Dec. 21, 2010

Do you remember a best Christmas of childhood?

This wouldn't totally be childhood but the best Christmas of my life was when Marie said yes to my proposal of marriage. It has made all of the rest of them really special as well. Of course I have had special ones through my entire life because I have always had very enjoyable ones. Even while in the mission field when our Christmas tree was just green streamers taped to the wall in the form of a tree. The year I made the little pencil holders was a memorable one as well because of the hard work of keeping the secret while working on it and then the other Christmases when we would travel to Roosevelt and buy all of our gifts at the Five and Dime store since everything was basically less than a dollar and we could get everything we needed for less than $10.00. I have had good Christmases all of my life and remember the most consistent part of it being the Christmas story on Christmas Eve that we have read every year that I can remember even the year we did it in a snow cave by the front door of our home in Mapleton.

Dec 20, 2010

Tell about your experiences with Santa Claus.

Santa would come to occasional parties at school and church. I sat on his lap each time and received the little bag of candy and nuts that he would hand out. Other than that I didn't have a lot of experience with him. I knew that mom and dad stayed up late each year and were very busy putting out things for us. You see in my childhood home I slept up stairs. It was an older home and there were two rooms upstairs where the girls would sleep in one and the boys in the other. In the girls closet there was a vent to the room downstairs. In the winter we would open it up so the heat from the old coal stove would be able to come up into the rooms to give a little heat to the rooms. The best part of that vent however was the fact that you could see down into the room and watch what was happening in that room.So on Christmas eve we would watch for a few minutes and knew what was happening. It never spoiled Santa for us however since we knew who he was and the presents were still just as great. He was the one that always brought the books and put into our stockings the ones that were signed or written in with:

"To Kent from Daddy and Mother with love- Xmas 1961"

"To Kent Dec 25, 1962"

"To Kent on Xmas 1964"

"Dec 1965 Love to Kent"

"Dec 25, 1966 Dear Kent, Here's resource material for your talks. Merry Christmas, Love Dad & Mother"

"Dec 25, 1969 Dear Kent, Sister Stewart says, beautifully, some things that mean so much to happiness. May you enjoy this little book and find inspiration and courage to live the life of happiness and joy that comes from living the principles of the gospel. Lovingly, Mother"
"To Kent with love, Dad & Mother Dec 25, 1971"

Dec 19, 2010

Tell about the worst Christmas present you ever received, as a child.

Under pants and socks. What to tell about that since they were always necessary but never very fun.I did appreciate them since they were pretty much the only clothes that I didn't receive as hand me downs. I did get new clothes but the majority of my clothes came from the older brothers who grew out of them before they wore them out.

Dec18, 2010

Tell about the best Christmas present you ever received as a child?

I received some very nice presents each year and, as I have mentioned before, there were always books in our stockings. I suppose they were the best present that I received since I got one practically every year and used them every time I had to give talks in church. I think I also used them when I talked at seminary graduation my senior year. There were other presents like clothes for school that I received every year and there were also toys, usually one a year. I remember a large tractor one year that we played with in an old tractor tire filled with sand. Along with some other toys that stayed there for several years. It was a lot f fun and we all enjoyed it.

There was one present however that remains in my memory or actually one present that I never got when I was young like I had expected. Each one of the older boys got a .22 single shot rifle when they turned about 14 years old. So I expected one as well. It was year after year that I was disappointed in that I never received one. In fact I went on my mission and had still not received one. I didn't ever really need one because I had one to use since dad owned one that I was always able to take. It wasn't until a few years later that I learned why I had never received a rifle for Christmas and it was because dad had always intended that I receive his rifle as an inheritance. The rifle no longer works well since the firing pin is worn down from all of it's use but it remains as the best present I didn't receive until I was suppose to in later years.

This was dad's brand bar triangle. Everything was marked with that brand.

Dec 17, 2010

Tell about the neatest present that you remember giving to your dad.

It was a small pencil holder made from a piece of wood cut from a limb of a cedar tree. It was about 3 inches high and tall and had the bark removed and then 3 holes drill down from the top into the wood so a pencil cut be put into it. I remember that it was pretty cold as I worked o them out in the barn so they wouldn't know about it. I actually made several of them at the same time.

Dec 16, 2010 Happy Birthday, Marie

Tell about the neatest present that you remember giving your mom.

I do not remember what I gave to mom since it was probably something small bought at at store. I know she always liked cameo pins and it seems like that was one gift we gave as several of us together one year. I think though mom and dad got more from watching the joy on our faces as we ran to our socks and opened the presents than what we gave to them. It just seems to be something I guess that comes from being a parent. I made mom lots of small gifts in school and hand prints in plaster and macaroni pictures seemed to be the norm for those years. They even hung in the house somewhere for several years.

Dec 15, 2010

Did your grandpa or grandma ever make gifts for you? Tell about them.

The one gift that I remember being made for me by a grandparent was a 3 legged bear made from the old upholstery that was taken off the couch that I ended up having for many years after we were married. The old brown couch we had until 1993 was given to me by mom and dad and was the couch that was redone with new fabric when I was only about 5 or 6 years old. Grandma Poulson used that old fabric and made all of us little animal pillows or what we always referred to as a stuffed bear. I still have it somewhere in my stuff.

Dec 14, 2010

Did you hang a Christmas stocking?

Yes, kinda. We never had a fireplace so we would each get a spot in the room where we could put one. Usually a chair or on the couch. We would always look forward to going to our socks and I remember the two things that we could always count on being in the sock were an orange and a small thought book from mom and dad. I don't really remember when I stopped believing in Santa Claus and maybe that was because I knew mom and dad were always a part of it since they apparently gave the books to him to put into the sock.

Dec 13, 2010

How did you decorate your trees?

We always made fresh popcorn strings. We would make a long string and then put it around the tree. It usually would reach around several times due to the length that we would make them. We would also put the glass balls on the tree and also hang an incredible amount of tinsel (which we would have to remove string by string as well). There would be the few and far between ornaments that we would make in school that would be hung on the tree as well.

Dec 12, 2010

When did you put up your Christmas tree? Where did you get them?

We usually put up the tree about two weeks before Christmas. We would either go cut down a tree (cedar) on the hillside above our home or we would buy one from the Scouts who would sell them for fund raisers. I even was a part of going after those trees for a couple of years. It was always nice to have the smell of fresh cut trees in the home but in our married years we had to buy a fake one that would last for several years due to the raising costs of the fresh trees , that around here were never fresh.