About 15 years ago (I don’t remember exactly), I got tired of having our multitude of family portraits in boxes where no one could see them. To get them out of the boxes, I decided to make our upstairs hallway a portrait gallery because: (1) there was nothing hanging on any of those walls; and (2) I didn’t have room for this many portraits anywhere else. I went through the boxes, selected the best pictures, measured and counted them, and bought hundreds of dollars worth of frames ($400+ I think). I framed them and printed identifying labels to attach to the backs of the frames–names, dates, etc. Then I needed a plan to arrange the portraits on the walls.

When Kathy came for a weekend visit, she and I stayed up very late one night, sorting and arranging the framed portraits. We could have quit earlier and gone to bed, but we were really into the project. We measured the hallway walls and laid everything out to scale on the bedroom floors in a variety of ways to construct a pleasing presentation.

The result of Kathy’s and my planning is that Wall #1, at the head of the stairs, is dedicated to our immediate family–Ted, me, and our four children. These are portraits of all six of us as babies, in first grade, and at high school graduation, as well as a few miscellaneous related portraits of our family and Ted’s and my “entire elementary school” pictures. We went to small rural schools, so there was room for everyone in a single picture.

Wall #2, the shortest wall, has just enough room for the two oversized frames in my collection. One is from my Grandma S. and includes the senior pictures of her 1911 high school graduating class of 12 students with three teachers. The other is from Ted’s mom and has the high school graduation pictures of her four children, and the six grandchildren she had at the time she assembled the collage.

Wall #3, the longest, is the wedding and history wall. I have wedding portraits of Ted’s and my parents, our grandparents, ourselves, and our married children. I also have a number of portraits and historically interesting pictures of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and a few other relatives.

Wall #4, the last remaining space in the hallway, is the grandchildren wall. We already had a few grandchildren at the time Kathy and I designed the gallery and I thought there would be plenty of room for all the grandchildren’s pictures on that wall. That wasn’t true. With nine grandchildren, and multiple pictures of some at different ages, I was doing ok until 2021, when Hadley (grandchild) and Ollie (great-grandchild) were born. We already have one grandchild who is married and had a baby, and several others are at a marriageable age and are likely to present us with more great-grandchildren. To make room for Hadley, Ollie, and future additions to the family, Ted and I spent the afternoon today re-arranging the grandchildren wall. We think we left enough space for at least six additional babies before we have to worry about a future adjustment.

Walls #1, 2, and 3 don’t change much over time because they’re all past history. Wall #4 was good for a long time and has now been compressed to make more space. As our grandchildren began graduating from high school, however, Ted and I realized we needed more gallery space. We decided to start Wall #5 along the stairway. We began with some portraits of ourselves that we didn’t have room for on Wall #3 and then transitioned to graduation pictures. When Alex got married in 2019, we had to find space for the wedding portraits of our grandchildren too, so we decided that, because the stairway wall is pretty long, we can call it the “growing up” family wall. This wall has lots of room for expansion and it gives us something to look at as we go up and down the stairs.

USA Today must hire writers who graduate at the bottom of their English classes because, whenever I read it, I find a plethora of errors. I was skimming that newspaper today and found three glaring errors that should never have made it through the first proofreading. Here’s the first of two errors in an article about yesterday’s bridge collapse near Pittsburgh. The error is highlighted.

Since “latter” is an adjective indicating something is nearer to the end than to the beginning, the word makes no sense at all in this context. A noun, such as “ladder” (a thing, an object) is needed to pull victims out of the debris. “Latter” and “ladder” were words my ESL teachers practiced with their students so the students could learn to distinguish between them. Maybe this USA Today reporter should come to one of our local ESL classes. Next, . . .

“Obtain” means to acquire; “sustain” means to undergo. Did the hospitalized people actually go to the hospital in search of injuries? You’ve got to wonder. And now last, but not least, and on a lighter note, . . .

If Minnie Mouse changed her clothes, you might expect her to “don” (put on clothing) her new outfit, but USA Today sees her change of clothing as a “dawn” (the beginning of an event or occurrence, such as sunrise).

I’m sure my childhood friends and I would have used the correct words in all three of these examples when we were in elementary school. If we hadn’t, our teachers would certainly have corrected us. We definitely wouldn’t make these mistakes as adults reporting for a national newspaper!

I was looking for a picture frame in our storage room and found a box labeled “family photos.” I couldn’t resist opening the box to see which photos were in there. I was surprised to find most of the formal portraits and Christmas pictures we had taken through the 70s, 80s, and 90s while our kids lived at home.

The words “family picture” were not what our kids wanted to hear. It seemed like every time I wanted to take a family photo of a special event or a celebration, I had to listen to the kids’ gripes and groans before telling them that we were going to do it anyway. Period. When it was time to take the pictures, the kids put on their good sportsmanship faces and smiled for the camera, and they all lived through those horrific (sarcasm here) experiences. As a result, we have some nice family pictures that Ted and I (and maybe even the kids) enjoy looking at as we remember those times.

Get comfortable, because here come my favorite family photos from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Part 1: The pretty nice pictures

1970: Ted and I had our portrait taken at a department store photo studio. We’ve always liked the picture, but my parents insisted that it didn’t really look like us. ???

1974: Ted came home from work with the news that he would be attending a training in Washington, D.C. and ended that sentence with the suggestion that I join him after the training for a few days. Here we are at the Tidal Basin with the cherry blossoms in bloom–one of the most beautiful sights of the D.C. spring. We moved from D.C. to MO almost 49 years ago, but I still miss the spring flowers in D.C.

1978: This is one of my favorite pictures of our kids. I took it in the family room of our previous house.

1979: New house, new family picture. We took this picture during the first spring in the house where we still live.

1980: I think Ted and I set up a tripod and set the camera timer to take this picture in front of our fireplace.

1982: On a visit to see our parents, I took this picture of the kids climbing one of Grandpa Schroeder’s apple trees. Ok, so these weren’t their climbing positions. I asked them to crowd together for the picture.

1983: We took the following two pictures in Neenah, WI when we attended Russ and Betsy’s wedding. There was a playground in the churchyard (maybe a parochial school?), and it looked like a good setting for the 1983 Christmas pictures.

1988: I think I did a decent job of staging some of our home photos. It seems like a lot of professional photographers include a drapery and a plant, so I did the same. It looks like I should have offset the plant behind Kathy so it wouldn’t look like she’s growing leaves, but this was the time of film, so we had to wait until the pictures were developed to see our mistakes.

1989: We went to Blanchette Park and let the kids pile on the Mazda RX-7. The weather and the fall colors made it a good picture. We felt a little bit naughty driving the car off the roadway and onto the grass to take the picture.

1990: The kids are growing up. We took our Christmas picture on the Lindenwood College campus in the summer because Jeff would be leaving for college in the fall. It looks like the dress code was white shorts.

1994: Ted’s and my 25th anniversary. We had a big party, bought corsages for ourselves (pink carnations, like our wedding flowers), and took pictures in “nice” clothes. When we changed into more comfortable clothes, we didn’t want to waste the corsages, so we pinned them on our T-shirts.

1994: This might be my #1 favorite set of two pictures. We went to Forest Park in St. Louis for the photo shoot. The family group looks very nice, but I especially like the picture of the kids.

1995: I have no idea where we took this picture, but it’s another of my favorite kids’ pictures–maybe my #2 favorite. Don’t the boys look cool with their sunglasses?

Part 2: The slightly “off” photos

1972: Here’s our first professional family photo with our first child, Jeff, and yes, that’s a maternity dress I’m wearing in anticipation of Kathy’s arrival. Oops! There’s baby drool on the shoulder of my dress.

1973: New baby, new family photo. This might be a church directory photo. Ted hasn’t changed his suit, shirt, or tie since last year.

1974: The kids are a year older, so it’s time for an updated portrait. If it worked for Ted, it should work for me. I wore the same dress and the same necklace as I did the year before.

1976: Thom was born, so an updated family photo was on the agenda. This was probably another department store studio photo. Neither Ted nor I remembers why he isn’t in the picture. Weird.

1988: The kids were especially cranky while I set up this picture–maybe because we’d already attended church and Sunday School and they wanted to change clothes and start making lunch. Still, they all smiled nicely. After we took the first picture below, I suggested we take a backwards shot to lighten the group’s mood. It actually worked!

1989: It’s Ted’s and my 20th anniversary, so we had one of the kids take our picture against our default outdoor background: the privet hedge. It was definitely the 80s: big glasses, big hair, and big shoulder pads.

1994: Now it’s our 25th anniversary and we’re wearing the same clothes we did five years ago, except that Ted put on a different tie and we added the corsages. What can I say? We obviously buy clothes we like and we get a lot of wear out of them before we get rid of them.

1993: Here’s another picture taken at Forest Park in a different year than those above. Jeff and Kathy were home for Thanksgiving break so, in spite of the cold and the snow, we had to get the Christmas picture taken. To keep our clothes dry while sitting on the snow, we brought white plastic trash bags with us. If you look closely, you can see the bags underneath the kids.

1994: Jeff, Kathy, and Thom were home from college for Christmas and I wanted a family picture while we were all together. In return for co-operation, I suggested a second photo in which we set our Santa hats to point upward for a touch of humor.

I had fun reviewing the box of family photos and I’m glad I didn’t let all those gripes and groans stop me from taking them.

We took a lot of pictures in 1982, and I posted some of them recently. Here are some others from that photo album that I thought were fun to look at.

One summer day, for no particular reason, Ted took a picture of me as I was sitting on the swing, relaxing on the patio. It turned out pretty nice. Ted gave me that necklace for Valentine’s Day one year.

We celebrated Christmas with our parents in 1982 and have some nice photos of them. Here are Ted’s parents.

I like this picture of my mom with our younger daughter. Mom is holding one of Kari’s many stuffed cats that needed to be included in the picture.

My dad looks pretty happy. This photo was taken in Mom and Dad’s living room. The pine cone wreath on the wall above Dad’s right shoulder was a gift from me one year when I made pine cone wreaths for us, for our parents, and for a few other people as Christmas gifts.

1982 was the year I decided I wanted a ceramic nativity set. I had never done any work with ceramics, but I knew I didn’t want to start with an ashtray or a mug–typical starter projects. I jumped into the deep end of the pool and bought three 15-piece nativity sets: one for us and one for each of our parents as Christmas gifts. I enjoyed making them and I finished all three sets with time to spare, but I’ve never worked with ceramics again.

Here’s my finished nativity. It’s sitting on a bookcase Ted and I bought for $50 the first year we were married. It moved with us three times and was gradually demoted from storing Ted’s and my books in the family room, to storing children’s books in the dining room (before we bought a dining room set), and then to the basement. We finally replaced it in 2012 after 43 years. (Note: I still put out this nativity set every Christmas. When Ted’s parents died, I was given their nativity set and I think I gave it to one of our kids.)

For several years, Thom’s dream was to drive a big rig. He knew everything about big trucks and he had a number of books about them. As we drove on highways, he would name the maker of the truck (Kenworth, Mack, White, Peterson, etc.) from behind by identifying the smokestack. A friend of ours, Mr. Siress, worked as an accountant at a trucking firm in St. Louis. He invited Thom to go with him to his workplace one day. Thom had a chance to sit in the cab of a big truck, and I think he was treated to a short ride around the lot as well. He pretty much floated on air for the following weeks. After the trucking experience, Mr. Siress took Thom to Lion’s Choice for lunch. From that day forward, Mr. Siress walked on water in Thom’s opinion. Here’s Thom, looking at a calendar with Mr. Siress. They’re probably admiring a big truck, judging by the calendar cover. The woman on the left is Mrs. Siress; the woman on the right is Mary M., a neighbor.

Ted turned 40 in 1982, so I planned a big party for him. A friend of mine made a bikini cake for the event. This is also the year I gave him the “Forecasters do it . . . ” shirt. That’s me on the left and Lindell T. on the right.

And that’s it for my selected scanned photos from 1982.

Kathy and Annette weren’t able to join Ted and me and Kari’s family for Christmas between the holidays in December, so we scheduled another Christmas celebration for the MLK weekend. Unfortunately, one of their cats was very ill and had to be hospitalized. The cat was scheduled to be released to return home, but Kathy and Annette weren’t going to be at home. The compromise was that Kathy came to our house for the “Christmas” weekend and Annette stayed home to pick up the cat to avoid the $100/day fees if they’d left him at the vet all weekend. When families get together, you can always feel the absence of those who aren’t present, so it seemed odd to have Kathy with us, but not Annette.

After being with Jeff’s family in Utah for Christmas, then celebrating with Kari’s family, our time with Kathy was Ted’s and my third Christmas get-together. It’s been a true holiday season for us. Kari’s family joined us on Saturday for our Christmas gift exchange. Here’s most of the group, and more gifts to open–some in hand-sewn gift bags made by Kari and me.

The first gift I unwrapped was a lost memory that I was thrilled to recall. In the evenings, I like to shower and then put on something comfortable (more loungewear than pj style) and I have several sets (top and bottom) of fleece Cuddl Duds (not a misspelling) that are nice and cozy in winter. When the weather turned cold, I put away my lighter weight loungewear and headed for the Cuddl Duds, but I couldn’t find the pants for my favorite set. I looked everywhere. Several times. When I removed the gift wrap, there they were! I had totally forgotten that when Kathy and Annette visited us in May 2021, the weather turned unseasonably cold and Annette had only brought shorts with her. I lent her the Cuddl Duds pants to keep her warm on her trip home. I was so glad to see them again! When I couldn’t find them, I considered throwing the top away. It’s a good thing I didn’t.

Ted had a surprise gag gift from Kari. I gave him this shirt for his 40th birthday. At that time, every profession seemed to have a meme about where or how its practitioners “do it.” I came up with this meme for Ted. The shirt was originally sky blue (get it?) and the “rain or shine” letters were in rainbow tones (get it?). I’m not sure how the shirt got to Kari, but she’s been wearing it for yard work, etc. and it’s pretty thin and faded now. She admitted that, for years, she thought “do it” meant “prepare a forecast.” (Note: She was 12 when I gave Ted the shirt.)

I had a gag gift from Kari’s family too. When Sefton was just beginning to talk, he couldn’t say “Grandma.” (I’m pretty sure there are no babies who can clearly pronounce “Grandma.”) Thom thought Sefton’s version of the word sounded like “Meemaw” and he suggested to me that maybe I could be designated as Sefton’s “Meemaw.” I said absolutely not! I know there are women who are happy to be called Meemaw, but I’m not one of them. To me, the word conjures up an image of a frumpy, stooped-over, out-of-shape woman who dropped out of high school, has bad teeth, bad hair, and can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence. I was willing to wait for Sefton’s speech skills to improve to the “Grandma” level. The rest of the family knows this story, so when she saw this shirt online, Kari said she couldn’t resist ordering it for me.

Our weekend together wasn’t exciting, but it was fun. Teddy brought some new games with him and we had a good time playing them together. We also had some hot tub time and, with temperatures in the 30s, that felt really good. As usual, the time passed too quickly and all too soon, Kathy was loading her car to go home. She’s planning a return trip–with Annette–in March.

I think Ted and I are now finished celebrating Christmas 2021. Good times!

We bought this Whirlpool microwave in February 2017.

It was a replacement for the Maytag microwave in the photo below. There was nothing mechanically wrong with the Maytag, but it was 24+ years old and outdated. It was only 1.1 cu. ft. in size, had only 850 watts of power, and the plastic parts were yellowing with age. A newer, larger, more powerful microwave sounded like a good idea. Note: I’d like to add that my Maytag washer and dryer are now 26 years old and are still going strong. Go, Maytag!

Unfortunately, we either bought a Whirlpool lemon or they really don’t make them like they used to, since the Whirlpool unit only lasted a little more than four years. Last fall, it started working sporadically. We could re-boot it by unplugging it, then plugging it back in, but by November, we were doing that trick nearly every day, so we decided it was time to replace the unit. “Supply chain” is becoming a phrase we’d all like to erase from the lexicon, but it’s a fact of life these days. We ordered a new microwave on November 27, 2021 (naturally, it wasn’t in stock) and it finally arrived, ready for installation on January 14, 2022–seven weeks later.

After they removed the old microwave, the installation guys commented on my notations on the wall behind it. When we moved into this house in 1979, microwaves were new and not everyone had one. We updated the kitchen in 1993 and replaced our original 14-year-old microwave with a new model–the white Maytag pictured above. That workhorse was still going 24 years later when we (mistakenly?) retired it in 2017. I noted on the wall that the 1993 Maytag was “not broken” but “replaced to update.” You can see what I thought of the one we replaced it with–the Whirlpool that only lasted a little more than four years. Does “dud” clearly convey my opinion?

Ted and I installed the Whirlpool, but the new Bosch came with free installation (Total Tech benefits from Best Buy), so we let the pros do the work this time. They finished in 30 minutes–much faster than Ted and I did four years ago. It helped that: (1) they knew what to do without reading the step-by-step installation instructions; and (2) there were two of them to hold the weight of the unit while the third one screwed it in place, compared to only Ted and me working.

Frankly, Ted and I didn’t realize how much we use the microwave until it went completely dead about a month before the new one arrived. Without a microwave, we had to adjust menus to avoid needing the microwave, and we became adept at heating some foods in a double boiler to keep them from drying out in a pot or a fry pan. (A double boiler takes a lot longer than a microwave!) The Bosch looks very similar to the Whirlpool, but everything about it feels more substantial. We’re happy to have a working microwave again and we hope this Bosch model will be good for the long haul.

Jeff recently shared this photo. Can you see what’s wrong with the picture?

The photo shows King Faisal of Saudi Arabia signing the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945. It’s an important and historically significant picture. Just for fun, a 26-year-old Saudi Arabian student “edited” the photo. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education mistakenly used the edited photo in Saudi Arabian social studies textbooks in 2017. The Ministry later apologized for its error.

Today we took down our holiday decorations. It’s a good thing we “minimized” decorating this year because of our Christmas trip to Utah. It still took almost three hours to put everything away.