The trailer

 While my dad worked on building our house, we lived in a single wide trailer.  I knew two things.  1) My mom didn't love living there and thought it was too small.  2) I didn't know what she was talking about.

The log house under construction.  My dad, Grandma Dahl (she must have been visiting from Florida), me, my mom holding Olivia and Marianne.  I love that all three girls are in purple pants.  I am almost certain my mom sewed them for us.

My dad is the most can do DIY person I know and he built a house by himself.  He was also working full time, so it took him a while.  Sure, I was excited to live in the new house someday, but it seemed like a far distant future and I thought the trailer was a great house.

Me and Marianne on Easter

My parents' room was on one end of the house.  I never remember there not being a crib in there, because there was always a baby.  The living room was next to their room.  It had wallpaper on one wall that was yellow and had a silhouette of trees on it.  Little girl Thelma found it quite glamorous.  It also had this floral couch that was textured and kind of velvety and I traced those flowers with my finger over and over. You could look out over the field and the "lower road" from the living room window.  My dad built a porch out the front door that was in the living room.  It had railing that turned out to be perfect for tying up Enoch with our jump ropes when we were babysitting him.  We were also sent to the porch when we had popsicles to eat.

The kitchen and living room were one space.  It was a small single wide trailer kitchen, but I loved it.  I remember standing on a chair at the stove and stirring a pot.  I remember sitting at the kitchen table and decorating sugar cookies.  I remember that it was neat and tidy and warm and happy.  My mother's kitchen.  On the wall that led down the hall to the bathroom and our bedroom, my mom tacked up all sorts of things.  There were job charts for us and visual aids from both family home evening lessons and more academic visuals for things she was teaching us.  At Christmas time we hung up red and green construction paper chains with the last chain, Christmas Eve, wrapped in tin foil.

There was one bathroom that had a window that opened with a small crank.  So fancy!  My dad built a cabinet against one wall.  I remember my mom letting us play with her makeup in that bathroom and sometimes our cousins would be there with us.  I don't think I would have let little girls loose with makeup, but my mom wasn't fussy about her appearance and was always amenable to us being creative.

There was another bedroom at the other end of the trailer.  Marianne and I shared a full sized bed in there until Enoch came along and Olivia was ready for a bed.  My dad built a bunk bed with a trundle and I loved it.  Marianne was on the top bunk, I was under her and there was a bed on wheels that could be pulled out for Olivia to sleep on.  There was absolutely no room for walking in the room when the trundle bed was out and now I can see that we were crowded.  At the time, I loved the ingenuity of it all.  My dad also built us a bookshelf.  Marianne was the self appointed librarian and would organize and reorganize the books.  We had a lot of books.  With a mother like ours, a small house did not limit our number of books! 

There was a back door in the hall and my dad built a fully enclosed store room/ back porch there.  I had to walk past it from my bedroom to and from the rest of the house.  When it was dark and the lights were off in the back porch, it terrified me.  There was one small little light on the floor from the freezer that was in the porch.  I would rush past it and not look that way because who knew what was lurking in that room!

When Tabor came along, he got the crib and Enoch needed a bed.  My dad built a room accessed from the back porch.  There was a little wood stove in it and Enoch had the full sized bed Marianne and I had used.  My dad also built shelves lining one of the walls from floor to ceiling.  It became our toy room as well as Enoch's room.  We had to clean it every Saturday and it felt like the worst fate we could imagine for ourselves.

It took five years for my dad to build the log house.  When I think about it now, I see my mom creating a nurturing and happy little life for us in those trailer walls, despite the small quarters.  I see my dad continually working full time, building a house from absolute scratch, busily serving in the Church, and building things along the way in the trailer to make it work.

What wonderful parents I have!