My life history

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 24^th 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 17^th 1984), Brittany Lynn (December 28^th 1986), and Benjamin Randall (January 8^th 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 31^st 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 5^th grade. My 2^nd 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 5^th graders, but he was actually a big teddy bear.  At Corridor we had the opportunity to put on a play every year. The 3-5^th 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 4^th grade the play as called The Saga of Mudhole Gulch It was a play about the early west settlement. In 5^th 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 4^th grade and a power sander when I was in 5^th.  When I was in 4^th grade I started learning the violin through a program ran through the school.

I went to Kelly DaVince Middle school for 6^th grade and half of 7^th. When I was in 7^th 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 7^th and 8^th 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. 8^th 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!