While waiting for...and watching...our house being built, Steve, the kids and I were learning to live together. One more person made the apartment, which seemed roomy when we first moved it, now felt smaller and crowded...especially on Lori's weekends. It helped that Steve and I worked different shifts. When we met, we both worked days...then when we got married, Holiday Rambler made us take different shifts...they wouldn't allow husband and wife to work together at the same plant. Later, when they dropped the afternoon shift, I got transferred to a different plant.
Life was good, again!
Every day we drove out to check the progress on our house. We watched the basement get poured, saw the walls go up, then the siding. We had chosen the color of the aluminum siding and the wood front, as well as the brick trim. After that, it seemed to come to a stand-still, waiting for the inside work. In March we went to this furniture store in Plymouth and picked out the carpeting and linoleum...in the middle of a big snow storm. But we were so eager to get it done, we weren't going to let a little snow (even 8 inches of it) stop us! One day in May, at work I got a phone call from the Bremen Hospital. This time it was about Joey. Tammy had taken him with her in a friend's car to look at the house, and when they turned a corner, the door flew open and Joey fell out. Thank God, he was not hurt badly...just scrapes and bruises. Actually, Tammy was in worse shape than he was!
Next came movi-in day. We moved into the house over the July 4th weekend. Mom and Dad, Jim and Loretta and Frankie and his wife, Penny, came up to help. With two trucks and all that help, it only took us a few hours to move and set everything up....and we were determined to stay there so we didn't have to pay another month's rent on the apartment....even though the electricity had not been turned on. We lived there a week before we had electricity!
Mine and Steve's bedroom had red carpeting with white walls and ceiling...the ceiling had silver sparkles on it. We had a big double closet with sliding mirrored doors. And our room had double entrance doors.
Buddy's and Joey's room was blue...with blue carpeting, and a double closet. They had new twin beds with new matching blankets and bedspreads.
Tammy's and Lori's room was light lavendar with lavenday carpeting. It was smaller than the boys room, so the girls had bunk beds with matching blankets and bedspreads. They got the smaller room because most of the time Tammy had it to herself.
The bedrooms and bathroom were on the upper level. On the main level was the living room and kitchen. On the lower level was the laundry room, furnace room, a half bath...and an unfinished room, that didn't stay unfinished very long. That was mine and Steve's first project together in our new home.
For months, after work, Steve worked on finishing the family room. When he finished, it was really nice...panelled walls, white tiled drop ceiling, and closet. A built in bookcase and desk-table took up one whole end wall. A few years later, after much begging and coaxing from Buddy, we put a bed down there and made it his bedroom.
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