Dad/Grandpa Cole
I have lots of memories of fun things that I did with my dad growing up. I remember him making my dollhouse furniture in his shed and making it look just like the furniture in our house. It was way cooler than any furniture that could’ve been bought at a store. Also, I remember playing the King’s Quest Rosella computer game with him when computers were new and it was really novel. Sometimes on Saturday mornings he would toast a whole pack of Lenders bagels in the oven and put apricot jam on them for our breakfast. Also he would cut letters from our names into chunks of apples, which I thought was super cool.
Some of my best memories of him are from Indian Princess camping through the YMCA. Mel and I got to do terribly tacky crafts while the dad’s sat around and chatted. My “Indian name” was Tiger Lily- not very original- and Mel’s was Shooting Star. My dad’s was Shooting Tiger. We got to go camping with him and that was always fun. I especially enjoyed picking out the junk food before the trips. We usually ate cheetohs, chocolate pudding cups, and A&W root beer. One time at a camp out I got into a fist fight with a boy who was much bigger than me because he had broken my water gun, over my own head no less. (In an effort for full disclosure I have to admit that I was being super annoying and it wasn’t totally unreasonable for him to break my water gun.) My dad pulled me off of the huge boy and carried me in one arm to the car to cool down laughing at me the whole time. It was probably the appropriate response.
Mom/Grandma Cole
There are almost too many things about my mom to write and it’s hard to know where to start. Also with your mom it’s hard to even single out the things that she did for you because she’s sort of the backdrop for everything that happened in your childhood. One of my earliest memories of my mom was of her taking me with her to register for classes in college. I remember waiting in line after line at the university with her to sign up since this was before computers. Also while she was in school I remember her coming home from school one day with Halloween costumes for Mel and me. One of us was a blue My Little Pony and the other was the brown Carebear. I don’t remember which was which. She must’ve been really tired to have bought costumes because those are the only costumes I ever remember her buying. Even though she still hasn’t finished her degree her example showed how important it was and she was always very encouraging of me in school
Another way that my mom was helpful was that there were some things that she just let slide. I went through a rough fashion phase from about 3rd-5th grade. I pretty much refused to wear matching socks or earrings and this was on top of the fact that 80’s clothes and hair were already bad to begin with. My mom just didn’t say anything about it and I got over it. If she had made a big deal out of it I probably would’ve kept it up for much longer.
I was not a very rebellious kid and I did what I was supposed to do overall. When I was 12 or 13 the costume of choice for Halloween was a French maid. I’m not sure why I wanted that costume so badly as usually if everyone else was doing it I wanted nothing to do with it but for some reason I really did. My mom made me a costume and while it wasn’t as sexy as most of my friend’s costumes it was still in line with the general idea. That year was the only cold Halloween that I ever remember as a kid. Karma. I never have tried to dress provocatively again. This is another case of my mom being wise in altering the costume but not talking me out of it. What a smart lady.
My mom always took care of us and we always knew that we were the most important thing to her. She volunteered in our classes, went on field trips, and helped with projects. She was supportive and fun and really did an excellent job of making science interesting. She is such a curious person and I think that’s wonderful.
Mel/Auntie Mel
When Mel and I were young we played together all the time. One of the things that we liked to play was Barbies. Unfortunately I was not a very good sister and on more than one occasion I convinced her to cut her Barbie’s hair. This never turned out well as Barbie hair needs the weight of length to keep it from being a fro. We also would play lots of imagination games, one I remember playing a lot was Butterfly Queens where we would use a sheet as wings and fly around the house making up very dramatic scenarios as we went.
One thing that really bugged me when I was younger was that Mel wanted to copy everything that I did and it made me crazy. My mom made up a song that went “Tag along friend, tag along friend, my best friend is a tag along friend.” She thought it was cute that Mel wanted to copy me but I didn’t. I also hated wearing matching clothes. When I was in 6th grade and Mel was in 4th we had matching quilted rose printed vests (yes, they were as ugly as you are imagining). One morning I waited until after Mel was dressed to put on my vest so that she wouldn’t match me. As soon as I put it on she went and changed clothes to put hers on. This made me so mad so I changed clothes but I secretly put the vest in my backpack so that I could change clothes at school. That wasn’t very nice.
Thew/Uncle Tutu
Probably one of my most vivid memories of Thew was when he almost drowned at Grandma LeSueur’s pool. He was probably about 5 or 6 and I was about 10 (but we could’ve both been a couple years younger) and we were in Mesa, Arizona visiting Grandma Hatch. It’s one of only two times that I remember going to my Great Grandma LeSueur’s house (The other time was when Mel, my dad, and I played Marco Polo in her pool and I broke my front tooth off when my dad cheated.). I remember looking over and seeing Matthew frantically trying to bob up out of the water and breathe. I looked around to see if any of the adults saw him and were going to help but no one saw him. I looked back at him and I remember very clearly that his blue of his eyes seemed to be almost the same color as the whites they just seemed like even they were getting diluted by the water. As he went under again I grabbed him and somehow dragged him to the side. It was really scary and after that I didn’t want to swim anymore that day.
Michael/Uncle Mike
With Michael I was there right from the very beginning. I was at his birth. I will always remember that he was born at 3:33 in the morning. It was very exciting and I’m not sure why in the world my mom and her doctor agreed to let me be in the room since I was only 9 at the time but they did. Overall it was a good experience and it helped me to not be afraid of childbirth because my mom is a very calm delivering woman. It was so exciting to see Michael brand new to the world. Mel and I were a little disappointed that he wasn’t a girl though so we occasionally dressed him up in our girl dress-up clothes, put a wig on him and referred to him as “our little sister Michelle”.
Jacob/Uncle Jaybob
I was at Jacob’s birth as well. I remember making him a special baby blanket and I was really excited by how well it turned out. I don’t have a lot of specific memories of Jacob as a really little kid since he was only 5 or 6 when I left for college. I do remember that Jacob was a super smiley and happy kid and that we always teased him about having a really big head. We called him “Pumpkin Head” because he has orange hair and a large noggin.
Sam/Uncle Sammy
Sam was only 2 when I left for college so most of my memories of him are from long distance. When I was on my mission and called home for Christmas I talked to each member of the family. When it was Sam’s turn he started rapidly saying, “When I get bigger I’m going to have mean dogs, a lot of mean dogs, and I’m going to keep them in cages,” at which point Matthew said to him, “Christmas things Sammy, Christmas things.” And Sam launched in to a list of his gifts as if he hadn’t just been talking about his fighting dogs. My other favorite Sam memory was when he shaved the night before my wedding (leaving a huge scab and later scar across his chin for the photos) because he “wanted to see if it hurt. Because you know how people say, ‘Be a man.’ It always hurts.” He claimed that shaving did not hurt.
Childhood Memories
When I was in Kindergarten I went over to my friend, Rachel Gibbs’ house. For a snack her mom gave us mint chocolate chip ice cream. Then she left the kitchen. Being five, and left to our own devices, we thought that we'd be helpful and clean our bowls for her mom. However our great plan was to lick them really clean and put them back in the cabinet, which is exactly what we did with our bowls and spoons. Later that night I realized that that probably hadn't been the best of ideas and I hoped that Rachel would tell her mom. I never mentioned it to anyone though and her family probably used slobbery bowls fro cereal the next morning.
At the end of 5th grade we had an awards ceremony. There were lots of opportunities for awards and I received quite a few. Keep in mind that I had been at this elementary school (Timbercreek Elementary) from kindergarten all the way through 5th grade with even an extra year thrown in for D1. Every time the principal, Mr. Harvey, called me up to get an award he pronounced my name wrong, and every time I corrected him. You’d think that after a while he run out of wrong ways to say Andrea and get it right but no, he just kept cycling through the errors. Finally on my last award Mr. Harvey predictably said my name wrong and I corrected him yet again, at which point he said, “Andrea Aundrea What’s the difference?” To that I responded, “One’s my name and one isn’t.” and calmly walked back to my seat apparently (according to my mom who later asked what I had said to him) leaving him standing there with his mouth hanging open. I maintain that it was a valid point.
My senior year of high school there were a lot of tests that you could take and get college credit for them so then you didn’t have to take the class in college. I took a lot of the classes and took several of these very expensive tests. One of the tests that I took was the US History test. All year long you knew what time period the essay would be about so that you could do extra studying about that era and be prepared to write a very in depth essay on the prompt that you would receive on the day of the test. Multiple choice was the other portion of the test and since I had had a semester in between the class and the test I was counting on my essay portion to bring up my multiple choice section score to get the college credit. On the day of the test in between sections we had a bathroom break and in the bathroom I overheard girls (most of whom I knew) discussing the essay. They had opened the sealed essay portion of the test before the break and were collaborating on the essay. I felt sick because I knew that they were cheating, but I hadn’t cheated and I didn’t know what to do. In the end I finished the test and then told a teacher the following day about the cheating (without naming names). The essay for all test takers was thrown out. We had the option of coming during the summer to write a new essay or just letting our multiple choice section count for our whole test. I chose the make up essay but bombed it because there was no way to prepare beforehand since it was for a totally different time period. I didn’t end up getting the college credit that I had been hoping for but I still knew that I had done the right thing. That helped with the disappointment.
My freshman year at BYU I had the calling of Enrichment Leader- I think it's now called Additional Relief Society Meeting Leader or something. As such I not infrequently had to buy stuff for activities and then turn in my receipts for a reimbursement, this was the first experience I had with doing this. Around November or so I got a phone call at my dorm and it was a counselor in my bishopric. He was very angry and was yelling at me over the phone. At first I couldn't figure out why he was yelling and I don't respond well to yelling- it just makes me shut down. After a few minutes of the tirade I realized that he was accusing me of stealing from the church because when I had filled out the form for a reimbursement I was off by 13 cents. It was a simple math error and I apologized and got off the phone as soon as possible. I then left my dorm (in case he tried to call back, remember this was before wide spread cellphone use) and went and sat under the bell tower on campus. I was very upset and did not want to see that man who had been so rude and wrong again. Briefly the idea crossed my mind that if I didn't go to church I wouldn't have to see him. Now thirteen years later, I am so grateful that I didn't entertain that fleeting though because I would have missed out on so many wonderful experiences (education at BYU, friendships, mission, meeting and marrying Collin, etc.) by choosing to let that one incident determine my future. I did avoid that counselor for the rest of the school year, and he never did apologize, but it didn't matter because my life has been richly blessed because of my activity in the church.
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