It's taken me a while to get to my 5th (and final) childhood home for a number of reasons. First, because Frank's appendicitis put me behind a couple of weeks. Second, because I had to track down a few photos (thanks for your help, Mom and Dad). Third, because I had to scan a lot of photos (thanks for your help, Frank). And last, because I knew that since this is the home I lived in the longest and remember the best it was going to take a long time to write about it. So I kept putting it off until I had time. Which I probably still don't. But I'm going to try. I already spent a hour or so last week adding the photos. So here goes.
This is 955 E. 840 N. in Orem, Utah:
We moved to this house in December 1978 when I was 10 years old. I lived in this house (with a few absences for college and my mission) until I got married in April 1992. It's pretty momentous that we stayed put for so long, considering I lived in four different houses the first 10 years of my life. My parents lived in this house for several more years after I got married; I think they moved into their current home in Lehi, Utah around 2002.
Because we lived in this house so long, the house changed quite a bit over the years as my parents were able to redecorate to fit their tastes better and as repairs and improvements were made. I definitely think we improved the house in the years we lived there! As I go through the description of this house I will mention several of the changes we made, although I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of them by now. I tried to include pictures that show the house the way it was when we moved in and how it looked later on.
So just for starters, the house was not blue when we moved into it. The house color then was an unattractive green color--Shellie dubbed it "barf green", and that was a pretty accurate description. I couldn't find a picture of the house from the front when it was green, but here is a picture from the back:
Yes, we needed to replace part of the rain spout. But the icicles were kind of cool--that's why I took the picture, I think. The ten year old mind!
The rain gutters and some of the other trim (possibly the shutters, but I don't remember now what color they were) was a dark olive green. I don't know who picked out those colors, but I'm not a fan of their taste. I can't remember exactly when we painted the house now--it was at least a year or two after we moved in--but I think the blue with white trim is much more pleasing (although not particularly fashionable now).
From the picture you can see that we had a two car garage (the driveway was fairly steep) and a second driveway on the side of the house. You can also see the edge of the picket fence in front. The fence was the same green as the house when we moved in but got painted white when we painted the house. To the left of the garage (when facing the house) you can kind of see a flower bed with stepping stones, lined with railroad ties. We added that landscaping at some point--I remember when we moved in that area was sloped down to the driveway and planted with grass but the grass never grew well there so the flower bed was a good idea.
You can see that you had to climb several steps to get to the front door--those steps could be very treacherous in the winter when they were icy! I remember it was hard to maintain them, too--the freezing temperatures in the winter tended to break them down. I think they were re-surfaced more than once in the years that we lived in the house. The large window to the left of the front door was in the living room. The windows above the garage were for the two upstairs front bedrooms. The two on the left were for my room (and Amy's); the two on the right were for Shellie's room.
This house was different from any other house I had lived in because it was a "split level". I remember my mom trying to explain it to me before we moved in, but I couldn't really envison it until I actually saw it. The house had four different levels. The front door opened onto the main level. The main level had the living room and the kitchen. There was a small foyer when you first walked in, with a small coat closet opposite from the front door. When we moved into the house, the wall to the left of the foyer was a half wall, which you can see in this photo:
(Picture taken about 1986, I think. That's Liz & Amy on the love seat and Erin holding Goofy.)
In this photo you can also see the "lovely" wallpaper that graced part of the walls in the living room and foyer--gold and olive green--and the original gold carpet.
In the photo below, taken in 1991 (I'm sitting in kitchen), you can see the front door. I'd forgotten that it had that yellow frosted glass window until I saw the picture, although I do remember the yellow frosted glass window that was next to the front door (not visible in this picture.) In this picture you can also see that the half wall has been replaced with a whole wall. There is also a tile floor in the foyer which we put in (I think originally it was carpet, and who wants carpet in their foyer?).
Why am I holding a Circle K bag and looking happy? Well, that is a story for another post!
The cute baby in the picture below is Erika, which means this photo was also taken in 1991--December, I think. I included this one so you can see the tan carpet that replaced the ugly gold carpet in the living room.
Behind this astonishingly cute couple sitting on the living room couch, you can see that the wall is no longer graced with gold and olive green wallpaper. It's painted white. (Although I think the white had a slight blue tint to it.)
(Frank & Annette--October 1991. This picture was taken the weekend Frank flew to Utah from Hawaii to visit me and we got engaged.)
Here's another picture where you can see the filled in wall (Hans is leaning against it and the piano). Christmas 1991--Erin, Rachelle, Nate, Tim, and Amy.
The living room was in the front of the house adjacent to the foyer. If you kept walking straight forward from the front door, you would pass a set of six stairs on your right (going to the upstairs level) before stepping into the eat-in kitchen. As you stepped into the kitchen, there was another set of six stairs on your right (going to the downstairs level). You can see most of that in the picture below, which was taken from the living room looking towards the stairwells. The darling little girl is Erin, in her Easter dress. This picture was taken in 1987.
When you stepped into the kitchen from the living room, you were in the eat-in part of the kitchen. The work area of the kitchen was to your left. When we moved into the house, the cabinets were dark, the floor was green linoleum and the wallpaper was yellow and green. Oh, and the countertops were green too. Whoever decorated the house before us was definitely fond of green! Here is a picture taken of the kitchen as it looked when we moved in:
This picture was probably taken at Christmas time in 1981. Curtis lived in Texas by then, I think, but he would have been visiting for Erick's wedding. The people in the picture (clockwise) are Shellie, Erick, Mom, Curtis, and Dad. Looks like they are playing Uno. I have a lot of memories of playing Uno and other games around this table!
In the picture above you can see the wallpaper a little better. The window behind Ben looked out on the backyard. There is a door to the backyard in this wall too--on the other side of Shellie. (The cake is my 14th birthday cake. I didn't intend to have a "Liberty Bell" cake originally--it was supposed to be a girl in a dress with a large skirt.but after making the cake part, we discovered that the doll pic was missing. So we had to get creative. At least it was the day after Independence Day, so anything patriotic works. Oh, and check out the camera with flash cubes that Ben is holding! So glad we don't have to buy flash cubes anymore!)
This picture shows the kitchen wall that borders the living room. There was a utility closet (which you can see behind Tim) on this wall as well as another larger closet that we used for a pantry (you can just see the edge of it on the far right of the picture.)
(March 1982)
In this picture you can see the original "marbled" green countertops. You can also see another use for the skirt cake pan without the doll--a volcano! Ben dreamed this one up for a Cub Scout cake auction. Pretty clever, don't you think?
Eventually, a lot of things in the kitchen were changed as well. The green linoleum was replaced (with tan linoleum, I think), the wallpaper was changed to a pattern with light blue and pink flowers, the stair railings and the back door were painted white, the cabinets were also painted white and the countertops were replaced with something a lot less obnoxious (I can't remember what exactly now). You can see some of the changes in the photos below. These first two show the back door, lighter wallpaper, and the white stair railing (it used to be dark brown):
(Amy & Nate, December 1991)
The kitchen wall with the downstairs stairwell was originally a half wall also so that you could see down into the family room, although it was the lower half of the wall that was missing, and the upper wall was supported by posts that matched the stairwell. (They were dark brown originally as well.) You can see the stairwell and the half wall in the picture below.
Amy & I were being a little silly when we posed for the picture above. (May 1991)
Here's another picture where the half wall is visible. (Around spring 1993; we were having a family game night and in this game I had to retrieve a ring poised atop a cup of flour with my teeth! Unfortunately, the flour disintegrated and I got flour all over my face!):
In the picture below, which was taken on Christmas 1991, you can see the cabinets are painted white now. The near cabinets still look dark because we covered the back of them with corkboard to make a large bulletin board. (In the photo I am the one opening the refrigerator, next to me are Erick, Liz, and Anna.)
In this picture you can see the pantry. I believe this was July 5, 1993--birthday #25 for Amy & I:
This picture was taken in July 1999. (See, we are still playing games around the table!) You can see that the dark brown refrigerator has been replaced by a white side-by-side version. In the photo: Tim, Madalyn, Amy, Nate, Rachelle, Annette.
In this picture, taken the same day, you can see that the half wall next to the family room has been filled in. You can also see Jared (on my lap), Sarah, Juan, and Liz.
Ok, that covers the main level pretty thoroughly. Now we are going to go upstairs!
(Me in January 1992)
Sorry for the goopy kissing picture that follows. If I remember right, we were having an "under the miseltoe" kissing contest in December 1991. (Mom and Dad won.) I included it here because it is a good shot of the upstairs hallway. We are standing on the stairs and behind us at the end of the hallway on the left you can see the door to the master bedroom.
On the right side of the upstairs hallway there was a long, deep closet with a built in desk and lots of shelves. We called it "the study". You can see the study doors in the picture below. (December 1991. Frank liked to stalk me and take pictures when I wasn't expecting it.)
The typewriter resided here, along with a lot of books. I remember spending quite a bit of time in there one summer while learning how to type. There were loads of interesting things in there, too, such as the family Book of Remembrance, my parents' high school yearbooks, old National Geographic magazines, and a big box of old Children's Friend magazines dating back to the early 1960's. (Amy and I used to search through them looking for paper dolls. Yep, the Friend used to have paper dolls--awesome ones! We'd color them and cut them out and give them names. We used to play with them by the hour. We even figured out how to make "beds" and "dressers" for them out of envelopes. So cool!)
The master bedroom was quite large and kind of L-shaped. On the wall opposite the door there were windows on either side of a large rock fireplace. Across from the window in the back corner there was a door which led into a walk in closet which opened right up into the master bathroom. The picture below of Amy and I was taken in the master bedroom. You can see part of the fireplace behind us and part of the chandelier light fixture above us. You can also see that this room had blue wallpaper. I don't remember if the wallpaper was ever taken down, but this wallpaper is a lot nicer than some of the others in the house.
(April 1991--a few days after Amy came home from her mission. I'd been home a few weeks.)
Just past the study in the upper hallway the hall made a right turn. On the left wall was the upstairs bathroom, on the right wall was the door to the room Amy & I shared, and straight ahead was the door to Shellie's room. In the picture below, I am looking out of the bathroom door (Frank was stalking me again) and you can see the doorway to Shellie's room on the right side of the picture.
When we moved into the house, the upstairs bathroom had really interesting wallpaper. I don't remember exactly what it was like now (sadly, we don't have a picture of it; it was so unique!) but it was a light background (white or cream) with gold cartoon-like drawings all over it of birds (pelicans or seagulls I think) wearing life preservers, sitting on posts, etc. Eventually the wallpaper came down, a new medicine cabinet was installed, another mirror went on the opposite wall, the walls were painted yellow, we got a butterfly shower curtain, and mom made white curtains with green, pink and yellow embroidered trim for the window (which was high up on the wall in the bath / shower). Here's a picture of me in that bathroom with the shower curtain behind me (yes, more stalking).
Yes! I finally caught Frank! (In the same bathroom, the butterfly curtain a little more visible behind him. You can sort of see the window in the wall behind him too.) And the "lovely" marbled shower surround on that same wall.
The picture below was taken in Shellie's room, although by that time Amy & I were living in this room. You can see the blue wallpaper that was on the walls when we moved in. The wall opposite from the door had the two windows. There was a closet on the same wall as the door.
This picture was taken in December 1987. (Erin is the little girl--you can tell I liked taking pictures of her!) My Johnson grandparents had moved in with us so that we could all help take care of Grandma, who had Alzheimer's Disease. My grandparents were in the master bedroom, my parents moved into the room Amy & I had been sharing, and we moved into Shellie's room. I don't remember now where Shellie was, but she was probably living in an apartment in Provo by this time. Amy and I were in college by now and we were both living in Helaman Halls that school year, but we were living at home again during Christmas vacation.
In the picture below, you can see the closet in this room as well as the goldish shag carpet, which was there when we moved in.
(Me on my 21st birthday--July 5, 1989)
Eventually, "Shellie's" room became the computer room. The shag carpet was replaced by a more neutral low pile carpet, the wallpaper came down, and the window coverings were changed to something a lot less "girly".
The room that Amy & I shared for most of the years we lived in this house was right next to Shellie's room, across the hall from the bathroom. The picture below shows the way the room looked when we moved in. There was very bright pink flowered wallpaper on the walls and a yellow shag carpet on the floor. Unfortunately, the dresser and book shelves we had inherited from older siblings were red. I was not happy with the red / bright pink / yellow combination! It was a pretty large room, though--we had room for twin beds, a dresser, a large toy / book shelf, a toy box, and doll beds on the floor, and there was still some room to play. (Incidentally, the bedspreads in this picture are the ones I tried to describe in the post about the Houston house.) This picture was taken about a year after we moved into the house, in December 1979:
You can see the door to our bedroom and the closet behind us in this picture. The closet took up that whole wall. Going around the room, the next wall had the dresser (with a large mirror on the wall over it), the toy box, and the book / toy shelf. The next wall had the two windows and we had the heads of our beds up against the fourth wall, with the door at the end.
I had a postcard collection and I liked to display some of the prettiest ones on the closet door--you can see some of them behind me. (This rather embarrassing photo was taken in December 1991. Frank brought grass skirts back from Hawaii for Amy & I so we were trying them on.)
The next picture was taken in the doorway of our bedroom. I included it because you can see the bright yellow carpet that was in our room. You can also see the gold carpet in the hallway (same as in the living room and both later changed for the light tan carpet), part of the bathroom doorway, and a corner of the hallway wall, which had wallpaper on it back then. (The wallpaper was later removed; see the picture of me looking out the bathroom doorway.) The handsome little man is my cousin McKay's oldest son, Ryan. I wrote on the back of the picture that he was almost a year old, so the picture must have been taken in early fall, 1980.
One of the things I remember about this room is that it was always cold. Sometimes on really cold winter mornings, there would be ice on the inside of the windows and that shag carpet would feel kind of "frosty". After my parents moved into the room, they discovered that there wasn't any insulation between the floor and the garage below. No wonder it was always so cold! They had insulation installed and after that--no more frosty carpet.
Thankfully, my parents were not deaf to our pleas for a more cohesive color scheme in our bedroom and for our 16th birthday they agreed to do a room makeover. The bright pink flowered wallpaper came down and was replaced by a much more pleasing (and tamer) print with pink, yellow, and blue flowers scattered over a cream background. We painted the dresser and toy / book shelves cream too, and "antiqued" them. By this time, the twin beds had been replaced by a double bed, so Mom, Amy and I tied a new quilt for the bed. It was cream colored too with blue, pink, and yellow flowers and butterflies on it. Mom made new curtain panels and lamp shade covers out of the same fabric so everything matched. Sadly, we couldn't get rid of the yellow carpet at that time but having a little bit of yellow in the wallpaper and bedspread helped tie it all together. You can see some of the changes in the room in the pictures below.
The new wallpaper is visible in this photo. Much less "busy"! This photo was taken at Easter time in 1987. That's Anna, using one of our dolls to practice being June's mommy someday. :) You can see that we had lots of stuffed animals and dolls still, although we didn't play with them anymore. You can also see part of our awesome dollhouse in the background. We didn't play with that anymore either but it was such a treasure that we had to keep it. (Amy still has it.)
Here is Erin, sitting in front of the dresser that used to be bright red. The pictures on the closet were cut out from Arizona Highways magazines--I loved that magazine! (The postcards went up later.)
This picture shows the new bedspread. This picture was taken in September 1991, after Amy and I had returned from our missions. We were back in this bedroom again because Grandma had passed away in 1988 and while we were on our missions Grandpa remarried and moved back down to Arizona. We had moved the bed to the corner where the toy / book shelf used to stand. It's hard to see in the picture, but I am wearing the nametag that I wore as an MTC teacher. That was the best job ever!
I included this picture because you can see the wallpaper a little better as well as the big mirror that was on the wall behind the dresser. You can also see that the wallpaper didn't go all the way up the wall--it went up about 3/4 of the way and was topped by a narrow white molding. (It was always like that--even with the old wallpaper.) Reflected in the mirror you can see that we had a lot of things hung on our wall! (Plus you can also see who took the picture. That handsome man I married.)
After Amy and I got married and moved out, this room became my mom's sewing room. It also served as a guest bedroom sometimes; they put a daybed in there. Scott actually spent the first night of his life in that room. I left the hospital when he was only 12 hours old and being somewhat anxious new parents, we decided to spend that first night with my parents. Frank and I slept on the daybed and Scott was in a playpen next to us. I remember crawling out of bed a few times in the night to put a pacifier in his mouth, hoping he would go back to sleep because I was exhausted. Thankfully, he did go back to sleep--but that was the last night he ever did that!
That covers the upstairs level. Now on to the downstairs level. (Hang in there!)
The downstairs level had a family room and a bathroom. It was reached from the kitchen stairwell, which went directly to the family room. This picture was taken on the stairwell:
You can see that there was a goldish brown wallpaper on the wall which extended along the back wall of the family room. As you can see, we hung the Christmas advent calendar on this wall every year. (That's Erin putting the star on the tree on Christmas Eve 1986. Amy is holding her, and someone behind her is holding Anna so she can watch.) You can see a map of Finland on the wall next to the calendar. That's because this picture was taken while Tim was serving a mission in Finland. I think this wall held various maps over the years as different members of the family served in different countries / states. When we moved in, the family room had dark brown shag carpet and tan curtains with green trim. (Yep, green again.)
Behind Erin you can see a doorway. If you walked through that doorway, the door to the garage would be on your left and the stairs to the basement would be on your right. The little square of floor right there was made out of rock. The wall opposite from this doorway had two windows and a large rock firplace in the corner. The wall adjacent to the kitchen, you may remember, was a half wall so you could see up into the kitchen. This wall continued below the kitchen opening down to the family room floor. When we moved into the house, there was another smaller opening in the lower part of the wall that looked down into another room in the basement. It was about the size of a window and had dark brown railings similar to the ones that supported the half wall in the kitchen (only much smaller). That opening was later filled in. I remember being kind of sad about it at the time--I thought it was kind of cool to be able to look down into the room below--but there was really no point to it.
This next photo was taken looking down into the family room from the top of the stairs. The far wall didn't have wallpaper--it was lined with planks of wood in a diagonal pattern, as were the other two walls of the family room. (Better pictures of those walls will follow.) In the far corner you can sort of see the rock fireplace. To Tim's right (that is Tim and Rachelle sitting on the couch), you can see a square of floor that looks dark. That part of the floor was also made of rock and the white that you see above it is the bottom of a door that led outside. Because this level of the house was partially below ground (the windows were level with the ground), the door led out into a "well" with a couple of steps leading up on each side--one side led to the 2nd driveway on that side of the house and the other side led up to edge of the backyard.
(Picture taken March 1991)
If you stood on the rock floor facing the outside door, there was a doorway on the left which was for the bathroom. When we moved into the house, this was a half bath / laundry room combination. We put the washer and dryer in the basement, though, and had a tub / shower installed where the laundry hook ups used to be so it became a full bath. This was the "boys" bathroom and I still remember how much I hated to clean it. That bathtub would get sooooo dirty! Sorry boys, but you were gross! When we moved into the house, this bathroom also had pretty wild wallpaper--some sort of western themed print--but the wallpaper came down right away.
In this picture taken July 5, 1986 (18th birthday for Amy & I) you can see part of the family room fireplace and part of the double window behind us, as well as the brown carpet.
In this picture (another birthday--1991 this time, my 23rd) you can see part of the wood paneled wall. You can also see part of the side door and a corner of the rock floor behind me. You can see that there were hooks on the wall by the door for coats and such and next to the hooks on that wall there is a small closet.
This photo was taken December 25, 1991. You can see that the partial wall below the kitchen has wood paneling. The opening in that wall (looking down to the basement) had already been filled in. The curtains have been changed to blue valances and the carpet (visible just below the kitchen opening) was rose colored and not shag. In the picture are Hans, Tim, Rachelle, Erin, Erick, and Liz.
This picture and the next one were taken December 25, 1993. I included them because you can see the pattern of the wood paneling on the wall and part of the fireplace. You can kind of see that the fireplace had a raised hearth that formed a bench of sorts. Rachelle, and then Tim (holding Taran) are sitting on it in the pictures.
In the following two photos you can see that the original goldish brown wallpaper was exchanged for a lighter wallpaper with small flowers on it.
Amy & Nate, December 1991. (Newly engaged) You can see the doorway to the garage / basement stairs landing to the right of Nate.
Annette & Frank, December 1991 (Also newly engaged, although not quite as new as Amy & Nate!) You can see the new rose colored carpet a little better in this photograph. Notice the blanket on the couch next to us. The family room was always pretty cold in the winter (although in the summer it was cool, which was nice) so we did not spend a whole lot of time down there. We spent most of our time in the living room.
Finally, the basement level! I don't have any pictures taken in the basement, so this part should go quicker. When you came down the basement stairs, there was a hallway at the bottom. On the left side of the hallway there were doors to the furnace / laundry room (which had a cement floor and was unfinished) and a bedroom. On the right side of the hallway were doors to the "play room" and another bedroom. The play room (for lack of a better name) had a wide, open doorway without any doors. Some of the older boys slept in there at various times and we also had toys and games down there. (I remember playing with all our cool Fisher Price toys down there--the school, the hospital, the castle, the house, the farm, and the Sesame Street playsets.) This is the room that you could look into from the "window" in the family room above. In the wall opposite from the doorway was a closet with an unfinished floor. It was always super cold in that closet. We kept some games and toys in there when we first moved in. For a while we had our old cabinet television down there and we would play Atari games on that sometimes. Eventually, the play room became more of a storage room. The playroom, hallway and stairs had this really strange carpet that was kind of a pinkish orange color. We never liked it and finally got a good excuse to replace it when we put a watermelon down there to store it (it was pretty cool down there and there wasn't any room in the fridge for the watermelon) and then forgot all about it! The watermelon eventually spoiled and burst open on the carpet. It smelled terrible and we couldn't get rid of the smell so the carpet had to go. (We sometimes teased Mom that she did that on purpose, just to get rid of the carpet.)
The two bedrooms in the basement were both tiny. Both rooms had one window high up on one wall. When you walked into the one on the left side of the hallway, there was a closet next to the door on your immediate right. The right wall had the window. This room had pink shag carpet which was too bad since Tim and Ben had to share that room. I remember the light cover on the ceiling light had a train painted on it though. It was kind of cool to lie on the floor and look up at it. The room on the right side of the hallway had dark blue shag carpet. When you walked in this room, the wall with the window was on your left. I can't remember exactly where the closet was--I think it was on the wall that you were facing when walking into the room. My dad built a bunk bed with shelves in this room and the older three boys shared this room at various times (never all three of them at once, since usually at least one of them was either living nearer college or on a mission). After the older three boys all moved out for good, this room became Tim's room and Ben got the other room across the hall to himself. Both rooms eventually became guest rooms. I remember Frank stayed in the blue room the weekend that he visited me from Hawaii and we got engaged. He also stayed there for a few weeks when he came back from Hawaii, until he could move into his new apartment. I took a nap in the pink room once--it was on Thanksgiving, two days after Tanner was born.
So that is the house that I (mostly) grew up in! Just a few more words (and pictures) about the outside of the house and our neighborhood. The picture below was taken in the front yard, looking to the East. You can see beautiful Cascade mountain, which was our view in that direction. That was one of the things I loved about living in this house--the fabulous mountain views. (And one of the great things about the mountains was that I always knew which direction was which, because Timpanogous was north.)
In this picture you can also see the picket fence when it was still green, our old station wagon parked in the driveway (station wagons are a thing of the past now; replaced by mini vans), and some of the neighboring houses. We lived in the third house from the corner. Right next door was the Sorenson's house and next to them (on the corner, facing 1000 East) you can see part of the Willams's house. They had a daughter my age named Amy. The blue house was on the corner of a cul-de-sac on the other side of 1000 East. The Adams lived there.
That's something that was different about this neighborhood from all the other neighborhoods we'd lived in--we knew all of our neighbors. That's because all our neighbors were also in our ward. That took some getting used to for us (although mostly it was nice). Our ward boundaries changed a few times in the years that we lived in this house, but overall our ward was usually only about 4 square blocks. Very different from what we were used to!
In the front yard of our house there was a large apple tree surrounded by a wooden planter. The apples were quite good once we started having the tree sprayed so there weren't worms in them. I never liked apples until we moved to Utah. It was only then that I realized that I had been eating ripe mushy apples most of my life. Fresh off the tree, they were a whole different fruit! In the fall when the apples got ripe, the branches of the tree would be so heavy with apples that they would touch the ground. I still remember how difficult it was to mow the lawn during that time of year, trying to lift up branches with one hand while pushing the mower with the other!
My mom planted rose bushes in the front yard and the roses were beautiful. I loved this yellow rose that was tinged pinkish peach on the edges:
We also had red roses. The planter box around the apple tree had Sweet William and pansies:
After we put in the front flower bed, there were tulips in the spring:
Yes, it really was spring in the picture above. We had a freak late snowstorm on May 13, 1983.
Next is a shot taken from the front steps. (Probably on the 4th of July.) Across the street you can see the ugly green Galaxy that Amy and I drove our third year of college, before going on our missions. The house right across the street belonged to the Johnson family and next door you can see the edge of the Weaver's house. He was one of our bishops.
This is a picture of the back yard. This picture shows the ugly green fence that surrounded the back yard when we moved in. It blew over a year or two later and we replaced it with a chain link fence. I remember how hard my dad, brothers, and uncle had to work to dig the holes for the posts. That rocky Utah ground was not easy to dig. The tree in the photo is a pear tree, if I remember correctly. There were a couple of them that were just perfectly spaced so that we could hang a hammock between them (Curtis brought a nice hammock back from Guatemala).
This picture was taken years later after the chain link fencehad been put up. (Easter--March 1991) That's Erin hunting for eggs. The same tree is behind her. The white house behind ours belonged to the Goodwin family. I used to babysit for them a lot and I would climb the back fence to get there and back. Brother Goodwin would walk me to the corner of the yard when they got home late at night so I could climb the fence (there was a large telephone box in the back left corner of the yard right next to the fence that made it easy to get over at that point) and he would watch to make sure I made it into the back door. Later, my friend Paula Hansen, Amy and I would use the same method to get to Paula's house quickly since she lived next door to the Goodwins.
In the right corner of the yard we had a large garden. We had never had much success gardening at our other houses, but we discovered that lots of things grew well in Utah. We grew pumpkins, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and zuchini. We planted a whole row of zuchini our first year because we didn't know any better. (We were innundated with them.)
The kitchen door led down some steps to a cement patio that stretched across the back of the house (nothing fancy, just plain cement). You can see the steps and part of the patio in the picture below, as well as the kitchen windows. That's Anna in the pretty yellow Easter dress, with Erick behind her. (Easter 1991)
This picture shows some of the back of the house. The lower window is the family room window and the upper window is one of the master bedroom windows. You can also see the chimney, which was for both fireplaces (the master bedroom fireplace was directly above the family room one.) I was trying to take a picture of a rainbow--can you see it?
Later on, my parents added a lot of landscaping around the house and along the fence lines, but I don't have pictures of that. The pear trees weren't very healthy and so they were cut down. The picture below shows grandkids playing in the yard sometime after the trees were removed. This picture was taken the summer of 1999. I know that Tanner is the shortest boy and I'm pretty sure that Timo is the other boy facing the camera but I can't tell who the other two are.
One other change my parents made to the yard was that they had a nice deck built over the top of the steps (they were always crumbling anyway and very hard to maintain--just like the front steps). You can see it in the picture below. That looks like Mom, Emily, Shellie, Timo, Rachelle, and Juan in the picture. Judging by Emily's size, I'd say this was Easter 1998.
Just a few more words about the neighborhood. We were located on what was called the Orem "bench", just below the foothills for Mount Timpanogous. (We had an amazing view of this mountain out our back windows). It was a friendly neighborhood with lots of kids. There were many apple and cherry orchards nearby. Our church was within walking distance and eventually an elementary school and junior high were built nearby too (although I was in high school by then, but Ben attended the junior high and I think the elementary school too). We were just a block north of 800 North, and on the opposite side of 800 North was a small store that sold fruit from the orchards (we called it the fruit stand). They also sold candy and other snacks, so we would walk over there sometimes to buy those things. The orchards and fruit stand are gone now--there's a big shopping center there. All the houses on the north side of 800 North are gone too--they were torn down so the road could be widened. The area around the neighborhood has grown up a lot since we lived there but I can still recognize many things when I go by, which I try to do whenever I am visiting in Utah. It was a nice place to grow up.
