Janet's Blog

When I was a baby, I lived with my Mom and Dad in a tiny little trailer house on the home place, a few steps away from the main farmhouse where my paternal grandparents lived with their two youngest daughters. The trailer, which was considerably smaller than many modern-day RVs, had a kitchen, living room, and bedroom, but only one sink, in the kitchen, and a toilet in a little nook all by itself. When any of us needed to bathe, we had to use the clawfoot tub in the farmhouse bathroom. One-year-old me, in our cramped trailer house. Around the time I turned two, Mom and Dad rented a farm a few miles away from the home place, just a mile outside of town. I am sure they were excited to move to their own place, with a real house, but they were not so excited to discover that the new house didn't have any indoor plumbing. They set out to remedy that situation as quickly as possible, but it takes some time to bury a septic tank and install plumbing in a house that has never had it before...

  "Glory to God in highest heaven,  and peace on earth..."   It's that time of year again, Christmas in all its glory.   As we get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's time to reflect, once again, on the challenges and blessings of the past year. It's been another eventful year for us, one that is best shown in pictures, but I'll start with a few notable events. After spending a year and a half at Gardenside in Fairbury, M om contracted Covid for the second time in 6 months, and wasn't able to overcome it. She joined Dad in Heaven on April 17th, just four days shy of her 89th birthday.  Bill's Dad also had Covid this summer, and spent some time in the hospital before moving to Heritage temporarily, after he fell. He spent several months living with Bill's sister, JoAnn, and her husband, Bill, but he is back at Heritage now. He has some mobility issues, but he's doing pretty well for a man whose 99th birthday is fast approaching. Levi sta...

Anna Elizabeth Tyler was born almost three weeks before her due date, at 10:53 a.m. on Monday, October 30th, 2023, in Columbus, Ohio. She weighed 5.45 pounds, and was 17.25 inches long. Her entrance into this world was more dramatic than we had hoped, since she had to spend eleven days in the NICU to monitor her breathing. But, after the initial scare, she is nursing well and growing appropriately at home. Anna at just a few days old Anna is the only one of our eight grandchildren who has spent any time in NICU. At one month of age, she is still small, but she is finally outgrowing her preemie clothes and moving on to newborn sizes. It's hard to be more than 1200 miles away from family when they need help, but contemporary forms of communication make that much easier than it used to be. Nevertheless, Bill and I were glad to join our daughter, Erin, her husband, Reed, our grandson, Will, and baby Anna, for Thanksgiving. We got to see for ourselves how their whole family is thriving....