When we were moving in 1945 and had a trailer load of furniture behind our car, we heard the announcement. "The war is over!” We both had brothers who were in this war, so the news for us was just fabulous. Our joy knew no end, because with the war over our brothers would be coming back home, and we ourselves had just purchased this home at 489 Hedges Street.

Every church bell in town started to ring and a parade was forming downtown. We quickly unloaded the furniture at the new house, cleaned up the children a little and hurried downtown to the scene of people kissing other people, no matter if they knew each other or not. The bands from our four high schools and many bands from nearby schools were forming. We had never seen so many people before, the children got into the mood and kept time to the music with their little feet.

The bands played tunes that were popular at that time, then they would swing into tunes from World War I. Such rejoicing we had never seen, and have never seen since.

After we moved to the south side of town, we had three sons in a row. I went to the hospital for the first time in my life when I had Mike. He was born the day before Christmas, and Gene had a strep throat infection, so I took a cab and went to the hospital alone in the middle of the night.

The children had two Christmases that year, one on Christmas day with half of the gifts and goodies, then we all had to celebrate when I brought the new baby home from the hospital. The tree was still up and we used the other half of the gifts. It wasn't as big a celebration as usual, but the expectation and joy on those little faces was something no mother would want to miss.

Tim was born the next December and we felt that with two little boys so close in age they would be great company for each other, and they were, too much so sometimes.

By the time Nick was born, even the boys were hoping for a sister. The first thing Gene said to me after he was born was,  "How are we going to explain to the girls that we have another boy?" It so happened that this was the first day of hunting season, and there were a lot of fathers sitting in the waiting room with their hunting clothes on, wanting to get started, but felt that they couldn't leave until their wives had delivered. So many of the mothers had girls that day, but not me!

So Gene and I put our heads together and came up with an idea. We planned that Gene would go home and tell the children the reason we had a boy was because they had a lot of girls out there but they were all too ugly. However, there was this darling little boy who was very cute, so we chose that one. This explanation satisfied the children, who thought we had made a wise decision.

By the time Betty was born, our friends began to say, "Hey, when you two were courting and planning to get married, you bragged that with all of the love you had between you, your marriage would surely produce at least a dozen babies.
But man! We're not holding you to that!" When Ben was born, I was learning to drive a car. Greg had graduated from high school, and was in the Marine Corps.

Rose was graduating that week, and she, by this time, was quite serious about Fran Brickner. So when he called for a date one particular evening, Rose explained that she had to baby-sit at home because her father and mother were just going out the back door to the hospital, and they were in a hurry. So Fran felt the excuse was good enough and was satisfied to just visit on the phone.
When Vickie was born I was 40 years old and my husband was 43. By this time Greg and Rose were both married, but I will speak of that at a later time.

Nick always thought Vicki was something special. Maybe it was because she was a soft little baby right at the time when he was seven years old and very impressionable. Or maybe it was because their names rhyme. Anyway, one day Nick was at the neighbors' and they had a baby girl about the same age. The mother was showing her baby to Nick and said, "She is the cutest baby this side of heaven." Not wanting to dispute her word, but at the same time thinking his sister to be the cutest, Nick said, " Then our baby is the cutest on the other side of heaven." Chris, who is our youngest, was the biggest surprise of them all. After he was born, our doctor said, " Now why did you have to do that? Here you had eleven babies without a hitch, and now at the last you have to have a cesarian section."

(End of Chapter 12)