nephew) Posted by Hello

Here is Renee’s e-mail response to my last entry entitled Take 2: (I don’t think that she wants to comment on my blog anymore 🙂

Ok Ok your right it is cute and I like the color.. By the way that was not a personal jab just a joke. Besides What do you call the comment back . Hipocrite. Is that how you spell it. Anyway I love ya even if you hair was all gone so get over it already!!

Brayden was born on January 8th, 2005 and he wieghed 9 lbs. 15.9 oz. OUCH!
My brother-in-law, Jordan, was 12 lbs. when he was born. Yeah, I can never live up to my mother-in-law.

Well, just in case Renee has hurt post-partum sensitivity, I want you all to know that I love her tons and she is one of my best friends.

K- bye.