Kettle River news

I hope everyone had a safe Christmas holiday and New Year’s Day. I know many make new year’s resolutions, but how many are able to keep them? Make your resolutions realistic. You need to work to keep them, so don’t make it something you will never be able to successfully keep.

Quilting at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church is every Wednesday from 9 a.m. until noon.

One summer, when I was about 11, my parents went on a trip to Boston to visit my mother’s brother and his family. This was the first trip they had taken alone since they got married. My mother’s sister and her family were to stay with us while they were gone. The day my parents left on their trip, my aunt ended up in the hospital during the night and left my uncle with eight children, ages 2 to 12, to care for by himself.

Each day, my uncle would load us up into the car to go visit my aunt in the hospital. Somehow, he always seemed to find a place to park directly under her window right next to the quiet-zone sign.

Then the washing machine broke a couple of days later and he had to get it fixed. Do you know how many clothes eight kids can go through in a week?

We were instructed to tell my parents, when they called, that everything was fine and that my aunt was busy and couldn’t come to the phone. We knew that if they knew my aunt was in the hospital, they would cut their trip short and come home. Two days before they were due home, the washer got fixed and we started washing all the clothes.

The next day, my aunt came home from the hospital in the morning. A few hours later, my parents came home. Somehow, we got all the clothes washed, dried and ready to iron or put away before they got home. They eventually learned what had happened while they were gone.

My uncle seemed to be able to keep us all fed and clean while he was alone to care for us.