Various photos from the 1980's...

This was taken in the winter of 1983 - previous to our family reunion that summer. It was a snowbank in Britt, 11 miles north of Kanawha. The land in that part of Iowa is so very flat that when there is heavy snow, deep drifts form, and can cause serious issues for travelers, as the roads quickly can become blocked by drifts that can wreck the underside of your car when you attempt to drive through them.

Our daughter loved Big Bird when she was 3. Here is her birthday cake, with Big Bird holding her three birthday candles.

 These were some of the gifts our daughter received for her birthday. We had a little party for her, and some of the neighbor kids came. This took place when we still lived on West 3rd Street.

 Eating an ice cream cone at Grandma Cooper's house on Mound Avenue. Yum! (My mother's kitchen was always decorated in something bright and cheery. I loved to go visit and usually talked her 'ear' off!)

This is our daughter at the age of four. A photographer often came to Kanawha and you could sign up to get your child's photo taken. Until she began school, and got annual photographs with each class, this was how I arranged for her portrait to be taken. We were only a couple of blocks from the grocery store where those photo were taken.

In 1983, Diane married Mike Fettkether from Waterloo. Mike's little brother, Brian, was the ring bearer, and our daughter was the flower girl.

 Here's Diane and the wedding party, including our daughter. 

Here is our daughter, with Mike's sister Kathy and his brother, Brian.

The wedding was a nice one. I had helped with several parts, including making the wedding cake. I drove down to Cedar Falls a few days before the wedding, and baked and decorated the wedding cake (which was a round layer cake, with a couple of tiers, with white frosting and lavender flowers) at the home of David's mom, Ann Rueber. I also made aprons for the servers at the reception, and David helped me finish the fancy pockets for those aprons. The aprons were white and the pockets were embroidered in lavender in the Norwegian Hardanger style. We were sitting in the bed the morning of the wedding, and David was actually helping me embroider the last couple of pockets so I could sew them onto the aprons! (What a guy!) I think I also made our daughter's flower girl dress. Busy time!

Mike was a student at a school for electronics in Kansas City. Diane had moved to Kansas City after her training as a bridal consultant in Omaha, and she worked at a bridal shop there. We had visited them there at Thanksgiving time while they were living there, and if I can locate some of those photos, I'll add them to this blog later. Unfortunately, Diane was sick while we were there, so David and I fixed the turkey and the Thanksgiving dinner. At that time, she and Mike were sharing a house with some guys Mike knew, so that was where we spent Thanksgiving that year...I think it must have been 1982. Kansas City is a great place during the holidays, and David and I, along with our daughter, enjoyed seeing the lights and the sights there. I can't remember if we stayed in a motel or not, but we must have because things were pretty tight in the house they were all renting...

After their wedding, Diane and Mike lived in an apartment for awhile in Waterloo, not too far from the Wendy's where she was working. I can't remember what Mike was doing, but I think he did have some kind of job while he applied for electronics jobs.

 Here are David on the far left, our daughter in her nightgown, Dave and Diane...all playing a game at Diane and Mike's apartment in Waterloo.

After that time, they lived awhile in Mike's folks' house in Waterloo and Diane continued working at Wendy's. It was the 1980's and the farm economy was terrible, so Mike's dad (who worked for John Deere) had lost his job. They moved out to Glendale, AZ, and Mike's mom got a job out there. I don't remember if it took Mike's dad quite awhile to find work or not, but it seemed like a lot of people from the Midwest were moving out there. 

When Mike found the job in Phoenix, Diane and I drove a moving van, pulling their Chevette on a trailer behind, and took their furniture out. I will tell more about that trip on a different blog. It was quite an adventure, but not one I'd like to repeat... I had never driven a truck, let alone pulled a trailer with a car on it...and there was a bad ice storm to make things even more interesting... 

 Our daughter's school photo from 1984. She was six years old that fall.

Our daughter took dance lessons from Jeralyn's School of Dance in Belmond when she was about six. She had fun at the lessons, but was pretty antsy and didn't really 'get into' dancing. This was her recital photo, and she did fine in the recital (which Diane and Dave came to watch), but she complained of a bad headache afterward, and I realized that dance lessons just were not her 'forte,' so that was her last year taking them. Cute picture, though...

Here is our daughter at Devil's Lake in southern Wisconsin. We took a trip to Baraboo, and other well-known sites in that part of Wisconsin.

 In June of 1986, Doug and Gail Schoenwald were married at the Knickerbock Hotel in downtown Chicago. This is one of the photos from that wedding. I think Dave was the best man, and Diane was one of the bridesmaids. Our daughter was the flower girl. In the photo, left to right in back are Dave Hansen, Gail and Doug Hansen, Diane Hansen (she was recently divorced from Mike Fettkether), and David Rueber. I am in front and our daughter stands beside me. It was a very elegant wedding, and we all had a wonderful time! (I made my dress, but I don't remember if I made our daughter's dress or not.)

Here are my three beautiful Hansen kids...all decked out for the wedding!

Here's the whole wedding party. I don't know some of the names well, so I won't attempt to name everyone. You can see Diane, Dave, Doug, Gail, and our youngest daughter. On Gail's left, seated, is her sister Laura, and standing on the far right, second from the end, is Gail's other sister, Debbie. My nephew, Jeff Brookner, is standing on the far right. It was a fabulous experience!

Here is the lovely bride, Gail, with our daughter, the flower girl.

While we were in Chicago, we visited some of the usual tourist sites. Here is Buckingham Fountain downtown. Left to right, Dave Hansen, me, our youngest daughter, David Rueber and Diane Hansen.

We also visited the Chicago Art Institute, and here are my youngest daughter and I in front of one of Van Gogh's iris paintings. Too bad the vivid colors didn't show up well in the photo...this is one of my favorite paintings...

Here we are, at the top of the Sears Tower. Our daughter seems to be a bit wary of the height...and is hanging onto me for 'dear life!'

This is our daughter's school photo when she was 7 years old - taken the fall after Doug and Gail's wedding in 1986. What a cutie! I sure was blessed with good-looking kids!

 I'm not sure just what year this photo was taken, but our daughter looks like she's about 4 years old. The story goes like this... We were in Cedar Falls and I noticed an ad for a pumpkin-carving contest sponsored by one of the city's banks. I decided I would try to make a clever pumpkin and enter the contest. Since E.T. was such a big hit back then, I decided to try to carve an 'E.T. Pumpkin.' I used part of a butternut squash for his neck, and a small pumpkin for the head. His eye balls were the round 'bowls' of plastic spoons which I embedded into his head where his eyes should be, and made pupils on those eyes using an indelible marker. I mounted the sculpture onto a heavy board, and took the sculpture to the bank for judging. Well, I won! I received a check for $100.00 for my efforts, and this photo is a side view of that sculpture. Just a few carved 'wrinkles' and some unique materials to complete the sculpture, and we had a pretty good representation of what E.T. looked like...
(One time, when our youngest daughter was lying in my mother's lap, she looked up at her and said, "Grandma, your neck looks like E.T.'s neck!" Kids don't spare your feelings, but say exactly what they are thinking...! I don't think my mother cared...she also thought it was funny.)

 My friend Jan Barnes came to visit us when we were at Ann's house, and this photo is of our daughter wearing Jan's witch mask. Pretty scary....

In this photo, our daughter and I are sitting at the dining table I had made in a shop class offered by North Iowa Area Community College. I got some nice 2" pine boards from the local lumber yard at that time, and made a trestle table using the school's shop tools. More photos that show that table's design will follow...  We are eating one of David's wonderful Concord grape pies. The red tall child's chair was made by David. I probably cut the heart into the back and did the forming of the top of that back with my jig saw. We did a lot of co-projects in those days... The photo was taken in the dining area of our house on West 3rd Street in Kanawha.

Here's our daughter at the age of 8, in the fall of 1986.

We had an early Christmas gift exchange at Thanksgiving in 1986. In this photo, David's sister Madelyn is seated on the left. In the blue-striped shirt is Craig, the son of Lois and Bill - David's sister and her husband. In the center is Michael, the son of Madelyn and George Peregrim, and our daughter, watching Michael open his gift.

In late December that year, we went down to Dallas and visited my sister Margaret and Al and their family. Here is our daughter, making a face at her cousin, Austin Hood, who Margaret babysat while his mom, Susan, was teaching school.

Here are David, me and our daughter, at Margaret and Al's house that holiday vacation. I think the black and white dog is Oreo, and maybe the brown and white one is Cocoa, but if that is not correct, someone will have to let me know...

Here is our daughter with Dave's cat, Tippy, when she came to live at our house while he was a student at North Iowa Area Community College in Mason City. I love this photo...will probably ask Carol Hansen to blow it up and give it a wrap-mount so I can hang it with the one of the three older kids in their holiday p.j.'s...that would be a fun grouping for Christmas decorating! (Notice the wooden block nativity scene that is partly visible behind our daughter. It is another of David's and my joint craft projects. We did Mary and Joseph, the 3 Wise Men, a couple of shepherds and some sheep. I used the set sometimes when I was teaching Sunday school.

More to come...at this point, my mother, Wilma, was 87 years old, and still living in her apartment on Dalewood Avenue in Cedar Rapids. She was very healthy, although she was no longer driving, and had given her car to the son of a neighbor in the next apartment.