Love Stories by My Grandparents

A couple weeks ago, the weekly question from Family Search was: Do you know the story of how your grandparents met and fell in love?

I couldn't answer that question off the top of my head, which meant I needed to spend time contacting my grandparents! (Which, I'm sure, was the intent of that question). I'll be sharing love stories from FIVE sets of grandparents!

L. Kent Peterson and Linda Hegstrom

Laurin (who goes by his middle name of Kent) and Linda Peterson are my maternal grandparents. They are currently serving their second couple's mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I emailed them this question and I'm going to just copy and paste their response because I think it's best in their own words:

"To start Chelsey we must tell you about some of the church programs that we had when we were teenagers that we do not hear much about now.  Perhaps it is because the church is a world-wide church now and that required some changes to some church programs.

Every year starting in the fall, each ward in the stake would take a Friday or Saturday night and host a ward Gold and Green Ball.  All of the married couples would attend at least their own ward’s Gold and Green Ball and perhaps other wards also.  Then The Stake would be the last to host a Stake Gold and Green Ball.  These had live music.  There was a local band that played ballroom music.  The young men and young women, those who were “Mutual” age would learn dances that they would perform for a floor show half way through the dance.  There was usually a boy and a girl from each ward that was invited to learn the dances and be in the floor show for the Stake Gold and Green Ball.

At that time, the church also would hold an “All Church Dance Festival” in Salt Lake City on the University of Utah football field.  The youth who danced on the stake dance teams from all the stakes in the church that were close enough to come would come a perform all together on the football field.  We all learned the same dances.  We learned a Tango, Foxtrot, and Waltz.  We practiced every week starting in the spring until the festival sometime in the summer.

I was the girl dancing with a partner from Nampa 2^nd ward.  Grandpa was the partner to a girl he was dating in the Nampa 5^th ward although he wasn’t living in that ward.   At dance practice was the first time we saw each other.  We both noticed each other.  I learned the dances and was able to go to Salt lake and dance in the All Church dance festival.  Grandpa had graduated from High School and was working to save money to go on a mission.  He and the girl he was dating had ended their dating and so Grandpa did not go to Salt Lake. 

We had stake dances two Saturdays each month.  The Nampa Stake would have a live band  one Saturday and records on the other Saturday.

We both liked to dance and would go to the dances.  Grandpa had a friend, Ed, that liked a girl named Marsha, who was in my home ward and was a friend of mine.  They introduced us.  That night after the dance Grandpa asked to take me home.  I had to go call my parents to get permission.  That was the beginning.  We dated until Grandpa went on his mission.  At that time we realized that we really cared deeply for each other so we decided  to write to each other while Grandpa was on his mission, as well as I would keep his journal.  The agreement was that I would date but that I would be waiting for him and we would see if we still felt the same way when he returned from his mission.  Which we did!  Grandpa returned home from his mission in April 1966.  When I went home from Ricks College to see him the weekend he returned, I found a dozen red roses waiting for me.   I finished that semester and went back home and got a job for the summer.  Grandpa enrolled in summer semester at Ricks College and would hitchhike home on some weekends to see me.   We were married and sealed on August 23, 1966 in the Manti Temple."

Elvin Hegstrom and Virginia Vasser

Elvin and Virginia Hegstrom are my great-grandparents. They are the parents of my grandma Linda. Elvin passed away in 2012, and Virginia is still alive (she is Benjamin and Luna's great-great-grandma). I called my grandma last week to talk with her and ask her how she and grandpa met. I, of course, took her off guard. I really should have planned this better so that she could be better prepared. I was pleased with what she told me, but she wasn't and wants to tell me more later.

Virginia and Elvin met in high school. I asked my grandma, "So you were high school sweethearts?" And she said, "Yeah, I guess you can call us that. We went on a few dates, but he didn't know how to behave!" I laughed and asked her what that meant and she said, "Well, he grabbed my ink bottle out of my hand and threw it down the hallway like a bowling ball!" She told me that when the war (WWII) broke out, his mom asked them to marry each other so that Elvin wouldn't go to war. (He did get drafted and went off to the European theater, which you can read about here.)

She said, "We didn't have much of an engagement. Once we decided to get married, we got married." She said that everyone was completely preoccupied with the war. Many people didn't graduate from high school because they were either going to work or to fight, plus getting married. I'm going to try and remember her exact words because they were really touching. "No one told me what my options were because there was this war going on, and everyone was so worried. Germany was closing in from one side and Japan was closing in on the other; and all of these young men were leaving school to go and fight. And every time a plane flew overhead you didn't know if it was American, or German, or Japanese. The big cities even had black outs, where I lived didn't, but other places did. And people today just can't understand. It's not the same today as it was at all. Today you can see what's going on live, but back then it would take weeks for something to show up in the newspaper. I remember a week after Pearl Harbor we went into the auditorium and listened to the radio. It was just so different than it is today."

While my grandpa was in Europe, my grandma lived on her parents farm. She helped out on the farm, and she and her mom briefly worked at a place to prepare potatoes to be sent to Europe for the soldiers. Everything was about the war. She told me that grandpa wrote her a few letters while he was in Europe, but he couldn't write while he was on the battlefield. My grandpa got injured in France, and was sent to a hospital in England. After a while he was sent to a hospital in Walla Walla, Washington. My grandma and her cousin went up to visit him there.

The conversation turned to her earlier life. She talked about riding in a horse drawn buggy to get to school. She told  me that her dad courted her mom in a horse drawn buggy. She said that they each had their own horse and they rode them all the time. She told me about her older brother who was one day riding his horse, and fell off (I think he took a turn really fast) and hit his head on a rock. He didn't survive that accident. She also told me about helping raise her youngest brother. They are 9 years apart, and she was like a second mom to him.

Talking about all of this with my grandma was really special. I greatly enjoyed hearing her talk about her younger years. This summer I am going to visit her, and she has a book full of pictures, letters, and other things that she is going to show me. I can't wait!

John Larson and Carol Wisdom

John and Carol Larson are my paternal grandparents. John passed away in 2015, and Carol is still here with us. The night before I planned to call my grandma to ask her how she and grandpa met, she was admitted into the hospital for bleeding in her brain - she is now in a rehab center and is doing better, but it's going to be a long recovery for her. So I have to go off what little I already know for this story.

According to my dad, John and Carol met at a Church dance, or some sort of Church function. John asked Carol on a date, and she said yes. While they were on their date, my grandpa asked my grandma how old she was. She told him that she was 18 and asked him how old he was. He told her that he was 29. She told me, "If we had not been driving on the freeway, I would have gotten out of the car right then!" Three generations of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are very happy that  they were on the freeway. They got married in the St. George, Utah temple a short time later.

I'm going down to St. George in April to visit, and I'm going to get to talk to her then, and I'll hopefully add to this story!

Even though these stories are about how my grandparents met and fell in love, I learned so much more than that. I learned about what life was like during that time. I learned about Church culture from Kent and Linda, I learned about life during WWII from Virginia, and I can't wait to see what I learn from Carol. I love my grandparents so much and I am so grateful for the relationships I have with each of them.

Note: I have the biographies of two of my deceased grandmothers. One I knew before she died, the other died before I was born. I'm going to look through them and do a second post on how they met their husbands, my grandfathers.

My Mom is My Best Friend

Last week's Family Search Question was: What have been the most important and valued friendships of your life?

I have had a lot of good friends throughout my life, but my very best friend is definitely my mom. She has been a true friend, not just a mom friend, but an actual friend. My entire life  I have been able to talk to her about anything; I can talk to her like any of my friends: when I was little, when I was a teenager, and now still as an adult. One post won't do my mom justice, so I'm going to share three fond memories of the two of us.

Road Trips

In June 2008, when I was 17 years old, I was one of the bride's maids at my aunt Vickie's wedding. She got married in the Oakland California temple and the reception was in Santa Clara, California; that meant we got to take a trip to California. My brother couldn't go because he had summer school (not because he wasn't a good student, but because he was getting ahead in his core classes so that he could do marching band, choir, and theater), so my dad stayed home with him while my mom and I took a road trip! It was so much fun! We made a few mistakes with directions. On the way there, we forgot to change freeways and went too far North and almost drove into Idaho before we realized it, that added an extra 2 hours to our first day of driving. Then, when we were trying to find the Oakland temple, there was road construction, so our printed off instructions were no longer valid! (This is pre-smart phone days.) We got off the freeway and called my dad - who couldn't help us, he was in Utah. We tried calling family members who were also going to the wedding, but no one was answering their phones. We prayed and felt impressed to get back on the freeway. Right as we got back on, my uncle Mark drove right by us! So we followed him to the temple. The rest of the trip was full of singing, laughing, and talking.

During the summer of 2012 we drove up, just the two of us, to Nampa, Idaho twice to visit my great grandma. The first time was a family reunion to celebrate my great grandparents being married for 70 years. It was really fun, and there were no driving problems since we knew where we were going. I was also pregnant with Benjamin, but didn't know it at the time! The second time was for my mom's cousin Chad's wedding. I did know that I was pregnant, and I was so sick. This trip was slower because we had to stop a lot for me. Even though I enjoyed seeing everyone, I can't say that overall I enjoyed the actual trip. We only stayed for the wedding ceremony because I was dying (it was an outdoor wedding). But my mom took really good care of me, and we enjoyed each other's company.

Grocery Shopping

During both of my pregnancies, I got to a point (generally by the third trimester) where I could not go  grocery shopping by myself. It exhausted me so much that I could not drive myself home. So, my mom started  going grocery shopping with me. She would pick me up, we would have our own carts - or share one depending on how big our list was, and shop together. It took much longer that way because we would talk and forget things, but we had a lot of fun. We still go together every once in a while, and we really enjoy it.

LDS General Women's Conference

March 2014 was the first General Women's Session for General Conference. We went together, and then went to eat at Chili's afterwards. To this day that is still one of my favorite sessions of conference.  The talks, which were about unity, were so wonderful and spiritual, the music was beautiful, and the time with my mom was great. We decided that we would go to the women's session together every six months. On the second time going, we changed our eating location to Red Lobster because Chili's had too long of a wait. Then I fell in love with Red Lobster! Gerson doesn't like sea food, so the only time I can go is without him, which happens to be every six months on the night of the women's session.

I love my mom so much, and I'm so grateful for the relationship that we have. She is an amazing person, and I have always and will continue to look up to her.

Life is Full of Achievements

This week's question from Family Search is: What will be the greatest achievement of your life?

I can't really answer this question the way it was intended. For one, I'm 26 and haven't accomplished much by the world's standards; and two, I can't pick one achievement to define my life so far. I think life is made up of several achievements that shape and define us. So, I have picked six achievements that stand out to me and that I want to share.

#1. I won the science fair in 5th grade. At my elementary school, Amelia Earhart Elementary, 5th and 6th graders could participate in the science fair. My project was titled: Which Whitening Toothpaste Whitens Teeth the Best? I took hard boiled eggs and stained them with grape juice, then I took four different toothpastes that claimed to be the #1 tooth whitener, and brushed the eggs. I brushed them over several days and recorded what I saw. I presented a poster with my recordings and pictures, and I also kept the eggs to show the judges. Winning was super exciting for an 11 year old! 2nd and 3rd place that year were also 5th graders and also girls! I got to go on to the next science fair (district level, I think), where I got 3rd place in my science (consumer sciences).

#2. I got 2nd place in Youth Smooth my senior year in high school. I was a competitive ballroom dancer during my high school years. My senior year I tried Smooth (which is American style of Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, and Viennese Waltz)  for the first time. My partner, had danced Smooth with other partners before, but this was our first year dancing that style together. I caught on really well, and we made the  finals (top 6) in almost every competition. During the last competition of the season: BYU's National Dancesport Championship, we placed 2nd in  Youth Smooth (our personal best all year)! When we looked at the individual markings for each judge and each dance, every single judge gave us 1st place in the Waltz! We also placed 5th in Youth Pre-Championship Latin (Cha-Cha, Samba, Paso Doble), and we helped our team win 1st place in Team Match. It was a great way to end my high school dancing experience.

#3. I graduated high school with high honors. School was always really important to me. I wanted to get the best grade that I could on every assignment, in every class. Yes, I was that student who asked my teachers for extra credit so that I could  go from an A- to an A. Naturally I wanted to graduate with high honors, and I worked hard to do so. (I also wanted the good grades to get into BYU, which I did.) I made the high honor roll all 4 terms of my Senior year, and I got that gold braid to drape across my shoulders for graduation. Graduating from high school was so exciting, and I could not wait for college in the fall.

#4. I married the love of my life in the temple. Getting married in the temple was always really important to me, and it was something that was also important to Gerson. So when we started talking about marriage, including the temple in that discussion was not difficult. Marrying Gerson, and being sealed to him was such a life changing moment for me. I really can't say all that I want to in one paragraph, but I did write an entire post a couple years ago: It's a Love Story and I Said Yes!

#5. I became a mother. Before I got married I didn't want kids. Because of my testimony of the Plan of Salvation, I knew that I would have them one day, but I was not looking forward to it. Shortly after marriage, something changed, and I was ready to start our family sooner than expected. I had planned to finish college, and do all sorts of traveling for dance. But that wasn't Heavenly Father's plan for me and we had Benjamin shortly after Gerson graduated, but I was still in school. I was pregnant with Luna when I graduated from BYU, and now we are a fun family of four! I really love being a mom. I was not very good with kids before I had my own, and I was nervous about not knowing how to interact with my own children. But natural instincts kicked in the moment Benjamin was born, and while there have been tough moments, I've never felt scared of caring for my own children like I did in the past. I have written Parenting and Pregnancy sections of this blog.

many posts about my mothering and pregnancy adventures in the

#6. I graduated from college. Graduating from BYU felt so good. It took a lot of hard work. I would be lying if I said I never considered quitting. I was never off track to graduate, but it felt amazing to graduate. Even though I'm not using my degree right now because I'm home with Benjamin and Luna, when our youngest goes to school, I will find a teaching job as well.

I didn't name these six achievements to say how awesome I am. I named them because I think it's important to record and remember these kind of mile stones in our lives. They map out our lives, teach us lessons, and give us great memories. I noticed that as I got older my accomplishments changed. I think that for the rest of my life, my achievements will not be my focus, but my children's achievements most certainly will be.

Exercising Around My Kids

This week's Family Search question is: What would you want your friends and family to learn about making and achieving goals from your example?

The thing that I have learned about goals that I would want to pass on to others is that it's a good idea to frequently review the plan we have created and make any necessary changes. The example I am going to use is my health goal for each year.

Last year, for my 2016 resolutions, my health goal was to lose all of the weight gained from my pregnancy with Luna and fit into size 10 pants. I accomplished the weight loss by June of last year, and I was in size 10 pants by October! It was a very exciting and successful year for me.

This year, for my 2017 resolutions, my health goal is to exercise a minimum of 3 days a week, and to move up from the beginner's level to the next level on my exercise videos.

Due to Benjamin, Luna, and I being together all day long, I had to pick a time to exercise that would work for all three of us. And I have learned over the past two years that that time will continuously change as my kids grow and develop.

When I was pregnant with Luna I exercised at night after putting Benjamin to bed. During the last month of my pregnancy Benjamin started coming out of his room to "exercise" with me. I can't remember when, but sometime in between Luna being born, and me being ready to exercise again, I read an article about how beneficial it is to allow/encourage your kids to exercise with you, even if they can't do it exactly right. So, I decided to start exercising in the morning so that Benjamin could join me. I would put Luna in her baby swing, and everything was fine, at first.

Benjamin really struggled to understand to give me a safe distance during this first attempt at exercising with my kids. He learned some pretty painful lessons about why I asked him not to try to hug my legs while exercising. Shortly after Benjamin learned to "exercise" in his part of the room, Luna's feeding and sleeping schedule changed (she was about 4 months old). This change made exercising in the morning difficult, so after a while of not feeling like I was getting anything out of it, I switched back  to exercising at night after bedtime.

Exercising at night is not my favorite thing to do, but I've always done it because it's what has worked best with my past schedules. When Luna's feeding and sleeping schedule changed again (babies do that frequently during their first year), I decided to try exercising in the morning again. I remember she was crawling so she was at least six months old, but she was crawling well, so maybe more like nine months old. Benjamin was better behaved, so no more problems with him.

It was really fun at first. Luna would crawl all over me when I was laying on the floor to do my ab workouts and stretches. Benjamin liked to crawl under me any time my body made a "tunnel". After a while Luna mastered climbing up onto the couches, but she couldn't get down. I couldn't fully focus on exercising when I was worried about her couch climbing. And if she wasn't climbing the couch, she wanted me to hold her; which couldn't happen so then she would cry, and put all of us in a bad mood. So, once again I went back to exercising at night.

For the past six months I have been exercising at night. It was going well for quite some time. Then, in December Luna's sleeping schedule started to change, again. For most of last year, Benjamin would wake up around 7:00 am, and he would wake me and Luna up. I would get him some breakfast, put a movie on, feed Luna, and then Luna and I would go back to bed. During the month of December, Luna slowly stopped taking that morning nap, and by the start of January she was completely done with taking a morning nap and now she only takes an afternoon nap. That also means, I no longer get a morning nap. :(

Since the new year, I have struggled with exercising at night. I'm just so tired, and there are many things I wait to do until after the kids are in bed, like grocery shopping. Also, now on Tuesday nights I get together with some girl friends and we watch The Bachelor on Hulu (go ahead, laugh at me). Because of all of that, I have only exercised one night a week for all of January.

So this week, I decided to once again, go back to exercising in the mornings. Both Benjamin and Luna are at an age and development that it's fun for everyone! I'm sure this won't be the last time my exercising schedule changes, but as long as I remain flexible to the changes around me and apply this to my other goals as well, I will be successful in achieving my goals and enjoying the process at the same time.

Memories of Tiger

A few weeks ago, my 18 year old cat, named Tiger, died. I wrote a post last week about his last couple of days and how I said goodbye. This post you are now reading is about as many happy memories as I can think of about Tiger's 18 years with my family.

For as long as I can remember I always wanted a cat. My parents said no at first because we lived in an apartment, but when we got a house, my begging increased. A year after we moved into our house I turned 8 years old and got baptized. In fact, I got baptized on October 31st - Halloween. At the family party afterwards, my parents gave me a giant present to open. I opened up a litter box, food and water bowls, and this picture:

The funny thing is, that is not Tiger. That's his sister. My mom picked out the girl kitten, and the one she walked away with was Tiger. It was meant to be. :) We had  to wait until November to bring him home because he wasn't old enough to leave his mom yet.

When Tiger was a kitten, and before we got him declawed, he would climb up my mom's pants and hang on her bum if she was standing.  If she was sitting down, he would get all the way up to her shoulder and sit there like a parrot.

We were told to keep him inside our home for a year before letting him in the backyard. That would help him know this was his home, and he would come back if he ever got out.  When the year was up we wold take him outside and he would run back in as fast as he could! So we turned it into a game. My dad, my brother and I would take Tiger out to the sidewalk in front of the house and say, "On your mark, get set, go!" We would let go of Tiger and all of us would race to the front door. Tiger won every time.

Around the same time, we moved Tiger's litter box from the laundry room to the garage. My dad installed a small doggy door so Tiger could go from the house to the garage and vice versa without us opening the door for him. He was, of course, scared  of the doggy door at first. So we would push him through the flap to the garage and he would immediately run back through into the house and all the way to my mom's bathroom where she was getting ready for the day, and he would hide behind her legs. We would start over and it continued that way until he learned to go through on his own.

When I was in third grade, I entered the photography section of Reflections with a collage of photos of Tiger. I don't remember what the theme that year was, but I made Tiger fit into the theme. My collage received an honorable mention. These are some of the photos I used in it:

At Christmas time Tiger liked to climb our Christmas tree - he didn't have claws and it  wasn't a real tree, so he would literally balance on the branches. One year I didn't notice him in the tree, and as I was walking by he leaped out at me and the tree came with him! I screamed and caught both Tiger and the tree.

 Also at Christmas time we would get a stocking for cats from Pet's Mart. My mom would put it out Christmas Eve with the rest of our stockings, but she wouldn't open it until morning. So, we would wake up Christmas morning and find Tiger's stocking somewhere on the floor with teeth marks in it. During the night he had tried to get it open to get to his toys. Then we would open it and dump his toys out and he would go crazy!

Tiger had his favorite spots to lay around the house. At night, when he wasn't prowling and playing, he would sleep on my bed. He would either lay up near my head - a few times even maneauvering my head off of my pillow! - or he would lay near my feet. When my feet got cold I would stick them under his body and he would warm them up. When he was feeling playful  at night he would attack my feet and my hands if I dangled them off my bed. He would jump up through my sheets to get to them, it was so funny.

During the day he had four favorite spots: the top of the love seat in the living room (so he could look out the window), where the hallway and entryway meet (he would lay half on the carpet and half on the tile), the top of my parents'  head board, and under my bed.

It wouldn't be a post about Tiger without mentioning this memory, which comes from my friend Lindsey:

Lindsey and I were having a sleepover, and in the middle of the night I woke up to Lindsey tapping me on the shoulder. "Chelsey," she said, "Tiger took my pillow and I can't get it back." Sure enough, Tiger had her pillow in his mouth, and every time she tried to take it back he would run away from her with her pillow. So I chased him down and got her pillow back for her.

During this whole time, Tiger was getting weekly baths. That was one of the conditions I agreed to in getting a cat: that I would bathe him every week. He never grew to love his baths, but he did learn to tolerate them, and eventually stopped trying to jump out of the tub. We would lay out several towels right next to the tub and when the water was drained we would let go of him, and he would leap out onto the towels and we would dry him.

In the fall of 2007, Tiger became an outdoor cat. He had started marking his territory too often in the house - as male cats get older they get more territorial - my dad had had enough and kicked him out into the backyard. In order for me to be remotely okay with this, my dad bought a giant dog house, put a rug and Tiger's bed inside of it, and we bought a heater  that blew into the opening at night during the winter.

Tiger liked to sit on top of the roof of his house and look around the backyard. We called the roof of his house, "Pride Rock" and my dad would say, "Oh, Tiger is surveying his kingdom." He liked to lay next to my mom  when she would work in the garden during the summer. And usually anytime anyone would open the back door he would come running to great us. Even if we opened the side door to take the garbage out, he would be there to say hi.

When Benjamin, and later Luna, entered the family and got old enough to play in the backyard, they became very interested in Tiger, and in turn Tiger became interested in them. Both Benjamin and Luna had to learn to be soft with Tiger, they would get too excited and hit him instead of petting him. They would get in trouble, and cry, but they both quickly learned to pet softly. Benjamin really liked to help feed Tiger, and then he would sit next to Tiger's food bowl and watch Tiger eat. Whenever Benjamin played in the backyard the first thing he would do was look in Tiger's house to make sure he was there.

Luna was scared of Tiger at first. We would put her on a blanket on the grass and Tiger would come over and sniff her and she would scream and cry and try to crawl away. When she felt brave enough to touch him, she wanted to be in my mom's arms to do so. She would lean over and barely touch him, then she would scream and crawl up my mom as high as she could go. By the end of this past summer, Luna would walk around with Tiger and pet him and laugh and smile at him. I'm glad  that both of my kids fell in love with Tiger just like I did.

I'm really going to miss Tiger. He's irreplaceable. I'm happy that I have all of these wonderful memories, pictures, and his paw print.