Lucky In Love

I don't really know if I believe in luck but if I did I would have thought that my parents had some of the best and worst luck in the world. My Dad bought into a franchise right before he married my mother he was trying to decide between a McDonald's or a Lum's (a Arby's type place) of course he chose the Lum's and his restaurant was doing great until the franchise fell apart and he would have to come up with some over sized amount of money to keep his doors open. Growing up we would ocationally tease about how life would be if he had chosen the McDonald's. The next occupation I remember would be as a mason. He started his own business and as a child when visiting Utah Valley we always had to drive by at least a dozen homes he had done brick work on. His business was great and our family moved into a brand new home in American Fork. It was 1980 and the housing market bottomed out suddenly there was no work and my Dad got very depressed. He went into a creative mode and built my sisters and I a beautiful barbie house. In the mean time my Mother who was desperate to make ends meet sold all my Dad's equipment. This became a sore spot forever more with my Dad who I think would have eventually recovered his business. Instead my pregnant Mother, my four siblings and I moved into my Grandmothers basement. My father went to Colorado to find work. His up and down career in sales began. My Dad came to get us after my brother Warren was born (#6). My Dad would have a long career in sales and start a property management business that would create some stability for a while. He was and is a life long entrepreneur. His luck was good for short periods of time but I don't think he ever saw a ten year stretch in any employment.

When my mom won the Atari

My Mother was always very creative and good at squeezing dollars out of dimes. We had amazing Halloween costumes made out of odds and ends and birthday parties were the same some how she always pulled it off. She won an atari computer back when very few people had computers in their homes. We had Pac Man in our house! Then she won bikes from 7 eleven we would have to fill out stacks of entry forms eveyday after school and she put our names in drawing all over. Every 7 eleven had one bike to win and our family won 6 of them. So I guess you could say she was the lucky one.
If our bad luck was in money then our good luck was in health. My parents had eight children we had stitches a time or two but no broken bones or glasses. There were a few catastrophys like the time my big brother Adam accedently cut of the tips of two of his fingers reaching into a running lawn mower. Or when my little sister was playing doctor and used a razor blade to cut the same big brothers wrist. I had found the razor blades and placed them in our toy doctor kit they looked like fun and I knew they were for medical purposes. But the very worst catastrophy to ever face our family was when my baby brother Darin (#7) drank paint thiner.

Darin

My mother was always making our home beautiful it didn't matter if we owned or rented she would clean and garden like crazy we always had the most beautiful yard and home.To decorate she would paint. I always had pretty walls in my room. This time she was painting an accent wall in our living room. My Dad was a traveling salesman and out on the road. Of course because she had a project under way the house was in disaray and that was the first thing I noticed as I walked in the door from a hard day of 4th grade. I saw my Mother holding my brother on her lap with the phone under her neck. She was frantic and he was a grayish color she had a glass of milk and was pooring it into him. A moment later a man in a blue uniform rushed into my home and my Mother and baby brother were gone. As the rest of my syblings arived we huddled together on the sofa looking out the window, we were waiting for my brother who would be home from the junior high. We clung to each other crying. When my brother did arrive he was in a mood and told us all we were stupid and went down to his room. The rest of us decided that their was only one thing to do so we gathered in a circle and knelt in prayer we prayed and cried and prayed. My brother was life flighted to a children's hospital and was there for three days. For those three days we had no parents. People from church took care of us. My mother was serving in the Stake Young Women's presidency with this amazing lady name Carol she came with a team of cleaning ladies that did a number on our entire house. We were taken care of. I remember my Dad was never reached (there were no cell phones) and he said it was a good thing because he was very far away and would have likely killed himself speeding home. I was so scared, but that prayer we gathered as children to pray it was a powerful thing my baby brother should not have lived and he did. I don't think that was luck I think it was faith and our prayers and the prayers of everyone who loved us healed my baby brother. So maybe we were never lucky with money but we were always lucky in love.

Mandy, Warren, Me, Darin, Adam, Cordy and Ethan I think this picture is why I started to get self concious of my big forehead.