Sunday, December 12, 2010

All About Whit

The scriptural phrase, the first shall be last and the last shall be first certainly applies to the order of my wanderings down memory lane. We had been married a little under two years when Whitney made her appearance on earth. From the minute she was born she carried a heart warming smile and happy disposition. She was a beautiful (a bit round) baby.....I remember thinking that she was the prettiest baby I had ever seen.....and to show I wasn't completely biased, we had many other non-invested observers who drew the same conclusion. Her fun personality matched her good looks! With the exception of her screaming period from 9pm until Becky returned home from working at the MTC cafeteria, she was the perfect baby. But for that last hour each night, she really tested her lung capacity and my patience. The rest of the time she was an angel and would entertain us with her cute use of the infant version of the English language. Her favorite saying was daba daba daba, which interpreted means my dad is truly a dapper dad! She was also very photogenic and would pose with a wide open mouth smile whenever the camera came around. She loved coming to my basketball games when I played at BYU. She would sit on Mom's lap and not move a muscle for the entire game, mezmorized by the movement of the players and the squeaking of the shoes on the floor.

We have lots of fun memories of Whitney when she was young. She played a really convincing Goldilocks in the Kindergarten play. When those three bears showed up, there was no doubt that she was really sacred! And then there was the science fair that we worked on together. Whitney's idea was to invent a hairbrush that would eliminate static....the "static-free" hairbrush I think it was called. We were all very excited to learn that her idea won first prize in her grade and that she qualified to move on to the school wide competition. While she didn't win the free trip to Acapulco, we were very proud of her efforts and ingenuity.

Whitney was very smart and particularly good and figuring things out. She was also intrigued by new challenges. In Boise, I was trying to figure out how to assemble a newly purchased barbeque grill, Whitney at age 9, came to my rescue and helped me figure it out. I felt a bit inept, but was impressed with her ingenuity. In Ohio, Becky was really worried when Whitney wanted to jump ahead of most of the kids in her grade and tackle Algebra. We worked together many hours to help her make the cut and while there were a few worrisome hours, she stuck to it despite her mother's desire to throw in the towel and try again the following year. I was also impressed that she became such a talented artist. Becky and I have zero talent in that area so it was amazing to us the things she was able to do artistically and that she continues to be able to do with her artistic talents. Martha Stewart has nothing on her!

One of the scariest moments of our lives was when we were at the Odgen City Mall. Whitney was almost three years old at the time....we had gone into JC Penney and Whitney wanted to go with Becky into the dressing room as she tried on some clothes. I thought Becky knew she was following her but she did not. When Becky returned and Whitney was not with her, we went frantically searching through the entire store. It was closing time and the storefront doors had closed and Whitney was no where to be found in the store. After what seemed like an eternity, we were notified that she had been wandering through the mall and had been found by an elderly couple. She was happily eating ice cream when we finally got to her....at that point we were able to take ourselves off of the respirator. I had never felt feelings of anxiety and desperation like I had in those fifteen minutes.

As the oldest in the family, the many moves that we made as my career unfolded were hardest on her. Mom and I always worried about Whitney making new friends and feeling connected. Over the years she made many good friends (some of which Lindsey tried to steal away). The Boise crew that included Brittney Viehweg and Brittany Mitton were a lot of fun! They would come over and stuff pillows inside their shirts and play like Sumo wrestlers bouncing off each other and being really silly. Whitney always beamed when she had her friends around her....they seemed to add confidence and help her shed some of her natural shy tendencies.

As Whitney moved into her teen years she decided to test our mettle a bit as she became interested in boys and other things. I will never forget the time I gave her four or five chances to tell me where those CDs had come from. She would not cough up the requested information, even though I knew where they came from. New Year's Eve was the night that she proclaimed that "we had ruined her life" because we wouldn't let her go where she wanted to go and with whom she wanted to go with. Despite her minor rebellions, I always knew Whitney was good and true at heart and that she just needed to remember her divine origin and heritage and that she would come through those years despite some of the negative influences of friends (even church friends that were not quite holding on tight to the iron rod) and sure enough she came through with flying colors. Once she was able to get over the homesickness of being off to college, she really embraced the blessing of being at BYU-Idaho and later at BYU and prepared herself to become a wonderful wife, mother and a very talented young lady. She is a great wife and a very patient mother - devoted to loving and teaching her children to choose the right. I love and admire Whitney very much and I am thankful to have her as my daughter!

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