What is Your Favorite Food?

Here's another questions for your life story:
What is Your Favorite Food?
Food often is tied to our memories.  Most people have a birthday cake on their birthday and probably ice cream with it.  Buttered popcorn while watching movies is another food commonly eaten and associated with something fun to do.  Turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie and other foods eaten for Thanksgiving have good memories associated with them.  An orange in the toe of a stocking is a common Christmas food.  Corned beef and cabbage are often eaten for St. Patrick's Day.  Hard boiled eggs are associated with Easter.  Watermelon or root beer floats are common on the Fourth of July.  
When I was growing up some of my favorite foods were fresh peas right out of the pod eaten while standing in the garden.  Tomatoes picked off the vine and eaten right away were a real treat.  Apricots, peaches, pears, plums were very good fresh off the tree.  I remember enjoying eating a stalk of rhubarb savoring each sour bite.  
Write down the favorite foods you remember as a child and why you remember them.  Maybe even writing down some of your bad experiences with food and why you don't like them would be good too as it would give a balanced view to your life story.  Record any recipes you remember that your mother or grandmother made.  Record your favorite recipes that you like to make.  Some day your children or grandchildren may thank you for them.
  

Online Family History Classes

Check out this website if you would like to learn more about researching your family history.  There are classes about research principles and tools, and researching in England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Russia and the United States.  Here's a great opportunity to find out how to find your ancestors.
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/education/frameset_education.asp?PAGE=education_research_series_online.asp%3FActiveTab=2

Cyndi's List - Blogs for Genealogy

Cyndi's List - Blogs for Genealogy

The above link is to a great website where you can find lots of information about genealogy. It's been around since 1996. I heard about it years ago, and it is a great resource when you are researching your family history.

What is Your Favorite Song?

 Here's another question to answer to add to your story:
What is your favorite song and why?
I think it is really hard to pick one favorite song.  I find at times I really like a certain song because of the meaning and because of the music.  When I've practiced a song with a choir for a performance, I usually come to really like the song.  I hear it in my mind over and over even when we are not practicing.  Some songs from my childhood such as "I Am A Child of God" still mean a lot to me.  I use "I Am A Child of God" as a way to get rid of thoughts or music that I don't want in my mind.  Maybe someone used swear words around me and they keep popping into my mind or maybe a song that I don't like the meaning of starts playing over and over in my head because I heard it on the radio that day.  I start to sing the song in my mind and before long the words or the song I don't like disappear from my mind.  The music I hear and sing at church is very powerful to me because I love the messages in the songs.

I also like other music.  Since being in the band in junior high and high school, I love marches.  When I need energy I like to listen to marching music.  I also like the music from the three musicals that I played in the stage band for--The Sound of Music, The King and I, and Hello Dolly.  I enjoy classical music too.
 I like some of the popular music from the time I was growing up.  Unfortunately now as an adult, I am bothered by the meaning behind some of music such as promoting drug usage.  Some of the music actually had different words which weren't allowed back then, but today they play the original words despite their blatant messages.


If you are like me you can't pick just one song as your favorite.  I think it's okay to have several favorite songs.  But writing down what music you do like and why can greatly add to your story.

Humorous Childhood Experiences

I came across the following video and thought of how many cute things children do.  Do you remember something you did as a kid that you find humorous now?  When I was very young, so young I don't really think I remember this incident, I went out to the chicken coop and started breaking eggs on the floor.  The chickens would see the broken eggs and would grab the shells.  Other chickens would try to grab the shell from the beak of a chicken who had gotten a piece of the shell.  It was kind of like a basketball game.  As soon as a chicken managed to get the shell from another chicken, it would start running the other direction.  Other chickens would try to grab the shell from the running chicken.  I was having a great time watching the chickens grab the shells from each egg that I broke and then run back and forth throughout the coop stealing the shells from each other.  When I was discovered breaking the eggs, I was promptly punished so I would never do it again.  Of course accidentally breaking an egg when gathering them happened every so often and that is why I can see a picture clearly of the chickens stealing the shells from each other.  I look back now and chuckle about the incident.

What things can you remember from your childhood that make you laugh now.  Record your experiences as part of your family history.  Record the experiences with your children as they are growing up so they will remember those humorous times later in their life.

Tell About an Exciting Place You Have Been To

Another prompt for writing your story is:
Tell about an exciting place you have been to.
 You have probably been to many exciting places.  A place could have been exciting because you had always wanted to go there and there were exciting things to do and see there.  A place could have been exciting because of who you would see and spend time with there.  A place could have been exciting because of an exciting event that happened there.  The post just before this one is about a woman's search for her family history and how it made history come alive for her.  She hadn't really felt really American until she found out how her ancestors had been involved with the Gold Rush and the Salem Witch Trials.  Traveling to those places where her family had lived became very exciting.

The above photo is of Bodie, California.  It is a well preserved ghost town.  I enjoyed going there because I love historic places.  I like the feeling of going back in time.  I went with two of my daughters and a group of other friends.  We spent the day and had a picnic lunch there.  It was a most enjoyable day.
Record the places you've traveled to, why you went there, who you went with or who you went to see and what you did while you were there.  You probably have many places you have been that have been exciting and you were grateful you could travel there.  

Sarah Jessica Parker

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Preparing for Marriage

I came across the following article on marriage. There were a lot of things discussed that I had not thought about. Not only how the bride and the groom are feeling, but also their parent's and others' feelings are addressed. The article talks about how to deal with the anxiety that is common because of the change that is taking place and how to make sure it is the best thing to do. The article is written from a religious perspective, but even those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can find a lot of helpful advice. I agree with the author that if more people evaluated their relationships before marriage more divorces would be prevented. This article would have been really helpful to me if I had read it before I got married. My life story would be quite different if I would have done many of the things suggested in this article. Hopefully sharing this article may help someone else.

LDS Living Magazine