It’s time for Project 52, Week 32, Part Two!

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.

However, for at least my first few years in Germany, I think it’s going to take more than one long blog post to cover each year. Two nights ago, I covered June through September, 1996, as we said our farewells to many dear friends before leaving. I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish the year tonight. What I should do is drastically summarize. But I’m having so much fun looking at castle pictures and remembering the joy of coming to Germany — I think I’m just going to indulge myself in memories and keep going with this however long it takes….

Castles, you say? I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that when we first found out we’d be moving to Germany, we were worried about how Jade (then called Josh) would take it. Josh didn’t like change. When we’d gotten rid of an old junky table and bought a new one, Josh had cried about the old table. How would Josh deal with such a big move?

Well, Josh’s second grade teacher told them there’s a statue of the Bremen Town Musicians in the town of Bremen. And I told Josh, “They have castles in Germany!” Their eyes lit up.

And that’s when we decided to collect castles. We decided that we could only count castles we actually touched. Eventually, we made more rules. It had to be at least a hundred years old. It must have a name. But we’d count castles, palaces, and fortifications, given those conditions.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Picking up where I left off in October 1996, we were making our last preparations to move away from Illinois. I recorded a lot of the details in my calendar.

We sold our Honda Civic — the one that had broken down in every major city in America but finally had a recalled part that would supposedly work — on October 2, 1996. (That was the only new car we ever bought, and one of the worst cars we ever had.)

On October 3, Steve broke his wrist when he fell off his bike. Not great timing, but what can you do?

On October 4, my Dad came to visit for a few days. (He probably had some business out there.) He’s always so good with little ones!

October 14 was the Columbus Day holiday, and we took Josh’s best friend Trevyor and went hiking at Knobelich Woods. (I don’t remember where that was at all, but that’s what it says.)

On October 18, our first shipment left. I think these were the things we’d want soonest, and they’d go by plane. I don’t remember what we chose. Maybe coats and winter gear, dishes, and what-not.

On October 19, Darlene came to visit for a few days! We took her hiking at our old favorite, Carlyle Lake. And now we had someone to take a family picture for us! The fun thing about that time is that our family was evenly spaced — we were all about a foot apart from each other in height!

On October 23 the Packers came, and we moved into Billeting. On October 24, they took our stuff away.

We took a trip to Rockford to see my cousin Karen and her family. She was sad, because she knew when we came back to visit, we wouldn’t visit Illinois. (She was right about that, I’m afraid.) It was super nice to get to know her during our years in Illinois.

Here’s Timmy with her youngest.

A couple of other cousins came over, and we had (as we thought) a bunch of boys, so we took some pictures of all the boys.

From there it was pretty much hanging out in billeting and going to good-by parties and dinners.

We still read to the boys at bedtime.

We took Josh and Trevyor on one last visit to Chuck E. Cheese.

And Halloween happened while we were in billeting.

I don’t remember who drove us to the airport. But this was our last day with the Honda before we gave it to the buyers.

Then, on November 3, 1996, we left for Germany! Here are the kids in the airport:

We arrived in Frankfurt Airport at 7:30 am on Monday, November 4, 1996. If I remember right, two band folks picked us up, so as to get all our stuff. Maybe Jody Pratt? Maybe Steve’s sponsor, Bruce Bender? Or maybe just Jody? The memories are vague. I think I rode with Jody, and I do remember that we saw our first castle, Burg Neuleiningen, from the Autobahn. Then Bruce had Steve go straight to work! The kids and I took naps and were far, far the better for it.

Then that night, at about 3:00 am (Germany time), a fire alarm went off in the hotel on base!

Steve had more presence of mind than me. I was just focused on getting the kids out, but Steve thought to bring a blanket with us. We didn’t have winter gear. It started to snow while we were waiting for the all-clear!

The USAFE Band at that time was based in Einsiedlerhof, near Ramstein AFB. But they were planning to move to Sembach AFB, about a half-hour away, in a few months. So we stayed in billeting on Ramstein, but looked for housing near Sembach.

Our time in Ramstein billeting was somewhat dreary. Lots of things went wrong. I didn’t start Josh in school, because they were going to end up going to school at Sembach. We did find an apartment by Saturday, but we stayed in billeting until November 26, when we could get our first shipment of stuff. And we used loaner furniture from the base office set up for that purpose.

We did have quite a lot of people we’d known from Scott AFB who welcomed us. I see “Dinner at Jodi Pratt’s” on the 7th and “Miranda Stanaford’s 2nd Birthday Party” on the 8th. In fact, it was a much, much less lonely move than the move to Illinois had been 5 years before. There was a lot of community spirit between the band families in Germany, because everyone was far from family (not just us).

On November 10th, after we’d bought a used car the day before, we drove to Frankfurt and saw Marie-Laurence, Steve’s friend from Biola! Here’s Steve with Timmy and Marie’s daughter Elise.

We had to get creative keeping the kids entertained in billeting!

Meanwhile, we were busy with paperwork and bureaucracy, paperwork and bureaucracy. But I see that November 14th was our first trip to a German bookstore — and I bought an edition of Momo, by Michael Ende, in the original language (German)! I also bought a book for Josh and Timmy about Flecki — Eric Hill’s Spot! And I bought my first hiking map. Hiking trails marked out for the entire area! I used that map our entire 10 years in Germany! When I first bought it, it was so much fun just to pore over. And that was when I first saw the symbols for Castles and Ruins dotted all over the map!

And on Saturday, November 16, we touched our first castle! Castle #1 was Burg Nanstein, a castle overlooking the town of Landstuhl, close to Ramstein, and even closer to the American military hospital. We got off to a late start, but followed the map and found it — and it was closed! I think it closed around 5:00 pm, though maybe it was 4:00. It gets dark very early in Germany in November (as far north as Seattle).

Somehow I had forgotten to bring a jacket at all. Steve let me use his.

We could get into one outer ruined tower.

On Sunday the 17th (two weeks in Germany), Steve went on tour with the band to England, and everything fell apart for me.

It started out not too bad. I went to church that day at Faith Baptist Church, an American church near Ramstein, and had lunch with two other left-behind spouses, Connie and Alex. But then my phone in billeting quit working, so I couldn’t call Steve or anyone else.

The next day, it snowed!

Remember, though — we hadn’t thought to bring snow gear in our airplane luggage for Germany. The same day, that car we’d bought broke down.

They did get the phone fixed — apparently we’d needed to let them know we were still there. And I borrowed a car from a band family, and I guess took our car in to get repaired. I made arrangements to have our first shipment come to our new apartment on the 26th.

Oh, that reminds me — while I’m talking about what went wrong is maybe not when I should mention that we decided to rent the very first place we looked at! And it was at a great price, and it was gorgeous! We’d been told over and over that apartments in Germany are smaller, but it had three bedrooms and was spacious and we loved it. Anyway, you’ll be seeing multiple pictures of Leithöfe….

Back to the comedy of errors — On the 21st, the car I’d borrowed got a flat tire! So I worked with the Kathy Huggins (whose husband was also on tour) to get it replaced. The world was cold, slushy and dark while this was going on.

Okay, I see I got our car back on the 22nd and got cash for the security deposit and dropped that off on the 24th. I remember getting lost on the way there. (German signs don’t use North/South/East/West, but just tell you which town the road leads toward. So you need to know the map. Hard to do while you’re also driving.) I’m not sure why I had the Huggins’ car again (some other disaster with mine?), but on the 25th, their car had not one but TWO flat tires! It turned out that the wheel rims were bad and were letting out air. I was involved in helping them get that fixed.

But on the 25th, Steve got back, and on the 26th, we moved in to Leithöfe, Germany — and everything started going RIGHT!

We had a garage. This is looking out our kitchen window.

And here’s the field behind our house.

Well, that’s a long enough post for now. I only got through a couple months, but the next post will cover settling in to Germany.

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.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 31!

31 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 31, June 14, 1995, to June 14, 1996.

The previous year, our second child Timothy was born after a pregnancy finishing up on bed rest and a very difficult labor. I didn’t bounce back quickly, what with starting to work again when Tim was 3 weeks old and, I see now, plenty of postpartum depression.

But around the time I turned 31, my journal sounds a little less frantic. I did teach summer school that year, which meant 8 hours per week of classes instead of 4 hours per week, so essentially working full-time for a couple months. Hmmm. That’s probably why there’s not much at all written in my calendar or journal for June and July 1995. (The entry that sounded so much calmer was before summer school had started.)

I’m going to try to just summarize this year, but I have a whole lot of cute kid pictures to share.

My journal does say that this was the time — before he’d quite learned to talk — that Timmy threw amazing, head-banging temper tantrums. What can I say? He was precocious. But those did get better a few months later when he started talking and could tell us what he wanted. And my goodness, he was cute!

We went on a short vacation to southern Illinois that summer. This picture cracks me up, because it’s so typical of my kids at that age. Jade (then called Josh) was quietly reading a book, and Timmy was getting into something, exploring!

We went hiking, trying to find “Old Stone Face,” and I almost got heat stroke.

The next day looking at these Cypress trees was nicer.

At the end of July was Timmy’s First Birthday!

My kids were cute at this stage!

Josh was 7 years old and losing teeth!

Of course, most precious are the ones of Josh with Timmy.

I’m not showing nearly all of the messy eating pictures!

Stacking cans was a favorite activity. (My Mom was the one who taught me to keep cans in a low cupboard because they make great toys.)

And in October, Kathe and Darlene came to visit! Kathe brought her son Tim, who is 6 months older than my son Timmy.

Rub-a-dub-dub, Two Tims in a tub!

For Halloween that year, this time Timmy was a clown, and I bought Josh a cell phone costume that really rang. They wore it a few years, and loved to make it ring after saying “Trick or Treat!”

In the Fall, we again went hiking to find Old Stone Face, and this time we found it! (We’d walked right by it that summer in the heat.)

And again this year we took pictures for our Christmas cards at Carlyle Lake.

Timmy still enjoyed stacking cans:

I had to include one picture with Timothy screaming. He was climbing over Josh, trying to get at the computer. Look how patient sweet Josh is being!

We went to Aunt Kay’s for Thanksgiving again:

Just more sweetness:

While they played video games, Josh used to give Timmy a controller that wasn’t hooked up!

Along about this time, the possibility came up that Steve might get to transfer to the USAFE Band in Germany. So when we drove out west for Christmas, we knew it might be our last trip in awhile. We saw lots of friends and family. I’ll show some of the pictures that came out the nicest.

Gramp E. and Gram E. welcomed us warmly to Phoenix.

Cousin Karli and her parents were there, too.

All the grandkids so far!

Our next stop was my sister Becky’s house in Encinitas. They took us to the beach.

My parents and some siblings and cousins came down as well.

This next picture reminds me of two stories about Timmy and cars, which he loved.

We were driving into San Diego from Phoenix, and Timmy was getting really fussy. Well, then we turned onto an 8-lane freeway and were suddenly surrounded by cars — and he was amazed and overwhelmed. He’d never seen so many cars at one time in his life!

At Becky’s house, Timmy really loved Michael’s bucket of cars. He wasn’t talking a lot then, but he was pulling the cars out of the bucket one by one and saying “Caaaaar!” with each one and setting it down.

I noticed what he was doing and commented on it, and the next car he pulled out was the Batmobile. This time, he said, “Ooooooo!”

It’s my cousin Carmen talking to him in the picture. Timmy could say her name!

With various family members, including my Aunt Linda and cousin Kristi:

A trip to the Botanical Garden in Encinitas gave us some nice shots.

Megan, Megan, already a rebel!

Becky was expecting her fourth child, Kristen, in the Spring.

And we spent more time in Phoenix before we drove home:

When we got back, it was back to teaching Statistics and Calculus (2 nights per week, 4 hours per night). Steve was also taking classes still, 2 nights per week. Because of my job, he got very cheap tuition ($2 per unit) at Belleville Area College, and ended up finishing an Associate’s degree in Computer Science before we left Illinois. I was never quite sure why he didn’t try for a Master’s degree, since he already had a Bachelor’s degree in Music. But I believe he is now working in the computer security field, so perhaps it was just as well. And it did make my job more valuable. Though it doesn’t look like we got too many evenings together.

I guess when babies get where they can reach the top of their heads, they like to put things there:

But this was the stage where anything Josh could do, Timmy wanted to do, too. Josh always liked to pose for pictures with their thumbs up. Timmy thought he was doing the same thing, but it was an odd twisting of his hands with fingers up. So cute!

But my absolute favorite picture of Timmy imitating Josh was this one below. We always prayed with Josh at bedtime. You can see Timmy trying to figure it out:

Josh was also the age when a towel after a bath becomes a cape.

Just more fun:

Josh turned 8 years old in March and had another Chuck E. Cheese party.

We went to Aunt Kay’s again for Easter.

While we were in Chicago, we visited the Sears Tower:

Timmy still really liked to jump on Josh.

And more simple fun:

In March, we’d found out that yes, we’d get to move to Germany in the Fall. I was so excited about that.

Although I believe in enjoying where you are and what you do — I was very pleased to get to quit teaching. (I’m an introvert and don’t like getting up in front of a bunch of strangers who don’t really want to learn math and having to be their adversary and test them.)

I was very pleased to get to leave Illinois. (My friends and family were far away. I really do prefer the coasts. We’d been there 5 years, and that seemed awfully long.)

I was very pleased that I’d get to stay home with my kids. I didn’t know how long that could last, but Steve did get a Cost of Living Allowance in Germany that might make up for losing my job when we moved.

And — Germany!!!! I’d spent 6 weeks in Austria back in 1986, and I’d fallen in love with the German language. And Europe itself. And I was just so excited.

Here’s part of what I wrote in my journal on my 32nd birthday:

“It’s my birthday again today! I’m 32! And I’m happy. 🙂 Lord, it’s going to be an exciting year for me. I am thrilled about moving to Germany. And the rest of my life is going well. Steve and I are deeply in love; class is going smoothly; Steve is finishing his AAS degree; I’ll get to quit teaching soon; Timmy & Josh are lots of fun; my photo albums are meaningful; and I hope to get going writing soon. I am so happy about all that You are doing for me now, Lord.”

It’s time for Project 52, Week 30, Part Two!

On Tuesday night, I was happily writing Project 52, and my computer mouse broke. Tonight my new mouse arrived from Amazon, so I’m finishing Week 30, my reflections on being 30 years old.

I’ve been thinking that using my calendar from 1994 is getting me bogged down in detail. So my plan was just to summarize the year briefly.

But then I started looking through pictures! I had a new baby that year! Both my children were so adorable! So there are going to be lots of pictures in this post, but I’ll try to keep from going on too long!

Last time, I covered Timmy’s birth at the end of July. I had 3 weeks off before I went back to work — but I only taught one class that Fall, Calculus 3 from 6 to 8 pm on Monday and Wednesday nights.

And that makes me think how nice it was that at Belleville Area College, they gave me the same class to teach over and over! I’d been teaching almost 10 years by now — and that was the first that I really got in a routine with a class. It was so much easier than preparing new classes each semester. Now, this was partly because this was the longest I’d stayed at any one school. But still, at BAC, I was more quickly given consistent classes to teach.

I still wasn’t crazy about teaching, but I did manage to enjoy it, and I think I did a good job.

Mind you, I’m not a natural teacher. Not at all. I’m naturally good at doing math — but that makes it a little harder to teach it well. I don’t quite understand how it can seem difficult to people. It’s all so logical and beautiful! I also always, always wrote tests that are way too long.

My favorite student in all my years teaching came about that time. She was a 14-year-old high school student taking Calculus 3, because she’d run out of math classes she could take at her high school. It’s not a surprise she was the best student I ever had at a community college. And she enjoyed Math as much as I did. And when I showed the class some beautiful thing, she thought it was beautiful, too, instead of just thinking I was weird. And sometimes she’d show me some cool mathy thing, and it just made me happy to have her in my class. Because honestly, community college students don’t often take math classes because they love it.

Now, my favorite class to teach was probably Intro Statistics — because that’s practical math. I liked bringing in real world examples that related. That class was usually full of earnest nursing majors who thought they weren’t good at math, but who worked hard at it and usually did quite well. Teaching night classes, I tended to get lots of adult students — and they were great students. But they didn’t necessarily like math.

Anyway, when I went back to teaching 3 weeks after having Tim, I only taught Calculus. And it was getting where I didn’t have to do too much preparation, so it was a real breather and meant more time with my baby. (It was hard on our finances, since I’d taken the summer completely off when I’d planned to work twice as hard. But such is life.)

And what fun to have this sweet baby!

Jade, then called Josh, was now 6 and a half years old and was a doting big sibling. In fact, looking back at that year, I remember how I would walk Josh to school with baby Timmy in his stroller. All the little girls also walking to school would stop and coo over the baby. The boys, not so much. But Josh would coo over the baby. I thought it was because this was their baby brother. Anyway, it’s all the more plausible that Jade was a girl all along. Not that a boy can’t be a tender and kind big brother. But if Jade was a girl all along — well, it fits.

Anyway, Josh was a wonderful big sibling.

Here I’m reading Josh The Horse and His Boy, by C. S. Lewis, at bedtime.

We had lots of visitors that year. I’m resisting posting pictures of every visitor, but you’ll see the ones who brought babies with them. Steve’s parents came early on. My Mom even came, bringing my youngest sister Melanie.

The church ladies at Faith Alliance Church threw me a baby shower, now that I was off bed rest.

Josh started 1st grade!

That Fall, we went to Carlyle Lake to take family pictures with the pretty trees in the background. The only trouble was, we got there as the sun was going down. But I still like this sequence:

And now I think I’ll just post pictures of my cute kids. I got a lot of time with my sweet children that year, and that was wonderful.

The looks on their faces in this one cracks me up:

Here’s Josh blowing dandelions at Scott Lake (just a couple blocks from us on the Air Force base).

And Steve carved a pumpkin with Josh again:

Timmy was a baseball player for Halloween:

The finishing touch was some black paint under each eye:

Josh was a clown again. I loved the way it made his smile enormous and infectious:

Here’s Josh on our back porch with a double rainbow:

More just nice pictures:

My sister Becky and her family came to see us over Thanksgiving. Timmy had just begun sleeping through the night, so then having visitors meant I still wasn’t feeling real rested. But it was great to see them!

I love this picture of Aunt Becky meeting Timmy!

And lots more pictures with the Friese family:

Timmy’s not smiling quite as big by this time!

Just more pictures of my cuties:

Then came Timmy’s first Christmas:

We spent it at Aunt Kay’s in Chicago. She gave Josh a big cuddly sweater from Ireland.

I don’t see any snow pictures from this year. But that makes sense! We didn’t go to California over Christmas, so of course Illinois didn’t get much snow!

More cuteness:

By this time, babies used an “Exersaucer” rather than walkers (like Josh had).

Josh could still fit in Daddy’s tuba case!

Timmy got his teeth all out of order, getting outside ones first, and on top. He was still really lopsided.

I think I wrote about this trick when Steve first did it with Josh. Before a baby can walk, they balance nicely on one hand, if you’re strong enough. Steve only did it over the sofa, but the babies didn’t fall.

Reading the Little House books at bedtime.

Those eyes!

All those baby milestones! Now sitting up:

Josh took this picture!

And now we learned the charm of letting Chuck E. Cheese do all the work of a birthday party! Josh was 7 years old!

We had another celebration at home and made cupcakes to bring to school:

We dressed them up for Easter. So adorable!

Timmy was quite round by this time.

More balancing:

This one cracks me up because of the book title. When Timmy was born, we told Josh to be gentle with the baby. But we forgot to tell the baby to be gentle with Josh! By this time, Timmy simply loved to jump on Josh. Eventually, we had to tell Josh to defend themselves.

Crawling!

Being together!

Steve’s parents came, and brought his sister Stephanie — and her new daughter Karli, three months younger than Timmy.

Karli could do a great Cabbage Patch face!

With all their grandkids! (Though they got one more, David, a couple years later.)

Standing!

This picture is fun because he’s playing with a toothbrush.

And he did learn to walk before his first birthday.

My Dad also came to visit. He has always loved to read to little ones.

And this picture makes me happy.

So I think that’s all I’ll say about that year. Looking back, it was a happy year with my children. Of course, at the time, it wasn’t so simple! There are plenty of difficulties all wrapped up in being a mother of young children. But to this day, I’m so thankful for those children.

Edited to add: I just read through my quiet time journal from that year, and Wow! I had a bad case of postpartum depression. And lots of conflict with Steve. I wondered many times if we would last. And we didn’t talk about the conflict. I talked about it in my journal, but we never did talk it out. I fantasized about leaving so he would appreciate me.

It’s sobering to me — because I didn’t remember that at all until I read the journals. I was overwhelmed trying to keep up with everything and my babies, and didn’t feel like I could do it all. Steve was taking classes at Belleville Area College to get an associates in Computer Science. He was able to get tuition of $2 a credit because of my working there — which made my work more valuable than just the pay.

But now I look at it and see the seeds of resentment between us. We didn’t work those things out. I would always conclude talking about it with something like, “I know Steve really loves me.” It never ever dawned on me that we really would get divorced one day. I was completely committed to marriage, and I thought he was, too. After all, he was a Christian! And divorce is wrong!

But somehow, we never learned to come back together. I do record that I felt bad when Steve volunteered to be on loading crew so he could leave sooner on a 2-week tour. That hurt. I’d been dreading his trip, and he was looking forward to it? Did he want to get away from me? Well, maybe he did, even way back then.

But we still definitely had good times. When we went to Germany in 1996, that brought us together. For awhile.

Looking at it now, I hope it will be different if I ever marry again. How to keep that root of bitterness from growing between us? I think I’ve learned ways to forgive. But it does take two to keep a marriage going, and you have to both want to. Maybe it is not so bad this happened. It seems the roots went further back than I had realized.

Anyway, looking back, I’m glad the joys of that time are what stuck in my mind.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 30!

30 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 30, June 14, 1994, to June 14, 1995.

As I mentioned last week, I began the year I was 30 pregnant, on bed rest, and on terbutaline trying to slow down frequent early contractions.

But turning 30 is a great occasion for a party, and it was also a wonderful time to see my friends from church who’d been bringing me food. Steve threw me a lovely party and folks came to me.

My calendar says I had some visits the week after my birthday. Rob Dalton, my friend from Lakewood First Baptist, the church I attended in high school, was in town on a business trip and stopped by (since I couldn’t go to him). I remember it was great to see him.

A couple days later, the de Rivera family — our friends from Biola, from Los Angeles, and from Philadelphia — came to see us and spent the night.

June felt a little like I was ensconced in luxury, holding court, with beloved friends coming to me!

But — the next day was another trip to the hospital — and Steve left for a trip with the Brass Quintet to Seattle for a week. I’ve got notes that every day while he was gone, ladies from the church brought me lunch and dinner. My neighbor and church friend Penny took Josh while I was in the hospital that first day. (No more delaying the trip for my contractions! They were too common now.)

I had two more trips to the hospital while Steve was gone. They weren’t overnight, but my notes say those three hospital visits lasted 4, 8, and 6 hours. Typically, they’d hook me up to an IV and give me fluids and IV terbutaline. At least I think that’s what went on. Anyway, they’d hook me up to a monitor, verify that I was having contractions, and give me drugs to try to slow them down. I went in when they were only a few minutes apart.

Okay, Steve got back on July 2nd and did the VP Fair Parade in St. Louis. On the 3rd, I went into the hospital at 8:30 am and was kept overnight. At that time, I was 34 weeks pregnant, so the baby was getting bigger and in less danger. But it was confusing because I was having lots of contractions.

No more hospital visits, just lots of doctor appointments the next week. On July 15, I hit 36 weeks and then on Monday the 18th, they took me off bedrest. My notes after that talk about going shopping and working on bedrooms. I think we moved Josh’s bedroom and got the baby’s room ready.

When I went off bedrest and off the terbutaline, my contractions did keep going. My calendar says I went into Labor and Delivery and sure enough, the contractions were 3 minutes apart. And they sent me home. I wasn’t dilating. So I wasn’t sure when I was supposed to come in. There were times when they were 2 minutes apart, but they weren’t doing anything.

Finally, on July 29, my water broke! No question about it, I went in and this time they didn’t send me back home.

Labor started well enough. Though I was annoyed that they had a policy not to give any drugs at all until you’ve progressed to a certain point. (With Josh, it was after I got drugs that I really started progressing.) Again, this time I progressed better once I had an epidural. But then it was time to push, and I pushed for 2 hours, and it turned out his head was turned to the side and he was stuck.

Steve had a really bad moment, because he saw the doctor get worried, and the baby’s heart rate drop. (I was oblivious.) They called in an OB/Gyn doctor from the next room (my doctor was a family practice doctor) and he used forceps and got the baby out.

For the record, any anesthesia had completely worn off by this time, and they wouldn’t give me more because I was pushing. And let me just say that it HURTS when they use forceps to take a baby out of you.

Oh, the other notable thing about that night was for the pushing part there was a shift change of nurses, and there were only men in the labor and delivery room. (Only in a military hospital would this happen, but they did have lots of male nurses.) At one point when I was pushing, I said, “It hurts!” and trying to be compassionate, a nurse answered, “I know,” and I looked around and saw only men, and I said, “NO you don’t! None of you knows!”

(I don’t know why that struck me so hard at the time, but I ended up leaving on a comment card that you should always have at least one woman in a labor and delivery room!)

But the end result made it all worth it, and on July 29, 1994, Timothy Ronald John Eklund was born!

His poor little face was hurt from the forceps, and that first night one eye was stuck open and one eye stuck closed because of a pinched nerve from the forceps. But those all healed quickly.

I was happy happy happy when the baby was born and that awful labor was done. Steve started crying. He had honestly thought he was going to lose me or lose Timothy.

[A couple months later, I came home from teaching to find Steve crying. He’d been watching E. R. and those manipulative writers had written an episode where a woman dies in childbirth. That was the night Steve told me that he’d been afraid he would lose me or lose Timmy. That was when he told me that he’d seen that the doctor was afraid. And this is how I know, beyond any doubt, that at that point in our marriage, my husband still loved me deeply.

That’s also when Steve decided that he didn’t ever want me to get pregnant again. I checked with the doctor, and though it was likely that I’d have to go on bedrest again if I were ever pregnant, the turned head and forceps delivery was just a fluke that probably wouldn’t happen again. But still, it was an awful scare for Steve, and he didn’t want to go through that again.]

By the next day, Timmy was already looking better.

Ready to go home! Newborns in a car seat always look so small!

And — my cordless mouse just quit working. And I can’t seem to fix it. And I really don’t enjoy using the trackpad on my laptop, especially when trying to manipulate pictures. So — I’m going to call this post Part One and try to finish talking about the year I was 30 later in the week.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 29!

29 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 29, June 14, 1993, to June 14, 1994.

Coincidentally, the day I’m writing this is also the 30th anniversary of the day I got married. In case you’re wondering, when I was 29, our marriage was still going strong, and I had no reason to think that would ever change. I see by my 1993 calendar that on June 19, our friends the Keaheys watched Josh while Steve and I went on a date! We saw the movie “Dave” — still one of my favorite movies.

The year before had been surprisingly stable, as I mentioned last week. Stable enough, that I started hankering for a baby. A baby when we felt ready for one! But come on, I was almost thirty — we didn’t want to wait too long! My thinking was that if I had the baby at the start of summer, I could take the summer semester off, and teach fall and spring….

That summer, I was teaching Calculus 3 6:00 to 10:00 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Well, look at that! Now that I found old calendars, I realize that I dated some pictures incorrectly. Although we did go to Wisconsin and see Grandma Eklund shortly after we moved to Illinois, the big Eklund Family Reunion happened in July 1993. So the pictures I posted of that in Year 27 were in the wrong place, and that’s why Josh looked bigger!

My calendar shows we were busy, busy. Josh was taking piano lessons. I was doing things with friends, mostly from church. Oh look — I wrote down that was when we finished reading Runaway Ralph to Josh. We had transitioned from three books at bedtime to three chapters at bedtime. I think we usually traded nights between Steve and me, but we read different books. I think that was about the time that Steve read the Little House books all to Josh.

In early August, we visited Aunt Kay in Chicago again.

We also visited Jody and Craig Sunken, friends from New Jersey who were now living in Chicago.

We went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

And we stopped to see the Rauseos, too.

I don’t remember the occasion, but the next week, Kathe came to visit! And let’s see — by that time she was expecting her firstborn, who would be named Tim. I ended up choosing the same name for my next child (They were six months apart.) But that wouldn’t matter — It wasn’t like they’d ever live near each other!

It looks like Animal Concentration was something we played with guests at that time!

Hmmm. Kathe brought Josh a book with a dog named Tim in it.

And we took Kathe to the St. Louis Science Center. Have I raved about the Science Center yet? I so loved that St. Louis had a fabulous Science Center and a fabulous Zoo — and they were both free! So we could drive to St. Louis and spend a couple hours and see cool things — and we didn’t have to feel like we had to spend the whole day to get our money’s worth. It’s such a wonderful concept. (Hmmm. Now the Smithsonian’s available, but I don’t go there as often. Though to be fair, the Smithsonian is much harder to get to and doesn’t have free parking.)

And that Fall, Josh started Kindergarten! I walked with them to school and back through the base and past a cornfield. It was half-day Kindergarten. Their teacher was Mrs. Schieppe. She was wonderful.

Also that Fall, I began coaching the church’s Quiz Team! It was all about memorization. The kids memorized I Corinthians and II Corinthians and the quiz questions were taken straight from Scripture. I have long been a believer in Bible memorization — It does you good in spite of yourself! So I agreed to coach the Quiz team. We’d go on trips about once a month to other churches in Illinois to compete.

Here are the kids on the team:

Here’s a sweater I knitted for a friend’s baby:

And that explains it! That picture I posted of the first sweater I knitted for Josh was in the wrong year. (It was on the roll with the Wisconsin Reunion.)

So it really was after cross-stitching a blanket for Megan that I realized how much nicer it would be to knit things instead of cross stitch. Because you wouldn’t have to frame the results. It turns out it’s also much easier to do while you’re doing something else — like watching a video or reading to your kid (when they hold the book). With knitting, you don’t have to look as carefully at where you put your needles. I never looked back.

Fall semester, I was teaching Calculus 3 and Intro Statistics, both on Monday/Wednesday nights. Still busy, busy.

One thing I loved about our base housing in Illinois was the sweet gum tree out our window. That meant we had to rake leaves.

And that meant time with an exuberant 5-year-old.

Josh dressed up on Halloween as a clown again. Halloween was Sunday, so base trick-or-treating was on Saturday. Our church had an alternative to Halloween party, but since that was on Sunday, we went to both! Josh won the costume contest with their great big grin.

I wrote a Josh quote on my calendar on that Saturday. “This is the best day of my life. But then, I’ve only lived 5 years, but hey…”

Shortly after Halloween, a sad thing happened. On Wednesday, November 3rd, Steve left for a trip to March Air Force Base in California. He took our camera with him, since they were going to stop at the Grand Canyon.

Now, the college where I taught, Belleville Area College, had a “Kids’ Club” that students and teachers could use. Now that Josh was in Kindergarten, they were old enough to go to Kids’ Club, and I didn’t have to find a babysitter when Steve was out of town.

But that night, when I finished teaching at 10:00 pm, I was going up the stairs in our apartment holding my books and hurrying Josh along. I think I was holding one of Josh’s hands. I know I was anxious to get both of us into bed, since Josh had school the next day.

And Josh tripped — and hit their face on a step — and cut their face open right below their eye.

We went to the Emergency Room, and Josh got 8 stitches. (It reminded me of when I got stitches when I was in Kindergarten. Oh, looks like I didn’t write about that in the Kindergarten post.) Josh was a great sport and held still when told. They fell asleep while the stitches happened. I was something of a wreck.

Naturally, this happened on the very day Steve had left for a 10-day trip! And Steve had taken the camera, so no pictures of Josh’s impressive black eye.

Here’s how it looked months later:

The next day I let Josh sleep late, and they made a dramatic entrance to Kindergarten.

Some time that Fall, we had another fire next door! It was a Saturday, and we were sleeping late. I heard some noise outside, and looked out and saw a fireman all in his gear — in our backyard! When we went outside, they were putting out a fire in the downstairs apartment on the other side of our building! (We were on the top right as you look at the building. This was the one on the bottom left.) They hadn’t thought anyone else was home! I was pretty mad they hadn’t gotten us out!

Since they were planning to build new base housing, they just left the burned apartment and the one above it empty. They probably didn’t require them to clean at all, so after they moved out, we had two empty and not clean apartments next to us.

That year, we went to Aunt Kay’s for Thanksgiving again.

And — that was the year I met my Uncle Duane’s family. Uncle Duane was the only one of my Dad’s siblings who didn’t live on the west coast, but in Rockford, Illinois.

Here are Uncle Duane and Aunt Vanie:

Here I am with my cousins Karen (bottom left) and Terry (top right):

And here are our kids:

I thought this one was funny because their heads all look alike!

Josh was still taking piano classes and had a recital in December.

The teacher had the kids doing songs together with drumsticks and rhythm. She explained to us how to make a Christmas tree costume for the recital. It was cute!

Here’s Josh performing:

For Christmas that year, we drove out to Phoenix, stopping in Colorado Springs to see Sam Powell, our friend from Biola, and his kids:

We went to Four Corners:

And saw the Grand Canyon:

We saw Gram E and Gramp E in Phoenix, and that was the Christmas when we told them that we were expecting a baby in August! (Remember how I thought I’d have a baby at the start of the summer? Well, we managed to hit a due date of August 12. That was right in between summer and fall semesters. Why not? I’d teach both semesters!)

And went to California. Here’s Baby Megan (Becky’s third child) and Dave at the Hatch house:

We spent some time at a park by the sea with the Friese family:

We got to Ruth’s house again. Jennifer and Susan met us there. I’m pretty sure that Jennifer was expecting her first, Carl John, at that time.

We went to Disneyland again. This year, Ruth and John went with us.

Josh was now old enough to pose for pictures when they hugged the characters they loved so much.

More time with the Frieses:

I like this one of the three kids playing Monopoly. You thought Josh was precocious playing Monopoly at 4 years old? Take a look at Michael here!

Here’s Megan being adorable again:

And then….

And the whole Friese family!

So we had a wonderful trip. Back home, we did get a few snow days that year.

I have a note that on January 25, I heard the baby’s heartbeat!

I like this picture. I was a member of Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club, and I suspect I took this picture when we had just received The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, by Eugene Trivizias. I laughed so hard! It’s still one of my favorite picture books.

And a little bit late, I finished knitting a blanket for Kathe’s baby, Timothy. Kathe prefers natural fibers, so I chose a cotton yarn. And it was so soft to knit, that got me started on my own run of knitting with cotton.

On Josh’s 6th Birthday in March, I still hadn’t discovered the wonders of letting Chuck E. Cheese do all the work. We had a party at our house.

The little girl on the right in the cat costume in the picture below was quite a talker, and didn’t like anyone to top her. When Josh told them all that on the next birthday in our family, his Mom would be THIRTY, that sweet little girl said, “Well, MY Mom’s going to be EIGHTY!”

What really cracked me up about that was the other kids, including Josh, all bought it! They looked very impressed. The girl’s mother actually looked to be about twenty.

Steve’s Mom always sent us an egg-coloring kit at Easter. Steve, who had more patience for such things, was usually the one who colored eggs with Josh.

So — Things were going according to plan. I was teaching Calculus III and Statistics again, two nights per week. I took Josh to Kids’ Club when Steve was on trips. I didn’t lose my headaches for that pregnancy, but everything was going pretty smoothly.

On May 10, we saw an Annular Solar Eclipse. We took Josh out of Kindergarten early. It was a bright sunny day, and we got a great view of it, with special viewers. I thought it was really cool the way the shadows of leaves all had little bites taken out of them.

On May 11, we went to Chuck E. Cheese. (I have no idea why. Maybe that’s what sent me over the edge.)

On May 12, I gave my Final Exams. Ready for about 3 weeks off, then I’d teach a full load for summer school — two classes, essentially full time (8 hours teaching per week). That way I could afford to take a half load in the fall after the baby was born.

On May 13, I went on an overnight trip with the Quiz Team.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but somewhere along the way, I learned that Monosodium Glutamate, MSG, gave me awful stomach cramps. Back in my college days, I’d finally figured out that MSG was why I always got a headache after having canned soup or a frozen meat pie. But by this time, I got bad stomach cramps.

Now, I never intentionally ate it, but there was usually something suspect when I had this problem. My mother-in-law liked to use cream of mushroom soup in casseroles, and that could do it, for example.

Well, we had a potluck meal for lunch on Saturday May 14, where the Quiz Meet was happening. Perhaps that was the problem. But anyway, we stopped at McDonalds on the way home. It also may have been the vanilla shake I drank — but after we’d eaten, when we were almost ready to go, I had to duck into the bathroom with awful stomach cramps.

The other Mom who was on the trip with me was a nurse. She said you could tell if they’re contractions if your stomach gets hard. Hmmm. It felt pretty hard to me.

Well, by the time I got home, I just wanted to go to bed. Steve told me that Josh had a really bad mosquito bite, and had had a fever at bedtime.

In the morning, I took one look at Josh — they were covered with spots. Definitely chicken pox!

And I still had stomach cramps. I called the hospital. They said the only way to tell if it was contractions or not was to come in and have them put on a monitor. It was contractions. I was at 29 weeks.

That was Sunday. Steve was supposed to leave that day for a trip with the brass quintet to Chicago for a week. They waited to leave until the hospital had gotten my contractions to slow down. I was supposed to go home and take it easy.

I woke up that night at 2 am with contractions 2 minutes apart.

And — remember how we had two vacant apartments on the other side of a wall? Well, that night I discovered that we had giant cockroaches. My scream woke up Josh.

Now — remember, Josh has chicken pox. It’s the middle of the night. Two church families have said they’d take Josh if I had to go to the hospital again. The family across the street had not had chicken pox, but the mom insisted that she wanted her kids to get it while they were young. I hadn’t meant to ask her, thinking I’d go with the family who lived 20 minutes away and had had chicken pox before.

I managed to stall until almost 5 am, but then I called the hospital. They said I should get there as quickly as possible. So I panicked and took Josh to the neighbor across the street. (It was SO nice of her to volunteer! I don’t think her kids did end up getting chicken pox from it.)

So — they admitted me and tried to get the contractions to stop. Steve’s work was nice. After he played the National Anthem at a Cubs game that day, they brought another tuba player off his vacation and Steve got to come home. And they let Steve take care of Josh all week while I was in the hospital the next five days.

Of course, they couldn’t visit me, because Josh had a really bad case, with spots in their mouth and their ears.

I must have graded my papers in the hospital. Remember how the Final was the day before the Quiz trip? At first, I still hoped to teach that summer — but it was not to be. I got put on bed rest and told to take Terbutaline (to stop contractions) every 4 hours around the clock.

My church really stepped up. People brought us food twice a week. I got a whole lot more time with Josh than I would have gotten that summer if I’d been teaching full time.

It would have been just lovely — ordered not to do housework, able to do nothing but lie around and read and write — if I hadn’t been worried about the Baby. Though they assured me that he would probably survive if born that early, but we were trying to keep him inside as long as we could.

I had a couple more overnights in the hospital. One happened when I slept through my alarm and missed my terbutaline dose. I really was having contractions that whole time. After awhile, Steve started joking that if I was admitted a dozen times, I should get a free t-shirt.

Oh, I should have mentioned that the first, five-day hospital stay, I stopped any caffeine, because the contractions scared me — so naturally I got a vicious migraine. And then they started doing construction with a jackhammer outside my room! (I’m not making that up.)

But Steve was wonderful, taking care of me, taking care of Josh. Later, when I was closer to delivery, I told Steve that people were really saying they admired how I’d handled the bed rest. He said, “It’s a dream come true for you!” And he was absolutely right. Again: Ordered not to do any housework. People bring you meals. All I could do was lie around and read and write and play with Josh. (I did get tired of the Sonic the Hedgehog song.) No, it was all much, much harder on Steve than on me.

And — my 30th birthday was coming up! I couldn’t possibly be surprised, but since I hadn’t been able to go out and see people for a month, Steve threw me a party, and people came to me.

And more about that next week!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 28!

28 weeks ago, on my 52nd Birthday, I decided to start Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week this year I’m blogging about one year of my life. This week I’m taking the year I was 28 — June 14, 1992 to June 14, 1993.

Last week, I wrote about the year I was 27, when we moved from New Jersey to Illinois.

Thinking about this year, I thought, “Wow! That year, for the first time in our adult lives, we weren’t going to school, didn’t have a major move, and didn’t change our family size.” But I almost forgot that we did have a minor move — we moved on base from a duplex in Swansea to base housing on Scott Air Force Base.

I don’t remember if there was just a year waiting list or if we had to wait until Steve was a Staff Sergeant — but we moved on base in August 1992. But we didn’t have to change friends or jobs, so I don’t even remember much about that move. Basically, it was a year of settling in and feeling at home in Illinois.

Now I have both a calendar and the old pictures to work from. Don’t comment on my amazing memory — I wrote a lot on my calendar!

It looks like I was teaching a summer school Calculus 3 class — 6:00 to 10:00 pm, two nights a week, from June 8 to July 29. (So we moved during the break between classes.) Steve mostly watched Josh when I was teaching, but I see from the calendar that we’d found a teenage daughter of another band member to watch Josh when Steve was out of town.

Josh at 4 years old was still so imaginative. Still talking a lot about “the Joshua Costume” that “visitors” would wear.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “the Joshua Costume” this week. In so many ways, it’s a metaphor for being transgender. The way it started was when Josh was pretending to be some other character and told me I was calling them by the wrong name. I said, “But you look like Joshua!” So Josh explained that there was a Joshua Costume they were wearing, but who they really were was this other character. (Maybe Piglet? Maybe Leonardo or Rafael?)

Well, when Jade was 27, she told me that who she really was, all along, was Jade. I realize that I hadn’t known the right name to call her because she was wearing the Joshua Costume. It fit perfectly and grew over time, but the only way I know who’s really in there is if they tell me.

I see that in June we were already playing Monopoly with Josh. This might have been actual Monopoly, since I saw notes for Monopoly Jr. earlier. I still say that board games are the best way to learn math skills! I do remember that Josh was pretty amazing playing with the large-denomination Monopoly money before they even started Kindergarten, so that would put it right about this time.

We still took lots of trips to Chicago to see Aunt Kay and get Steve a tuba lesson with Tommy Johnson. In June in Chicago we saw an outdoor production of “The Mikado” in Grant Park.

At the start of July, I stayed behind to teach, but Steve, Josh, and Steve’s parents and sister went to Wisconsin to see Eklund relatives.

This picture was still in Swansea — making “Oobleck” — cornstarch and water to play with.

And Josh was really reading by this time.

Ooo! I wrote down more Josh quotes in my calendar. On August 8th, apparently I’d been talking with Josh about hours and minutes. I asked Josh, “How do you know that 30 and 30 is 60?”
Josh: “Because 3 and 3 is 6!”

And look at that! On August 16, I wrote that I “typed story with Josh.” That was the start of a fun tradition. I had my typewriter out, because I was trying to do some writing. Well, Josh wanted to write a story. I tried to gently point them toward a plot. But we started with a character who liked to do something. I still remember how that first story went: “Record the baby kitten loved to jump. He jumped and jumped day and night without stopping!”

I tried to guide Josh by asking what Record wanted, what his problem was — and Record took his owner’s address book, and accidentally threw it to the top of Mount Everest! So he had to jump up there and get it! (Josh’s eyes had fallen on my address book in a slot high on the wall on a key caddy.)

So began a tradition of typing out stories. And then, since Josh could read, he had a great time reading them. Steve also started taking dictation. He didn’t try as hard to keep Josh focused. The stories developed themes and motifs (like looking at the sun and screaming). Really fun.

The last week in August, I started my Fall semester of classes, teaching Calculus 3 on Monday Wednesday nights for 2 hours each night, and Trigonometry on Tuesday nights for 3 hours each night.

Shortly after that, Josh started going to Kinder Preschool two afternoons a week. Just enough to do a little social interaction. I remember I told the teachers he could read. Then a few months later they said to me, “He can read!” Um, yeah, that’s what I said.

It looks like on September 1st, we bought our first pet — Bluefish (named by Josh), a fish for Josh that was blue.

We drove out to Carlyle Lake for some hiking.

I loved the sweet gum trees out our windows at Scott AFB. Of course, living on base, we had to rake up the leaves.

We used the costume Gram E had made for the Kinder Preschool Halloween party.

And a Jack-o-Lantern costume for Halloween night.

For our long weekend on Columbus Day, we went to Shawnee National Forest and the Little Grand Canyon Trail.

Then at the end of October, we explored Illinois some more. Since I taught Monday through Wednesday, one Thursday Josh and I drove up to Quincy, Illinois, to see Steve finish up a tour with the band. We got to bring Steve home with us and went back by way of Hannibal, Missouri, and looked at Mark Twain Cave.

Meanwhile, I was attending a weekly Ladies’ Bible Study on Thursday mornings and starting to walk around the base regularly at night with a friend named Dian Lewallen (from church).

We kept making trips to Chicago, and in November we visited the Planetarium (picture at the top) and visited the Rauseos, who we’d known first in California, then visited in Maryland, and now had moved to Wheaton, Illinois, where Steve Rauseo was teaching at Wheaton College.

More 4-year-old Josh quotes!

On Steve’s birthday, November 30:
Me: “It’s a good thing Daddy was born, or you wouldn’t have been born.”
Josh: “… It really takes mothers to have children…”

On December 6:
Me: “But tickling you is such fun!”
Josh: “It’s boring for me. And discouraging.”
(Well, then.)

And the year before we’d stayed in Illinois to try to get a white Christmas? This year, our relatives wouldn’t let us stay away, so we drove out to Arizona and California. (And, yes, they got the most snowfall of the entire winter while we were gone.)

Pictures from our trip:

We went to Disneyland with the Frieses:

This picture feels typical. Josh is hugging the character, while Jason’s having a conversation with him.

We were spending our nights at Becky & Dave’s house, and went to the beach with them.

Christmas Day, the entire Hatch family was there, so we had to take pictures.

Here we are, from oldest to youngest. Rick, Becky, Sondy, Wendy, Randy, Ron, Jeff, Nathan, Abby, Peter, Robert, Marcy, and Melanie:

Then we added in Mom and Dad:

Then we included spouses (Dave and Steve) and grandkids (Jason, Josh, and Michael).

Josh with their six-weeks-younger Aunt Melanie:

And here’s our family:

Inside, Josh played piano with Aunt Linda (who taught me piano once upon a time).

And this is fun. Those stories we’d typed that Josh wrote? We assembled them in a notebook, and then Josh read them to the crowd on our trip, to great acclaim. Everyone enjoyed the 4-year-old logic involved.

We went to church that Sunday at Evangelical Free Church of Los Angeles, where we were married. We saw our friends Claudia and Fernando afterward, with their kids Luis and Antonio, who was one month older than Josh.

And Darlene was in California for Christmas, too! We gathered at Ruth’s house, with another high school friend, Jennifer Ferber.

Here’s the obligatory picture showing how TALL we are:

Our family:

Ruth and John with Josh:

And here’s typical Ruth. Which one’s the kid, again?

Of course we also spent time in Phoenix with Gram E. and Gramp E.:

And we drove through Dallas on our way there and back and saw my Biola roommate Coral and her husband Jo and daughter Sophia.

When we got back, classes began on January 14th. A cool thing happened that semester. My last semester’s Calculus 3 students had specifically asked that I teach their next class, Differential Equations. It was a small class — 7 students — but they already knew and liked me. It felt so good to be requested. I also greatly preferred teaching such a small class. It never felt like I was getting up in front of a big group. That semester I taught Calculus 3 again from 8 to 10 on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Differential Equations on Tuesdays from 7 to 10.

Now, since I was part-time, the only way I got a paid day off work was if it snowed. In February, I finally got two snow days on the 15th and 16th, with 5 inches of snow.

This one’s on our back porch.

There was a great place to go sledding at the other end of Scott Lake.

We got another snow day February 25. That day I typed and mailed a story for publication. (It was never accepted. But I see I was doing it. And it was a much longer process then.)

I believe this was a Calvin & Hobbes inspired snowman.

Josh turned 5 in March. Church kids and a band kid came to the party. (The band kid also went to Josh’s preschool.)

We still read books at bedtime. In this picture, they’re reading Where the Wild Things Are, of course!

And my first niece, Megan Michelle Friese, was born in April that year. I cross-stitched a blanket for her. The way I remembered it, cross-stitching this blanket and not having to frame it was the thing that got me started knitting. But I found a picture of the first thing I’d knitted in last week’s post. So maybe it was having knitted and not framed things that got me to cross-stitch a blanket instead of a picture.

Stephanie came to visit in May. This picture was taken at Cahokia Mounds.

I suspect this picture shows that we’d been playing Animal Concentration.

And that was about it for the year I was 28! We were busy and happy. We had an adorable 4-year-old, attending preschool and taking piano lessons, reading and playing games. We had a nice circle of friends from church and/or from the band. We got to visit long-time friends. I was teaching night classes and working on my writing and being a Mom. I was still getting lots of headaches, but visiting the Headache Treatment Center in St. Louis and trying different preventatives without much luck at that point. Steve was doing lots of tours with the band, but we still often went to concerts to hear them.

But mostly, yes, that year was about my sweet, bright, intelligent, always learning, always observing 4-year-old. I had always wanted to stay home with my kids. At least I got to spend the days with Josh. And that was a lovely time. When I think of time with Josh that year, I always picture them with a smile. Even though I still wasn’t crazy about teaching math to a bunch of people who didn’t necessarily want to learn it (the Diffy Q class being an exception) — getting to teach night classes gave me more time with my kid, and that was such a gift.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 27!

27 weeks ago, on my 52nd Birthday, I decided to start Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week this year I’m blogging about one year of my life. This week I’m taking the year I was 27 — June 14, 1991 to June 14, 1992.

Last week, I covered the year I was 26 and we lived in New Jersey after Steve joined the Air Force Band. I did love New Jersey and all the pine trees and greenery — but the very next summer, we had to move.

What happened was military budget cuts. And they decided to reduce the number of field bands. The band at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, even though it served the largest population area of any field band (including New York City) — was one of the bands chosen to be cut.

All the band members being cut were given an opportunity to list their preferences of where they’d like to be stationed next. Overseas wasn’t an option at that time. Of the bands that were left (Alas! the band in Washington State was being cut.), I most wanted to move to Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts. But we were still in a very bad place financially, and of course I would lose my job when we moved. So we opted for a place where the cost of living would be lower, Scott AFB in southern Illinois, across the river from St. Louis.

Before we moved, we made sure to enjoy the East Coast. We took our summer vacation to visit Steve’s Uncle John, who lived outside of Boston.

This is overlooking the Hudson River, on our way up to Boston:

In Boston:

And our favorite thing about Boston was visiting the Boston Public Garden, the site of the beloved book Make Way for Ducklings. We got a real thrill out of riding an actual Swan Boat.

But best of all were the statues of Mrs. Mallard followed by Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack! I taped this picture into our copy of the book:

Here is Josh with two of Steve’s young cousins:

And another two cousins:

(Again, Josh last year in 2015 changed her name to Jade and informed me that she was female all along. I will use the name we knew her by at the time, Josh — but will use the pronoun “they” to refer to her when talking about the past when we didn’t know she was female.)

Here’s Josh with our next door neighbor, Philip, enjoying some Discovery Toy instruments in a parade:

Six Flags Great Adventure was right near us in New Jersey, and we went a couple times that summer. I was thrilled to have an amusement park so close by.

Here’s when I told Josh that they wouldn’t get very wet on a ride. They didn’t really trust me after that about whether a ride would be fun.

I was amazed by all the trees, even in the park. Six Flags Magic Mountain didn’t look anything like this from above.

And Josh still loved all the characters. Most of the pictures just show Josh from the back with their arms around the character. It was hard to get them to turn and smile for the camera when someone so soft to hug was around.

Doug Moore, the pastor from California who married us, came out with his family and visited us and the deRiveras. We met them in Philadelphia. Here is Josh with Chrissy Moore in the Ben Franklin House.

And we made another trip to DC before we left. For awhile, Steve’s long-time friend Bob Bauman and his wife Stephanie were in DC. We met them at the National Cathedral.

That trip, we got more time with the Rauseos. Here’s at a park near their home in Maryland.

I was thinking about friends today. We only lived in New Jersey a bit less than a year and a half. We didn’t make many lasting friends. Once Audrey and Tom moved close by, that was a lifeline, but they were still 45 minutes and a toll bridge away. Part of the problem was that we never did find a church home. We attended Audrey and Tom’s church — but that was too far away to really feel a part of it.

At 52 years old, I’ve lived a lot of different places. How do I make friends? In some places, I feel like I strike it rich. Other places, it’s harder. In Virginia, now, I had a head start since Kathe and Darlene, two lifelong friends, were already here.

Yes, I usually find my main core group of friends at church. When I was teaching, I couldn’t find them at work, since I didn’t see other teachers, and students aren’t there to be your friend. Other band spouses is a good potential group, and that’s where I made my one lasting friend from that year in New Jersey.

Here’s Josh with Jody and Craig Sunken (now Jody Green). Jody was another band wife, and she and I bonded over books. We each signed each other up for Book-of-the-Month Club to get free books and talked about books. She was great with Josh, too.

And I got a short story published! I remember that the acceptance notice came on my birthday in New Jersey. It was on my 27th birthday, and I remember that I was sitting on the front stoop in Browns Mills when I opened the mail and read the amazing news.

I had taken a Children’s Writers’ Institute course and wrote this short story for that. It was accepted by Highlights for Children, and they ended up printing it in an anthology rather than their magazine. After that I started working on a book, but had trouble actually finishing it. I still wanted to be a writer, but it was hard to get around to writing when what I needed to do in my spare time was grade papers.

Another thing I remember happened in New Jersey was the day Josh walked into the room, and I said, “Hi Josh!”

The answer came in a high, squeaky voice, “My name is Piglet!”

And so Josh’s pretending began. (Interesting to me is that the first character my second-born pretended to be was also Piglet. You can tell I love Winnie-the-Pooh.)

Josh went days claiming to be one character or other. I remember many times it was one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Leonardo being the favorite. (Alas! I couldn’t keep them on Winnie-the-Pooh characters!)

One day, when Josh scolded me for using the wrong name, I said, “But you look like Joshua!”

And so the Joshua Costume was revealed.

Joshua explained that they were wearing a “Joshua Costume.” That was why they looked like Joshua, even though it was really someone else. (Hmmm. Is there a metaphor here for transgender folks?) We started calling them “The Visitors.” When a Visitor came, they wore the Joshua Costume. The Visitors tried to keep Mommy informed about who was wearing the Joshua Costume so that she’d call them by the correct name.

This went on for at least a couple years.

Right before we left New Jersey, Jessica deRivera was born. Here are Audrey and Jessica on our last visit to see them.

We took a scenic route on our trip to Illinois. We began by heading north to visit Liverpool again, where Steve had grown up.

We met his childhood friend Doug Rougeux at a lake near Liverpool:

This time, we got to see Doug perform his Bubble Show at a library, where he talked about Bubbleology.

By this time, Josh had a lot of books memorized.

Next stop was Niagara Falls. Then we went through Ohio and visited the Ericksons, friends of Steve’s family. And yes, our Honda Civic continued to die in every major city in America. When it would die (while going 55 mph), we would wait ten minutes by the side of the road, and then it would start again. Mechanics still couldn’t figure it out.

But here’s Niagara Falls:

We took the “Maid of the Mist” boat to the foot of the Falls.

But we finally made it to Illinois. And on a lovely day soon after we arrived, we visited the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

This was August, by the way. Don’t ask me how we got such nice weather.

Scott AFB, like McGuire AFB, didn’t allow low-ranking folks to live on base. Either that, or you had to wait a year. (But I think it was when Steve made Staff Sergeant a year later that we were allowed to live on base.)

We found a nice duplex in Swansea, Illinois. Here are Steve and Josh in the back yard.

Now that we were in the Midwest, Steve’s parents came and drove with us to an Eklund Family Reunion in Wisconsin, where Steve’s Dad’s Mother lived. Here are four generations of Eklunds:

We stayed in a campground in Wisconsin with Steve’s Dad’s siblings and their families. We did some boating, and Josh enjoyed the young cousins.

Here are the Eklund siblings with their mother:

And antics in the campground:

It amused me a little bit that the Eklunds thought theirs was a big family. But I very much enjoyed getting to know the extended family. (It was a lot easier to get to know people than in a truly large family.) They always made me feel very much a part of the family, and it was a fun group.

Back in Swansea, here’s Gramp E. enjoying Josh.

And that was the year I learned to knit! We found Josh a piano class for 3-year-olds. It met in a small shopping center, right above a craft store, and I bought a Learn to Knit Book.

I’d tried to learn when I was a kid and my Grandma tried to teach me — with no success. But this time, something clicked.

Partly why I wanted to take up knitting was that sometime around this time, I cross-stitched a baby blanket for my new niece Megan, Becky’s third child. The cross stitching was a pain — You have to look at what you’re doing. But I loved making a blanket, because I didn’t have to frame it! That was always where I got stuck. I never got around to framing anything. So — I learned to knit. The first thing I tried to make did not turn out at all. But the second thing was this sweater for Josh.

And — I got a job shortly after we moved to Illinois! I applied to teach math at Belleville Area College — and barely found our phone in the moving boxes in time to receive the call offering me a job for Fall semester.

I continued to teach there all the years we lived in Illinois, usually two classes per semester, each class two nights a week.

Oh, what fun! That prompted me to dig in my box of calendars, and I just found my 1991 Calendar.

Look at that. Moving Day was August 13, 1991 — must be the day the movers brought our stuff. The same day says, “Got a job!” Only a week later, Steve went on a Band trip to the Azores.

That first semester, I taught two Trigonometry classes. One was on base, and the other at Belleville Area College. Both were three hours a week, just one night a week. I later increased my teaching load to four nights a week.

The Wisconsin trip was the first week of September, in between classes. (I taught the Wednesday before we left, then the Tuesday after we got back.)

My calendar says we were visiting different churches each week. We finally settled in to Faith Alliance Church on October 20. John and Sandra Morris from the band invited us.

The band at Scott AFB had a lot more families. A lot of people were new there, because of the band budget cuts, so it was easier to make friends. We did settle in fairly quickly, and of course it helped once we found a church.

My calendar reminds me that I was still having lots of headaches — but I started a Headache Treatment Program at St. Louis University that Fall. They taught me biofeedback techniques to relax — which would help reduce the severity of the headaches. I also started trying different preventatives.

Here are more pictures just having fun in Swansea:

Steve was the pumpkin carver in the household. This year they made a pumpkin to look like Pippo (a stuffed monkey), from one of our favorite series of books by Helen Oxenbury.

And on November 6th, it SNOWED!

For Thanksgiving, Steve’s Mom persuaded us to go to Chicago and visit Steve’s Mom’s long-time friend, Aunt Kay. We did, and were welcomed warmly.

Aunt Kay gave Josh a stuffed raccoon which they named Tick.

The year before remember how we missed the snow in New Jersey because the only significant snow that fell was while we were in California and Arizona for Christmas? In 1991, I insisted that we would stay home in Illinois, in order to get a white Christmas. Then not a flake fell during the time we would have been gone in the two weeks around Christmas!

Stephanie came to visit us in early December.

Oh, this is fun. There are some cute Josh quotes sprinkled throughout my calendar. In August, Josh was trying to say, “Sinister Sam,” but said, “Mr. Sim, Mr. Sam.” And this one perhaps foretold future proclamations. On September 13, Joshua said, “Some day I will be God.”

In 1992 was when Josh told us that someday when they got married, they would marry a blue woman. Where would they find a blue woman? In Alaska.

Oh, I like this one. I now think that I’m a year early on when Josh learned to read. Because the quote is, “Look what it says.. Morf, Morf, Morf, Morf.” In parentheses, I explain, (The word was from.)

In 1992, I began teaching four nights a week, with Intro Statistics on Monday/Wednesday nights and Calculus III on Tuesday/Thursday nights. Since I was part-time adjunct faculty, the only way I got a paid day off was if it snowed. It finally did, I see by my calendar, on February 12. We made a snowman.

Oh, here’s a fun conversation I wrote down in February!

We were talking about puppies, and I said “I’d rather have a baby.”
Josh: “I know where babies come from.”
Me: !!!
Josh: “They make babies with a machine.”
Me: “Do you think they made you with a machine?”
Josh: “No, but all the babies we don’t know were made in a machine.”
Me: “Where is this machine?”
Josh: “In a factory at Disneyland. In a factory in a field near Disneyland.”
Me: “How do you know about it?”
Josh” “God told me.”

Another cute statement: “0 is Four’s Nickname.”

And this one I like even better: “17 is your Nick-age.” (I think I’ll keep that.)

This calendar has all sorts of things I’d forgotten. Steve started getting tuba lessons from Tommy Johnson, a tuba player in Chicago — so we’d go up and stay with Aunt Kay. In May we took a trip and visited the Museum of Science and Industry and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Boy, these Josh quotes are fun. I must have been grading papers for this one: “I don’t think your students would know this one: What’s 14 + 1? They won’t know that it’s 15. That’s a Toughie!”

I didn’t take too many pictures that year. I think teaching 4 nights a week was keeping me busy. But there were plenty of outings. The Eklunds visited and took us to a Cardinals game. I started playing board games with Josh, especially Monopoly Jr. Oh look, I made a note of the time we got stuck in a loop where no one was going bankrupt and we played until the game ran out of money. When we finished, Mommy had $176, and Josh had $152. (Monopoly Jr. is the *best* game for teaching basic math skills! I like the way it has Ones, Twos, Threes, Fours, and Fives for the paper money and how you double the price when you have a Monopoly.)

And the day before my 28th Birthday, we went hiking at Pere Marquette State Park. (I don’t remember it, but it’s on the calendar.) By then Josh was old enough to help decorate the cake:

So it was a good year, settling in to Illinois.

I do remember a little song Josh sang one day while we were riding in the car:

“I used to live in New Jersey,
and then, suddenly I knew,
I lived in Ill-i-nois!”

It’s time for Project 52, Week 26! Tomorrow’s my half-birthday, and I’m halfway through!

Half a year ago, on my 52nd Birthday, I decided to start Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week this year I’m going to blog about one year of my life. And now I’m halfway done!

I’m afraid now that I had such an adorable child, all the rest of my posts will be dominated by photos. But I’m having fun looking at them and thinking about all the memories they spark.

Last week I talked about being 25 years old and leaving California, where I’d lived for 20 years. Steve joined the Air Force Band of the East, and we moved to Browns Mills, New Jersey. I loved all the trees in our front yard!

For the entire year I was 26, from June 1990 to June 1991, we lived in New Jersey. Sometime in Spring 1990, I went to a job fair for Burlington County College and got a job as an Adjunct Professor, teaching Math. I don’t think I started until that Fall, in which case, 1990-91 would have been the only year I taught there. (Though it seems like I taught more than two semesters — I think one of the Saturday courses I taught might have been summer school.)

Interesting to me now, I remember that the Burlington County College campus where I taught had a good genealogy section in its library. That’s interesting to me now, because now that I work in the Virginia Room here at City of Fairfax Regional Library, I’ve been working on my own genealogy — and learned that a large number of my ancestors actually founded Burlington County in the 1700s! My Mom’s Mom was a Shreve, and her Shreve ancestor had land that bordered the land owned by Brown, who had a mill — which is what Browns Mills was named after. The Shreves intermarried with other Burlington County colonial settlers with good British names like French, Pancoast, and Scattergood and the like. They were Quakers until Colonel Israel Shreve decided to fight in the Revolutionary War. He brought along his 13-year-old son John Shreve, also my ancestor, who served as an Ensign and later Lieutenant, rather than leave him home with his stepmother.

Anyway, I remember I went into the genealogy section of the library and saw some familiar names (It must have been Shreve.) but had no idea that they were really related to me. (I will have to return some day, now that I have more information. Some of the houses that my ancestors lived in are still standing.)

Being fresh from California, I was so excited to live where there were so many sites from U. S. History. On July 4th, Steve’s band played in Philadelphia outside Independence Hall. The speaker was Jimmy Carter.

We had to see the Liberty Bell while we were there.

Here’s the band getting ready to get back on the bus.

And living on the East Coast was Steve’s chance to show me upstate New York, where he grew up. We took a vacation to Liverpool, New York, that year.

Josh was ready to go on vacation!

(By the way, these pictures remind me just how SWEET a child Josh, who is now Jade, was. Again, I’m not saying that boys can’t be sweet. But I’m not so terribly surprised to be informed that Jade is really female when I reflect on this.)

This next picture is one of my favorites. We had stopped at a rest stop, and Josh and Steve were jogging along a path. The camera snapped at the exact moment Josh looked up at Steve with the thought clearly in their eyes, “Wow! Daddy! I’m running just like you!”

I think of this picture when I read the verse Ephesians 5:1 — “Be imitators of God, as dearly loved children…”

We met Steve’s childhood friend Doug Rougeux, who was best man at our wedding, at Lake Oswego, New York.

There was an old fort there.

In Liverpool, Josh played on Daddy’s old elementary school playground.

Doug had been a professional clown with Ringling Brothers and now did his own educational shows at schools and libraries and parks. Josh liked Doug’s clown shoes.

And Josh was fascinated by “Little Doug.”

Lots of people visited us now that we were on the East Coast, and that was a reason to do more sight-seeing. Here’s a trip with Stephanie and Bruce to Philadelphia.

Josh was still in the wandering off stage. We had a Mickey Mouse leash we tried to use. It was a little better when Josh got tired and gave up wandering.

We stopped at Friendly’s for food on our way home.

This next picture is fun. Here’s the story. I was getting ready to read Josh some books at bedtime. I asked Josh to pick books while I went to the bathroom. When I came out, the chair was piled high with books and Josh was dancing around it. That was about the time we started the tradition of reading THREE books at bedtime.

This was also the year Josh really learned to read. I remember it was in New Jersey that Josh saw a Stop sign and said, “STOP! P-O-T-S. Stop!”

But around Josh’s third birthday, I ordered some Beginner Books through a book club. By the time they arrived, Josh had cracked the code and didn’t need Beginner Books any more. That was SO much fun to watch!

More visitors. Here we are at the Liberty Bell again, this time with Wendy.

Ah, and this trip to the Liberty Bell has a story that goes with it. We didn’t watch a lot of TV, because we couldn’t afford to get cable. Josh had seen one episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Yes, they were around 26 years ago!) and was entranced. But he happened to see that one episode twice. And in that episode, a bad turtle impersonated the good turtles — and cracked the Freedom Bell!

Well, Josh didn’t understand the whole impersonation thing and didn’t realize that it was bad to crack the Freedom Bell. So when Josh saw the Liberty Bell, they started saying things like “Pow! Smash” and waving a fist at it.

Well, then Josh really looked at the bell and saw the crack. Their eyes got wide.

“It’s broken!” said Josh. “I broke it!”

And that was how my child believed they cracked the Liberty Bell with the power of their mind.

Later, Gram E. and Gramp E. were passing through the Philadelphia airport, and we went to spend an hour with them.

Those were the days when Gramp E. and Josh would play a game endlessly. One would say, “Something about… X” Then the other would say, “No, no, no! Something about… Y” And Y would be something very loosely associated with X. It was a fascinating game to listen to, and Josh’s giggles and Gramp E.’s laughs made it completely delightful.

Around Halloween time, Gram E. sent two costumes she’d originally made for Steve! (Wait, I might be remembering that wrong. They might just be from the same pattern.)

And around November, our dear friends from California, Audrey and Tom deRivera, with their son Jonathan, moved to a Philadelphia suburb, about 45 minutes away! We were so glad to see them!

We still hadn’t found a church we liked. I have to admit, I’ve never liked visiting churches. (It goes back to when my parents moved to California when I was a shy child, and they visited a lot of churches before they settled on one.) Nothing felt right. But Audrey and Tom found a nice church right away, so many weeks, we’d drive across the river and go to church with them.

This is at a park a block from their house.

We had a little accident with radiation at that park! Here’s Giant Josh holding Steve.

And my first year away from California, I was just crazy about Autumn! These were taken in our front yard.

For Thanksgiving that year, we drove down to DC and spent it with Darlene and Kathe.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the three of us. Steve took it at an angle that would show how TALL we are!

Kathe still had her dogs. (And always will, I think.)

We went to Arlington National Cemetery with Kathe and Joe.

I was reading a book on decluttering at that time and read the idea to take pictures of your trophies — and then throw them away. I’m rather glad I chose to do so and not carry them all over the world! I had to zoom in to see what they were for. Five of the little ones were for 5-in-a-row Tic Tac Toe championships in high school (and junior high). The other little ones for Hex and 3D Tic Tac Toe championships. The bigger ones are for being Junior Honor Guard in 11th grade and Co-Valedictorian in 12th grade, and one is an award for one of the classes I took my Senior year. And the cute kid is even better than the trophies.

For Christmas, Steve’s parents paid our way out to the West Coast to see them. Now, I was a tiny bit annoyed by that. They didn’t ask — and I’d been looking forward to my chance at a white Christmas. However, it was good to see family at Christmas.

We started at Stephanie and Bruce’s home in San Francisco.

Christmas Morning. Just what every nephew needs! A drum!

Josh was always much loved!

Next we went to Long Beach, California. Here’s my sister Wendy at my sister Becky’s house.

And cousins Jason and Josh unwrapping gifts.

Here’s my Mom reading to Josh and Melanie.

This is outside Becky’s house. I think Josh was dressed up for church.

We had another gathering at Ruth’s house, with Ruth and Susan and Darlene (also out in California for Christmas).

And here’s a gathering of folks from First Evangelical Free Church of Los Angeles. It looks like Audrey was also visiting for Christmas.

And the last stop of our Christmas trip was Phoenix with Gram E. and Gramp E. again. Here Gramp E. and Josh are demonstrating how their Eklund noses wrinkle in exactly the same way.

Back home, the deRiveras were visiting:

And the very sad story of snow that year was that New Jersey got a record warm winter that year. The only significant snowfall happened while we were in California! It had melted by the time we got home. However, we got a little bit of snow and made the most of it.

Here we are crossing the river to go to Philadelphia.

Now, January 1991 was the year the Gulf War started. I remember because sometime around February, Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at McGuire AFB, and the Band played for him. And, yes, even though his misuse of the English language appalled me, I shook his hand.

Having my husband in the military when a war started was a bit unnerving. Band members did check, and whether in wartime or peacetime, the mission of the band is morale and public relations. They weren’t going to be sent to fight.

A week after the Gulf War started, the apartment next door to us caught on fire.

I woke up in the night because I smelled smoke. My first thought was that someone was bombing the Air Force base. Yes, I smelled smoke through the walls with all the windows closed. In my sleep. Steve didn’t smell it when I woke him up, but by then our neighbor was knocking on our door.

Our neighbor was a firefighter on base. His 17-year-old wife (they had two kids) had had a fight with him and gone to her mother. He was frying chicken while drunk and fell asleep. And burned down the apartment. (Well, gutted it.) He later convinced her it was her fault for not being there. (Grrrr.) But they were no longer our neighbors. We made sure we got renter’s insurance after that incident. (They were held liable.)

But it was quite terrifying to wake up to a fire next door. One week after a war started. The next day I was afraid to go to sleep, because with the residual smell of smoke, I wouldn’t know if a new fire started off a spark they had failed to put out.

It was interesting to me that Josh wasn’t scared at all. To a little kid, Mommy and Daddy will take care of it. It was terrifying to be Mommy and realize how little control I had.

In March, Josh turned Three Years Old! This is how they felt about it that morning:

Here’s the Band commander’s daughter and our next-door neighbor Philip. Jonathan deRivera was also at the party.

And who knew? Six Flags Great Adventure was only 20 minutes away from us in the forest of Jackson, New Jersey. I was so happy to go to a less crowded amusement park. Never mind that it rained a little.

Our little Josh got chosen to go up on stage during a show!

Josh didn’t bat an eye when performing:

And still loved those characters.

In April, we went back to DC to see the cherry blossoms, and Darlene and Kathe. This is on Darlene’s couch:

And in DC. I’m glad we went then, because now I never brave the crowds!

I love this one!

And later, we went to Washington’s Crossing. I think my sister Wendy was with us then, too.

At Washington’s Crossing, they’ve got the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. It’s a giant-sized painting, and they’ve got it up on a stage. Well, Josh, a musician’s child, saw the stage and decided to get up there and dance. Alarms went off and lights flashed! Oops!

This next picture was taken at the Band building probably when we’d gone to pick up Steve. (We only had one car, so did a lot of that.) Josh saw the podium and knew what to do.

The band at McGuire often played in New York City. One time, they were playing at Lincoln Center when Audrey was visiting her family on Long Island — and we agreed to meet at the concert.

And here’s another concert where the deRiveras joined us.

The annual Air Show at McGuire AFB was fun for Josh.

In May 1991, we discovered Valley Forge. It’s a beautiful place, and the history is amazing to try to fathom as well. (But mostly, it’s a beautiful place in May.) We first went there on our own.

Not long after, Darlene had a business trip near Valley Forge — so we met her at the park. (Here’s another picture I love.)

And finally, to wrap up my 26th year, on my actual birthday, we did some hiking at Valley Forge and then met the deRiveras at a nearby band concert.

Since it was Flag Day, we dressed both our boys in red, white, and blue.

And they passed out flags for the kids to wave.

Our kids danced in front of the stage for the entire concert, until they were exhausted.

What a day, and what a year!