I was tagged by my friend Ashely, and I love this tag! Mimi and I were sitting around a couple of weeks ago just swapping song stories about the songs that narrated our lives. I know, sounds nerdy, but she was blogging and I was knitting and American Idol was on in the background, and we were just chatting it up. It got me thinking about music and then I read Ashley's tag. It took me a little time, but here goes...five songs that I love and why...
1. “Our Song” by Taylor Swift (on my playlist below)—when you marry your high school sweetheart, it’s easy to forget that childish, playful romance of your roots. We change and mature, and our relationship turns into a love built upon deep commitment, intense responsibility and unconditional support and love for each other…those things kind of take over the memory of being kids and living for a phone call or celebrating a one month anniversary. So songs like this one make me remember all the silliness of posing for countless dance pictures, slowing down at green lights for red light kisses and passing notes in seminary (yes, we were soooo those kids). I loved "our song", and I still do.
2. "I'll Stand By You" by either The Pretenders or Carrie Underwood (on playlist below). I love this song because of the line that says “even if you’re wrong, I’ll stand by you…” and the line, “nothing you confess, could make me love you less…” okay, there are so many lines to this song that I like. I’ll stop there. I relate to this song because friendship is important to me, and when I say friendship, I mean family relationships too. I’m a passionate friend and rare is the moment when I forget that being a friend is not protecting, judging or reprimanding. I think a lot about the Savior’s invitation to be your brother’s keeper, and I think that when someone is your brother, he or she knows your heart and they know where you stand on things, and to make their hardship about where you stand is to alienate them. I’ve had friends make eternally condemning decisions, and it is so hard not to want to live differently for them, but I try to remember that in order to be someone’s “keeper”, I have to be their “brother” too. In the right spirit and with the right love, you can stand for something for your own life and stand by others as they do their best to do the same thing in their own time and in their own way. Besides, I’m a big dummy and I really love the people (Chris, especially) who stand by me in spite of all my failures and mistakes. Of course, thank goodness for the one person who stands by us all NO MATTER WHAT and to whom nothing we confess can make Him love us less! (I have one friend who will read this and know that this wasn’t always a strength of mine! “Garner”, I know I called you out of the blue after ten years because it was weighing on me, and you passed it off like it was no big deal, but know that it was a huge lesson for me!)
3. “Flies on the Butter” by Wynonna Judd. If you don’t know this song, listen to it. I’ll add it to my blog now. This song speaks to me. I love how illustrative the lyrics are and the nostalgia of it all. I don’t necessarily relate to the specific images, but the feeling and the chorus make me cry. There’s something so magical about childhood and home, and it is one place you can’t ever go back to. People marry into the family, we establish new traditions, new—stronger--bonds with others, and that old dynamic of the original family unit morphs into something else. Its not a bad change, but there is a longing sometimes for the option to revisit that youthful time when it was me, my 4 brothers and mom and dad, doing it up Hamm style. Everyone can relate to this song.
4. “Mystery” by Indigo Girls. College was a time more than any other when I relied on music as an outlet and as an explanation of what I was going through and all the nerdy things that people that age are searching for and needing. I think lots of the music that I relied on then, will always affect me more than any new music I might like because I just don’t need the comfort of a Carpenter’s song or the anger of of an Alanis Morisette song the way I did back then. Anyway, thank goodness for all the music that saw me through the most unknown, and silent struggle of my young adulthood…FIVE YEARS OF NO CHRIS! My undying love for Chris had to be entirely under wraps to anyone who loved me because it was admittedly undeserved and unrequited. Anyway, Chris and I moved in and out of various stages of contact and even friendship during those five years and I was always aware of what he was up to. Most of that time, we were living very different lives, and I really didn’t have much hope that would ever change. That’s why this song was one (of many) that I loved to sing along with. I love the line that poses the question, “if it (love) was ever there and then left, does it mean it was never true?” I think that was a fear I had. That maybe it wasn’t really true. It was!
Here's the lyrics. I could have picked other songs, but I had to give a nod to the IG’s because their lyrics are worthy and I still play a dozen of their songs on repeat and never get tired of listening to them. Come to think of it,
"Ghost" is maybe a little better...oh well. Speaking of "Ghost" (also now on the playlist below) are those lyrics for real? I love the poetry, "the mississippi's mighty, but it starts in minnesota, at a place that you could walk across, with five steps down. i guess that's how you started, like a pinprick to my heart, at this point you rush right through me and i start to drown..." that is so what it is like when you are married to someone you once sat next to on a seating chart! I love their music!
5. Sorry, I can’t commit to the last song.
I am wholeheartedly a Jewel fan, and I can’t decide on what song to say I like the most. I love all her songs (except for the one song on every album that is a little weird…like “Daddy” and ones like that). I spent two entire years listening to pretty much nothing but Jewel’s Pieces of You soundtrack (remember, Lynz?).
I grew up on the Carpenters, and I love their music. I can remember listening to that tape over and over again on family vacations and I bought the CD to love me through living on my own.
I love the Dixie Chicks. Again, every album, every song (except for the weird instrumentals, too busy for me). I could go on and on. I want more.
As long as I’ve mentioned Jewel, DXC and Indigo Girls, I’ve covered my major bases. Those are the albums that I belt out in my car with my girls. I love singing in the car. Whew!
I tag...Deanne, Sommer, Mimi, Amanda and Heather. Jeff, I'd tag you, but I don't think of you as particularly affected by non-hymn music. If I am reading you wrong (all these 28 years, please, I'd love to read about your music).
We did find some sunbreaks, and headed for the park to feed the ducks. It was a lot of fun, but the ducks were super aggressive, and were taking bread out of Alice's hands, which she did not appreciate one bit.
The girls really enjoyed playing at the park, even though it was really wet. It was a nice day, no yard work and just enough family time! 
Our friends Sandy and Adam had their little baby on Monday. I got to meet her on Thursday, and she sure is darling. She's little, and quiet and alert! I want one! We didn't have ideal lighting to work with, but I did my best to snap a few pics of her. Best wishes to the happy little family! 
Ruby is really into these red, sparkly shoes. This is her second pair, as she grew out of the first.
Alice is really into her baby doll. I found all the doll clothes that my mom made me when I was little, and we had fun dressing the baby up to go out with us. We bought Ruby this little carseat for her baby when I was expecting Alice, but she was really never interested. It was fun to pull it down for Alice and have her be so excited. It isn't that easy to have a two year old dragging a carseat around, but we do it anyway. She gets a real kick out of it. Here she is all strapped in her carseat, holding her baby in her carseat!
Ruby and Alice were real troopers last weekend when Chris and I worked all day around the yard and garage. They rode their bikes, pushed each other around in the wagon and begged incessantly for treats. Here they are with their tasty popcicles. 
Chris managed to give the whole yard a face lift by leveling the huge hedge in the backyard. He actually out used his hedge trimmer and had to get a new one in order to finish the job. I love how nice it all looks as a result of his hard work. He got a sunburn, it was pretty warm! 
The hedge on the right is done, and he's working his way down the left side. See how scraggly it was before? It looks so sharp now!
The weather was a bummer, so it wasn't really the right time to take pictures or anything, so I ran off to choir when Chris got home and he got the girls dressed and met me at church.
After church and dinner, we had our weekly Family Night. I found a great object lesson online to teach the kids about the significance of Easter. It is supposed to be spread over twelve days, but we'll do it all in 6 days, that way both of the girls get to open an egg every night. I changed it up a little bit by having the girls do a hunt for the eggs at the beginning. Tonight we read in Matthew about Judas Iscariot's betrayal. Ruby was really interested in that. So in the egg they opened, there were two dimes. I asked Ruby if someone told her that they would give her money and she could buy anything she wanted with it, but she would never see her mom again, would she want the money or mom? She was (thankfully) sure she'd want me more than any toy or money. So we talked about how any amount of money or worldly posession would not be worth betraying Christ. She was pretty worried about Iscariot, so Chris talked about how Jesus forgave him. It was a nice time, and it was brief enough that they were interested and engaged. I look forward to this little devotional every night this week.
After the serious stuff, we made sugar cookies (okay, made is a stretch...I don't bake much lately...but I bought those horrible pre-rolled sheets) and decorated one each to snarf down. It was a nice Sabbath Day together.
She really likes to make use of the little "shelf" on the bottom of the bike. Today, she rested her snack there, but it fell off once she got going fater. What a big girl!
She is really into cutting. She does a pretty good job too! It will entertain her for like thirty minutes. She just sits there and fringes all around a piece of paper, creating many minuscule little paper shards along her merry way. (This picture is horrid. I painted her face that day (a cat) and she had taken a wipe to clean it all off, but of course she wasn't all that thorough.) 
Chris, Alice, Ruby and "E"
The biggest, scariest crab that I caught. I know I'm absent from most of the pictures, but I really do participate in the fun too!
"C" and Jimmy checking something out.
Here's our little second cousins who have cousin-like friendships...Alice, Ru, "E" and "C". We almost managed a pretty good picture, huh?
Love that I caught a couple of really great shots of the boys!
We had a nice little birthday celebration with this awesome ice cream cake that Heather made and decorated. Ice cream cakes are a family fave, but they've never been so fancy as this one! Usually, we just layer ice cream and oreos and fudge or carmel in a 9x13 pan and call it good. Heather really set the bar!
My mom rounded up two of dad's old birthday pictures and had them mounted onto foamboard and we signed them.
The grandkids helped Opa open a group gift...an outdoor fireplace for the new deck he built at home. 
We had a lot of fun playing with the Wii. A lot. We bowled, played tennis, golf, boxing and we heard all about Heather's yearning for Dance, Dance Revolution as she begged Robb for it several times. It dawned on me Saturday night that Heather's birthday is in May, and we needed to get her DDR early so we could all enjoy some fun. Heather and I ran to Walmart and it really was a great time! I really like the Wii, and I never thought I'd want a gaming system, but I do. I really liked DDR especially (even though I am not so great at it).
Leave it to Oma to be prepared with a fun Easter treat for the kids. She had some nice new books for each of them and then she hid some candy-filled eggs all over the front yard and the kids were super excited to go claim a few. Ruby went for all the blue eggs. 
