74- An Active Life

I remembered today (March 18, 2017) that I had a box of our old calendars in the garage. It appears I have all the years from 1977 to 2016!

Consulting the 1982  wall calendar, I noticed we had a very busy life: we scheduled lunches and dinners with friends 3 or 4 or 5 times a month and caught every special speaker at church. Dan was working part-time in the next town, Carson City, pre-recording his daily program at KNIS, the Christian radio station. We were sick quite a bit with colds and went to the pediatrician’s office for well-baby checks and sick visits a couple or a few times a month. Dan was attending the leadership class at church called the Servant’s Class one night a week, and the boys and I were in a Bible study/mothers’ support group a couple of mornings a month at my friend Michelle’s house.

We hosted a Bible study on Wednesday nights at our house and later attended one at the home of another family.

AND THEN, I was strongly encouraged by a good friend to take a position at the Christian school teaching science to the junior high kids. I was not qualified and not confident and I can’t fake anything. Yet, I succumbed to her enthusiasm that I could do it and that it would be great. It lasted a month and my journal reports that it was encouraging to be with the other solid Christian teachers and school staff and that I did okay with the students. The good that came out of it was that I knew I wanted to raise my kids myself, and not turn them over to a babysitter for a few hours every day and have her raise them. So that was that.

We tried the Natural Family Planning system of birth control through the Catholic Church. I had to do a daily charting which I will not describe, and a nun wearing a gray and white mid-length dress and a headscarf, Sister Julianna, came to see us once a month for consultation. After dinner one night, I remember her good-natured laugh as she watched Timmy and Stephen zipping gleefully around the living room: “They feed off each other, don’t they?”

And they did.

The new baby, now four months old, would be be joining their rambunctiousness soon. [And with another new little brother joining the ranks in a year-and-a-half, it was a bustling life we lived, especially as little boys are tireless!]