Life Happening - Val's Story, chapter 4, part 1

Val was born on a sunny, warm Saturday afternoon in April. The next day, Easter, as I lay in the hospital bed, nursing her, snow was falling outside. There were still a few inches on the ground when we took her home on Monday, but it warmed up quickly and melted before we knew it.

          We were living in a mobile home in a trailer court in town when Val was born. Her father and I had talked about buying a house and started looking in earnest. Our first outing with Val was a visit to see my sister Pat, and on the way there, we stopped to look at a house. I waited in the car while he met with the owner and went inside.

          He came out and said it was only two bedrooms, but had a bath and a half and a large living room. The two-car garage was attached, and it sat on just over four acres. I had already fallen in love with the large, grass-covered yard and the trees surrounding it. No neighbors nearby. It seemed perfect except for only having two bedrooms. We had two kids – a boy and a girl – so we would need a third bedroom at some point.

          We hired a real estate agent and looked at a few other houses in the area. But we kept coming back to that first house and finally put in an offer on it. We moved in at the end of September.

          It was the sixth place we’d lived in since getting married five years before. As a baby, Nick had made all those moves with us, but I don’t think he remembered any of them except for the trailer house.

          This house, a few miles south of town on a piece of land that would become paradise to me over the years, would be the only home Val had when she was growing up.

Not a good picture, but this is from the sale's flyer on our house. So, the first picture I have of it.