Miriam and Gina
These are picture from the last year of Miriam.
Martha, Maria, Moriah
Miriam and Gina
Eric and Miriam in the snow
Miriam
It was Miriam's birthday on the 10th. She was 19 years old. Birthdays of my children always make me go back and remember my life "back then".
I was 27 yrs old and Miriam was my 6th baby. We "planned" on this baby. If you could call it a plan. We wanted God to "plan" our family. But how that is put into practice is different for different families and even over the different times in our lives it meant many different things. Michael and Mishael were very close in age. I got pregnant with Mishael when Michael was only 8 mo. There were problems with the pregnancy, I ended up on bed rest and having to quit nursing Michael. Bed rest with 4 children under 7, and not lifting your 9 mo old baby that wants to nurse, but can't....... interesting to say the least!
So we felt very peaceful in using natural family "planning" after Mishael. After I was done nursing Mishael we both wanted another baby. So as I say Miriam was not an accident, she was "planned"!
We moved to Kalispell early in the pregnancy where we lived in a nice 3 bedroom mobile home. I had horrible morning sickness (morning, noon, and night) Rick was great at cooking hamburgers. He would sprinkle them with smoke flavoring. I can't stand the smell of that stuff to this day. Martha being 9 at this point began her adventures with cooking. No wonder Martha is such a great cook with all the morning sickness I had! This mobile home, would shake when the washer would spin. It's horrible being so nauseated and shook at the same time.
After 9 months in Kalispell living mostly on unemployment, the phone company decided to put on a class again, this time in Eugene OR. So we put all our stuff in storage. The company gave us a motel until we could find a home to rent. I was about 7 mo pregnent at the time. It's really fun to try to find a place to rent in a college town, (where they lack rentals) when you have 5 children and your expecting another in a few months. Plus we had our family dog. We wanted to just rent a small little place that would be really cheap, since we didn't have our furniture with us. The job was only going to last 6-9 mo. Well after lots of work we found a big house. It was a nice house for $400 a month, but without furniture it was sort of huge for us. It was easy to keep clean though, and so we all have good memories of our time there.
I found a nurse midwife. She only delivered in the hospital, but I did have the care of a midwife. I was late again, but maybe only 10 days late this time. I went into labor on Rick's 1st day of class! It started in the night with really light contractions. I went in to the midwife and she said just go home and see what happens. An old friend we knew that lived in the area took the children home, Rick went to work and I went to sleep. When I woke up a couple hours later I was in good labor. But I wanted to be sure, so I sat down and read a book. It wasn't very often that I got to be alone in a quiet house, so I was enjoying it. Finally I called our friend and asked her if she could take me to the midwives office. She did and they said, you better get your husband over here. We had a system on his beeper that if it's important we would type in the number and then add 911 to the end. So he was up teaching his 1st day of class, and he sees the 911 number. So they rush me to the hospital, where basically my contractions stopped. This has happened to be a few times, I suppose I don't like being a watched pot. Well the midwife suggested we break the water and I went ahead and agreed. In 5 min. we had a baby! It was a great birth and a beautiful little girl.
I wanted to name her Grace. But what if she was the last baby, and she was the only one without an M name. We couldn't do that. We both loved the name Miriam anyways.
So I was 27 yrs old with 6 children under 10. Homeschooling, Rick had odd hours of noon till 9. We got on an extremely healthy diet, no sugar, or white flour. Took walks every night. We both lost weight and felt really good.
It was a good year there in Eugene. Our paychecks were large, but we were not very wise. We should have invested the money. Instead we bought a computer (which were very expensive back then, like $3000), sewing machine, and a VW camper van. When the job was over we went on a 3 month trip from OR, to Southern Calif all the way to Maine. We camped and stopped all sorts of places. We made an extra bed above so all 8 of us could sleep in the van. 5 in the upper bed and 3 below But if we could we would set up the tent so the children wouldn't be so squished. We had a porta potty, a tiny sink, stove and fridge in the van too.
It was a great trip, but the van turned out to be a lemon, and we lost lots of money on it.
When we got back Rick had one more job with the phone company in Spokane for only 3 mo this time. I was tired of moving around and traveling. I wanted to settle down at all costs. We did. But it cost us too.
Mishael, Miriam, Gina, Jon, Monica, Mark and James don't ever remember living anywhere but Montana. It's a wonderful place to raise children, but you have to be content with a simple life.
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