Grab a cup of coffee before you start reading this one!
It has been a long time since my last post. Much has gone on and we purchased a home. In the process of thinking through how I would post about this under my "Tale of the Whale" Blog, I came up with an idea of making a chronicle of the homes we have lived in since Craig and I were married.
We were married in June of 1970. Craig had finished Officer Training School and his first assignment was Laredo, Texas. So, after a honeymoon we hit the road for southern Texas.
We rented an apartment while Craig was in Pilot Training.
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| #1 Laredo, Texas - 1970 |
We lived here for just three months. The new Pilots were all training to go to Viet Nam. Craig didn't finish training because of the grueling pace and most of the guys already had their private licenses, so they pushed him into a much needed field of "Weapons Controller". It was using radar to scramble plans if someone entered our airspace and also doing midair refueling. They gave him orders for schooling in Panama City, Florida. We lived in a mobile home for six weeks right on the gulf. At the end of our time here, we found out that I was newly pregnant.
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| #2 Panama City, Florida - 1970 |
Training was over and orders came in to go to Malmstrom AFB in Great Falls, Montana. Craig worked with NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) We spent a little time in our home town of Crown Point, Indiana with family before driving out west during a huge ice storm just before Thanksgiving of 1970. We rented the downstairs apartment. It was so cold there that we had to have a heater plug put into the car and when you threw snow into the air, it would disappear. Our first child, Todd, was born here.
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| #3 Great Falls, Montana - 1970 |
When Todd was five months old, Craig had received new orders that he was to spend a year in Thailand without us. My parents were kind enough to welcome us back into their home. It was a very sad time without Craig and my older brother, Bob, had been wounded in Viet Nam and was also home. It made for a very full home and a hardship for my folks, so Todd and I moved out to the north side of Crow Point, Indiana.
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| #4 Crown Point, Indiana - 1971 |
I can't really find a picture that I took of the apartment we rented, but I did find this advertisement for Fountain View Apartments.
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| #5 Fountain View, Crown Point, Indiana - 1971 |
Craig came home for 19 days to celebrate our first Anniversary and Todd's first birthday. Craig returned stateside just before Christmas of 1972 with orders to Tyndall AFB, Panama City, Florida. He came back to a wife that was six months pregnant and an 18 month old son. and Jeff was born in this home in Panama City, Florida. We rented this home.
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| #6 Panama City, Florida - 1972 |
Our family was growing and we decided to look for a home to purchase since we knew our assignment was for three years.
We bought a home from the Craig's on Collins Street. I couldn't make this stuff up.
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| #7 Lynn Haven, Florida - 1974 |
We had just found out that I was pregnant with our third when Craig got orders to go to Montgomery, Alabama, for a three month Squadron Officer's School. I was morning sick while we were there. We kept our home on Collins street and Tana was born there in Aug of 1973. Before she was born orders came in for a three year tour to Germany.
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| #8 Montgomery, Alabama -1974 |
It was a tough trip to Germany with three preschoolers! We got in country and were told that there wasn't any base housing available on Sembach AFB, so we went in search and could only find a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment to rent on the German economy 14 miles away from the Base.
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| #9 Sembach AFB, Germany - 1975 |
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| #10 Ramsen, Germany - 1975 |
We were on a waiting list to get into Base Housing near Kaiserslautern, Germany, close to Ramstein AFB as Craig Squadron was 14 miles down the road from K-Town. We lived on the corner 4th floor apartment with NO elevators. Craig was a part of a mobile radar unit and wasn't home much so I struggled through with the kids and dealing with having to walk them, groceries, laundry and myself up and down the steps. Craig was assigned to the Group Headquarters in Kaiserslautern toward the end of our time in Germany.
These were old Dutch quarters at one time and they were called Vogelweh Housing. It was a long three years, but we got to see much of Europe and my unhappiness sent me on a spiritual search that led me to Jesus. So, it was all worth it!
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| #11 Kaiserslautern, Germany - 1976 |
At the end of three years, we had orders to go to Luke AFB in Glendale, Arizona. We are now up to 1978. As we were packing up to move back stateside, Craig was ordered to stay behind for several weeks. Craig's parents were then living in the "Mayor's Mansion" in Crown Point and they willingly took in the kids and I so we had a place to live until Craig got back.
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| #12 Crown Point, Indiana - 1978 |
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| #13 Glendale, Arizona - 1978 |
Craig had spent nearly 11 years as an Officer in the USAF. We visited his career adviser and was told that Craig would make Major the next year, but then would have two more years of remote assignments before he would get in his 20 years. He even tried to cross-train into the computer field so he could avoid the stress of radar controlling in remote areas, but the Weapon Controller Field would not release him. After much prayer and a few miracles we left the Air Force in 1980. We took a long vacation and then lived for several weeks with Charlie and Janis who opened their home to our family while we looked for work.
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| #14 Big Spring, Texas - 1980 Charlie introduced us to Rene and Elizabeth Brown who owned a ranch in Leakey, Texas, which was about 90 miles northwest of San Antonio in the Texas hill country. We made an agreement to remodel the ranch home and work the goats until we found other work. This was in early 1980's and there was a recession going on and jobs were fairly sparse. We lived and worked this 1200 acres ranch for nearly a year and the kids attended a school where K-12 were all in the same building. They all loved this time with animals and basic living. Sadly we just got news that his house burned to the ground. |
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| #15 Leakey, Texas - 1980 We finished the work on the Texas ranch and felt we needed to return to our hometown in Indiana and spend time with our parents. We rented the house that Craig's parents had and where Craig had lived for many years in Crown Point. |
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| #16 Joliet St, Crown Point, Indiana - 1981 |
We made a short move back down to Texas to work with Sonshine Ministries. We first lived in the main house and then moved into a two bedroom trailer. Craig actually built a three tier bunk bed for our three kids.
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| #17 Big House, Azle, Texas - 1982 |
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| #18 Azle, Texas - 1982 |
We came back to Indiana and lived in the Beaver Dam Townhomes for several months. Craig and I worked together building decks and shoveling snow or whatever we could find until he was hired onto the City Street Department.
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| #19 Crown Point, Indiana - 1983 The Lord miraculously helped us to find a home on south East Street. With all of our moving over the years we are thankful that we settled in here long enough for all three of our children to graduate from Crown Point High School, just as Craig and I both did. |
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| #20 East St. Crown Point, Indiana - 1984 |
My parents had moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1984. Craig's two brothers lived in Colorado and so we began to pray about moving west. Chuck found a small hardware store that was for sale, so we flew out to Aurora, Colorado and bought the Hardware Store and also our next home all in a five day period. So, we put everything in our front yard and sold everything we could and the rest fit into the smallest UHaul truck. Tana had graduated from High School and she moved out with us.
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| #21 Andes Way, Aurora, Colorado - 1993 |
Craig's parents moved out to Colorado and had some health issues. We began to look for a way for them to live with us. We had this next home built and it had a walkout full apartment downstairs. Craig's dad passed before we finished the house, but his Mom moved in and lived with us here for eight years.
During our time in Colorado we owned and operated a Hardware Store. We also moved the store twice during our time in the State.
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| #22 Cathay St, Aurora, Colorado - 1997 |
The economy changed after 9/11/2001 and we were forced to close the business and sell the building. We rented out our home and we went on a trip to see what the Lord had for us. We ended up helping a friend with a house that had damage from a Hurricane and while there, we got an offer to work for Rock Solid POS. It is the Point of Sale, Inventory Control and Accounting Software that we used in our Hardware Store. We went through tech support training and lived in a hotel for awhile. And the agreement was that we could work from home as long as we had good internet.
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| #23 Wellington, Florida - 2006 |
Craig had been watching homes for sale on lakes and we returned to Texas to Gun Barrel City and lived on a lake and had a home office to work. We rented this home on a trial basis and decided to move to the other side of Cedar Creek Lake.
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| #24 Gun Barrel City, Texas - 2006 |
From the same lakehouse.com website Craig found this next home to rent. The owners lived in Aurora, Colorado.
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| #25 Tool, Texas - 2007 |
Craig continued to watch the lakehouse site and found our next rental house on a lake in Bonham, Texas. This was such a fun place to live and this had to be one of our favorite homes. We had a big family reunion here just before we moved back to Aurora. The jobs were pretty stressful and our daughter offered Craig a job as her assistant doing Short Sales.
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| #26 Bonham, Texas - 2009 |
Our Cathay home was still rented out, so we purchased our next home and settled in just long enough to get concerned that the economy was about to take another downturn. So, we sold this home and moved back into a rental home.
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| #27 Coolidge, Aurora, Colorado - 2010 |
This was an end unit of a quadplex and we enjoyed the home, but began to wonder why we hadn't asked our renter to leave so we could move back into the home that we had built on Cathay.
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| #28 Lake St. Centennial, Colorado - 2011 |
That is exactly what we did. We painted everything and replaced all of the carpet upstairs and down and unpacked things that we hadn't opened in many years. The house was big and way more than we needed to live in. We thought my parents might come to live with us as Craig's Mom had, but they weren't sure they could handle the colder weather of Colorado compared to Nevada. I had retired at 62 and Craig was nearing 66 and we began to talk about what we would do so he would be able to retire. My father had become ill and Mom was worn out caring for him, so we sold our home in Colorado and took a leap of faith and moved into what we thought would be a very temporary motorhome.
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| #29 Aurora, Colorado - 2012 |
We had to learn about the RV life because we didn't know a thing about what we were doing. We parked in Duck Creek in Las Vegas and did our best to help Mom with Dad. After he passed, we thought Mom might want to come and live with us somewhere. She didn't want to leave Las Vegas, her home and friends. So, we found a place a few hours away so we would be close. We spent our first winter in Wellton, Arizona at Tier Drop RV Park and fell in love with the community there. For the next two years, we moved to many different places to visit family and friends and took on jobs here and there to help pay for the gas that our Whale drank up. We looked for our "next" home nearly everywhere we went. We spent our second winter at Tier Drop and decided that if we were going to continue to RV, we would need something a bit larger. We found our Jayco on Craig'slist, so we looked and found the second one just 12 miles down the road in another RV Park.
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| #30 The Whale 1.0 - 2013 |
This Holiday Rambler Admiral has two slides and we felt like we had moved into a large apartment and being crammed into the Jayco for two years.
We spent our winters in Tier Drop for four years.
I started this blog to track our travels and the people we got to meet along the way, so now what?
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| #31 The Whale 2.0 - 2015 |
We bought a home in Crown Point, Indiana on June 6, 2017. Our two sons live here and three of our eight grandchildren. We also have the opportunity to work with our son Jeff as he is the Facilities Director for Bethel Church. There's always plenty of work to do and the extra income will help us to keep the Whale for awhile.
Here's the new digs. Most of you have seen the process on Facebook, but I know that some didn't know that we had purchased a home after four years of being Nomads. Message me if you would like our new address.
We have a family vacation to Lake of the Ozarks this month, so we have stored the Motorhome and plan to pack it up and take it down there and we are still praying that we will be able to go to Tier Drop for our 5th year for a few winter months.
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| #32 Cochran Dr. Crown Point, Indiana - 2017 Here's a few pictures of the 1/2 duplex we purchased. |
I hope to continue to write the blog, but it probably won't be as frequent as it once was, or perhaps only when we ride the Whale?
Blessings,
Kathy
