Life is full of changes! I remember years ago hearing this quote from Alphonse Kerr: "The more things change, the more they remain the same." I didn’t really get it at the time, but I’m starting to understand more as I go along in life. Our family is at something of a turning point now, and I’m feeling so nostalgic about it that I want to collect some memories here.
What’s happening is that we are selling the house we have owned in Provo for almost 13 years. It’s a simple house but it’s unique and special. More than anything, it’s full of memories. And that is really the only explanation for the gnawing question: How can I be so attached to a house where I’ve never lived? It’s full of memories of my own children who have lived there, as well as their many friends. There are memories of buying the house, investing in it together as a family, working on it to make it serviceable, and furnishing it. From here the stories go on to the ward and family gatherings; the dating and romances; the many autumns, winters, springs and summers. There were innumerable trips back and forth to school on bicycles, on foot, on motorcycles and in cars and buses. There were times when it was being used by family only, and times when others were living there with some of our children; it would be interesting to recount everyone who has lived there during those years.
We find it so hard to close this chapter in our family story that we didn’t even decide to sell the house until last month, when it became obvious that the time had come. Now we will only own it for two more days! At least it will still have a chance to house loved ones until the last minute, as our friends John and LeAnn Halgren will spend the weekend there.
I’m now soliciting comments from you. I would love to have a collection of memories of The White House. I would love to have one-word triggers that say it all, whole paragraphs and stories that describe and elaborate, and loads of pictures.
About Me
- Connie
- I'm more of a Mom than anything else. I'm the mother of 12 children, and have spent a busy 36 years at it so far. I am interested in everything they do, which is a lot!
9 comments:
I guess I was only there for about the first year of the 13. I remember the remodel job very well. I think I was the first one to live in it, because the rental contract where I was living ran out right in the middle of the remodel. For about the first month, I slept in a sleeping bag on a cot in the living room. There was not carpet, and lots of construction dust everywhere. You wouldn't want to walk on the floor barefoot, so I pretty much had to step out of bed into shoes, into the shower, and then straight back into shoes.
At the end of the summer we got the carpet in, and a friend of mine (Robin Curtis) left some of his stuff in one of the upstairs rooms for a couple of weeks while he went home. A bottle of shampoo leaked through a duffle bag and bleached a spot on the floor, the first blemish on the newly completed house. I think it was covered by a bed soon enough that hardly anyone noticed it was ever there.
Okay, here's a weird one, since you asked! The white house has always had a distinct Spencer smell. That's a good thing, I promise! I don't know if it's the laundry detergent, or the Spic and Span, or what, but it is distinct in my book. I noticed it when I first visited. And then it became associated with the smell of my Ben. Although Ben's smell had a definite tinge of Morris mixed in there. Unforgettable!
I liked coming home to that smell when we lived there for a summer. After we moved to Boulder, I found myself washing the remnants of that smell out of Ben's last flannel shirt that had not yet been washed. I knew it was the end of that smell, and I buried my nose in it for a minute and remembered lots of sweet times. It was a shame when he started smelling like me.
Whenever we visited Utah after we moved, and went to the white house, I'd smell that smell and it would send me back to dating Ben and that 1st year of marriage. That was always a treat! And I get excited still whenever I smell even a hint of that smell. I think Ben has a coat or gloves or socks or something in the obscure corners of my closet that might retain that smell. If I find a little piece of archaeology like that, I'll probably be tempted to put it in plastic and protect it for the rest of my life.
I only lived there for a year (during my single days) so I don't have TONS of stories, but here's what I remember...
Most importantly, that is where I met Ryan! I had probably only moved in about 3 days earlier when he was over hanging out at the house with all the 17th ward people. We were playing Dave Matthews music and we both turned to each other and commented about how much we both loved Dave Matthews Band. It was love at first sight and the rest is history!! We didn't start dating until almost a year later, but what got that going is that we started watching the show "24" on DVD at the white house and go so into the show that we watched episode after episode together and that serious quality time together led to our relationship together!
The next story is that we were trying to go through all the "junk" that was sitting in some of the closets (a true white house trademark--all the random things people leave behind!) and we found some really ugly old dresses that someone left behind. Ryan was hanging out at the house one day and thought it would be funny to try them on, so he pulled the dresses on over his basketball clothes. They were so tight the buttons were all popping off! It was really funny and I still have pictures of him modeling all the dresses.
The last story is that one time it was snowing really hard and it was pretty late at night but there were a lot of people at the white house still (me, Lincoln, Carrie, Ryan, Mike Riley, Paul Brooks, a bunch of Wingers people, etc) and of course needed some important constructive things to do with our time during the late hours at night after everyone at Wingers got off work. So we built the most enormous igloo ever in the front yard! It was quite large and could easily fit a few people inside! It also turned out to be a very "strong" igloo because it probably sat there for 3 months before it melted! I'm sure all the neighbors loved staring at our giant snow structure until it very slowly melted.
I typed these out a few days ago and emailed them to mom. She told me to just post them here in the comments box, so here you go:
Heidi’s Top Ten Memories of the White House
1) I got engaged on that old cream colored couch. Can’t top that! Along with that, I fondly remember getting ready for my wedding day using the big hallway mirror.
2) Rotating through batches of borscht (Quentin), chili (Benjamin), quiche (Amy) and slimy potato and canned mushroom soup casserole (me) during our cooking turns. The boys would never go to the grocery store until we were out of grape nuts. We could be out of literally everything else, and be eating our grape nuts with water on them. We used to each pitch in 50 bucks a month for food, which is an unbelievably low amount now.
3) Drilling a hole through my windowsill so that I could run coaxial cable into my room from my homemade copper J-pole antenna on the roof. Before that, the best place for hitting the repeater from my radio was on the front porch, which gave the Skabelunds much to listen to and later ask me about. That was before the days of the grown up trees between us and them that now provide a much needed buffer zone.
4) Sunday dinner with all the boys that were trying to woo me showing up. Alan was always the most patient and last to leave, which is largely why he won the bidding process ; ). Along those lines, the morning after we got engaged a vase of yellow roses arrived. It happened to be Valentine’s Day. I thought Alan was so sweet to think of doing that so quickly until I read the card and realized they were from Russell who was out of the loop and didn’t realize that he was now out of the running.
5) Following a trail of bits of pink velour blanket fuzz to the small bedroom to find Traci. She often would just show up and crash on the couch in there when she didn’t have anywhere else to stay. So did a whole lot of other people. That was the beauty of the house, that it was a home that many people felt comfortable in. It’d be fun to try to figure out exactly how many people actually lived there.
6) The evil social worker roommates. I was so fortunate to have so many good roomies – all my siblings, Laurie and Becky – that those two girls really threw me for a loop. The kicker was having my knees operated on that semester and them not being one bit helpful. I remember hobbling around the kitchen on one crutch to do their dishes. I also remember getting stuck in the bathtub a few days after my surgery because I couldn’t bend my legs and the old sliding door was on the tub. That was a truly charming moment.
7) Becky’s cats. The worst day was when I was coming home from clinical to change before going to talk to my colonel about being discharged from the Army. In the 10 minutes I was in the house, one of the kitties ran outside and got hit by a car right in front of the house. When I got out there, she was still moving, but obviously had fatal injuries. Grant Skabelund was home and came to the rescue. He put her out of her misery and buried her for me under the apple tree in the backyard. That put me over the top on the stress meter, so by the time I got in to talk to Colonel Sullivan, I was a bawling mess. He was very kind, and thankfully gave me a medical discharge.
8) Sitting in the cold dry bathtub to stay awake while I was studying. This was for desperate situations only, typically the night before an ugly test. Most the time I just bagged it and went to bed, crossing my fingers the next day. I managed a 3.6, so I guess it worked.
9) The time Grandpa backed out of the driveway , went all the way across the street and managed to wedge his back bumper on top of the retaining wall in front of the neighbor’s house. Only us girls were home, so we knocked on doors until we recruited enough strapping lads to help us lift it off. Grandpa had managed to burn an actual pile of rubber shavings off his tire trying to drive himself off, and the wall bore scars of it for a long time. I believe he was taking us to a Folkdance Around the World festival or something like that, and it was an extremely nerve wracking mile and a half ride to campus. His keys were taken away shortly after that.
10) Making batches of chocolate chip cookies every Tuesday night with Becky, Traci and Laurie. This necessitated a trip to Day’s Market to purchase the ingredients and flirt with a guy in our ward that worked there. I don’t even remember his name now, and I don’t think he was even particularly cute, but for some reason he really tickled our fancy. We’d bring cookies back to him periodically if he was flirty back.
I should probably have the most stories of anyone here since I lived in the white house for five years! I don't know if I have ever done anything as exciting as build an igloo, however. Those five years were the transition for me between moving away from home and graduation from high school, to figuring out who I was, what I wanted to do with my life, and making some of the best friends I have ever had.
The first year there from 98-99, I think it was me, Amy, Heidi, and Laurie for a year. I got to be there when Heidi and Al courted and got engaged all within a matter of 2-3 weeks! Alan was just a friend for a while who would hang out at the house. One Saturday he wanted to go on a hike but neither Amy nor Heidi were available, so it was just Alan and I. We got to know each other some, and at the end of the hike he commented that he thought I was meant to be his sister. Hmmmm.... seems he already had plans long before he started dating Heidi! Amy was great to have as a roommate. She helped me to transition to learning how to cook and take care of myself more than I was used to! I believe that was the year Amy left on her mission (correct me if I'm wrong!) That summer Laurie and I had a lot of fun. We went on a trip to Southern Utah to hike Angel's landing. We went biking and other such things, and I think it was towards the end that she started dating her now hubby, Josh. Her first impression of him was that he was nice, and wore glasses. At least that's what she told me about him first. The rest was history!
The second year I was there, Kate Dunster and Becky Vest and Aubrey Greenhalgh lived there with me. Kate was there for three years or so, and Becky lived there for 3 and a half I think. She is still my longest standing roommate. Aaron will break that record in a couple of years. :) We had many good times. Kate the eternal optimist always had a smile on her face and a friendly word. Sometimes we teased her for it, since she never seemed to have a bad day, but she was a joy to have at the house. She also went through her share of guys. It seemed she would never find someone good enough. Then she met Cullen! He was her perfect match, and they are happily married now with two kids. Becky was also a blast to have as a roommate. She introduced me to Dr. Bell's lab, where she got her master's degree and I got a year and a half of research, two publications and a great letter of recommendation for med school. She and I had a lot in common as far as school and shared many days in the lab running the spectrometer. There were many, many nights staying up yacking about life, the universe, and everything! Aubree was also fun to have around. She lived there for about a year. She is one of the most motivated people I know! Every morning she got up at 5:30 to read her scriptures for a half an hour and run 6 miles. On Saturdays she would get up early to clean, do her laundry and get her business done. I remember one time going on a camping trip with her and another friend which was way fun.
I may be missing a couple roommates who lived there for only a short time but I have at least covered the main ones. My last (fifth) year of college was with Becky, Kate and Carrie. That was by far the busiest year of school for me. I was applying to med school, running BYU EMS, doing research and finishing my degree in chemical engineering. My days were nearly booked from 7 am to 11 pm, and I was at school most Saturdays doing homework or working EMS shifts. That was the year Kate got married and Becky graduated with her masters. Carrie was just starting out figuring out what to do with her life. She changed her mind every couple months or so, but I think landed on sports medicine in the end. She was also working at Winger's. She was always a whirlwind! She'd throw open the front door, drop her keys on the shelf, run downstairs, run back upstairs, and out the door again before we knew what happened! It was great fun to have her at the house though. I don't know if it was as much fun for her to be roommates with a bunch of old ladies, but she put up with us ok. :) We also had late night talks many times.
The summer I graduated I was still living in the white house, commuting to my job in Salt Lake City. That summer Melanie and Lincoln moved in (2003). It then went from being the mellow white house to the party house! I remember one time Carrie and company decided it would be fun to hike the Y at 2 am. I think they regretted it the next morning. I was too boring to involve myself as much in their antics since I had to get up at 6 am every day for work. Eventually the commute wore me down and I moved to Salt Lake City after a few months. But the party continued on at the white house and it was always fun to visit! No matter when I came there was always someone there (whether or not an actual white house resident was present). The white house will always have fond memories for me and a special place in my heart.
I only have one memory of the White House. Andy and I stopped there when we were dating (before we got engaged) because he wanted me to meet some of his cousins. Carrie was the only one there; she was the first Spencer I met. It was a very short visit, and all I really remember is how pretty I thought Carrie was.
Well apparently I started the partying at the white house! Somebody had to make the place a little more interesting... it was always so quiet and boring before I got there. Here are my memories from start to finish:
1) Remodeling the house: We got rid of the bright green, red, gold, and other amazing shades of shag carpet. We knocked out walls, re-built the bathroom downstairs, re-wired everything, re-roofed, etc. That was a fun summer for me. I also like that many of us kids invested in the house - it was a good way to feel like we were a part of things and take ownership in the house.
2) Visiting the White House during high school: Every time I visited the house on family vacations, it drove me crazy how quiet and boring the house was! One time Sam Garfield and I went on a road trip to Utah during high school - we had plenty of great adventures, but one of the funniest parts was playing tricks on Becky's cat. We put tape over its paws and it was sliding all over the kitchen floor!!
3) My freshman year at BYU: I lived in the dorms my first year of college, but visited the white house once in a while to borrow the gray Camry (Ludwig?) from Emily. I only had a motorcycle to get around on then, and it was nice to borrow Emily's car for dates in the cold winter months. The summer after my freshman year, the girls were out of the house so I moved in, and my friends Andrew and Bryce lived there too about half of the time. We made tons of amazing breakfast burritos and tasty Brazillian limeade!! Great memories.
4) The shed: at some point before or during my freshman year in college, Dad and I both realized that a good shed would be nice at the house (he knew it would turn into a motorcycle shop). We got rid of the crummy tin-can shed, and built a sweet wood shed with electricity, lights, a nice workbench, hooks for tools, etc. Honestly, some of my best memories at the white house were out in the shed working on motorcycles.
5) Living with Emily after the mission: This was pretty funny - when I lived in the house with Emily and Carrie, Emily would always go to bed so early! (at 10 or 11) She wore earplugs to bed because we were always making noise late at night. One time she sleep-walked from her room into the living room, turned the music down, and went back to bed. We were shocked - she was completely incoherent!
Sam Garfield and I played a funny prank one Sunday afternoon - Emily had some church music playing on the computer, and Sam and I installed a plugin for Winamp that lets you control the music remotely. We sat in the office on the other computer, and would turn on some obnoxious rap really loud, and Emily would freak out and run to the computer to turn it down. We did it about 4 or 5 times until she finally figured out what was going on - we were trying so hard to control laughing!! We were rolling on the floor in the office we were laughing so hard.
6) Motorcycle mania! I had always bought and sold motorcycles since I was 13, but it turned into a big deal at the white house. At one point, Tom Savage was out hunting down deals for me, Matt Woods was helping me fix and sell bikes, and between the team of us 3 we had 17 bikes at the house one day! The basketball court was covered with motorcycles - who needs to play basketball anyway? Then one day a neighbor called the police, and they put a stop to all the fun. Dad got a letter from the city saying that I had to have the bikes out of there by the end of the month - which wasn't a problem since I was moving home for the summer and selling everything anyway (except for the 6 or so that were still left, that I loaded onto my poor little truck and trailer).
7) The hot tub: One day Ryan called me, and said we could have a free hot tub if we picked it up within the next hour. We had about 6 guys, a truck, and trailer there ASAP and rolled that thing onto the trailer end over end! We did our best to tie it down but it made me nervous swaying from side to side on the way home. We had many fun nights talking and joking in the hot tub, drinking Henry Weinhardt's root beer and often eating popsicles or Del Taco. I think the record was 13 people in the hot tub at one time - the water level was down about 18 inches after that night.
8) Shindigs: We had many great "shindigs" hanging out with friends - I'd text everyone in my phone and invite them, and sometimes we had 50-100 people stop by throughout the night! My idea of a party wasn't dancing to loud music - we just played games, ate tasty snacks, talked, and sat in the hot tub.
9) Later upgrades to the house: Carrie and I talked Mom and Dad into remodeling the living room because it was getting pretty hammered from all of those years. We painted the walls a cool textured green, Dad put in the fireplace and had carpet replaced, and somehow we talked Mom and Dad into getting 2 LoveSacs along with the new couches. I wired the home network, installed surround sound in the living room (more wiring through the nasty cinderblock walls...), and eventually we had a pretty nice place! Carrie and I were really excited about the upgrade - it was fun to take part in so much of it.
10) Carrie - coming home from Winger's: The best part about the white house was Carrie. She made it a fun place to live, and always brought the party with her. Some nights when nothing much was going on, she'd come home from work at Winger's late at night and the party would start! She usually had a bunch of co-workers and other friends trailing behind her ready to have some fun. This "spark" that Carrie always had made life fun, adventurous, and crazy.
Hey Sister Spencer!! I hope you don't mind me sharing a few memories from the white house too :). After I moved to Utah, I hung out there a lot with Carrie. There was a New Year's Eve party just a few days after I had moved to Utah and I remember laugh for hours with people I had never met before. Carrie, of course, was the life of the party.
And, just like Lincoln, I remember the hot tub. Carrie and I along with a few other friends sat out on that porch for hours; some of the most memorable conversations I have were times in the hot tub. All of you children have such amazing qualities and I am grateful for knowing them (and you and Bro. Spencer too :) ),for their frienships and countless fun times we've shared at the whitehouse.
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