Sometimes we had snow....

This was how deep the snow got in our front yard that year. Dave was probably about 3 or 4, and the kids enjoyed playing in the snow....

We put our Christmas tree outside after we were done with it in the house. We would put bird seed and other goodies in it, and we could enjoy the tree for awhile longer before it had to be thrown away. 

One year, Doug had a paper route. I remember feeling sorry for him when he had to deliver papers in the deep snow. Once I tried to walk across the field behind the house (which was the quickest way to deliver the papers on a street up near its end, and the way he often walked), and the snow was up to my hips in some of the places... hard work, especially for a kid...not to mention the alcoholic lady across the street, who was quite hard to deal with sometimes when he tried to collect from her...

That's our front sidewalk. Must have been about 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground... Notice the white post with the gas light on the top...one year the utilities was doing a promotion on gas accessories, and a gas yard light was one of the options (so was a gas grill). We got to have both of those put in at our house (sort of so people could see what they looked like, I think). The gas yard light had a few plastic decorative covers that you could clip over the lamp part and we got a couple of those, too. I remember we had a big orange pumpkin with a face (these were about 2 feet in diameter, so they really were impressive). It seems we also had a snowman head, but I'm not sure about that.

Here's Diane (wearing another dress I made for her) standing by our gas grill. We enjoyed having that...it was right outside of our family room, and close to the kitchen, so we could grill food and have it easy to access.

...and here I am, posing of course...and showing off the nice gas grill. (I think the Jacki-O sunglasses were just the fashion at that time...)

Now....here's where my story starts to get a lot less fun. As the kids grew older, and my job got physically easier, I started to think about how I would spend my future years when the kids no longer 'needed' me as much. I took a couple of evening classes at UNI and enjoyed them.

I'm sure Vern knew I was very restless, because he began to be more willing to go on day-trips, or to places we had never been before. 

About that time, my parents were getting to the age where they wanted to make plans for what they would do with their cabin once they weren't able to go up there any more. Three of my sisters (Jean/Jack, Merry/Merrel, and Dorothy Ann) had earlier bought the red cabin from my Uncle Herbert's sister and her husband, Esther and Pete Hanson. My sister Margaret and her husband Al had a share in that cabin too, but they often stayed at my cousin's cabin when the Browns were using the red cabin (if I remember correctly, Jack retired and they spent quite a lot of their summers up at the lake). None of my sisters were interested in having my folks' cabin. So...my folks offered it to Vern and I. Well, I was very excited at that prospect, but Vern was not. He didn't want to spend his two-week vacations doing repair and maintenance work on a cabin. So, they sold the cabin to my nephew, Michael.

Vern did make some effort to get away on short trips. We went to St. Louis, Decorah and the Mississippi River, and other outings that weren't just visits to relatives' homes.

Life has bumps in the road, and I was about to hit one, big time...