When our daughter was in junior high, students were required to make a project for the annual Science Fair. In the photo below, Alitza is preparing part of her experiment where she judged the quality of various forms of insulation as to their ability to retain heat.

In this photo, she is pouring boiling water into a container that is inside the red box, surrounded by one of the five varieties of insulating materials she was testing.

This photo shows the various boxes with their separate kinds of insulation. David is seated at our dining room table, and Solo is coming from the kitchen where Alitza was heating the water for the test. (This took place prior to Solo's death in 2001.)

In this photo, she is checking the temperature of one container of hot water to measure how much heat it had lost. Each box was similarly tested several times, and through those measurements, she was able to see which kind of insulation worked best at retaining the heat of the water over time. Alitza was a pretty good student in science, and had excellent grades. It didn't hurt that her dad was a scientist, I'm sure!

On May 16, 1993, at the age of 15 years, our daughter was confirmed in the Lutheran church where we were members. We had a dinner at the church for family members and friends, as well as the minister and his wife after the confirmation service. 

Here is Alitza's confirmation photo in front of the altar at the church. This is the same church where I worked as secretary for 15 years, with several different ministers. We all attended at this church the years we lived in Kanawha. Alitza had been baptized here, as was posted in an earlier blog about her early life.

For the dinner following the confirmation service, I had made this lamb cake. I also made a butter lamb, so got to put my ability to sculpt into practice. The photo on the table is of Alitza wearing the baptism gown that was worn by her grandfather (David's father). 

Here is the butter lamb. Not quite as detailed as the famous butter cow made each year at the Iowa State Fair, but it is quite obviously a lamb, and it served its purpose to decorate the table!

This photo shows a few of the guests at the confirmation dinner. On the far left is David, Marcus Hoelscher and Bill Schroeder, with a family friend from Ventura seated at the table. That is me standing in the center holding the champagne toast we were enjoying. To my right is my friend and co-worker at the newspaper, Louise Smith Hoelscher. Next is my son Dave, and a few other guests I can't recognize in this shot.

In this poor quality photo, family friend Tillie Hinrichs from Ventura, Iowa, and David's mother, Ann Rueber from Cedar Falls, Iowa, are pictured with Alitza before the confirmation dinner.

Here is Alitza with her sponsors, Bill and Lois Timmermann. Lois is David's sister.

This shot is of David's mother, Ann Rueber, starting to wash dishes after the dinner. It was nice to have so many people to help with that dinner!

And, there I am, peeking out from behind the refrigerator, looking rather 'pensive and serious,' beginning the clean up after the confirmation dinner was over.

And, here are my two co-workers (from the newspaper), and the minister's wife helping me get the dishes done after the confirmation dinner. On the left is Louise Smith Hoelscher, center is Twila Schroeder, and on the right is the minister's wife, Ruth Perkins. Ruth also was one of Alitza's baby sitters when she was small.

Here is Alitza with her three cousins who came from Sibley, Iowa to attend her confirmation. Alitza is on the left, with Scott, Craig and Donald Timmermann, left to right, next to her. 

In 1994, at the age of 16, Alitza and I took advantage of a couple of 'glamor shot' photos when a photographer came to Kanawha and set up at the community room to take this kind of photo. As you can see from this picture, our little girl was growing up!

Here is the photo we had taken together. It became one of my favorite photos of the two of us.

In this rather funny shot, Alitza is trying out a 'new style.' She is standing in my mother's hallway of her apartment. Behind her on the wall are the photos of me and my four sisters that my mom always had hanging somewhere in her home. My photo is to the right of Alitza...that was my high school 'glamor shot,' I guess!

This weird photo of Alitza was taken when my Cedar Rapids family got together at the home of my sister Merry after she and her husband Bob had purchased a really nice motor home. Alitza is trying out the bed in the motor home's bedroom which was pretty cushy for a travel vehicle!

My brother-in-law, George Thiher, pats Alitza on the head as she jests while sitting on top of the fancy toilet in the motor home...all brass and glass, that place was!

The kitchen in the motor home was not too shabby either! Alitza checks out the cabinets...

In this photo, Alitza had invited a young man she had met at speech contest to attend her junior prom with her. His name was Jeremy, and he was from Spirit Lake. In this shot, they are posing by our front door before they left to go to the prom.

Next, Alitza was invited to attend Jeremy's prom at Spirit Lake. I took her up there, and we stayed at a nearby motel so she could go to the prom with him. I think they had a good time, but that was the end of their relationship. Just not meant to be a couple...

As it was approaching Alitza's senior year in high school, she needed a good photo to accompany her applications for college, and this is the one we chose.

 

For her own senior prom, Alitza and her friend Katie Tveiten went together. Neither of them had a particular special friend at that time, so they attended their prom without dates. Alitza is actually wearing the dress I wore when her dad and I were married in 1975. Still looks pretty good, but by this time I was no longer able to get into it!

Below are Alitza's senior photos. There were quite a few of them, but it was really hard to pick from them, so I got a bunch! She was pretty photogenic!

 

 

This one ended up being the one she used for most purposes.

This is the newspaper article about Alitza's naming as a 'commended student' in the 1996 National Merit Scholarship Program. We were pretty proud of her, you can be sure!

In the fall of 1996, Alitza entered Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as a freshman. She had been awarded a scholarship that paid half of her fees, and began her life away from home.

In the next post, I will get back to my mother's life. She was having 'milestone' birthdays as she neared 100, and we had several special parties toward the end of her long life.

Come on back, and follow the stories of my family...

 

Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Diety designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Here is another photo of the two dogs, sunning themselves on the porch. They kept watch at whatever was going on in the yard, but usually stayed on the porch, as long as I didn't leave them outside too long.

Both dogs seemed to be extra photogenic when they were enjoying the sunshine on the porch. Above is Lady, looking like royalty.

I just had to post these photos of Solo laying on the porch...she was so beautiful.

 Here are Mom and Daughter, looking so pretty together!

When our daughter graduated from high school, we took the dogs with us when she got her senior photographs taken. Here are the two dogs, posing for a professional!

 Senior Photos with Solo and Lady, Fall of 1995.

 Another photo with Lady playing with a bunny. She was really fascinated with them...

Lady laying on our sheepskin rug, next to the Christmas tree that year. She was such a pretty girl...

Lady traveled with us on all of our vacation through the years of her life. In this photo, we were having a picnic next to a lake in the Big Horn Mountains on Highway 16, west of Buffalo, Wyoming. That drive is one of my favorites, and we traveled through the Big Horns a couple of times over the years. Lady has just had a bit of her food, and is licking her mouth off...she was not just a pretty dog, but was also very clean.

Here is Lady, sleeping on the carpet in the living room. She spent more and more time sleeping as the years went by...

One of my favorite photos of her - Lady was such a special dog, and we loved her.

Recalling the day we brought her home, I remember that the little pup shivered all the way home as she sat on my lap in the car. Since she had one all-white leg in front and one white front paw, we decided she looked like she was wearing one long, white glove and one partly put-on glove. She looked like a 'lady dressed up for a party, with only one glove completely on.' Since she was a silky, soft and shiny black, we thought she must be 'sophisticated.' So, those two attributes became part of her registered name - Sophisticated Lady Rose (Rose, after her mother, Carlota Rose Mare).

Lady was afraid of thunder, and would pace the floor if there were storms in the area. Or, if it got too loud, she would crawl under our bed, and lay there shivering. Several times, I sat there on the floor by the bed, and held her in my lap to help calm her until the storm was over.

She would often have an upset stomach when we traveled, and I thought it might have been because of that first traumatic ride (of an hour), when we brought her home the first time. All her life, she felt she had to watch out the car window as we drove along. I think she thought she was 'keeping guard.'

Lady liked to go out to the garden in the evenings with David. She especially loved it when he brought a big bowl of peas into the kitchen, and she would chase after any pea that rolled onto the floor, and would gobble it up. She also liked to bite off the tops of the asparagus. This dog liked her vegetables!

One summer evening at about dusk, she was out in the garden near David and had an adventure that she didn't enjoy at all. She came to the front door to be let inside, and as soon as she got in the door, I realized she had been sprayed by a skunk! So, I did what the recommended treatment was at that time, and that was to give her a bath in tomato juice (supposedly, the acid in the tomatoes cut the odor from the skunk's spray). After the tomato juice bath, she got a regular bath with dog shampoo, but even those efforts did not get rid of all of the odor. Even after she got almost dry, she kept running in circles all around the living room. Each time she stopped for a moment, she would smell the skunk smell again, and took off once more. Finally, she got just too tired to care anymore, and went to sleep. I'm pretty sure she was curious about the skunk, just the way she was curious about the bunnies, and got too close to it. She never did that again!

But, age began to take its toll on her. She became quite deaf eventually, although sometimes I think she learned to use that as an advantage, and simply would not look at you if she thought you would motion for her to come inside when she wasn't quit finished sniffing in the yard. 

Lady always liked to stand beside David to be petted and get scratched. She liked to lie under the kitchen table, near his chair, so she could watch for crumbs and chopped vegetable pieces that might fall from the chopping board. Both dogs knew when I got out the popcorn popper, and would come and stand beside me until the popping stopped and I gave each of them a handful of the popped corn in their dog dishes.

On July 3rd, 2004, Lady seemed very tired, and just was not 'herself.' She slept on the lambskin rug that evening until David got up to go to bed. She did pause by my chair to be petted and have her neck scratched. Little did I know that would be my 'good-bye' to her. After a few minutes, David called me from the bedroom. Lady was having convulsions. I got down beside her and talked quietly to her, and tried to calm her while David called the vet. We were able to contact one of our vets, and he told us to bring her to his office, but she was dying. She stopped breathing one time on the drive to his office in Belmond, but began again. But, by the time we got to the office, she was too far gone to bring her back. I told him to give her a shot to put her to sleep, and after that sad time, we drove back home, with David holding her wrapped in her towel. We were both bawling, so it was a good thing there was not much traffic that night. The next day, July 4, 2004, we buried her next to Solo's grave near the garden. David put a rose in full bloom into the grave with her. Later I made mosaic plaques for each dog, and we put them on the graves. When we moved from the farm in 2014, we brought the plaques with us, and they will lay in our flower beds in memory of our two beautiful dogs.

Loving an animal is a double-edged blade ~ It brings you so much joy, but is so awfully painful when they die. Still...life would be dull if we avoided all sorrow by never giving our love.

"My little old dog: A heart-beat at my feet." ~ Edith Wharton

"The dog is a saint. He is straightforward and honest by nature. He knows by instinct when he is not wanted; lies quite still for hours when his king is hard at work. But when his king is sad and worried he creeps up and lays his head on his lap. 'Don't worry. Never mind if they all abandon you. Let us go for a walk and forget all about it!" ~ Axel Munthe

"He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion." ~ Anonymous

"The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact, the most precious and valuable possession of mankind." ~ Theodorus Gaza

"No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversations as a dog does." ~ Christopher Morley

 

 

Buy a pup, and your money will buy love unflinching. ~ Rudyard Kipling

This was the sign in front of the research farm at Kanawha with Solo and Lady posing beside it. They were quite the 'hosts' for any guests we had there.

We had a lot of flowers around the farm, and here are a couple of photos with the dogs and the flowers. Such pretty things, all of them.

Sometimes, I could even get David to pose... Yes, that is a rose behind his ear...Silly man!

I could let the dogs out onto the porch on sunny days, and they would just lie there in the sun, and would normally not leave the porch. (One time, though, a wild rabbit was discovered in a nest she had made in our discarded pine Christmas wreath I had pitched under the porch after the holidays. Solo had found the nest, unfortunately, and since she had not been raised during our 4-H rabbit times, she didn't realize that the bunnies were not 'food.' I looked out to see if the dogs were still on the porch, and they were not. Solo had picked up one baby bunny and had eaten its upper half before I realized what was happening. Lady had also picked up a baby, but she had carried it out a bit farther in the yard, and was just laying there, looking at it. When I went over to her, she gently picked it up in her mouth, until I told her to 'drop it.' I put the little baby back into the nest beneath the porch with the other little bunnies still there, and put up a blockade to protect the nest. The dogs were told 'No!' and were taken inside the house. For several days afterward, we didn't let the dogs out the front door, and eventually the bunnies were gone from the nest. I was relieved to find that the mother must have returned, and kept feeding them for the few days until they were big enough to be out in the world. David could not quite understand why I was interested in protecting baby rabbits. To him, they are just a rodent that likes to eat in his garden! But, the 'mother' instinct in both me and in Lady kicked in, and we didn't want to harm them. Solo never attacked another rabbit that I know of...she was normally a very well-behaved dog.

Unfortunately, one time when we had been gone on vacation for a week, and had hired a neighbor to feed Alitza's rabbits in their cage (which was on legs, but had wire mesh on the bottom). A dog from town came out and found the cage, and the bunny Alitza had at that time got it's feet chewed off by that dog, and when we came home, we found her dead in the blood-spattered cage. The dog's owner did come out and apologized for the dog's behavior, but I was not happy at all. And, Alitza was crushed. Just one more reason for people to keep their dogs under close watch any time they go outside.

We took a vacation in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, and in the photo on the left, the dogs are enjoying attention from a little girl who was staying at one of the motels where we stayed. In the photo on the right, the dogs are enjoying a walk along the beach at Au Train Bay on Lake Superior with David. The water was frigid, even in August, so swimming was not a long-time activity!

Here are Solo and Lady enjoying the beach. Notice that we kept them on leashes when we were in areas they were not used to...but in this shot, even though neither of us is holding the leashes, the dogs think they are supposed to stay where they are...

One Mother's Day, we met Dave (my youngest son) and his wife Carol at Beed's Lake near Hampton, Iowa for a camp-out. The dogs both slept with us in our tent, and they enjoyed roaming around our campsite, but we kept them both on leashes. Even the best-trained dogs can forget their training when excitement occurs. A chipmunk, or other creature, would send them off chasing after it, and they could easily get lost. We just didn't risk that...

One fall, we met Dave and Carol at McIntosh Woods Park near Clear Lake, Iowa for another camp-out. In the photo above, Carol is cooking for one of our meals, and Dave is assisting. The dogs liked hanging out near where the food was being prepared, even if they never got to eat scraps from our table. 

During our time in Kanawha, I worked about 15 years as secretary for the Lutheran church there. In the photo above, the wife of one of the ministers I worked for is standing with me and the dogs as David looks on. We were at Lake Catherine in Thorpe Park near Forest City, Iowa for a walk and a picnic supper with Pastor Lee and Lorraine. We had so many good times with our dogs and friends...

In this photo, the two dogs are posed in front of our back door, and then I took that photo and cut out just the dogs to use as accents with this photo. It was Christmas time, and the dogs were sure pretty additional decorations for our house!

In this photo, Lady and Solo are standing with David in front of one of the huge snow sculptures at the St. Paul, MN Winter Carnival. We ventured to go up there, even with snow and ice a possibility on the road, and we had a very good time. 

In August of 2001, I took my elderly friends, Louise and Marcus Hoelscher, to spend a couple of days at the cabins in northern Minnesota. In the photo above, we were spending some time at Itaska State Park, and this shows Louise, Marcus and the dogs posed near the marker for the Headwaters of the Mississippi River at Itaska. Little did I know at that time, this would be Solo's last trip to Minnesota...

Here is one of my favorite shots of Solo as she basked in the sun on the front porch of the farm house in Kanawha. I had a special bond with this dog, since I assisted in the breeding to get her, and also helped deliver her when she was born. She was 'my dog.'

In October of 2001, we had a nice picnic at Crystal Lake north of Kanawha. Here are the dogs, enjoying the sunshine by the lake on that nice afternoon. It was to be our last picnic together...

The photo above is the last photo I took of my beloved Solo. We had entertained David's mother for Thanksgiving in late November of 2001. She had gone back home on Sunday after Thanksgiving, and Monday morning I was pretty tired, but still had to get up to go to work. I was taking my time arising, and I heard the phone ring. David had let both dogs outside to do their morning 'business,' and our neighbor across the road (the research farm is located on a county road that goes right through the town of Kanawha) had been out on their usual morning walk, and noticed what they were pretty sure was our dog lying in the ditch near the road. David went out to look, and it was my beautiful Solo. She was dead. At first we thought she had been hit by a truck going into town, but she had only one tiny spot of blood on her head, and no other signs of injury. I could not go out there, so David picked her up, carried her to the back yard by the garden, and dug a hole to put her in. After he was finished, he came back to the house. I needed to be at work at the newspaper, so I ate my breakfast and got ready, and went to my job. Needless to say, I was in a state of shock, and even though I was able to type, I was not able to carry on conversations. My boss was totally understanding, and explained my quandry to any customers who came in and wanted to speak with me. I made it through the day, but it was one of the saddest days of my life. I talked to the gal who lived next door to the farm at that time, and she said not to be so sure that Solo had been hit by a truck. She had seen an enormous owl flying around in the mornings when she got up to go to work at the local Pronto convenience store, and she thought it was big enough to be able to at least pick up a dog the size of Solo. With the tiny spot of blood on her skull, I think that may be the explanation of her death. It would be sudden, and since the dogs literally 'never' went out near the road, it seems to me to be the only way to explain how she got out in the ditch. I was shattered by her death, but we still had Lady, and life goes on...in spite of our sorrow.

After awhile, I decided to make scrapbooks of my dogs, and starting attending gatherings of the Creative Memories scrapbook group at the community room in the City Hall building. It was a good way for me to work through my grief, and to make a permanent way to remember her, and later Lady as well. The photos I've entered in my blog these past two days are from those scrapbooks, in the most part. Each dog has her own book - one is white (for Solo, our too-much white dog) and one is black for Lady who was so very black on most of her body. I put sayings by various writers inside each book to commemorate our beautiful and loving dogs, and I will post some of those here, and some later as I tell more about our lives with Lady as we carried on after the loss of Solo. Each book has the dog's plaid collar with its tags buckled around the spine 'sleeve' of their own book. It has been a great way to remember these fine animals, and started me on my 'scrapbooking adventures,' which are still going on...

"A dog has the soul of a philosopher." ~ Plato

"Dogs watch for us faithfully." ~ Cicero

"You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us." ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

"I think God will have prepared everything for our perfect happiness in heaven. If it takes my dog being there, I believe he'll be there." ~ Billy Graham

Stay tuned...more to come!