Scott - Mission Complete

Scott left on his mission May 26, 1983 (Farewell to Florida). In 1982, the missionary term was changed from two years, to 18 months. Scott served during this time, and it was probably helpful to Mom/Margie to have her first-born back a little sooner than the full 24 months. Scott said that the mission rule was returned to the 24 month length on the day he arrived home ... but that his Mission President (President Talbot) wouldn't let him return. 

In the 80s, it was writing snail mail letters, with a phone call at Christmas and Mother's day.  

Just a few photos taken with a film camera. 

Scott got back just after Thanksgiving (November 30) in 1984. 

Pictures (1) A little pre-Christmas celebration in Florida (2) Hitchhiking home (just kidding!). (3) Airport arrival - Elder Frank T. Reilley was there, one of Scott's companions (he actually served with him twice, once in Titusville, and then again in Port Charlotte. (4) Home for Christmas.

Scott thinks he gave his Homecoming talk the Sunday after he returned home. The folks were great at keeping all papers with the Westra name in them, and while that program hasn't surfaced, this one from January 1985 in the 11th ward was saved (scanned in 37 years later!). The returned missionaries would travel to other wards in the stake and speak on High Council Sunday. Scott mentioned that the missionary circuit was discontinued, but that he thought it was a good experience for missionaries and members.  

Baby Books and a Chris Questionnaire

Here on the blog, I've tried to capture the birth stories of the Westra siblings (Shane and Derek ... I'm still working on it!)  I had Mom write up her memories from each birth. There are pictures in Dropbox. We have the little DMarie time-capsule. I had MY baby book, and it had some good details, so I wondered where the other baby books were. I had Wendy look for hers, but she couldn't find it. Turns out, Mom and Dad still had all the baby books for everyone besides me (even Dad/Lamar's baby book! They made baby books back then?) So now armed with more memorabilia and information, I'll have to update Scott and Wendy's birth blogposts, and/or make a new post to address the childhood years (I did add a little to "Chris Came"). You can see in the image below, that there were extras included and saved along the way. Cards, photos, birth certificate and immunization records.

In Chris's collection, I found pages of text, written by both Mom and Dad in September of 1984. It appears that Chris had a school assignment to write about his birth. While I didn't find a copy of the actual questionnaire included, both Dad and Mom followed the same format, so I can imagine what the original looked like. It was quite comprehensive, and Mom and Dad really came through with their answers (with a little help from the baby book).   

Rather than scanning stuff, I went ahead and retyped (Google Drive links below), and while it is all about Chris, I really enjoyed reading about it all.  It was interesting to see how differently Mom and Dad answered the same questions. Dad's crazy humor! How much more Mom remembered for this write-up, vs the little one she did recently for me (36 years later, and not glancing through the baby book for memory prompts).  Lesson ... write things down sooner than later! Now I need Chris's completed paper for closure here!

Chris Questionaire - Dad

Chris Questionaire - Mom

What would Mom and Dad's answers be about the other kids?
What would you (as the parent) write up about your own kids?
Did you keep a baby book for your kids?

Lake Powell Memories

Dad/Lamar's sister Sharon and her husband Kent were big fans of Lake Powell. They had a houseboat, and a boat for waterskiing, and jet skis. The Westra clan was invited on a few trips to Lake Powell over the years ... Mom/Margie recalled one early trip when Jenny was about three years old; "I remember her missing and I was sooo panicked that she had maybe fallen overboard! Then came to find out she had gone in the speedboat with others to the shore." 

So while this may not be a complete collection of trips and memories ... it's a start!

During the July 1982 trip, baby Derek was just a few months old! Mom/Margie says he slept in a little cardboard box by their bed on the houseboat. Thanks to Wendy's journal, we have a pretty good recap of everything (you can read it here).  There was a lot of water skiing, jet skiing, cliff-jumping and the big log (pictured above) was a lot of fun. Wendy mentions she, Chris and Dad spelled "Westra" with rocks and took a picture (couldn't locate said picture though). She mentions a group picture at the end too. In addition to our family and Amann's, Burgeners had come up (Grandma Lucille, Vic and Karen), Ricky's girlfriend, Alyson's boyfriend, and another girlfriend.

Wendy mentions pulling the tumbleweeds from the water. Jen remembers this too ... little fish had gone in them to hide, and then would flop out as we pulled the big, round branches from the water. After they dried out, they were burned in a big bonfire! There were fireworks and sparklers too. A storm the first night, and lots of gnats!

And then there was the catfish incident, but that was the NEXT trip ...

We went to Lake Powell again a couple years later. Wendy's journal isn't quite as helpful for this trip ... written in retrospect a few months afterward, and mainly focusing on some of the teenage boys that came along with the Amann family (Kent's nephews and an exchange student from Germany).  More cliff-jumping and skiing. Wendy was able to get up on one ski, and cross the wake. 

And the catfish incident. Grandma Lucille recounted the event in her history ...

I went to Lake Powell with my daughter Sharon and family and my son LaMar and family and daughter Diane. Sharon was recuperating from a broken and sprained arm (she had been knocked down while roller skating). The doctor said she could get in the water. While she was out floating, LaMar was fishing and caught a large catfish. He unhooked it and flung it out in the water and the catfish hit Sharon in the thigh and hung on. She was bitten and the ranger took her to the doctor's office for a tetnus shot. Later when she was in Hawaii, she scratched her leg and found a tooth of the catfish.

There were more trips ... exact dates and details weren't quick to appear. 

This can be updated if more information/pictures come up. 

Jen has some additional Lake Powell memories too ...

• I remember we went "hunting" lizards with BB guns (not very humane, I know!)
• Sleeping on top of the houseboat under the stars ... so much brighter than back home.
• Ricky and Randy had bottle rockets, and lit them and aimed them so they went underwater. There would be the whistling as they were in the air, then silence as they hit the water and were submerged, then a muffled "boom" and flash under the water.
• Once Uncle Kent was driving the boat trying to get someone up on water skis... they fell, and Uncle Kent shouted "I'll save you" and jumped out of the boat. One of the older boys got up and took over the driving of the boat ...
• There was a card game we played ... we called it "The Lake Powell game" and I remember it was a lot of fun.
• Gray and I went once after we were married. Grayson remembers Uncle Kent called him "Killer" ;) 

1983 ~ Wendy's Write-Up

Wendy has kept a journal for years. That's been a great thing for family history. If we need details about an event, there's a good chance Wendy had something recorded. Below (check out Dropbox for a clearer copy, Word doc or PDF) you can catch her recap of 1983. While a lot of the details are about what a 9th grade/10th grade girl's life was like at that time, there is oodles of information about the family and other activities.

Scott left on his mission. Chris fell into the orchestra pit at the high school and broke his ankle. Wendy got her ears pierced, her braces off and got a perm. She loves waterskiing, tried snowskiing, and ran track. There was a family reunion for Mom's side of the family in June. A family reunion for Dad's side of the family in July. A fishing trip to Strawberry Reservoir. Griffiths came to visit. Mom&Dad went to Vernal. There was a Bishop's Youth Outing to the Uintas, big floods and a huge hail storm. The Westra's got their first family computer!  It's interesting to compare Wendy's wrap-up with the annual Westra Christmas Newsletter recap.  We still need a complete BLOG recap too, based on all the information and pictures we have for the year. But Wendy's write-up is pretty complete!

Merry Christmas from the Westras ~ 1983

 ** Christmas border was added for the blog image, not included on the original. **

To enlarge, check out the PDF version from the original scan.

What the Hail?

 

Holy hail! This picture was taken in 1983. Looking at the size of those hailstones, it's not surprising that there was damage done. Mom said they had to tap the homeowner's insurance to get the house partially re-roofed. The big front window at Owsleys got broken (neighbors who were out of town). It caused dents and broken windows in cars too. 1983 was remembered more for the flooding that year, but I'm sure glad the folks thought to document the size of these impressive ice balls!

As old photographs are resurfacing after being scanned, the huge hailstones of 1983 started this trip down memory lane. Just for fun, I stuck "hail" in the search bar in Dropbox (and in the Blackham Blog), which is how some of these connections came up. There were some mentions in journals and letters too (included at the end). 

While it's not quite as large as the 1983 memory, 2013 had some pretty good hail hit the Blackhams in West Jordan. Jen had done a blog post then and wrote "I was downstairs in our home gym, when I heard a rattling. There was something, make that several somethings hitting the window ... it was a hail storm. I cut my workout short and came up to check on Cooper, who was cowering in my room crying. I comforted him and as quickly as it had started, the hail storm was over. I convinced Cooper to come out and check out the hail (the other kids were already out there). There were a lot of big pieces. That definitely would have hurt to get caught out in. There was a lot of hail on the trampoline, and the kids gathered even more. Then they jumped on the tramp in their bare feet! Crazy kids ... it was a bit like hot potato, but it was cold hail!"

St. George, February 2014

 This hailstorm was enough of a memory that it made it into Josh's annual recap, 

and Wendy had documented it on their family blog. 

Again, while not as impressive in size ... 

Janika's mission hailstone memory makes up for it in quantity!

May 2016, Janika wrote "We had this super weird storm in the middle of the night, and it was terrifying haha. My thinking process was something along the lines of 'okay, if it was really a problem, they'd have the sirens, right? Then we'd go find a storm shelter....oh my gosh where is the storm shelter?! do we even have one of those here?!?!' Needless to say, there was a little panic involved but no sirens, so we survived. We woke up to a foot and a half of marble-sized hail filling our parking lot, so we spent morning exercise helping a neighbor dig his truck out of the hail!! Only in Nebraska!"

Blackham Backyard - September 2019

Jen remembers a few hailstorms during the duck years (2015-2019). Worrying that the ducks might get hit and hurt during the storms. 

The leafy plants did not survive the storm in 2019. They got shredded!

Now a few more memories from letters and journals ...

• In 1978, Dad had kept a journal about the scout trip to Wind Rivers. He wrote "during the trip up, the dark clouds suddenly gathered, and it started to hail, hailstones about an inch in diameter. We felt sorry for the scouts we had left behind, and especially for our packs. When we got back, it had stopped hailing momentarily, and most of the scouts had taken refuge under nearby trees. They had also placed the packs under vehicles close by. When we got packed, the hail began again, and all the scouts huddled in the suburban. The hail lasted for another 10 minutes and then subsided. We decided to try the trail and warily donned our packs and set out – with very threatening skies all around." 
• In 2015, while Landon was in the MTC he wrote "We were in our classroom studying, and the rain came pouring down! Thunder and lightning soon joined, and then the rain changed to hail. We didn't even bother studying. We were all just mesmerized by the storm."
• Also in 2015, Jase wrote about hail during the Pioneer Trek, he wrote "it started hailing on and off every day. In fact, one day it hailed so bad the tents flooded and we had to evacuate the camp."
• In 2017, the Redwood Shore (Shane's family) Westras wrote "Happy March! It's hard to say if the month has come in like a lamb or a lion...we had pretty nice weather earlier in the week, but it was rainy yesterday and today. We even had a short burst of hail this morning while we were at church! We could hear it pounding on the roof and one of the men in our Sunday School class opened an exterior door to investigate, so we even got a glimpse of the hail coming down."
• Also in 2017, Wendy wrote a family update, mentioning how she and the girls had been swimming on Labor Day, when a little later " a huge storm came in and it was hailing marble sized hailstones!! Hailing in September, when it was over 100 degrees that day? Crazy!! So much for our clean pool."

So now you know ... weird weather gets collected and documented on the blog!

Next time it hails ... get pictures! 

Any more hail memories?

Farewell ~To Florida

 

So long Scotty! He's Mr. Missionary now, off to Florida to serve an LDS mission. Here in mid-May, he had his official farewell at the church. This was back in the day when the meeting was all about the missionary, with everyone in the family having a part on the program. According to the program, there was also an open house the next day at the Westra home.

Not a lot of pre-mission photos ... in fact, this was the only one found.

... a bit blurry, and only recently scanned in (in 2020). 

The first of the Westra kids to go on a mission ... but not the last.