Easter Weekend 2023

 Easter has changed over the years for our family.

Of course, the message of Easter never changes, but the way we celebrate it is changing as Tiz and Soli grow older.

I am trying desperately to hang on to the things that the girls liked when they were younger like the Easter clue hunt for their baskets and the outside hunt for the plastic eggs with the dollar bills inside. But, sadly, time marches on and those magical Easter moments are no longer quite so magical.  Neither girl had any interest in dyeing the eggs so I did it myself. Note to self:  Next year just leave the hardboiled eggs white, no one will care!

To add fuel to this fire, this is the first Easter without my mom which of course, makes things different.  Even though she was in Park Terrace last year, we could still visit her and share Easter joy with her.  This year she celebrates Easter in heaven because of what happened on that first Easter.  I did make her famous scalloped potatoes and ham for Easter dinner so that was a nice way to feel her with us.

When we lived in Watertown, Alissa, Courtney, and their families came to our house for the entire weekend. Now that we are in Oskhosh, Alissa comes up and stays with Courtney and we spend some of the time together but not near as much as we did in Watertown and I miss that.  I am trying to make the best of these changes and enjoy as much as I can while making memories in a different waky.

.This Easter was fine.  It was not the best Easter ever but then again, it wasn't the worst. Alissa arrived on Thursday.  John and I met up with Courtney and Alissa after dinner and had a few beers and some family bonding with just the four of us.  I really do love spending time with just the fours of us, reminds me of the olden days.

On Good Friday we didn't get together at all. Alissa spent time with Tizita and Soli but on Saturday, Courtney, Alissa and I had a fun time with Cottontails and Cocktails which involved going to downtown businesses and picking up eggs for prizes while enjoying a drink of some sort at each stop.

We met up with everyone else at Green's Pour House and had a very nice dinner.  In past years, Saturday was our bowling day with Kev, Vikki, Mal Nic, and mom. It was always so much fun and I miss that, too.  It can be hard to hold the family together once the matriarch is gone, but I am trying!

Alissa left early on Easter Sunday for her four hour drive home. Courtney's family, John and I went to church at our church, Martin Luther.  It was a wonderful service, nothing new there, The eservices there are always good.  After church we came to our house for the basket hunt and dinner, then I hid the plastic eggs outside at the Van Aukens and that was the end of it.  Easter was over for another year.

Here are some photos

The photos above are from the Cottontails and Cocktails event. 

And gthe following ones are from Easter Sunday

Slide show continued

Here as promised are some more of the slides from my dad's collection. There are so many to choose from and I am sorry that these are out of order. These happened to be on a flash drive from a few years ago so I just put them on my computer and used them for this post.  Hopefully I can add some more at another time. Again, my reason to do this was to give my daughters and granddaughters some of the memories and stories that I loved so much. 

Kev and I on Halloween 1960. I think I was some type of fairy and I don't think that Kev wanted to dress up.

This is me swimming in a lake somewhere up north. It's either in Minoqua or a lake a a cottage near there. We had gone up to a cottage on a lake with the Goeckes and the place was awful. There were leeches and bloodsuckers in the lake, so we would go to Minoqua to swim.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my brother Kev. This is one of the flower gardens in my grandma and grandpa's backyard. I love his saddle shoes!

Easter 1959. Both my brother and I look a bit wired on this photo. John's comment was, "Why does that bunny have such big ears?" I am not sure but they do seem unusually tall.

This is Easter 1959 before church. I love how I had a matching coat, hat and that cute little purse. My mom was so skinny back then. I think our house was yellow at this time. Notce the corsages that my mom and I are wearing, too.

This is me and Kev, summer of 1959 on our neighbor's swingset. We were very close to all our neighbors and shared all the outside swingsets, sandboxes, etc. This was The Velhuizens swingset. They lived next door to the sough of us. Checkais house is across the street. I was the only girl in the neighborhood so I spent a lot of time playing baseball, kickball, and wrestling. 

This is me up at Santa Land in the Dells. Of course, just like Storybook Gardens and Fort Dells, it no longer exists. My Aunt Pearl made the dress of wearing. We took a lot of little trips to places like this around the area.

And speaking of Fort Dells, here we are having a fun time at the Fort. 

This is my grandpa on a hot summer day. I remember he drove up to our house, that's his car and he had cut off a pair of his long pants to make shorts. My grandma was not happy with his new look. My grandpa always wore suspenders. 

I really like this picture of Kev and me. It was Halloween 1959

This waw one of many family vacations that\we took to Lake of the Clouds Michigan. 

My dad, Kev, and I having a picnic lunch on one of our trips. I remember that cute outfit I was wearing and I also remember that cooler on the table.

For some reason we have a lot of pictures by pumps at waysides. We must have liked to stop at them and I am sure Kev liked to work the pump.

This is Kev and me at Ohma's house on N. Washington St. It was Easter and look at that pillbox hat that I am sporting. Ohma always liked to be posing or touching something in pictures as you can see here. She was such a wonderful lady. She had very little but her heart was full of faith and love. My mom was a lot like her.

A Christmas at my grandma's house on Green St. They always had a tall, very skinny tree. All my Christmas dresses in gradeschool were velvet. 

This is Christmas in our basement with Jody and Tim Block. Their mom, Betty was my mom's cousin and our families were very close as we were growing up. My dad always liked to have a tree in the basement and upstairs. Some years, he just cut the top off of the upstairs tree and stuck it on a table down in the basement. This year's tree was a full size.

My grandpa, Kev, my dad, and me at the Milwaukee County Zoo. I don't remember going many places with my grandma and grandpa except out to eat but apparently we did go to the zoo with them.

You might recognize this rock. It's located near the bandshell at Riverside Park. I always called it the watermelon stone because at park school we would spit our watermelon seeds from this rock. It actually has a time capsule buried under it.

Feeding the deer at Riverside Park. We grew up just above the baseball diamonds on Highland Ave and this was our backyard. We loved feeding the deer until someone shot one, then the city got rid of them. It was a sad day.

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....................This is a pool at a motel in Eagle River on one of our Northwoods vacations. My dad was very thriftly when it came to motels and he was not a swimmer so having a pool was not important to him but this time he let us stay in this motel and I loved the pool.  The next time we traveled north and I asked if we could stay there again, he checked on the price and it had gone up to $22.00, much to expensive for him. ..I remember not being very happy that night!

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Another Easter and I have lost my cuteness to that awkward age around middle school. Still have the matching purse and hat though but what is up with those socks

This is my cheerleading uniform in the 5th grade at St. John's. We had to make the coulotte skirts and the top was a simple white sweatshirt. We had to try out to make the cheerleading team and it was quite an honor when over twenty girls tried out and only six were chosen to wear this uniform and represent the school! 

Fifth grade slumber birthday party for me. These were three of my gradeschool friends, Chris Grosnick, me, Pam Grady, and Lori Wickus. I remember this being a very fun party.

Another favorite of my dad and me. He must have made those paper hats for us. I know we were up icabin in Tomahawk on this picture.

 

This is my grandma and grandpa, Leona and Erwin Kohlhoff in their backyard. Look at those beautiful roses! I had so many good times with my grandma and grandpa over the years. They were even able to take are of Alissa when I taught preschool and took Courtney with me\

My fifth birthday. I loved my cowboy hat, I also had a gun and holster as well as cowboy boots that I loved just as well. My mom always made sure we had a birthday party with our friends. Birthdays were big celebrations in our house.

This is me on a slide at the lake in Tomahawk. I nearly drowned going down this slide. I guess it would have been after this photo because I look pretty happy here. I went down, went under the water and had to be pulled out by a man there. I think my mom was busy chatting with her friend, Juanita up on the beach. The man who pulled me out was a pastor and his last name was Thies, He had a daughter named Amy who became my friend after the incident. So, there you have my near death experience.

This is me and my mom at that same lake in Tomahawk. Sicne we went up there for a number of years, I am not sure if this was the year I almost drowned or not. Apparently my mom is keeping a closer eye on me here.

Another Easter before my brother was born. I must have been three or four. I love that green lamp, wish I still had it today.

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These are two of my best friends from the neighborhood, Tom Checkai and Bruce Veldhuizen. We had the best neighbors growing up. It really was a much easier time to grow up. We would walk in and out of one another's houses, play from sunrise till sunset, and play lots of games with guns. (sticks if no guns were available) Whenever one of us got shot, we had to count to ten and then we were alive again. Teh boys ere always very good about playing dolls with me every once in awhile.

This is the house that I lived in for 20 years of my life until I got married and then I lived there with John and my mom for the 20 more years after our girls flew the nest. My dad lived here for almost 30 years and my mom for over 60 years. That's a lot of history in one house.  This is how it looked when we first moved in when I was two. My dad added the addition of a bedroom before my brother arrived and John and I added a master bedroom with on suite bath. We also added a big bedroom for my mom and made a double garage. 

This is my bff from high school, Connie Dobbratz. She joined my family for a vacaion in a cabin on Lace Arbor Vitae. Her family moved to Brandon WI after our freshman year. I was so sad when she left, but so happy when she returned for our senior year. We have remained friends to this very day. When our kids were little, we spent many fun weekends in Wausau with Connie's family. So many happy memories.

John and I in my backyard sometimne around our engagement. I was teaching Kindergarten at St. John's and he was finishing up college.. So young, so thin, so in love.

My dad behind his beloved bar. He spent a lot of time behind that bar. He loved to have people over, he was a very social person. I think this is after one of our trips. He collected beer cans and mugs from his travels. If this bar could talk, oh, the stories it would tell! My girls spent many hours sitting at this bar while my dad served them kiddy cocktails. Later after my dad died, we spent Christmases down there around his bar reminiscing about him.

And on this note, with my dad at his bar, I will close the slide show. 

Cheers Dad and thanks for leaving me so many memories.

2000 slides and a broken projector

 My dad loved his slides. He had over 2000 of them all organized in circular slide cartridges. Inside each cartridge box, he had a detailed list of the subjects of the slides in that reel. I remember my dad setting up the screen and his projector and going through the slides with whoever was willing to watch with him. I always enjoyed watching them and hearing the stories that he and my mom would tell about all the adventures they had while taking the pictures. I especially liked hearing the stories from before I was born and then in my early years. I have filed all those stories away. 

After my dad died, I would pull out my dad's projector and the slides, (we no longer had the screen, so we would just show them on a light-colored wall,) and show them on holidays. I could look at the slides all day and repeat the stories that my dad and mom had told me, but my audience would dwindle as the slide show wore on. My daughters would only tolerate so much, my brother also couldn't last past two reels, my husband would usually ride it out and my mom thoroughly enjoyed the entire show just as much as I did. To this day, I can hear her and my dad telling the stories.

Fast forward to our move to Oshkosh. We just did not have room in our little apartment for all the slides plus the projector, so I put it in the care of my brother. I knew he would not look at them, but at least they were safe. 

My mom died in August, and we moved into a bigger apartment in November. I had room for the slides and the projector and if they were with me, I could pull them out and watch them whenever the urge hit. We picked them up from my brother's and I immediately set up the projector and began going through the slides. I hadn't even made it through reel 3 when the projector stopped working. We thought it was the bulb, so we checked out ordering a new bulb from Amazon but at $125.00 that wasn't happening. Upon further inspection we realized the bulb was fine but the On. Off switch was broken. Well, there was no way we could fix that ourselves and who would we find that could fix a 60-year-old projector for a decent price. 

Now I realize, there are companies that will put slides onto flash drives or DVD's but that is not a cheap endeavor and with over 2000 slides, it seemed way too expensive. So I made my way over to Ebay and found a slide projector, same make as my dad's, only not quite as fancy as his, but it appeared that the reels would fit. I ordered it to the tune of $100.00. It arrived and we were back in business. John and I looked through all 2000 slides and he listened patiently as I told the stories.

I am hoping that someday my kids and grandkids will sit with me, watch the slides and listen to the stories. I worry that those precious stories won't continue if someone doesn't take time to listen to them and pass them down to future generations. And one never knows when my memory will fade, and I just don't want those memories to fade with it. 

One other thing, every time I see all the work, my dad did writing all those descriptions I think of him and how proud he was of his slides. They are very precious to me.

I am going to share a few of my favorite slides here. I want to have a record of a few of the stories just in case no one will watch them with me and listen to the memories.

This is my mom and me. Not sure of the date but I was born in January of 1953, so I would saay I was one or two months old here. One thing I love about looking at these old slides is seeing clothes, furniture, and decor of the times. Look at that wallpaper. My grandma and grandpa got this apartment ready for my mom and dad after they married. My grandpa built even thing to turn their upstairs into the apartment.

This is my mom, my dad and I in front of our house. Which was my grandma and grandpa's house. We lived in an upstairs apartment. The reddish car visible in the front is our car and the one in the driveway belongs to my grandpa. I am pretty sure this is Easter.

This is me in my crib in the upstairs apartment above my grandma and grandpa's house, 212 Green St. Watertown. Date was spring 1953.  I had the cutest wallpaper in my room. We lived in this apartment until I waa 2 when we moved to 906 Highland Ave where I lived for the rest of my childhood and then again after my daughters moved out.

This is my mom and dad all dressed for a formal dance. It was during Watertown's centennial celebration. My dad had grown the facial hair for the celebration. 

This is my dad and I in our backyard. He still has his facial hair so this must have been around the centennial celebration. That was a stone fireplace in the background. 

This is my mom and I dressed for the centennial in our Sisters of the Swish dresses. My daughters used these dresses for dress up when they were little. They played a lot of Little House on the Prairie, and the dresses were great for that.

One of my all-time favorites, me and my dad doing tricks. I love how I always was dressed so cute. This was at our house on Highland Ave. 

This is me in my backyard which was also my grandma and grandpa's backyard. It was a big, beautiful backyard with lots of flowers, vegetable gardens and hot beds with plants. There were horsehoe pits and sheds full of treasures.

This is me and my very good friend, Karrie Kucckan Aleshire. We are in the apartment above my grandma and grandpa's house. Looks like we are having some type of tea party. I was born in January and Karrie was born in May. We are still good friends today!

My second birthday celebrated in our apartment. Look at the wallpaper and all the Funk and Wagnall encyclopedias on the shelf! I always had the prettiest dresses thanks to my grandma who always bought them for me at Tot and Teen, a children's shop here in Watertown.

Same picture just a little closer.That cake looks yummy. I also remember the footstool it is sitting on. I used to like to lay on the side of it on my tummy and roll around. 

Another favorite of me and my dad hammering at our kitchen table in our apartment. I still have those little girls salt and pepper shakers that you see on the tavle in front of us.

Me with two of my dolls. I am sitting in a rocking chair that I wish I had not gotten rid of when we moved. We are still in the apartment, so I am around 2 here.Notice how that one doll has such big elf ears!

Easter Sunday with my grandma, Leona Kohlhoff and my grandpa, Erwin Kohlhoff. We are in front of our their house, our apartment. I love the hats!

This is my other grandma who we called Ohma. She is my mom's mom, Helen Block Uttech. This is the house she rented on 215 N. Washington St. Watertown. She lived their with her sister, Laura. They never had much money and both worked very hard. I am with Ohma and my only cousin Bob Uttech on this photo. Yep, only one cousin. My dad was an only child and my mom had one brother, Herb who had one son, Bob.  Bob was 14 years older than me.

This is me outside of the new house on Highland Ave. I remember this cute muff with little doll head on it. Again, my grandma used to buy my winter coats, too. 

First Easter in our new house on Highland Ave. It was pink when we bought it. I love my little outfit and my corsage. 

Well, this is a little out of the timeline. This is me Kev and me at a motel in Minoqua. We took a lot of family vacations. My dad loved to travel, and he planned our trips very carefully. I have so many happy memories of those trips.

This is me and my neighborhood friends, Tom and Mark Checkai me and Bruce Veldhuizen. We were dressed up for hobo day down at Riverside Park. We went to "park school" where we had special dress up days, all types of games, contests, and activities. It was such a fun place to hang out all summer. There were always two teachers, high school or college kids, one boy and one girl. I don't think being a hobo would be politically correct in this day and age!

This was Easter 1967. I was in 8th grade and Kev was probably 8 year old. I remember this suit. It had an orange blouse underneath. Our house is not pink anymore, it is now green.

My confirmation. May 1967. The picture was taken in our living room.

This picture brings back a lot of memories. It was taken at a cottage we rented on Pickeral Lake. We went up there with Paul, Helen, Karla and Layne Kohlhoff. I was their babysitter and our families were good friends. Helen worked with my dad. Helen did my hair for me ond day and took this picture. I really liked that orange ruffled shirt I had. This was the summer before eighth grade.

This was my 15th birthday and I am wearing my absolute favorite dress. I was in ninth grade, having the time of my life! I wore yellow fish nets with this dress.

I am going to end this post and add more slide pictures in the next post before it gets too long.

See you at the next post!