Jeny's Grandparents

This is a fun one! I love remembering my grandparents!

I remember the Breckenridges house in Durango a little bit. Grandpa had colorful sand in the garage (maybe?) and made sand jars out of it. There were a lot of deer in the backyard and I think a salt lick. Grandma used to give us a big vitamin C and we loved them. Yummy! and she had us eat what I think was wheat germ for breakfast instead of cereal. She would tell us to only have a little bit, because it would fill us up fast, and it did! And then there was carrot juice. Enough said about that. They had the neat table in the kitchen in Springville that got bigger. I don't know why I though it was neat, but Grandpa would bring out the extra pieces from the closet. Then we could sit at the bigger table and eat strange things. I especially remember the rabbit. Yuck. Grandpa had his rock collection in the backyard and in the basement and would make jewelry and such out of it. My favorite Breckenridge memory was waking up in the morning in the basement room to the sound of the train. Grandma always cracked the window opened for us. I still wake up some mornings to that train and think about her. She was quiet and very gentle. And remember pompom? And "Friendship like the setting sun sheds kindly light on everyone". Good times! The last time I saw Grandpa, Holly and I went to visit him in the home he was in. He was unresponsive and just lay there staring at the ceiling. I tried talking to him a bit and felt like it was useless, until I said "Grandpa, I want to go back to Hawaii. Do you want to go with me?" He looked right at me, smiled and said, "yes". Then he went back to staring at the ceiling, but it did shock Holly and I a bit!

The Lauritzens home was always really fun because of the food. Bacon in the mornings and snickers whenever we could sneak them. We would sleep on the cots in the family room, or the pull out bed with the great clock sounds. Most nights Grandpa would stop the clock so it didn't wake us, but I loved the sound of the clock! Once in a while Grandma would let us play with her jewelry which was super fun! And she always had toys to play with. My best memories of Grandpa have to do with irrigating. He would wear the baby blue cover-alls and roll up the legs and go out to pick worms and other things out of the water. We made boats once or twice and floated them on the water. He also helped me mow the lawn for my first time - with his push mower. What a pain that thing was! He always put food out back for the cats that would come by, and Grandma always had candy for the kids that would come by. They both kinda collected strays. I lived with them for a little of my freshman year at BYU, and learned a lot about them. When the home teachers were visiting one day, I took a load of laundry into the living room. When the home teachers left Grandma came after me like a shot - boy was she mad!! She said nobody knew her laundry was in that room. She had kept it a secret all those years and I ruined it. She could get mad super fast, but she didn't stew over it. She said what was on her mind, and let it go. They liked MASH and Jay Leno, and they really seemed to like each other. Grandpa got really confused after his first big stay in the hospital not long before he died, and he was the first to admit it. He kept telling me stories about the war, and they bored me a bit. I wish now that I had listened and could remember what he said. I didn't know until after he died that he wouldn't talk about the war much. Before grandma died I tried (and usually did) to visit her every week. She loved having the decons bring her the sacrament, and asked me to make her a few dresses so she could look good for them. She couldn't see very well, so she would usually have me find something that she had misplaced, or look for a cup becasue all 8 weren't in her cupboard or something like that. She loved to have us come over, but nothing could interrupt her "Matlock"! If we went to see her at noon, we got to watch it with her. Good times!