My Story about Dolls

When I was growing up I loved to play dolls. For some reason I don't remember ever owning a doll of my own. Wierd! It doesn't make sense to me at all. From what I do remember . . . my mother decided to make dolls for Christmas one year. I must have already been in school? Martha, one of my older sisters made the dolls, they were pretty modern with movable arms and legs. Up to that time the dolls must have had the arms sticking out wide. Hard to dress and play with.

Anyway, Amish dolls don't have any facial features or hair. They are made out of cloth. These dolls were made out of white muslin type of cotton material. I loved to play dolls, somehow I must have talked my younger sisters out of allowing me to use one of their dolls. I loved playing with them. (Didn't I already mention that several times?)

I do remember being a favorite to an English couple that lived in Pulaski. They were friends of my parents. My dad might have built a house for them too. For some reason I can't remember their names. But they must have felt sorry for us because our dolls didn't have faces, so they brought a modern, plastic doll for me to play with. My mother must have been wise, she let me play with that doll for the day, but after I went to bed, I never saw the doll again.

I started "giving my testimony" to churches in the area and sometimes I would tell my doll story, so I now have several sets of dolls. One type of doll we never had as children were boy dolls, so now I have boy dolls too.

A really funny story about Amish dolls; (not really funny at all) my husband started selling them on the internet. We went to my sister Anna's house and we bought some to sell on our drive to NYC to help our youngest son, Josh move there for graduate school at Columbia University. Anyway, somehow it worked out the entire time we were moving his stuff into his apartment someone stayed at the van at all times. We kept the box of dolls in the van, we might even have placed them on the drivers seat? We left my bag of sheets and maybe some other odd stuff. Holly was living in Delaware and had come along for the trip.

Josh's roommates hadn't arrived yet so we spent at least a day touring the city. Anyway, I went out to the van to get our sheets when it got to be bedtime, I found the sheets strewn all over the floor of the van and my cutesy polka dotted bag was gone! I was really upset thinking that one of us had done it. But after awhile we realized that we were robbed. So someone (Josh?) made jokes that they heard people walking the streets trying to sell Amish dolls. You needed to be there to enjoy the joke.

Anyway, I think that this will be interesting moving back to PA. When Ed and I got married, our first apartment was in Hubbard Ohio. After Bible School and our first church we lived in Transfer around a year. So this will be another adventure!

Contemplating Turning 60 Years Old...

When I turned 16 years of age, my parents sold the family farm. This was the house I was born in! We actually moved on my 16th birthday. Now I've turned 60 years of age and my husband and I are moving out of Sheboygan this fall, out of a house we have lived in for 26 years! I have had a good life up to now so I am very grateful for having had the opportunity to live in this house! We bought it in hard times, and now we need to sell it in not such a great time (for sellers). But God helped us before and I believe He will help us again! I will always remember these events in my life.

Way back as a teenager, I was only beginning my adventures with God. I left home for Bible College that fall, which has changed my life forever. I went to Philadelphia my first summer and worked for Teen Challenge. I was right off the farm and went right into the heart of a city! Wow! Being shy and not really knowing much about the world, I would follow others around and pray for them as they would share Christ. One of my friends loved to visit Temple University right up the street from where Teen Challenge was located on Broad Street. I loved everything about getting out and about. My room at the end of the summer was on the fifth floor with no elevator, so I would count the stairs. I soon learned not to forget a hanky or the little stuff! I remember ministering at the Coffee House on a Friday night. One thing I knew back than for sure; Legalism! Christian women wore no make up! :-) One of the people were talking to me and started on make up, why Christians didn't wear make up. But I was firm knowing that would be one thing I would not do!

After I graduated from Bible College I realized that I couldn't do small talk with anyone outside of the church so I ask God to help me not be a freak. I worked on learning to socialize and getting along with people. Than I became a pastor's wife and thought, what should that look like . . . and becoming a mom I had no more time to worry about such small stuff! I am so grateful to God for the life he has allowed me to lead! I am grateful for the traveling I have done, my husband and I have done, and what God will allow in the future!

Having a Happy Family Day

We had our family over for Sunday dinner after Church. I dug out our toys left over from when our children were growing up. Josh had a big set of a Brio train set. He's showing his nephews how to set it up.

Too bad we had so much snow and ice this winter! Our last winter in snowy, Wisconsin hopefully! The roads were awful and now they have many potholes too. This winter was like the early eighty's when we had the Antarctic winds blow and lots of snow and ice. My father-in-law visited and complained about how awful the roads were. So we got one last blast from the past.

While Holly was visiting from NC, she left balmy weather, one night we had around five degrees overnight and it was really cold another night too. Poor Lincoln couldn't play outside because everything was icy, including the snow. So in desperation we took Lincoln to the mall and also he played at church. One nice sunny day, we played on the parking lot at church. Lincoln found some water from melting snow and splashed to his hearts content while his grandmother froze. I would have done anything because they came to visit us. Thank you to both Holly and Josh for leaving the comfort of home and traveling to Sheboygan.

Remembering . . .

From one generation to the next, that's where we are now. My father-in-law passed away a year ago March 4th. One day we are the child and the next thing you know your parents have passed away and you are the "older" ones.

My husband inherited his family farm in Transfer, PA. Its all official now. We are planning to build a house on the farm where the barn sat. Josh our youngest son is an architect working in NYC designed our house. My oldest brother-in-law with his Amish crew plans to build this house. One of my nephews with his Amish crew plans to finish the house. I don't have a picture of the house at this time but hopefully I can post it at a later date.

My family were all together last weekend in Sheboygan. Most likely Holly's last time to visit Sheboygan since we plan to move at the end of summer. Holly is expecting her second baby right around the beginning of August and we should have our farewell soon afterwards.

Anyway, Holly flew to Sheboygan with her son Lincoln to meet his new cousin that Brent & Tracy are adopting from Russia. (I wanted to post a picture but I guess I don't know how to get it). Anyway, Andrei arrived to Sheboygan just in time to celebrate his 7th birthday, December 21, than he celebrated Christmas with Tracy's family, the Bloks, Christmas Eve and than the Homer family on Christmas day. It was really nice to have a child to celebrate Christmas with.

So we enjoyed a long weekend with the "cousins" playing together. As grandparents, this is the height of happiness. I have many pictures of my family getting together having fun with my parents sitting in the background looking on. Yikes! I still want to be part of the fun!!! Hope that I feel that way for a long time!

Family

Here are my younger sisters sitting in front of my brother's Steve's house in PA. You can see our mother sitting in the background watching all of our goings on. (Can you guess us?)

I try to stay in touch with my family communicating with them several times a year. Family are important to me and staying in contact helps to know what's going on with them. With all the modern gadgets now, its rather easy to stay in touch.
My Amish family . . . well now that's another story. Mail and if they call me is the only way to stay in touch. Since this is a new year and another set of birthdays coming up. Two of my older sisters have a birthday coming up along with my oldest brother in law.

I was just remembering my strict upbringing and thinking about ministry. My dad was called by God to be a minister. The Amish select their ministers by "casting lots". They take the eligible men and seat them in order on a bench at their church service and place a piece of paper in the song book. They pass out the song books and the man with the paper is their next minister. My dad heard God calling his name and he received the book with the paper. When he became a bishop, they used the same system. My dad heard God call his name again.

My memory of dad becoming a bishop was this. I was told to wear my cap when I went out to play. I hated this on my head and would take it off as soon as I went outside. So then I started getting spanked and after awhile I must have seen that fighting this was totally useless.

Our family also starting having prayer time together in the mornings. This was hard because the prayers came from a German prayer book. They weren't all that long but sort of annoying at first. Not that we had much of a choice in the matter!

I love my family and I am looking forward to the day when we will live closer to them.

Christmas is over for another year

Christmas has come and gone, now the Christmas stuff needs to be put away for another year. Thinking back to my childhood, life was so much simpler. We didn't put up any type of decorations in or outside, we did give & receive gifts and had homemade cookies and homemake candies. I was so happy when I got to help with the baking.

Right after we were first married I made all my childhood sweets. Only after several years of gaining weight realizing that I also ate all of it and have cut down on all those sweets! Even after I got old enough to bake and cook, there were so many of us that one or two rounds of passing out the goodies, they would be gone. So my mom and older sisters would hide them. When I would come home from school, my favorite part of the day would be to "hunt for them and sneak a piece".

It'll take me several days to get everything put away here and order brought back to our home. Compared to my upbringing I now live an extravagant life. As a child we daily had to sweep and dust, one of our early morning jobs. Daily chores. Coming from a large family, everyone had a job.

For example, making a meal, washing dishes, drying and putting them away, clearing the table. I never had to do all of that until I got married. I was exhausted the first year of our marriage because I had to get used to doing everything. It was always wonderful when my husband volunteered to help. We didn't have a dish washer either so if the dishes didn't get put away after getting washed, they sat on the counter. Yikes! God bless the inventors of dishwashers!

Christmas

Growing up Amish, we had no decorations inside of our house. I didn't have a christmas tree until after I married. So Ed and I had the biggest and bestest tree ever. Decorated beautifully! I invited my mom and dad and brother and sisters; but that year they had the flu and no one could come. So Ed and I enjoyed our tree alone.

Growing up we received gifts at Christmas. I so totally treasured that gift. I learned early on to ask for something that would last and last. I hated broken crayons, so that was on my list often along with a coloring book(big book!). I would color one page at a time so it would last longer. Another gift I ask for several times was a blackboard and chalk because I could play school with that and it would last. That breaks too and I didn't like broken or cracked boards so that was asked for several times.

My first memory of Christmas growing up, we set the kitchen table with a plate at the "spot" where we sat and in the morning we would have an orange on our plate. That must have been a "big" thing. Several years I remember my dad would hide our gift and we'd run around looking for it. I loved that!

One year my older sisters made cloth dolls for my younger sisters. These dolls were pretty modern because the arms and legs moved. Of course all the dolls had no faces. (graven image - - forbidden!!!) Sometimes English people would feel sorry for us "poor children", playing with dolls and no faces, they would bring us a plastic doll, my parents allowed us to play with them that day and than after we'd go to bed, they would forever disappear.

One year my dad built a big barn for the boys and a doll house for the girls. Another year he built a cupboard and dry sink for the girls. One year the "older" children received an ice cream freezer. To this day I love popcorn with ice cream. We would make homemade ice cream and pop popcorn. Yummy!

At our family reunions (the Amish can't call our get togethers reunions), my parents were excommunicated and shunned.

I loved Christmas growing up! We would have big family dinners. After we started raising turkeys for sale, mom would bake the biggest turkey for dinner. She would get it into the oven early in the morning so it would be cooked in time for dinner at lunch.