Project 52 – 32, Part One: Farewell to Illinois!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 32!

32 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 32 — June 14, 1996, to June 14, 1997.

The year I was 32 was the year we moved to Germany! However, I’m writing this after working the late shift — so I don’t think I’ll be able to cover the whole year tonight. I will instead see if I can cover the months from June through October, as we said good-by to Illinois.

Last week, I covered the year we found out we’d get to move. We were ready to leave Illinois, and very excited about the adventure.

The first pictures from that year are more of my adorable children. That was the time that Timmy decided if he closed his eyes, I couldn’t see him or take his picture. Of course, I think the aggressively-closed-eyes pictures are cuter than ever!

And my last day teaching college math was July 24, 1996! I’d been teaching Calculus 3 for summer school — 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm on Monday and Wednesday nights. I wrote in my journal on the 22nd: “This is the week! The week a new epoch in my life starts — when I actually won’t be working for at least 4 months! A dream come true.”

The fact is, I’d wanted to stay home with my kids since they were born — but we couldn’t afford it. We were hoping that the extra money Steve would get in Germany — for Cost of Living Allowance and higher housing allowance — would make it possible for me not to work. But since I couldn’t teach Fall semester, we had more than three months of living in Illinois with me not working. Yes, every time we had a military move, our finances took a big hit. (This will always be true when both spouses are working. You can’t get a job instantly. Though I have to admit, it was close to instantly when we moved to Illinois.)

The other thing I was dealing with then — alas, the whole time I was not working outside the home — was mysterious very bad joint pain. It would happen in waves, but was quite severe. I’d also get waves of lethargy, so I wasn’t feeling great at that time, and was annoyingly unproductive.

I finally found out more than two years later that it was from the Inderal I’d started taking as a migraine preventative. Since the joint pain didn’t start until I’d been taking Inderal for six months, that never occurred to me (or my doctor). We did tests, and I came out borderline for rheumatoid arthritis — but it looked like it was probably lupus. (It did, in fact, turn out to be drug-induced lupus.) So that was something hanging over me, starting that summer after I turned 32. (And when I stopped taking Inderal a couple years later, it completely went away. So that was indeed the problem.)

That summer, Josh played Little League baseball. They had a tendency to stand in the outfield and look at flowers, but I think they had fun.

While Josh played, Timmy played in the dirt by the field.

I love this picture. I’m not sure why we had some candy bars. But Steve had put them in a high cupboard. One day I found Timmy in the following pose. Note the stool he’d brought over to achieve his goal! And the downcast eyes of one caught in the act.

And Colleen, my roommate from Biola, came to visit us with her parents! We took them to the Gateway Arch.

Alas! This was the last time I saw Colleen. She’d already had surgery and had a brain tumor removed. But it did grow back, and she died the following spring, on March 18, 1997. She was 33 and a half years old and an amazing high school English teacher. Very, very sad. Yes, I believe she’s happy in heaven. But I’m still sad that her potential for touching lives here on earth was cut short.

Then we started planning to see people in the States before we moved. At the end of July, we visited my brother Randy and his wife Cherita, with a stop at Fantastic Caverns on the way.

After visiting Fantastic Caverns:

Then we visited Randy. He’s a truck driver, and let Timmy take the wheel!

Our next stop was the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum on Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. We were there on a truly glorious day.

And the day after we got home was Timmy’s 2nd Birthday!

He loved his new bubble mower so much!

He also got a Tickle-Me Elmo.

My adorable children:

And Timmy’s favorite thing to do around that time (and later in Germany) was to drive cars off that small file cabinet and watch them crash on the floor. There were dents on the floor where they’d land.

Steve’s family visited, and we went to the St. Louis Zoo.

Gramp E. with all his grandchildren:

At this playground, Karli thought it was the greatest thing to pour the little rocks on her own head. They were incredibly dirty that night.

And we fed the geese at Scott Lake:

Timmy and Karli’s car seats were next to each other in the car, and they squabbled a lot. But after we dropped them off at the airport, and Timmy found out Karli wasn’t coming back, he burst into tears.

This was from a trip to Six Flags. I’m sure Timmy believed he was really driving the car.

Then we took another trip to Chicago.

While we were there, the band had a performance somewhere where there were tanks we could climb on.

On August 27, Josh began 3rd grade! They would not finish it in Illinois.

Here are my kids’ Passport Photos! The cutest passport photos ever!

And then at the end of September, Kathe arrived for a visit, with her husband Joe and son Tim!

We went to the Transportation Museum on the 24th. Both the two-year-olds were enthralled.

On the 25th, we went to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

On the 26th, we went to the Science Center. This is the bridge over the freeway.

On the 27th, we visited the Magic House, a sort of heaven for small boys. My Timmy had a peak experience, which he remembered for years.

Josh got inside a bubble.

And the final day of their visit, we played on the playground before taking them to the airport.

And that’s all I can post tonight! I’m still a month away from the day we left for Germany, but it was a very full month. Like I said, we were trying to see everyone and everything before we moved across an ocean.