She said what I've been thinking. (Turn back Tuesday)

Next month marks the anniversary of my mom's death.
Lately, when I'm really sad, I dwell on the night she died.
I remember almost every detail, and it makes my heart ache so bad.

But, my little sister, she's a sweetheart.
She's been smart enough to know, that dwelling on the last moments of mom's life is not the way to remember her.

She sent me this email, and she posted more thoughts on her Blog.

My mom was a beautiful, loving, woman.
I didn't know how much I would miss her until she was gone.
Melanie challenged us to write our memories down so we don't forget.


From Mel (I love you!)
Memories of Mom

Eating saltine crackers with peanut butter, marshmallows, and chocolate. We made little sandwiches and broiled them in the oven like smores

- She used to get mad at me and make comments about how she could practice and practice a song on the piano and then I would just come right after her and play it with hardly any practicing. She always commented on how naturally talented I was.

- She loved the warm car after church on Sundays and would drive half way home with no a/c because she said it felt so good to be warm

- She always cooked on Sundays in her church clothes and either warm socks or slippers and an apron.

- She loved to take hot baths

- We use to go hot tubing together at Schamps and Cervos

- Sometime she drank postum before bedtime. She said it helped her sleep

- On Christmas when she got cooking stuff in her stocking she would make a comment like “Oh Thanks, now I can cook some more good stuff.”

- She loved getting earrings from dad as presents and would take you in her room and say, “Did I show you the earrings your dad got me? She’d hold them up to her ear and smile

- When she cooked or baked her classic line was, “Oh its probably not any good,” or “You probably won’t even like it, its nasty.”

- She would check her nose and say, “Oh I have got a dirty nose!” If she had a burger

- We went on several trips with just us girls. One to Mount Rainer where she drove Grandpa Orlo’s truck and camper and was too short to reach the pedals. She had to put a pillow behind her to drive. We also went to Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast and went well watching. I remember her getting really sea sick.

- She liked shortcake and strawberries

- She always canned food in the summertime. Raspberry Jam, Sometimes apricots, asparagus, pears, peaches, pie cherries, and tomatoes. We would get corn and put it up to.

- I liked to go up to Wiens corn field and pick corn with her.

- She use to love to go out to Aunt Marians and cook with her. We would go out and get fruit from her fruit trees to can.

- One time, dad and her were wanting to go fishing and she needed practice getting into the tube to fish. They came down to aunt Jan’s house and I laughed so hard. She was wearing a black swimming suit and was white as a ghost. She was trying to figure out how to get into the tube without getting wet and falling in. When she finally got in she was just floating around. We took a picture of her and she got mad.

- She loved to work in the garden and especially loved Spring when all the flowers came up. Every year when the roses bloom she’d make a comment to me about going out to look at her roses. I use to water them with the house from the pump house to make her happy.

- She loved to serve others and never complained

- She always told us girls how pretty we were and the boys how handsome they were.

- Her and dad use to kiss in the kitchen sometimes. Mostly after dinner and when one of them got home from work. He would always squeeze her bum and give her a big loud kiss and we would say “DAD!!!YUCK! Or at least I did.

- She would always scratch your back or your head and if you lay opposite of her she would sometimes rub your feet. She had the trade mark temple rub.

- Chris said, “She knew how to work that is for sure. She was the Mr. Fix it at the house. She is a good painter and can mud good too.”

- Sometimes she would eat bread and milk with sugar on it.

- She loved to put butter on everything. Dad would say, past the butter, mutter. J

- She made us the best breakfast. It was always big with more than one choice a lot of the time. Double batch of german pancakes or scrambled eggs and bacon and the whole thing.

- In high school, I was always on the run and hated breakfast but I would eat cinnamon toast so she would make it after I did my hair and put it on a plate for me to take with me.

- She bought an older car (the white buick) so I could have the maxima to drive

- A lifetime movie on T.V. + Mom= good times

- Orange Julius and Popcorn

- One time we were in trouble changing pipes and we had been out there forever it seems. It was cold and dark and we were starving. We see this little flash of light bobbing and along comes mom with a flash light to help us. I don’t remember who was out there with me. She helped me do pipes when I was doing them by myself several times.

- I liked decorating with her at Christmas time. She would get an idea every couple of years to do a different type of tree. One year we tried to bake little gingerbread men. Another year, she wanted an old fashioned looking rag tied tree so we got the material and tore it in strips and tied them to the tree.

- She would put the timer on after dinner and challenge us to get the dishes put away before it went off.

- We would go for walks sometimes. I remember going down to the high school and walking around the track. We would drive the maxima some of the time so we didn’t have to walk back home if we were tired.

- She always tried to come to my volleyball games if she could get time off work.

- I loved kisses her soft cheeks and smelling her oil of Olay skin

- If I lost her at the store I would yell out Lucretia Carver and she would always say… Melanie, don’t call me that and I would say well mom that is your name and besides there are a lot of Chris’s but no Lucretia’s.

- I would pull out her gray hairs and she would tell me that for every one hair I pulled, 2 more would come.

- She always asked if there were holes in the back of her hair. I would spray hair spray for her and rat it and fix the hole.

- I loved when she came home with groceries; I got excited because I knew dinner was coming. I remember thinking she looked pretty with a new short hair cut and can just see her opening the old brown front door with the 3 little windows in it, coming through with new groceries.

- Her little feet and the one toe with the little mole.

- Meeting her and dad at the fair after the rodeo for ice cream.

- I loved to watch her fish. She was hilarious because she would always freak out when she got a fish on her line.

- When we went camping we had the BEST food. She would even make a pie in the Dutch oven before we left on occasion so we would have good desert.

- Nothing beats getting to sit next to mom in sacrament meeting. I would put my head on her shoulder and if I talked to her too much, dad would reach over and squeeze my shoulder or my knee or pull on my ear.

- During sacrament, she and dad would always hold hands and she would rub her hands on his.

- She liked to paint her fingers nails and make them look nice for nice things. If they were all grown out and one broke, she would get upset.

- She probably never sat through a whole meal without getting up to wait on someone or fix something else.

- She always had homemade ranch and a lot of the time homemade mustard in the fridge. You could almost always count on it. That goes for ice cream in the freezer too.

- She always shook her bum when she cooked or used something like a whisk.

- She was a good housekeeper and loved a clean kitchen. I can count the times when she went to bed and left her kitchen dirty.

- She made her bed all the time and use to tell me it was easy, just make it while your still in it and it is easy.

- She got mad at dad for being such a packrat she called it.

- She would always leave us for a while to go help when one of the older kids had a baby. We would be scarred to stay home with dad but she made a few meals before she left so we wouldn’t starve.

- If she made something for church like a desert, dad and her had kind of a unwritten rule that she had to make double whatever it was so we would have some at home.

- She liked playing yatzee

- Cleaning the house or cooking and listening to Neil Diamond or Hymns.

- She always cleaned up the utility room at least once a year and talked about one day when she got a new house she would do this and that. I remember her defrosting the freezer regularly.

- She took naps on Sunday

Food favorites:

Cinnamon rolls, caramel sticky buns, lil smokies and bacon cheddar bread bowl dip on Christmas Eve. Roast Beef and mashed potatoes for dinner with peas in white gravy. The sound of that annoying oven timer going off on fast Sunday when you were starving and the glorious smell of a fat roast beef in the oven.

Black bottom cupcakes with extra cream cheese stuff on top. The famous CHOCOLATE CAKE with Cream cheese frosting. Potato salad and marinated chicken in the summer, 7 layered salad and deviled eggs.

We never ran out of milk or eggs that I can remember. She always bought the big block of cheese.

Sometimes she would cut stuff with the wrong knife and tell me not to tell dad that she did it. (Like the butcher knife for veggies)

♥