1976 - a very good year!!

Some of the biggest memories of 1976 don't have documentation - it's a good thing I'm writing them down - I may forget them by next year!

1976 was the bicentennial of the United States - and it was a really big deal. Babies were born and named Liberty. Stamps were issued. Billboards blared the news. The media was steeped in it. The church got on the bandwagon too. We had special programs - and I was on one in our ward Relief Society. We did some kind of tableau or pageant - and I was Molly Pitcher! I went all out - made a dress with apron, shawl, bonnet - I was authentic! We were in SoCal for the 4th - and it was a Sunday - and women all over the church wore their Colonial dresses to church. It didn't seem irreverant at all - in fact, it was pretty cool. And I don't have a single picture of me in that dress!

We had moved to Harris' house in December of 1975. They were a couple in our ward who were going on a mission. The house was somewhat furnished, but we put some of our things in . There were two fireplaces, 3 bedrooms upstairs and and a finished basement. It was glorious after years in Spartan rentals and old stone houses full of critters and mold! And we reveled at being in a real neighborhood with a real yard. The babysitter lived next door!! My visiting teaching route was literally "up the street."

Harry had his 4th birthday - love the Mr. Roger's cardigan and U.S. Mail lunch pail - his pride and joy - along with the Fuller Brush hair brush - I think he still has it. You can see Elizabeth in the background.

I made clothes for Bonny all the time - I can remember them clearly but I don't have pictures of very many of them. I also made lots of matching doll dresses. Dad used to say, "Are you making those for Bonny or for you?" I sewed a lot for myself too. I made a new dress every month to go with my Relief Society lesson!

One dress was a mauve wool jumper - kind of tweedy - with a matching cape! I'm not sure why I never took a picture. When the kids went to Primary - in the afternoons on weekdays then - I would go to the fabric store and look at patterns. I loved it!

Alice came over a lot - Frances and her kids came. I took classes at the U. Charley and Jeannette came for a visit too. We were across the street from Julie's mom and dad.

And we had a blue Pinto - and we don't have a photo of that either! Elizabeth disappeared - and we feared she was gone forever - we had lost Amado a few years earlier. Then one day as I was lamenting her disappearance, Richard, who worked for Dad and was at our house, said, "She's out on the hood of the Pinto."

Sure enough she was. And she had a healed wound on her side - she had apparently been injured - probably by a dog - and gone away to heal - and then came back! (At least that is what all the neighbors claimed.)

Bonny and Harry both got whopping cases of chicken pox. Harry was very ill one night - we took him to the emergency room. The verdict? A huge bubble of gas in his stomach.

I became good friends with a Danish woman who lived in our ward - she was not a member but her son was. She taught me to make abelskiever. We had them a lot.

And we had a Scandinavian Christmas - even had goose - but it wasn't all that good. Kind of dry.

I think Dad worked a lot. And was in the Elder's Quorum Presidency. I taught Cultural Refinement. He and I spent Sunday nights watching "Masterpiece Theater" - loved The Pallisers and Danger UXB.

It was a pretty good year - and got better soon thereafter with the promise of Phoebe coming into our lives. We had wanted more children for a while, and it wasn't happening. Bonny would tell people at church that we were going to have a baby - thinking I guess that if she said it, I would make good on it!!