Hailey Elizabeth 1987

Halloween 1987

HAILEY ELIZABETH - Ontario,Oregon 1987

We were living a delightful life in Boise, when Roger informed me he got the Branch Manager job in Ontario, Oregon and was starting work there the first of the year January 1986. I did not even know he had applied for the job. (A job in Twin Falls had been open shortly before, but he did not feel like that was a good career move.) He commuted to Ontario 57 miles away for several months since we had to sell our Silver Spur home. All the girls were growing up. Emily had started school and was so smart, but hated the bus rides. Stephanie had a fear of toilets and an obsession with The Sound of Music, she wanted to meet the Von Trapp family. And Chelsea spent the first few days of the new year in the hospital with pneumonia, it was so scary. Then in July I wrecked our new little Dodge Colt (the only car we ever purchased new), luckily none of the girls were hurt, and we finally moved to a rental home in Ontario that month. I wrote in my journal, “It is Roger’s birthday. I HATE IT IN ONTARIO.” But that didn’t last long, we met some wonderful friends there, the Oakes (with 4 boys), the Dames (with 5 boys) and the Andersons (had a daughter who babysat for us and a son Steph’s age) and when it was time to move from Ontario a few years later, I did not want to leave.

Towards the end of September I found out I was expecting again. We were excited! On October 18th I went in to see the doctor with cramping and bleeding. In an ultrasound they found a live fetus with a heartbeat and either a dead twin or a blood clot behind the placenta. My new LDS doctor, Dr. Woodfield, sent me home to “take it easy” and said the pregnancy would either stabilize or I would miscarry. Fortunately things stabilized, but I remember ward members asking why was I trying to save the baby, that usually miscarriages were because something was not right. Of course I wanted to save the pregnancy if possible. Again on February 15th I had an episode of bleeding and the ultrasound showed we were having another little girl…at least the doctor said if he was a betting man that is what he would bet.  If she had been a boy she would have been named “Lukas Roger,” but now we were going to have a “Brooke Elizabeth” or “Whitney Brooke”. Again things stabilized, thank goodness, and the baby was okay. 

On Mother’s day May 10th 1987, I was cooking a ham for an elderly neighbor woman, Mrs. Powell, to join us for dinner when I stared bleeding again. It started slow, but after the doctor checked me the dam broke and I was hemorrhaging. He admitted me to the hospital with catheter, IV and monitor, then I was sent home after 7 hours with no baby. Chelsea wanted to know where the baby was and Steph told people at church I was not having a baby, they just could not take care of me. Great :-). I wrote in my journal: “The girls have been really good, Roger is calm - he always is and the doctor is the one who got the most scared . He is afraid of having to do a c-section or even hysterectomy….the baby is doing okay.”

May 12th, 1987 at my scheduled appointment the doctor decided not to check me, but I started bleeding through my clothes down the sides of the exam table, so he called a specialist in Boise that said to induce labor. Again I went to Saint Alphonsus Medical Center, across the street from Roger’s bank and they started Pitocin at 12:30 P.M. At 6:00 P.M. I still had a ways to go, so the doctor broke my water, said it would be about midnight before the baby arrived and he went to dinner. 

At 7:30 I felt pressure and told Roger to have the nurse get the doctor. I had three crazy hard contractions, felt extremely sick and my arms went numb. I knew I was going to start pushing. They wheeled me into the delivery room and Roger thought he was going to have to deliver the baby. The doctor got there with three pushes to spare. Roger told him he did not have time to change clothes. In his street clothes the doctor caught Hailey posterior or face up and all. Roger cut the cord. The doctor said it was his “funnest” delivery ever and he wants to do more since everyone had such a great time. Sure we all did. I delivered on my side with Roger holding my leg up (Dr. Krueger's method). 

Hailey Elizabeth Christensen was born at exactly 8:00 P.M. weighing exactly 8 lbs. and was 21 and a half inches long. I wrote in my journal at three days old: “She is so pretty. She has dark hair, dimples and a cleft. She looks more like Stephanie, but is her own little person. Mom thinks she looks like me when I was a baby.” We brought Hailey home, but Chelsea insisted on calling her Jessica for a while. Roger sent six roses for the six girls since my mom was there too. My four “little women” daughters had arrived! Hailey was an intense, determined, go-er from day one, and crawled by four months old.

In August 1987 the girls and I went to McCall with my parents and then to Moscow for my grandma  Helen’s 80th birthday party. (Roger went to Portland for work). When we returned home I started packing to move again. We purchased a 2800 square foot rambler with a basement on Verde Drive for only $58,000 just 3 doors down from Emily’s school. It was on a busy road with a small yard, but we really liked it. We had planned to build a home in Fruitland, Idaho, but decided not too. The builder we worked with said he was going to sue us for $2800 for not building since he did not have any work. Two lawyers said we would win, but it would cost us $5000 in court costs, so we paid the builder. An expensive lesson, but the less stressful way to go. It made me sick to pay someone for nothing when we had a growing family with expenses. We did not even have a car that fit our whole family. But it was only money, a non-eternal entity.

That Christmas Eve 1987 someone dropped a ton of presents (16, I think) off on our front steps for the girls. It was so kind, overwhelming and such a blessing. I painted “THANK YOU ???” in large letters on our front window because I did not know who to thank (and do not to this day). It was a reminder to be generous and do things for others when we can. We did pay it forward.

I had been wrestling with the decision to go back to work for a few months. The hospital was close and offered me a job in the OB department which was my favorite place to work, the place I had most recent experience, we could use the extra money and it would help keep up my RN license. As pondered what to do I opened a drawer in our desk and an article fell out about the Prophet asking mothers to stay in the home if possible. Roger was always so busy (In my journal it said… “Roger is never home, he is on every committee in town and does at least one athletic event a day”, he worked 10 hour days and taught part-time at the Jr. College) the girls did need someone at home. I started babysitting a four month old baby girl twice a week instead. Ontario was beginning to feel like home, so of course we probably would not be there much longer. Roger had been applying for jobs in Oregon continuously…in Eugene (he was 2nd choice there), then Salem and finally applied for the Corvallis office which he was hired for. 

In February 1988 the girls and I stayed behind for a few months while Roger went off and began his new adventure/job in Corvallis, Oregon. While he was away we enjoyed library outings and had a little roof fire from the wood burning stove. I was struggling with the prospects of moving again, so Roger asked me to pray about it. I begrudgingly did and afterward opened the scriptures to D&C section 111 which is all about moving to a new area and the treasures they would find there. Our treasures would not be monetary necessarily, but we did meet many great lifetime friends in that area (Catchpoles, Martin's, Moss's and Egans). Roger bought a home in Corvallis I had not even seen, but it had everything I asked for. It was in a mountain neighborhood surrounded by trees, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths for $70,000. It was smaller than our home in Ontario, but prices were higher in Oregon. It had a neighborhood association with a swimming pool which was fun and the girls would walk to school down a mountain path. There were some trials upon arriving…like our home was infested with a woodpecker, birds in the attic and huge carpenter ants under the carpet, so we had to live in a motel over Easter while it was fumigated…but we were now beginning the Corvallis chapter of our life and would be in Oregon for another 21 years.

Roger with Hailey at 3 days old

Hailey in hospital

Hailey about a week old

Hailey going to church

Four sisters in Moscow with Great Gpa Art

Hailey a few months old

On the Oregon Coast near Newport

Hailey 1 year old in her crib in Corvallis

Four girls with daddy in Corvallis

The front  of our Corvallis home surrounded by Douglas firs

Jean jackets on the back deck in Corvallis

The backyard of our Corvallis home

Random Junior High and High School Artwork

My parents found a portfolio of my Jr. High and High School artwork in 2016 when cleaning out areas of the home of my youth on Plainview Drive in Twin Falls, Idaho. I decided to post a few in different mediums from my works. The best ones or those that won awards are framed on their walls, but here are a few of my amateur efforts for posterity:

Seagull in acrylic painted and framed for Roger before his mission.

Watercolor and ink hands

Self Portrait as a Junior in High School

Poster paints

Acrylic painting

Pen and ink with watercolor

Tissue paper 3D

Pastel with varnish

Acrylic paint with dimension

Acrylic paint

Book cover in watercolor and ink pen

Acrylic Paint

Glue and pastel chalk

Markers (plans for play backdrop)

Poster paint

Pastel chalk

Pastel crayons

Toothpick artwork

Chelsea Jill 1984

CHELSEA JILL - BOISE, IDAHO 1984

In early 1984 my body had been acting odd, then I found out I was expecting another child and chalked everything up to that. We were so excited and went on living life in our many venues. Roger, Chris, Steve and their BSU football player friend Lance were on our church basketball team that won the area tournament out of over 200 other teams. An older gentleman at church gave me one of the nicest compliments I have ever received when he said, “I looked just like he pictured Jesus’s mother Mary would look”.  We had an opportunity to move to Twin Falls for Roger to work with First Federal Savings and Loan, but Roger decided to stay in Boise. And Boise got a temple, I went to the first session at 6:00 A.M. on my 25th birthday. Life was good.

At my first OB doctor appointment the nurse said there was a nodule on my thyroid, but that could be normal in pregnancy and they would watch it. The next month when I met with the doctor he said my thyroid was asymmetrically enlarged and that was not normal so I had to go to the hospital for tests, the ones I could have while expecting anyway. An ultrasound showed a tumor the size of a golf ball growing on the right side of my thyroid. It was too big to needle biopsy so they would have to remove it. I was so scared! I wanted to live to raise my daughters. I knew no one else would love them as much as I did. 

On March 16th I was at my huge waterbed praying to God that I could at least live until my children were raised, when a song or hymn came to my mind. I did not know what hymn or verse I was reciting so I went and got a hymn book and thumbed through until I found the hymn on page #66 (in the new hymn book #85), the 3rd verse of How Firm a Foundation: “Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.” It was such a powerful, moving experience. I knew God was mindful of me and whatever happened it would be okay. This verse has come to my mind many many times through the years when I needed comfort and the 7th verse at times too.

On Wednesday March 28th I entered the hospital and the next morning went into surgery at 6:30 A.M. for a thyroidectomy with biopsy. My mom and Roger accompanied me. It lasted over two and a half hours and they had to hang my neck off the operating table to cut the mass out since the tumor was so big.  When I awoke in recovery the worst nurse in our RN class, who had almost failed, was my nurse… Yikes… and the doctor said they found multifolicular papillary carcinoma and removed the whole right side and 2/3s of the left side of my thyroid. Not the best news to open my eyes to. The incision was about four inches across the bottom of my neck closed with metal clamps and a drain for blood hung from it. I was on the OB ward of the hospital to monitor the baby and looked like a lady Frankenstein who had just delivered a baby c-section out her neck. Emily jumped up on my bed, but Steph was terrified of me and the whole hospital experience. That whole day I felt drugged out of my mind and asked the OB  doctor about my baby. He said it was drugged out of it’s mind too and that’s why it was weaving back and forth (and doing flips it felt like). Roger gave me a blessing that this baby would bring a lot of love into our home. That was wonderful, but I wanted to hear it would be okay! I finally got to go home on Saturday after making many promises and on Monday went to recuperate in Twin Falls for a week. We still had a few months to wait for the main event of the baby’s birth who we planned to name “Cassidee Jill or Casey Roger.” 

Since my brother Chris was getting married Dr. Krueger agreed to induce our baby just two days after the due date on August 16th, 1984. I was so nervous this time and worried if all would be okay since it had been such a rocky pregnancy. Roger was just excited to get the baby here. We arrived at St. Lukes Hospital at 7:00 A.M. and my water was broken before 8:00. By noon nothing had happened, I had just walked by legs off. The intensity picked up in the afternoon and after 15 hours of labor at 10:05 PM a beautiful baby girl Chelsea Jill Christensen was born weighing 7 lbs 2 oz and 20 and 1/2 inches long. From my journal: “Kind of a cross between her sisters. She is fair, but looks more like Steph. Once you hold your baby a magic is put over you to defend and love that child for life. The miracle of bonding still amazes me. If anyone had told me I would love this baby so much I would never have believed them.” She was perfect, but her respirations were 100 a minute instead of the normal rate of around 60. They discovered through an x-ray one lung was filled with fluid, but she rallied and was shortly okay. 

Chelsea got to go to the wedding at a week old. Steph suggested we give her to Chris and Joan for their wedding gift, but really she liked her a lot and was always carrying her around to my horror (got her out of the crib, took her on top the table, etc.).  Chelsea and cousin Mollie Hessing were blessed on the same day in different wards, September 30, 1984, quite the family gathering with a double-blessing celebration in Boise that day. 

Chelsea’s first plane ride as at 6 months old. Roger’s company was moving him to Roswell, New Mexico to manage a branch there so we flew down to meet him. I had just had a cryo (freeze) procedure on my pre-cancerous cervix a few hours before Chelsea and I boarded to a plane to New Mexico. She was a great traveler, but I did not have good feelings about the town (besides the airport and the military school). We could not find a place to live and some boys had set the bushes in front of Roger’s office on fire. On the way home Roger got a call from Benjamin Franklin Savings and Loan offering him a job so we could stay in Boise. However our house had sold, so we rented an older cute little brick home with a sky light for a few months. We looked at one house with a realtor and it had everything we wanted…4 bedrooms, 2 baths, garage, family room, 1800 square feet, nice neighborhood in SW Boise and we could afford it for $60,750 with payments under $450 per month. We moved to Silver Spur Drive during the spring of 1985, purchased Wild Waters passes and enjoyed the next chapter of our lives as a family of five. 

Roger holding 1 day old Chelsea at St. Lukes.

Sisters welcoming Chelsea home to Kerr Place.

Chelsea a few days old.

Chelsea dressed for the wedding in wedding colors.

Off to Chris's wedding August 1984.

Blessing day September 30, 1984.

Chelsea in her walker.

Darling picture... bright eyed Chelsea all boxed up. 

At the brick rental house in Boise spring 1985.

Winter 1984-85 in the wagon.

Spring on Silver Spur....Chelsea lived in 3 houses by 8 months old.

Front porch on Silver Spur Drive.

Snuggling mom at church.

Chelsea's 1st birthday (see bow) on Silver Spur in Boise.

Wild Waters Summer 1986

Wild Water's blonde beach beauty. 

Summer 1986 Silver Spur back deck.

Chelsea on our back deck on Silver Spur.

With Gma Bonnie and Hessing cousins.

The girls with pig tails.

3 sisters and a dog on Easter Sunday 1986.

Tough Times 1982-1983

TOUGH TIMES, TRIALS  and DEATHS 1982-1983

This section will not be long, but I want to do a rapid review of a few eternal things that happened in the interim between babies. 1982-1983 were tough years. Five of our grandparents passed away among other challenges:

Ada May Sailor Meyerhoeffer died in February 1982.  I am pretty sure she had Alzheimers Disease before we even knew it existed. She was always such a gentle, proper, classy woman. She had been a spinster who raised the Tate's children when my grandpa Marvin married her after his divorce. The last time we visited her she showed my mother and I “friends” who were visiting her in her bedroom mirror (they were us) and she had been feeding my grandpa cat food and leaving the stove top on. 

Marvin Lewis Meyerhoeffer passed away on June 17, 1982. My parents moved Grandpa Marv to Twin Falls shortly after Ada died. He had suffered a stroke and was not in the best health. Roger and I had picked out a comfortable recliner for him to sit in, but he did not need it long since he was put in a care facility shortly after arriving in Twin Falls. When he died my parents and brothers had all gone to Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open, so the Care Center called me hoping to have me help because none of us knew where they were and it was the days before cell phones.

My Grandpa Marv and Grandma Ada in Moscow with my dad.

Bertha Lesta Hatfield died on October 20, 1982. She was my Grandpa Art’s mother and everyone was so impressed she had lived so long in good health. She was born in 1888. I did not know her well, but remember visiting her occasionally.

Mattie Fjeldsted Lewis left this earth on December 7, 1982.  Grandma Lewis was Roger’s mother’s mother and had lived with them for many years. Her health was never good, but she was always a delight and would read our fortunes with cards or read our palms when we asked. (Her sisters even read tea leaves and head bumps.) She was a friend that I enjoyed visiting with and even wrote her a poem. Both Roger’s and Keegan’s middle names came from her family names.

Benjamin Williams Harding passed away on February 2, 1983. He was in a car wreck the day before and life-flighted to Salt Lake City, but did not make it. He had pulled out in front of a teenaged driver that he did not see, probably because he was wearing a hat the police said. Grandpa Ben had been a sheep herder at one time and loved sports. He always had candy for us grandkids…Horehound hard candies, Beemans and Black Licorice gum...were some of the flavors I remember. They had moved to Heyburn, Idaho and were living in a little house on my Uncle Gerald Ben’s farm when he died. My Gma June lived there alone unable to use her arms for another 22 years.

Grandpa Ben and Grandma June in Heyburn, Idaho 

Then Roger’s sister Cheri’s little boy James Ryan Hessing died on August 10, 1983. He was their first son after four daughters and the family had all gone camping and left him with his Hessing grandparents to tend. He was found in his crib deceased from crib death. Roger and his dad came and picked me up at girl’s camp and we went with some Hessing family members to find Cheri and Brent and tell them. It was one of the most awful things I have had to do. As soon as Cheri saw us she started wailing… “no, no, not my son”. (Ryan later appeared to Cheri as a missionary-aged young man to comfort her and let her know he was okay.) Then my cousin Cindy Harding Mickelson lost her daughter Megan to crib death that year too. It was a tough time of loss in our family.

A different kind of loss happened that year as well. On Stephanie’s first birth in December of 1982, Roger lost his job and was no longer employed. Economic times were tough. First he had been cut to four day work weeks, which had been tight, but better than no job at all. Roger was so depressed. He felt like he had done everything asked of him and thought God had let him down. His dear grandmother had just died a few weeks before and things seemed so heavy he could not get out of bed for a few days. I truly was not worried and tried to be his cheerleader, but was probably just annoying. I knew Roger was a hard worker and heaven would provide. It was a tough Christmastime that year, but shortly after he was offered a job by our neighbor at Associates Financial Services. Not his dream job, but a job was a job and it had potential. We still had our house and two darling daughters and my brother Chris lived with us while going to Boise State that year so his rent helped too. Roger’s former boss the Stake President called me to the Stake Young Women’s presidency shortly after Roger’s job ended and that was an awkward interesting interview. President Grow cried. I hope he felt a little bad about leaving a young family unemployed.

One bright spot during that time (and of course there were others too) was that my dad was hired as President of the College of Southern Idaho.