So part of this project is to write a 5 page life history. Mine is incomplete, I only got to 8th grade by page 5 so I still need to catch up on the last 7 years. Sorry it's a bit long!
I
was born on January 24th 1992 in Springfield Oregon. My middle name
was my great grandmother’s maiden name, Ruby Elizabeth Lelia Musick. You could
say I was born 10 days early or about a year and a half late. My mom miscarried
about 1 ½ years before I was born, she has always said that she knew it was me
just trying to come before my time. Before I was born I tied myself in a knot
and could have been born with severe complications but thankfully I was born perfectly
healthy. I have 3 older siblings. Andrew Scott (May 17th 1984),
Brittany Lynn (December 28th 1986), and Benjamin Randall (January 8th
1989). I’m proud to say that I’m the only member of my family born in the great
state of Oregon. I was born at McKenzie Willamette Hospital in Springfield but
we lived in Eugene at the time. The first time I slept through the night was on
Mother’s day, I like to think it was the best Mother’s day gift anyone ever
gave my Mom. At the time my Dad worked for the Taco Time Corporation based in
Eugene and my Mom stayed at home with 4 kids. When I was 2 our family moved to
Riverton Utah.
In
1994 we moved to Utah for a job change. My parents thought we had a large
family, not many people had 4 kids. When we moved to Utah my Dad looked around
and realized that our family was not so big compared to all the other large
Mormon families and decided that he wanted one more. My little sister Savannah
Leigh was born on July 31st 1995 in Sandy Utah. I was only 3 ½ but I
still remember the day I became a big sister. My grandma had flown in from
California to be with my mom for the last few weeks of the pregnancy. When I
got to go to the hospital to see Savannah for the first time my grandma
wouldn’t let me hold her but my Dad did. I remember sitting on a bench in the
corner of the room and him handing me my little sister and showing me how to
hold her. I also got to help give her a bath, the nurse showed me and my
brother how to gently wash her hair so it wouldn’t fall out.
It
was in Riverton that I started preschool. I was 3 years old and a friend of my
Mom, Monique, taught preschool in her house. I have a few vague memories of
playing with shaving cream on the table and playing in their sandbox. I also
remember being unjustly put on timeout for something I did not do, but she
didn’t believe me. Our house in Utah had a big cherry tree in the corner of the
backyard where I first learned how to climb a tree, I never got very far before
being afraid. It was behind this tree that I ate numerous monkey bars (a banana
popsicle) that I stole from the freezer in the garage. I thought my mom didn’t
know about it but she did. It was also behind this cherry tree that Brittany
claims she found Ben’s egg that he hatched from, he was apparently an alien. In
the summer we would pick the cherries and sell them out of a wagon to our
neighbors. That tree has a large place in my memories of Utah. We had a pen
with 2 ducks and a chicken who thought she was a duck. I was terrified of ducks
because they looked just like geese. While at my grandparents in California one
of their geese bit me in the butt and I had been terrified of them ever since.
Brittany tried to help me overcome my fears by tying me to a lawn chair with a
jump rope and putting Blackie and Camouflage (so named by Andrew) on my lap,
without my permission. Brittany was very devious that way. I had three friends, Analise, Alisha and
Hailey. At one of their birthday parties I won 2 goldfish and got to take them
home in a mason jar. They were my first pets and I loved them until Ben killed
them. He thought I wasn’t feeding them enough so he dumped all the food in the
jar and polluted the water, one of these days I might forgive him for that. We
had a magical bush in the backyard that grew peanut butter and sometimes candy
canes around Christmas. Yes I actually believed this for quite a long time, but
then again so did Ben. I never noticed that all the jars had the dates written
on top just like my mom did before putting them in the pantry. It was something
that my Dad started, he always liked to joke with us and play tricks. Brittany
started helping out after a while and would sneak peanut butter out of the
house to keep the magic alive for me.
We
moved back to Eugene, Oregon in 1997 because my Dad’s old company wanted him
back. We lived in rental house for a few months before we moved to my childhood
home on 740 River Road, the yellow house. This house was built in the 1930s and
was a magical place for a child to grow up in. throughout my childhood I was
extremely hyperactive and copied everything that Ben did including a speech
impediment for a few months until he grew out of it and I copied that too. Our
backyard was ½ an acre and my parents turned it into paradise. There was a
playhouse built to the standards of a real tiny home that we had sleepovers and
tea parties in. A huge garden that we grew just about everything in, the
world’s best climbing tree, a play structure, a dozen fruit trees, and enough
places to hide away from that I could hide from my family for hours. Which I
did once and nearly scared them to death. One chore that we all hated was
picking up rotten pears. There were two huge pear trees that continuously
dropped fruit on the ground. There was no way we could can and dry them fast enough
to keep up. All of us hated picking them up off the ground because they had
rotted and bees swarmed around them. When we moved into the house we planted a
small Dougless Fir tree in front of the house. We used to be able to jump over
it but in the 15 years since then it has grown to tower over the two story
house. We named the tree Homer because it was our new home and we used to
decorate it for Christmas. I learned how to ride a bike in that house, put up
drywall, garden, pull weeds, climb a tree and empty a swimming poll.
I started
Kindergarten at Gilham Elementary School, the next year I was at River Road
school for first grade where my teacher was Miss Boyd. The next year I changed
schools again and was at Corridor Elementary school with Ben who was in 5th
grade. My 2nd grade teacher was Vic Hansen, who was my favorite
teacher until high school. Corridor was an alternative school and focused on
the performing arts, we were encouraged to call our teachers by their first
names. For a primary activity we got to invite out teachers to an activity, we
painted clay pots with our hand prints on them as a gift, Vic still has the one
I made him on his porch. I found him on Facebook a few years ago and he still
remembers me. My third grade teacher was Ron Wycoff, fourth grade Bev, and
fifth grade Tom Wayward. Tom was a large guy and talked loudly and scared most
of the 5th graders, but he was actually a big teddy bear. At Corridor we had the opportunity to put on
a play every year. The 3-5th graders got to perform theirs in the
Hult Center and the community got to see it. My third grade play was called
Rockin’ Around the Clock. I still remember my 2 lines: “Hula hoops” and “The
Mousekateers were a major hit on TV.” My roll was a 50s girl. In 4th
grade the play as called The Saga of
Mudhole Gulch It was a play about the early west settlement. In 5th
grade we did Peter Pan I was
Slightly, one of the lost boys. I was proud to be one of the few people with an
actual name in the play. I graduated from Corridor with many odd skills because
of the elective classes we got to choose. I could use a power saw when I was in
4th grade and a power sander when I was in 5th. When I was in 4th grade I started
learning the violin through a program ran through the school.
I went to Kelly
DaVince Middle school for 6th grade and half of 7th. When
I was in 7th grade my family had to move. My Dad was looking for a new
job, we almost moved to Arizona. I hated Arizona, I can’t take heat over 80
degrees. No one really wanted to go there, the day we found out we didn’t have
to move there was the first time I cried of happiness. It was an odd situation
because my Mom and a few of our siblings were in the part of town that our
first house that I lived in was so we begged her to let us see it. The house
was for sale so we walked around the yard and looked in the windows. We were at
the house when we got the call. We still couldn’t stay in Oregon and ended up
moving to Coralville Iowa when I was 15. I probably would have liked Iowa a lot
more if I hadn’t been ripped from my childhood home. I remember the first time
I saw Coralville, it was February and covered in snow. The city looked
dreadful, I thought to myself, “One day you will think of this as your home, it
will be alright.” There were a lot of things I didn’t like about Iowa, the
water tasted bad, there were not mountains or trees, and it was humid. I did
like the fireflies in the summer, having no fence in the backyard, and my
friends. The first Sunday in our new ward a girl ran up to me after Sacrament
meeting and introduced herself as Kristilyn Gelder and showed me where my class
was. She was my first friend out there and ended up being my first roommate out
here at BYU-Idaho in college. While I fought every minute of being in Iowa I
met so many people that changed me for the better. I went to Northwest Junior
high for 7th and 8th grade. I actually ran for student
body vice principle but didn’t win, so I was involved with the student council.
I was still in orchestra and I started really loving it in middle school when I
got the opportunity to play in a symphony. 8th grade orchestra
combined with the band once a week, I looked forward to these days so much and
it really influenced my decision to be in the symphony in high school and then
to go into music education in college.
To be continued….
Stay in tune for my move back to Oregon and West Salem High School!
Olivia is my mother’s
step-mother, she raised my mom from the time she was 5 and is sealed to my mom
and me. Olive Briones was born in Los
Mochis, Mexico on March 22nd 1940. Her parents were Jose Briones
Pavilla and Ernestina Vega Rosas. She had two younger brothers, Eario and
Francisco. Two older sisters, Herlinda and Irene, and 2 younger sisters, Reyna
and Tina. Olivia and her 4 sisters were local celebrities because they
participated in many beauty pageants, they were local beauties. Her father was
orphaned by the age of 5 and never went to school. He taught himself everything
and learned how to work with gold and to repair washers. Her mother had also
lost her parents at age 10 and worked as a seamstress. 
Olivia
spoke Spanish at home but took English in high school although she never took
it seriously. In 1972 she met David Niven Baguley in Southern California. He
was recently divorced and was taking care of his 3 children. She spoke no
English and he spoke no Spanish yet they were married within the month on July
29th. No one in the family quite knows how that worked out. Olivia says that
David labeled everything in the house with the English word. Donna, my mother
says that growing up she mixed up nouns and adjectives all the time, for
example saying ‘box mail’ instead of mailbox and ‘paper toilet’ instead of
toilet paper. About a year after they were married they had their 4th
and final child, Brenda.
On
March 17th 1984 Olivia became a grandmother to my older brother
Andrew. Today she is a grandmother to 16 grand kids and 2 great-grandchilren. They live in Lebanon Oregon
and raise geese and other random farm animals.
Cord
made his way to Kansas where he lived for most of his life. He married Grace
Darling Pierson in Spivey, Kansas on May 19th 1904. The next year
their first daughter, Zelma, was born. According the 1910 United States Census
he lived in Woods, Oklahoma for a short while before going back to Kansas. He
and Grace had 18 children; 9 boys and 9 girls. Walter Harold who was born in
1914 was my great grandfather. According
to his
youngest daughter he rarely spoke German with his family, he told them “he came here to make his living and we would speak English.”