Life Story

Nathan and I have had a really relaxing weekend. On Friday night we had Anna and Rich over for dinner. On the first Friday of each month the church have parents night, where there is child care so that parents can have some "us" time. We were thrilled that Anna and Rich wanted to share their time with us. I love having people over for dinner and making a big meal so it was a treat to be able to sit and chat with them for a few hours.

We spent Saturday around the house, Nathan studying and me cleaning up. When Nathan asked me on Saturday morning what I was going to do that day, I told him,"clean the house." "Why?" he asked, "we just did it last week!" I am starting to think Nathan thinks his clothes are magically washed, the food POOF appears and the floors are self cleaning. I'm kidding, of course, Nathan always assures me that he sees how hard I work for us.

After a great night's rest (hurray for the time change!) and a full and wonderful Sunday worship we headed to the Central Library downtown for the Lifestory Writing Workshop hosted by author Charley Kempthorne. It was a 2 hour workshop that addressed the "soft story" of history. Geneaology is really popular right now but most of the information is available to everyone. The fact that I know my great-great-great-great grandmother's name doesn't define her or me. Mr. Kempthrone explained that writing your personal story, your autobiography, your memoir, not only tells who you were but who your family was. It personalizes history.

Nathan found this oppurtunity online and I was so excited because although I wouldn't consider it my memoir, I think of this blog as my journal. I share many feelings on here that I don't say out loud. Nathan says even he learns things about me by reading the blog. In going to the workshop I learned a lot about why I love to blog. I always wanted to be a writer growing up but I was always so scared to try and writing my stories on here helps to fill that void. Mr. Kempthrone said to think of writing in scenes rather than a beginning, middle, and end. I feel like that's what the blog is. Snippets and stories.

One of the exercises we did was to draw a floor plan  of our childhood home and while drawing write in labels of things that meant something. For example, furniture with a label of 'grandma always sat here when she visited.'

When I did the exercise I labelled our old laundry room (where my parents bathtub now sits). We were all sitting at the table on night when my parents looked at each other saying "Did you kids here that? What was that scratching?" We didn't hear anything, but we were also 7 and 8 so we didn't catch on to the ruse. They pushed us along through the downstairs, searching for the noise and eventually we found ourselves in the laundry room. My Dad lifted a box from behind the washer and opened it, inside was a hamster - our first pet.

The point of the exercise was to get you to think about stories you hadn't thought of in years, and it worked! Suddenly I could remember my parents house back when it had wood paneling and yellow carpet!

Nathan wrote a story in which he and Heather were dancing to a CD and jumping from the couch to the coffee table. The coffee table broke and the kids were made to call Martin at work and tell him the news. "The voice at the end of the line was as scary as it was reassuring, "We'll talk about it when I get home.  I love you and take care of your mom while I'm gone." Nathan even read his story out loud to the whole group (about 40 people!) He's so brave.

It was a great opportunity and I'm so thankful for an amazing local library.

The central library is a former bank and the archituecture is amazing. Before we left we went into the basement to see the old vaults/new movie theater. It was really interesting!