Our mobile home is toast

There was a picture of a mobile home in the paper the other day. It had burned in a fire. It looked familiar, like the one we owned in the '80s so when I was down in that neighborhood today, I drove by. It was ours. It made me sad. We have so many good memories of the time we spent there from October 1983 to August 1988.

Riley had just started his Ph.D. at the Y, Jason was 2 1/2 and Andrea was three months old when we bought it. We figured it was a good stepping stone while Riley was still in school. It was in a nice park, not a trashy park. We had great neighbors and made lifelong friends there, some that we still get together with.

These are some memorable moments from living there:
1) Jason and Andrea both learned how to ride bikes there. They also both started school at Timpanogos Elementary.
2) Amy was born while we lived there.
3) We had Thanksgiving dinners and family Christmas programs there.
4) I babysat for other people, giving my kids friends to play with and us some extra income.
5) I served in the Young Women program and loved my young women, some who are now friends on Facebook.
6) We had several litters of baby kitties there. The kids named them odd names like Lizard, Blizzard, Gizzard, Flour and Bakery. I think the mom to all of them was "Yeow," who Amy named.
7) Amy pulled most of her little shenanigans at that house: butter all over her body, hair gel in the carpet, pulled the Christmas tree over three times until we finally nailed it to the wall, flushed my glasses down the toilet and loved Wonder Woman underwear.
8) I started winning contests on a monthly basis while we lived there. My friend Leslee and I won a trip to Acapulco. I also won a "Consumer of the Month" contest and Riley and I were flown to San Francisco to pick up our $1,000 check. This led to the jobs I had with Purchase Power while we lived in Utah, California and Texas.
9) We lost five loved ones while living there. My grandma Wheeler had a stroke the summer of 1984 and I went to the hospital up the street every morning at 5 a.m. for five weeks to be with her at a time of day I wasn't needed as a wife or mother. She died July 14. My great-grandma Ford died within weeks of her. Riley's mom Aileen died in November of 1986, followed by my grandpa Poulson in Dec. of 1986. His wife, my grandma Poulson, died 17 months later in May 1988. I hadn't had anyone in my family die since I was six years old so it was difficult to lose so many in just a few years.
10) We played in the park swimming pool nearly every day in the summer to keep cool. My niece Steph remembers, "Around and around, around and around, brush your teeth, around and around" and other pool ditties.
11) Riley built a great porch where we had our picnic table and a kid-size picnic table. The kids had birthday parties out there. Andrea had one where friends brought dolls - mostly Cabbage Patch kids.
12) Riley had his bike stolen from that house, one his grandfather had given him.
13) I discovered Amy had molars when I had to dig manure from the garden out of her mouth.
14) We made great friends with Doug and Nann Mower, Ev and Kathy Snyder, Dave and Leslee Henson, Alvin and Cindy Williamson, Ray and Eileen Barney, Orlo and Vinetta Eyre, Debra Prestwich, Betty Morgan (of the brownies fame) and many others. We've kept in touch with them and still laugh about our times together back in the '80s.
15) We used to walk over to the Provo River to feed the ducks, a cheap family outing.
16) We got our first video camera while we lived there. Riley's dad Winston bought it for us.

We colored Easter eggs, carved pumpkins, set out Christmas stockings and got candy from the Valentine Fairy Monster there. We had yard sales, played in the snow, had Family Home Evenings, ate 4th of July breakfast and went to the Grand Parade from there. We bought our first family car - the '81 Toyota Corolla which we just sent to the Kidney Foundation in 2008 - in 1985 while we lived there. We spent some of the best years of our lives in the 14X70 mobile home and even though the house itself is now a burned-out shell, the home part will always remain in our hearts.