Turning 13 means so many things to a kid. Their first milestone was hitting those double digits, at least in their minds, but an even bigger milestone is the one that changes them from a kid to a teenager. They begin to see the years ahead as coming quickly as they race toward adulthood and independence. Before long they will be learning to drive, and then getting their license, dating, graduating from high school, and before you know it they are married and starting their own family. The good news is that all that is still a little ways down the road, and for now he still likes to hang out with his dad…especially on 
road trips in the semi truck.
Connor, who is my cousin, Larry Cameron’s son, had the chance to travel with his dad a short time ago. They had an amazing time traveling together to new places. Larry posted several pictures of their trip, and I found myself feeling so happy for Connor to have such a special time with his dad, and happy for Larry that he could enjoy being with his son, before Connor is all grown up. These are such fleeting moments, and so quickly gone. You want to treasure every ride, trip, and even ice cream cone that you get to share, because they are as amazing as your precious child.
Connor is the youngest of Larry’s three children, and little brother to 
Nehemiah and Moira. At times, I think he is the one that keeps everyone centered. He seems to have a stabilizing effect on them. When everyone is feeling upset or mixed up, here comes Connor to say just the right thing to soothe the situation. Being the peacemaker is never a bad thing, and is, in fact, a wonderful trait to have. I see that in Connor and I know that it is a trait that will take him far…and he will have many friends along the way, because people seem to gravitate to that type of person. Connor is such a fun loving kid. He likes to see the humor in every situation. He loves a good joke, and smiles often. I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to get to know him. Today, Connor is 13 years old. Happy birthday Connor!! Have a wonderful day!! We love you!!
Family pictures are always a trial. It really doesn’t matter how big the kids are either. When my husband, Bob was a kid, he was very much a cut up. He liked to get everyone laughing and basically keep the situation a little off center. Of course, his mother really didn’t appreciate that much, and it was even worse, when Bob got Brenda laughing. Brenda found many things that her big brother did to be quite funny, and had a very hard time not laughing about his antics. And as anyone who knows Brenda will attest, once you get Brenda laughing about something, it’s hard to get her to stop. Now most of the time, that is ok, because it really is fun to listen to Brenda’s laugh, but when they were trying to get those pictures taken, Brenda’s laugh, and Bob’s humor were not as appreciated as they were on most other occasions.
On this particular occasion, in about 1968, Bob and Brenda were in rare form, joking with each other quite a bit. Their mother seemed to be handling things pretty well, and their sisters all thought the whole thing was pretty funny too. Their dad, however, was clearly not amused at all. I’m sure that by the time this whole photography session was over, he even had quite a headache. He was always a very easy going, and mostly a soft spoken person, but I would wager that this had taxed his patience to the limit.
I have known this man a long time, and he was always long suffering, but once his patience had ended, he had the ability to blow a gasket with the best of them. At that point, you knew it was time to straighten up your act, and by the look on Bob’s and Brenda’s faces he had reached that point. They were clearly mid-laugh when their dad yelled, “Knock it off!!” At that point there was nothing they could do except to close their mouths tightly and swallow what was left of that laugh. That can make for the funniest of faces as you can clearly see, but I suppose it was better than the alternative, which would have been the spanking they probably deserved.
After looking at this picture of my Great Uncle Albert Schumacher, and learning of his love for machinery from my cousin Shawn Frederick, I have decided that while my Uncle Bill Spencer does not look like his Uncle Albert, he is indeed very much like him in many ways, as is my cousins Tim and Shawn Fredrick’s dad, Gene, and Tim’s son, Daniel. These are men who like the inner workings of machinery, as well as their design. “Great Uncle Albert’s claim to fame”, according to what Shawn told us, “was that he studied machinery constantly and could fix ANY kind of machinery. He was also the only one in the territory to own a Ford car and always dreamed of owning a Rolls Royce. He also taught all of his boys to repair cars.” I have to think that maybe he handed down his talents by way of the genes to a number of other men in the family too.
Uncle Bill, who is Albert’s sister, Anna’s oldest son, and the one 
who got many of the Spencer side of my family interested in the family history, put together a tractor made from a pickup. According to Uncle Bill, “It had 1927 Dodge 4 cylinder engine with a 6 volt electrical system. The front axle was turned upside down for clearance. The rear axle was a worm gear drive gear system that was 18 inches top to bottom. It had 10 x 20 truck tires from a 1915 5 ton Wilcox Truck. In low gear the engine turned 18 times to turn the wheels once. It could do twice what a team of horses could do, and it didn’t have to stop to rest.” Uncle Bill was pretty proud of that tractor. He also bought an old school bus, back when his kids and my sisters and I were little kids. He spent quite a bit of time converting that old bus into a camper/motorhome for his family to travel in. I can vividly remember the fun times we spent in that old bus. We used to take trips in it with them, and we would hang out in it when they visited us or we visited them…especially us kids. It was almost like a club house.
Daniel, being a young man of just 12 years, does most of his design and building work at home, and much of it is done with Legos and such, but his dad tells me that Daniel is constantly building and inventing things…sounds a lot like his Great Grand Uncle Albert, doesn’t it? I think Daniel’s future possibilities are endless. He is a smart young man, and very motivated, so he will go far. It’s amazing to me that these men, while generations apart, are so much alike. I have often thought that when there are generations and generations of people in the same line of work, that it was just following in their parent’s footsteps, and maybe to a degree it was, but maybe it was just in the genes.
Every year on October 31st, kids all over the country take to the streets, knocking on doors to collect a bounty of candy…whether they need it or not. My kids and grandkids are all beyond the trick or treat stage now, but that doesn’t stop some of them from dressing up for work and parties they have been invited to. My nieces and nephews have a great time each year, and the costumes are as varied as the imaginations of the people wearing them. My niece Jenny and her husband Steve always have a party on Halloween, so that all the family can gather and enjoy each other’s company. Jenny and Steve have come up with a variety of costumes over the years…from Indians to cowboy and dance hall girl. And then there’s my niece, Kellie, who uses the workplace to create a costume…I guess writing insurance for Progressive has it’s perks…I should have thought of that, since my daughter Amy and I write for Progressive too. My 
granddaughter, Shai has told me that she is planning to dress up for work tonight too, at Outback Steakhouse. I think she should go as a Bloomin’ Onion, but I don’t expect her to take my advice.
When I was a kid, Halloween was pretty much a kids game, and while Dad always took us trick or treating, the night belonged to us. My parents never dressed up, nor did any other adults I knew. We didn’t bother with a little Jack-O-Lantern basket for our candy, because that didn’t hold enough…just take a pillow case. It was sure to be full by the time you got home. Dad was always a good sport, taking us out as long as we could stand it, which was quite a while if the night wasn’t too cold. We didn’t go 
to places like the mall…we didn’t have one anyway…or other businesses, because there was very little worry about tainted candy. It was just a very different time. These days people must be much more careful, and maybe that is why there are more parties, and less trick or treating.
Halloween will always be a kids game, I suppose, but these days it’s not just for kids, and the people I am around that dress up are not kids…or maybe they are. They say some people never grow up, and it could be that the ones that dress up just have a little bit of a kid still living on the inside of them. Here’s to childhood, and never growing old!! Happy Halloween everyone!!
A couple’s wedding day is quite possibly the most wonderful day of their lives. It is that moment when all their hopes and dreams begin to come to life. The wedding day is quickly behind them and they begin their journey out into the future to build the life of their dreams…but not always. Theirs was a love, young and hopeful. Her family, my great great grandparents, Allen and Lydia Spencer, loved the young man their daughter, Matilda had fallen in love with. They nicknamed him W Biller, although his name was William Beller…it was their way of showing him that they liked him, and they were happy to welcome him into their family. Although their daughter, Matilda was young by today’s standards, at just over 17 years of age, she was of an acceptable age for marriage in 1879, and so she married the man of her dreams, but theirs was not to be the fairytale ending of happily ever after, because in just three short days, Matilda’s life would be over.
The death records would show Brain Fever as the cause of death, and these days few of us would even know what that is. It is a term, not commonly used today, that described one of three illnesses that most of us do understand today…Meningitis, the 
inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord; Encephalitis, an acute inflammation of the brain, commonly caused by a viral infection; or Cerebritis, inflammation of the cerebrum. I can’t say which of these diseases caused my great grand aunt’s death, but I can imagine the devastation her husband of only three days felt as his precious bride was taken from his life, leaving him to wonder what had happened, and how he could possibly go on. A young man of just 19 years of age should not have to experience marriage and widowhood within three days of each other…truly, no one should.
As I read the account of the short marriage of my great grand aunt and uncle, I felt the pain he must have felt. Without the knowledge we have today, my guess is that he had no idea that something was terribly wrong. He and his young bride traveled from her home in Webster City, Iowa to their home in Boone, Iowa, just 32 miles away, but when the time came, I’m sure that distance felt like thousands of miles. Getting her parents to her before she passed probably didn’t happen, and he must have felt like he failed her in every way possible…failed them. I’m sure he felt like he should have been able to take better care of their daughter than that, and yet he didn’t know what he could have done, because he had no real idea what had happened. His life had gone from married bliss to lost dreams practically overnight.
It would take him three years to finally move forward with his life, when he would marry 
Nellie Vanderbilt. Their lives would take a different path, and they would have six children. I’m sure he loved her very much, but I have to think that as he was having his second set of wedding pictures taken…in the exact same pose as his first set of wedding pictures, that his mind wandered back, just for a moment…to the bride of his youth, that seemed so far away now. His face looked a little distant…sad even. At 23 years of age, my guess is that he felt old…much older than his age would have you believe, but widowhood at such a young age would do that to a person. I’m happy for him that he had a good life in the end, and yet still sad that he had to live with the lost dreams of his youth hiding there in the back of his mind.
In church on Sunday, we were talking about patience…a subject that we all need to think about, but often don’t. It brought to mind something that happened to me years ago…on my way to my bridal shower. For those of you who are a part of the Byer family, you will understand how this could happen. And for those who aren’t, the Byer family has a different way of looking at time than the rest of the world. They operate on Byer Time, and that is 30 to 60 minutes later than the time that the clock shows. Unfortunately for some of us in this family, being fashionably late is not something we ever thought was the right way to do things. I happened to be one of those people, due to being half Spencer maybe, while my mother…a Byer by birth, even if she was half Pattan, definitely operated on Byer Time. I will say that time and circumstances can mellow a person, and I don’t stress about the time nearly as much as I used to, especially concerning Byer family functions.
Mom and I were on our way to my bridal shower, and as usual, we were running late, because Mom took so long to get ready. I was ready early, and growling around like a caged lion. Finally we were on our way, with every stop light and every slow moving car in front of me raising my anger level even more. I was driving, and yelling at everything as we went, and I came up on a car a little way before we got to the turn by the Wagon Wheel Roller Rink, that was moving particularly slow…at least in my mind. Mom tried in vain to calm me down, but I was having none of it. I screamed at the woman, and at some point (looking back I’m not sure just where or how) I passed her, screaming and yelling at her all the way
It was at this point that I realized that the woman in the slow moving car, was none other than my Great Aunt Gladys. Now she never said a word about my behavior, but then she 
didn’t have to. Not only was I horrified that I had acted in such a way toward one of my favorite great aunts, but then I got to face her at the shower. As I said, she never said a word about it, but I had to carry on a conversation with her, hoping that she was still speaking to me, and hoping that my face didn’t show the true level of the humiliation I felt.
I have had several turning points in my life, concerning patience…or the lack thereof, and each one of them has left it’s impressions on my mind. I have to hope that I have learned a few things about that in my lifetime, and I often feel like I have a good handle on it now…until the next episode, that is.
For seven years, Susan was the youngest grandchild of my in-laws. I suppose we thought of her as the baby all that time, but she really wasn’t. She was to be the youngest girl for the rest of her life, however. For some reason, that youngest girl status is unique, and she can be in a unique position too. When the older girls were coming into the teenaged years, and were very style conscious, Susan still didn’t really care much about all that. It’s not that she didn’t become very style conscious later on, because she did, but when the other girls were there already, Susan was still wearing what the other girls deemed a mismatched outfit, because 
the socks totally did not match the rest of the outfit. The girls have all laughed about this picture for several reasons. We have wondered what was so funny, because they were all laughing and not just the typical canned smile for the picture.
Susan tells us that the outfit she had on was her favorite at the time. I don’t know if that included the socks or not, but my guess is not. Kids change over the years, and now Susan is dealing with little girls who insist that they totally match. I have to wonder if that is a difficult situation for Susan, since matching wasn’t always her strong suit. I realize that her matching skills 
have vastly improved over the years, but it still has to be a bit trying when your girls won’t wear this or that outfit, because they don’t like the color of the top you picked out.
Seriously though, Susan is a great mom, and she and her girls do very well together, and have great times. I have watched her with them, and it is a loving, caring relationship. The girls love doing things with their mom, especially the girly things…or fishing as long as they don’t catch anything. Susan makes their lives special in all the necessary ways. Today is Susan’s birthday. Happy birthday Susan!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
My niece, Dustie has been a homemaker and she has worked outside the home in the 11 years that she has been married to my nephew, Rob. She is a great mom, and has done a wonderful job caring for her children, Raelynn, Matthew, Audrianna, and her step-daughter, Christina. Over the years, she has also been very helpful to my mom and my sister…doing some of the shopping and other errands they needed help with. That has been something that has endeared Dustie to our family for a long time.
Dustie has also worked at times during her marriage to my nephew. She has worked at several places, including McDonald’s 
and Outback Steakhouse, but she seems to have found her calling at Albertson’s. Dustie was recently hired to head up the Salad Bar at Albertson’s. I know there is more to it than that, but I don’t know all the details of her job yet. I do think she has a gift when it comes to salads though, and I think her co-workers would agree. They like to come to her when they are on their lunch break because she can create the coolest salads, and from what I hear, her guacamole is fabulous. We all have a niche in life, and I have to wonder if Dustie hasn’t found hers. Some people are just natural cooks, and their work is very creative and appealing. That is the way Dustie’s salads are. She puts a lot of work into them and takes pride in how much people love them. A good chef is like that. They instinctively know what people will like to eat, and how to make it all look amazing.
There is, however, another side to Dustie…a humorous side…maybe even a strange side. While most of what Dustie does is perfectly normal, it would seem that after work is over, she changes…becomes a totally different person…someone we simply don’t know. Maybe it is the influence of her co-workers, the hours she works, dealing with having a job and a household to take care of…I don’t know, but something has changed her, and it is very strange. After Dustie and her co-workers get off work, they become…Lettuce Heads. I think this whole salad thing might just be…affecting her!! What do you think? Today is Dustie’s birthday. Happy birthday Dustie!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
As the youngest of my Grandma and Grandpa Byer’s family, my Aunt Sandy got to hear all the stories of her family’s lives, starting at a very young age. Her siblings were already out there doing things with their lives, and it all sounded so interesting to her. I suppose that is why she has been the one that was most interested in the family stories, and my go to person when I need information on this person or that person for a story I’m working on. I really need that kind of a person, because there are many stories I hadn’t heard before. I have enjoyed our talks so much, and look forward to the next one. It’s funny, that sometimes when I ask my mom about something to do with one of her siblings, she will say, “I was married by that time, but Sandy will know.” And mom is right.
Of course, eventually Aunt Sandy began to have stories of her own unique experiences, such as the traveling peddler of sorts, who was allowed to take a picture of Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt 
Sandy, or the trip she and grandma took to Wisconsin to visit my family, when we lived there. And as a little girl, she became an aunt at an early age when my cousin Susie was born. They would be almost like sisters in those younger years, and at least, great playmates. Every life has a story to tell, and Aunt Sandy paid attention to all the stories, keeping them safe in her memory files…just waiting for someone to take an interest in all of those little treasures waiting there. Some people have a knack for remembering the really interesting stories of a family’s past, and Aunt Sandy is one of those people. She has an amazing memory for the details of situations that happened a long 
time ago, and she can relate them in such a way as to keep her audience spellbound throughout her story. That is a great skill to have.
These days, Aunt Sandy has retired from the job she held for many years, and she is taking life a little easier. She and my mom have been spending a little more time together, and that has been such a nice thing for my mom. She hasn’t gotten out as much is the last few years, so those get togethers with Aunt Sandy have become very special. Today is Aunt Sandy’s birthday. Happy birthday Aunt Sandy!! Have a great day!! We love you very much!!
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