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Many things changed on the day, Jennifer Schulenberg Parmely, my sister-in-law, was born. No, it wasn’t something that she or her parents did, but rather in the world. On this day, April 12, in 1961, the year Jennifer was born, the world saw it’s very first manned space flight. That was the day that the Race to Space ended with Russia putting the first man in space. That man was Yuri Gagarin. The United States had hoped to win that race, but we were not ready to put our first manned space flight into space for another month. I’m sure that all this meant nothing to Jennifer, or her parents, Walt and Joann Schulenberg, but it is, nevertheless, a historical fact, and it happend on the day she was born.
Jennifer grew up, and became the mother of three boys, Barry, JD, and Eric. There was hope that she would have a daughter, but that was not to be. It seemed to be some kind of tradition in the Schulenberg family…at least with the grandchildren and great grandchildren. Whatever the first baby was, the others in that family were the same. The only one to break that tradition to date is my daughter Amy Royce, who managed to have a girl and then, shocker…a boy. All the others in the family have one or the other. That didn’t leave Jennifer much hope of having a granddaughter either, but Eric and his wife, Ashley broke with the boy tradition in Jennifer’s family and had two girls, Reagan and Hattie. They still kept with the tradition of what the first one is the others are too, however. Of course, there is always a possibility that they will try again for the boy, and maybe…just maybe, they will succeed like Amy did. Until that time, Jennifer is enjoying the little girls she never got to have, and that is very nice for her, because they are little sweeties, for sure.
Jennifer is a nurse at Wyoming Medical Center, and has worked there since she was just seventeen. She 
started as a Candy Striper, and after college, was hired in the Obstetrics department as a nurse. She has always loved newborn babies, and this way she gets to see lots of them, but the good news is that she can hold them and then give them back to their mothers, because as most mothers know, there is a time to have your babies, and a time to be the one to just spoil those babies and let their parents handle the fallout. It’s called being the grandma, and believe me, it’s awesome, as any grandmother will tell you. Today is Jennifer’s birthday. Happy birthday Jennifer!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
Years ago, when my sisters, Cheryl Masterson, Alena Stevens, Allyn Hadlock, and I took a trip to Seattle, Washington to visit our sister, Caryl Reed, who was living there then, we had the wonderful opportunity to go to the Tulip Festival. We drove north from Caryl’s house until we reached Tulip Town near Mount Vernon, Washington. There we were treated to the most amazing sight. There were tulips everywhere. It looked like miles and miles of them. They were planted by color, so we saw rows and rows of each color. It was like looking at a tulip rainbow. That trip, taken in the Spring of 1993 has many lingering memories for me, but I must say that the Tulip Festival was one of the coolest of memories. You just don’t easily forget something like that.
Now that my daughter, Amy Royce lives in Ferndale, Washington, she finds herself right in the area where the 
Tulip Festival is held every year. Before they moved to Washington, they took a trip there at the perfect time, and were able to catch the Tulip Festival, so this year was Amy’s second, of what I am sure will become an annual visit to the Tulip Festival. This year, she went with her friend from Elementary School, Karen Bradley Sargent, her husband, John, and her two little boys, Oliver and Logan. The pictures she posted were lovely. They were just as I remembered it, but of course, pictures could not possibly do justice to being at the Tulip Festival. You have to see it to truly experience it.
I know that they all had a wonderful time yesterday, and I really wish I could have joined them, because I would love to go to the Tulip Festival again. I can’t say that I ever wanted my daughter to move away, but I 
suppose that if she had to do it, there could possibly be a few perks here and there. I really do love the North Western Washington area, and the Tulip Festival. I know that somewhere down the road, I will have to make the trip up to see Amy, when the Tulip Festival is going on so that I can go to it again. For now and for this year anyway, I will have to just settle for the pictures that Amy sends, and the memories I carry in my memory files, because the Tulip Festival is over, or would be before I would be able to get there anyway. So Amy, thanks for the beautiful pictures, and for the memories.
As my niece, Chantel Balcerzak became a grandmother a month ago, when her son Jake Harman and his fiancé, Melanie Price welcomed their daughter, Izabella Siara Harman into the world, I started thinking that like most mothers, the rite of passage to grandmother had suddenly occurred for Chantel, bringing with it a big change. As mothers, we sometimes find it very hard to believe that our child could actually be a parent. They were just babies a few days ago, right? How is it possible that they have babies of their own already? I think that for most parents, the first thought is do these kids really know what they are doing? Of course, in most cases, they do…its just our perception that clouds our thoughts. As with most parents, new or seasoned, the baby is very vocal about whether or not they are happy. If the parents just check the normal things babies are upset about, they can figure it out pretty quickly.
So, the rite of passage is often with the grandparents, and usually the grandmother, who has the misperception 
that this baby, now parent, can manage to take care of and raise this new little person…grandma’s little sweetheart. That is the problem, of course. This is grandma’s little sweetheart, and Chantel raised Jake…whether her mom, Cheryl Masterson, thought Chantel could do it or not, just like my sister, Cheryl raised Chantel, whether our mom, Collene Spencer thought she could do it or not. The babies are now grown up and they can raise children of their own. They have gone through that rite of passage into parenthood, just like the parents have transitioned into grandparents.
Before long, that period of disbelief in the new parents’ ability to do this fades away, because they are doing it and doing it well. Now the new grandparents have the time and ability to relax and enjoy this new little baby…which is what being a grandparent is all about, right. You get to have the baby at the best of times, and give the baby back to the parents at the worst of times. Of course, like most grandparents, you find yourself wanting to help out to make life a little bit 
easier for the tired parents. But then what would grandparenting be if not to give the parents a much needed break sometimes.
As Chantel, her husband Dave, Jake and his fiancé, Melanie embark on this new journey, I know that they will have the greatest of times. Little Izabella is a sweet baby, and I know she will grow into a beautiful little girl. She will learn lots of new things from her big sister Alice, and this family will be a great blessing to their grandparents and great grandparents. I only wish my mom, Jake’s great grandma, Collene Spencer, and my dad, Jake’s great grandpa, Allen Spencer, could have been here to meet our little Izabella.
It would be hard for me to imagine walking away from all I knew to travel to India to begin a thirteen year run as the wife of a missionary, especially in 1874, but that is exactly what Mary Barr Uhl did. Mary was a somewhat distant cousin on my husband, Bob’s side of the family…specifically the Knox side of his family. The beginnings of her future mission were actually laid by when she was still a child. An elderly relative, Dr John Scudder laid his hand on her head and stated his wish for her to become a missionary. I’m sure that for a little girl, being a missionary meant very little, but as she grew, perhaps the words stayed with her. Sometimes, when we think about something like that for so many years, events in our lives line up to put us in exactly the right position to fulfill just such a mission, without our really thinking about it very much at all. Such was the case for little Mary Barr.
Mary Barr was born in Savannah, Ohio, and was educated there and in Springfield, Ohio. As was the case with most girls in those days, becoming a teacher was the degree of choice, and so Mary Barr became a teacher. As time went by, it’s possible that the desire of the elderly Dr John Scudder to have Mary become a missionary, faded into the past to a degree, until she met Lemon Leander Uhl. Leander as he was called, was a pastor in the Lutheran church. Dr Uhl was a graduate of Wittenberg College and Seminary in Springfield, Ohio, and did his post graduate work at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The couple married in the fall of 1872, and Dr Uhl became a missionary in the India field of the General Synod, Lutheran Church. Thus, the desire of Mary’s relative, Dr John Scudder, became a reality. Leander and Mary would spend the next thirteen years in the mission field in India. Mary and Leander arrived in Guntur, India in March of 1873. Mary opened the first school for girls of the upper classes and the first Zenana work for the same classes. She carried on both forms of mission work for many years. Mary’s perseverance and dedication won her great respect in that country. She was an untiring worker among the Telugu Hindus, and aided her husband in the Anglo Vernacular School by visiting the young men students in their homes.
Mary and Leander’s only child, Grace was born in Guntur, India during those missionary years. That is another thing I can’t quite imagine…having my baby so far away from my mother, and the doctors that I trusted in the United States, but by then, perhaps Mary felt comfortable with the help she had around her. It didn’t matter really, because she had no choice. You can’t stop babies from coming when it’s time. You just have to go through it. For Mary, childbirth went well, and she had a beautiful little daughter. It was by the grace of God, and so they named her Grace. While I’m sure that giving birth in a foreign country might have been an event filled with apprehension, the life they gave their daughter was one of many experiences. Not only did Grace experience life in another country, but she experienced schooling in many places. Grace would graduate from the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mary Barr Uhl’s life took many turns that might have seemed far fetched to a child, who had been told of the desire of an elderly relative, but in the end, the desire of Dr John Scudder, that little Mary Barr would become a missionary had come to pass. Her life was not ruled by this man, it was just his desire…that became her desire too. Perhaps he saw something in that little girl that told him that she would be a great missionary. I suppose we will never know, but Mary did indeed, become a great missionary, and spent many years serving God in that capacity before retiring and returning to the United States. She died on March 26, 1926 at the age of 80 years, having fulfilled her destiny.
A few days ago, our family held the first annual Spencer Family Christmas Party. It was a little bittersweet, and at times very sad, because things were very different from what they had been just 10 months earlier. Our holidays are all in the process of being redefined. With our mother’s passing, on February 22nd, we knew that everything would naturally change, and everything has. Nevertheless, like the Byer family…which is our mother’s family…we knew that our parents would not want their daughters to drift apart after their passing, so our youngest sister, Allyn Hadlock, and her husband Chris decided to host the first annual Spencer Family Christmas Party. This first year was filled with some special gift exchanges which included home made jerky, reproductions of special pictures of Jesus that had been in Mom and Dad’s home, special Bible verse plaques, and flash drives that held old family pictures from our childhood. This was an emotional gift exchange, filled with sisterly love and sharing…and yet lacking in the one thing we wanted there more than ever…our parents. Since that was not to be, we had to settle for a Christmas party they would have absolutely loved…and on that note, we succeeded is a very spectacular way.
Having gone through most of our parents things, we knew which things were precious, and which things brought back sweet memories. One of the things that brought back sweet memories of Christmases past, was 
the Christmas sweater that Mom always wore that day. Your really couldn’t call it Christmas until you saw Mom in that sweater. She also wore a goofy necklace with Christmas lights on it. Our sister, Alena Stevens got that sweater, and decided to wear it to that Christmas party. It was almost like having Mom there, or at least like the echo of Christmas past. It really was a special treat to see that sweater. The necklace went to my niece Jessi Sawdon, and while she didn’t think of wearing it to the party, she wore it to church the next morning, so the echo of Mom at Christmases in our past was complete. I don’t think that we could celebrate this particular Christmas without the Christmas Sweater. That’s what kept Mom close to us.
There were of course, some new faces at this year’s party, but it seems there always are. We had several boyfriends or girlfriends who joined us. The grandchildren are getting so grown up now, that we are almost to the point of another growth spurt in the family. In fact at the time of the party, my grand nephew, Jake Harman and his fiancé, Melanie Price were expecting a baby, but at the time of this writing, she has already arrived. Little Miss Izabella Siara Harman made her grand entrance at 12:55pm on December 21, 2015, weighing in at 5 pounds 11 ounces. This year seems to be a year of firsts…some good some not so good. 
Izabella’s arrival was definitely a good first. She is the first great great granddaughter of my parents, Collene and Al Spencer, the first great granddaughter of my sister Cheryl Masterson, the first grandchild of my niece Chantel Balcerzak, and the first child of my grand nephew Jake Harman…as well as the first sibling of Melanie’s daughter Alice. She has turned some of us into great grand aunts and uncles, and others into aunts and uncles. She joins a huge family, with more to come in the future. We are all so very blessed and I know that our parents would be so proud and happy too.
Until September 1, 1947, my mother’s family consisted of my grandparents and nine children. When a family is young, you rarely think about the future changes…such as the children getting married and having children of their own. Those years seem far off into the future. Nevertheless, the reality is that time flies, and before you know it, all the children are married and have children of their own. While those years seem to fly by, you just never forget the days when another person joined the family, and the reality is that whether you do it consciously or not, you are always a little bit amazed when you think about the first addition to the family that wasn’t your own child.
For my grandparents, that day came on September 1, 1947 and that additional person was my uncle, George 
Hushman. The years that followed the marriage of my aunt, Evelyn Byer to Uncle George, were a virtual whirlwind of babies and other marriages. A few years back, we proudly counted our extended family at over 200 people, and at this point I would have to guess the number to be closer to 300 people…if not more, and Uncle George started it all when he married Aunt Evelyn.
Following their marriage, their five children followed in rapid succession. Their first child, a daughter named Sheila Ann, or Susie to all who know her, was born just fourteen months later, on November 14, 1948. Their first son, George Wave was born just thirteen months later on December 13, 1949. He was followed by Shelley Kay on November 8, 1950, Shannon Lee on January 27, 1953, and finally Gregory Wane on April 10, 1954. By the time Aunt Evelyn and Uncle George’s family was complete, there were other children in the family who were married, and the family continued to grow quickly.
Once a family reaches the point of adding the first spouse to the family, the growth really never stops. There is always another of the couples who is having a child, having a child get married, or having a child have a child. As quickly as one becomes a parent, another becomes a grandparent. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill…it grows and grows. Our family has never stopped growing since the day Uncle George married into it. And it will continue to grow as long as time endures. While Grandma and Grandpa Byer started it all with their nine children, it was Uncle Georges proposal to Aunt Evelyn, that signaled the next phase of its growth. Today is Uncle George’s 91st birthday. Happy birthday Uncle George!! Have a great day!! We love you!!
Lately, I have been watching the remodeling shows on television, such as Flip or Flop, Fixer Upper, and Property Brothers. I find it very interesting that they can take a house that starts out looking so awful, and turn it into something quite beautiful. The reasons people remodel a home are as varied as the people themselves. By watching the shows, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to plan and execute a remodel of your own house. I can’t say, of course, that I am ready to tackle such a thing, but maybe someday I could be, if I watch those shows for a while.
I grew up in a little house, not far from where I live today. Back then, things were tight. Nevertheless, like most families who live in little houses, we were a very close family. Our parents, Allen and Collene Spencer, and their family of five daughters lived in a two bedroom house for much of my young life. Then, in the early 1970’s, my sister, Cheryl got married. Her husband was going to be going into the Air Force, and so they were living with us for a time. Our family was growing in another way too, because Cheryl was going to have her first child…her daughter and my niece, Chantel Masterson Balcerzak.
It was decided that the garage, which pretty much never held a car, but was rather a storage unit, should become a third bedroom and a utility room. Our house was about to undergo a renovation, and we would be the contractors. It was an exciting time. So much was changing in our family. My younger sisters and I were about to become aunts. Of course, the exciting part of the time would be short lived, because after my sister’s husband was done with basic training, they would be stationed in Plattsburgh, New York, and that would be one of the loneliest times we would face. But, that time was a little way off yet, and remodeling the house was exciting.
At first the work was done in the garage, while it still resembled the garage to a large degree. Cement was poured and we all put our hand prints in it before it dried…along with our names. It became a permanent part of the structure, and one I had forgotten about until I saw the picture that was taken of them. Before long, the garage had a floor that was the same level as the floor in the house, and doors were put in for the utility room and the bedroom that would become our parents room. The sleeping arrangements were a little unorthodox during this time, and my younger sisters and I found ourselves sleeping in the attic of the garage…at place that had been our clubhouse years earlier. It was almost like 
camping. The room that had been ours was now occupied by Cheryl and her husband.
Before very long, the renovations were complete, and we were back to sleeping in the bedroom again, except with only four of us now. Just as quickly, it seemed anyway, Cheryl and her husband were living in New York, and there were two sisters to each room. The renovations continued to make our lives more spacious, even if the house now had a bit of an empty feel. Having part of the family living so far away never got easier for any of us…until the time that they moved back to Casper for good. That was a great day. Still, by then, I was married and had a daughter of my own. Our family never lived together in that house again. Like that house, life had changed forever.
Our family always loved having our Aunt Ruth Spencer Wolfe, her husband, Uncle Jim Wolfe and their kids, Shirley, Larry, and Terry come to visit. We always had so much fun when they came. It didn’t matter if we were playing with the kids or sitting around listening to the many stories Uncle Jim or Aunt Ruth told. There was always so many fun things going on when they were there. My dad, Allen Spencer and Uncle Jim kept us all laughing with their antics. Dad and Uncle Jim were always coming up with some new thing…from wild recipes to crazy challenges. There was never a dull moment when our two families were together.
When we were kids, the two families took trips together. A favorite was the South Dakota trip. Our parents were great campers, and they always made it a lot of fun. I also remember several trips to Casper mountain. The mountain was a long standing favorite, because it was close and yet we got to 
get out and camp, or at the very least, go for picnics. For a number of years, however, their family lived here in Casper, and that made it much easier to get together.
I gave us kids lots of time to play together. They had chickens, ducks, and geese, and for my sisters and me, all city girls, that in itself was a novelty. Of course, we didn’t have to clean up after them either. I think we were pretty prissy, and we would have probably freaked out at the site of the coop. They also had a garden, and in it was just about everything you could imagine, so I’m sure Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim found a few things missing from the garden after we all spent time outside at their house. They also had a tractor that Shirley would hook the wagons up to and take us all for rides. It was a great time. Of course all too often, it was more fun to be inside with them. Our dad’s kept things lively, whether they were together or all by themselves.
For Uncle Jim’s kids, he was a role model. He taught them how to shoot a gun, and go hunting, so they could provide meat for their families. Their training started as young as two years old, and that is something I agree with. If children know what a gun can do, and they are taught the value of life, they will gain a healthy respect for both life and gun. Shirley recalls fishing, hunting and camping with her dad, and with that came a great 
sense of camaraderie between the two of them. He was her hero, and she knew that he could do anything. I suppose that is part of what made it hard for her when his mind started to go. Suddenly the dad, who had always taken such good care of her and the family, needed her to take care of him. I know how she feels about that. It is a hard thing to know that your parents are aging, and all you can think is, “How can I stop this? I want to go back in time!!” Unfortunately, that can never be. We live the life we have been given, in the time we were meant to live in, and when it is time to go home to heaven, we must go, whether our family is ready or not. Today would have been Uncle Jim Wolfe’s 94th birthday. He left us almost 3 years ago, and we’ll always miss him. Happy birthday in Heaven, Uncle Jim. We love you.
Bob and I, along with our granddaughter, Shai Royce have looked forward to our trip to Seattle, Washington to see her parents and brother for the three and a half months since they moved there. It has been a long and sad time for us here, and them there. Now that the trip is over, the sadness has come flooding back in again. The trip was lovely and we all had such a nice time. It was so good to be able to see where they live and tour the area. We talked and laughed, and just enjoyed each other’s company again. It felt a little bit like old times, except that we were in the wrong place for old times. So, it is like new times, instead of old times.
All week we tried not to think about just how fast the week was going. Nevertheless, it was going by fast. You can’t slow time down. It goes at the pace that it does, and it doesn’t care how you feel about it. There are only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a week. And you have to sleep some of them too, unfortunately. That makes a short amount of time go even faster. And a week is such a short time anyway.
This trip was centered around Amy and her husband, Travis Royce renewing their vows for their twentieth anniversary too, so there was a group of people, and not just us. We had to share them, and what I really wanted to do was to have them all to ourselves. Nevertheless, share we must, so share we did. And I 
understood it too, because we weren’t the only ones who had missed them. Still, we had a very nice time. It was just too short.
Bob and I have often taken just one week of vacation at a time, and thereby had two weeks of vacation at separate times, but with our daughter and family living so far away, I can certainly understand why my parents always wanted to take at least two weeks to go visit when they had daughters who lived far away. Maybe if we had taken two weeks, it wouldn’t have felt like it went by so fast, but then again, probably not. In reality, it doesn’t matter how much time you have, because it will just never be long enough.
During the week we were with Amy, and her family, it was easy to distance ourselves from the time that was coming so quickly, when we would have to leave them…at least most of the time anyway. We did all the things that tourists would do, as if this was just another carefree trip with no impending separation, but inside I knew that in just a matter of days, we would all be feeling the rush of sadness once again.
When the last day arrived, we went to breakfast, still able to pretend that it was a day like any other day, but all too quickly that time passed too, and the easy conversation of the meal at the restaurant turned into the quiet reflection of the sadness we all dreaded. In the end, the words simply stuck in our throats behind the tears we were trying so hard to hold back. Of course, we failed miserably, and the tears ran silently down our 
cheeks. We hugged each other, once and then again and again, but finally we had to leave. The ride to the airport was very quiet. We simply couldn’t speak. I thought about how Amy must be feeling, and the story Shai had shared with me about her first day at work. She set the pictures of her family on the shelf in her cubicle, and with a rush of emotion thought about the fact that she could not hug her daughter. I knew she would be feeling the same way again. We had hugged each other over and over and spent as much time together as we possibly could, but in the end, it is just never enough.
When a young woman gets married, she expects to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, for my husband, Bob Schulenberg’s second great grandmother, Mary LuLu Taylor, that was not to be. Mary, who went by LuLu, married Bob’s second great grandfather, James Leary on September 30, 1880 in Shelby, Missouri. They were very much in love. The young couple would move to Forsyth, Montana and on January 4, 1886, she gave birth to Bob’s great grandfather, Marion Chester Leary, who went by Chester for most of his life. Now their family had entered the next phase. They were no longer a couple, but rather, a family…at least for a while. The couple would move again, this time to St Louis, Missouri. March 26, 1888 would find LuLu a widow, with a two year old son to raise…alone.
For a young mother in the 1880s, being a widow didn’t leave her with a lot of options. LuLu moved back to Shelby, where she met her second husband, James Begier. They 
were married on March 18, 1890. LuLu thought her life had turned around, and in many ways, she was right. LuLu and James Begier went on to have Minnie in 1893, John in 1896, and Mable in 1902. I’m sure that by 1902, LuLu felt like her life was finally perfect. She had her husband and her children. Nevertheless, life would not reamin so perfect forever. This marriage would not be a happily ever after marriage either, because while James Begier’s death date is not known at this time, the last known census showing James Begier was in 1910.
LuLu would remarry again on February 19, 1919 in Rosebud, Montana to Milo Warren. She had moved back to Forsyth because her eldest son, Chester Leary, was living there, with his family. When a woman is widowed, it is often the best option to move to where family lives…especially in those days. As with LuLu’s previous husbands, Milo would predecease her on August 21, 1928. Once again, LuLu moved. This time to be near her youngest daughter, Mabel Begier Brown. I don’t really know if Mabel was sick during this time or not, but LuLu passed away on April 26, 1929 in Fletcher, Oklahoma, and her daughter, Mabel Begier Brown passed away on 
April 2, 1931 in Elgin, Oklahoma, and the young age of only 28 years.
While, LuLu’s life was filled with times of sadness, she did nevertheless, live a full life. She had the opportunity to live in several places, and she was blessed with four children, and many grandchildren and multiple levels of great grandchildren, including my husband and his siblings, by daughters and their cousins, and my grandchildren and their cousins. While I never had the opportunity to meet LuLu in person, I have long beed intrigued by her life. My only regret is that I don’t have pictures of all her husbands…just James Begier, nor of her children…just Chester Leary. Nevertheless, I feel blessed to have those few. LuLu was born on August 31, 1861, and today is the 154th anniversary of her birth. Happy birthday in Heaven Mary LuLu Taylor Leary Begier Warren. I look forward to meeting you someday.
