Stew Lemmon Day 2009

 Me, Juice, Ivan, and a little bit of Linc in the car after Sizzler

For those of you who are new to the blog since last year, I'll do a small recap for you. Stew Lemmon Day is a holiday invented by our good friends the Ropelatos. Each year on Sept 13, we remember the life of my Dad by eating stew and lemon pie (some years I substitute in lemonade) for dinner and sharing our memories of him. This will the the 7th year we've celebrated Stew Lemmon Day. Seven years since he died of Lukemia.

Kyle, Tanner Jones (a friend of Jack's) and Linc in the van after Sizzler

This year on the 13th my kids were sick, and Aaron had a crazy school schedule, so we didn't actually celebrate on the 13th. But today, the 20th happens to be my dad's birthday, so I thought it would be a good day to redeem ourselves. This year two of my brothers, Kyle and Jackson, live in Orem. So we decided to go to lunch at Sizzler in honor of Dad. Last year Kyle mentioned that Dad probably wouldn't like all the fuss, and it's true, he never was one to want us to make a fuss over his birthday, but any excuse to go to Sizzler (in my opinion, and in Dad's) is a good one, so to Sizzler we went. I forgot to take pictures inside the restaurant, so we improvised and took a few in the car afterwords.

So one of my very first memories this year was obviously of Sizzler. My dad ate at Sizzler ALL the time. He was a contractor, and when he and his business partner would be working on a development, they would find the nearest Sizzler and eat there every single day for lunch. For months in a row. It got to the point where the waitresses knew what time they would come in, and would have a table set and waiting for them, their Pepsis already waiting, and their order on it's way. Kyle mentioned at lunch today that when he and his friend Shawn Miles would do their week long basketball camps, Dad would always take them to eat at Sizzler aferwords. Every day. For a week.

Another restaurant memory...my dad took my mom out on date night every Friday night that I can remember for my entire life. It was their get-away from us once a week. I guess they needed it for their sanity, and really, now that I'm a mom, I don't blame them one bit. But my dad was not super patient. If they went to a restaurant and the wait was going to be more than 10 minutes, he wouldn't stay. They'd get back in the car and drive somewhere else, only to find that they wait was going to be "too long" and then they'd have to go to somewhere else. They'd end up going to 4 or 5 different places until they found one that could get them in in less than 10 minutes. The funny thing is, in the time it took them to drive to 5 places they could have waited at the first place and been in. But that was Dad for you.

My Dad was always surprising me with the way he reacted to things. He'd get really mad sometimes about things that didn't seem like a very big deal, and then other times when I was sure he was going to kill me, he would be very reasonable and understanding. Here's a good example. I was forbidden to get my ears pierced until I was 22. (Why 22 I have no idea, you'll have to ask him.) Anyways, when I was in 7th Grade, my friends Abby and Alicia and I had just watched the newer Parent Trap movie (with Lindsey Lohan) and thought for some reason that it would be an excellent idea to pierce our own ears. We did it over the deer hunt weekend, so my dad was out of town. I remember thinking that if I just wore my hair down for a long time, it would cover up my ears and my Dad would never know. Well, he found out. I seriously thought he was going to kill me, or in the very least make me take the earrings out and ground me for a year. Instead, he took me to lunch (at Sizzler of course), bought me a steak, and gave me a box with diamond earring studs in it. He said he wanted to be the first person to give me diamonds. Then he told me, if he ever found me with more than one hole in each ear, he would rip it out. :) He never was very subtle.

With the holidays coming, it's easy to think of a lot of holiday memories of my dad. He was a food conesuer, and so most of the memories have to do with food. I remember he always went all out for New Year's Eve. Seafood was usually the theme, and we had shrimp, and lobster, and crab, and kipper snacks (barf), crackers, cheese, dips, etc. He was also the instegator of our Back to the Future marathons. We'd watch all three Back to the Future movies while we waited for midnight.

One more memory, and this one always makes me laugh. It's one of those stories that gets passed down and retold over and over and over. One day, Kyle, Jackson and I were giving Tanner a hard time about something (I really don't remember what actually) and my dad came in and said you guys be nice to Tanner, everything is not always Tanner's fault, we didn't need to always blame everything on Tanner, and so on, until he'd set us straight. Then, not two minutes later, he walked out of the room and in the other room stepped on some toy cars that were lying in the middle of the floor, and said, "Who left these cars here? Tanner!" We all busted up laughing. But he never saw the humor of it.

Anyways, those are my memories this year. Later tonight, our little family will be enjoying some stew and probably lemonade for dinner. After the kids go to bed, Aaron and I will watch a movie, in honor of my dad it will be one of these 5 titles: Father of the Bride (1 or 2), Groundhog's Day, Arthur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or A Christmas Story. These are my dad's classic movies, the ones that made him laugh out loud over and over again, no matter how many times he watched them.

If you'd like to help us celebrate and share your memories of Stew Lemmon, please feel free, we'd love to hear them.