Mom was always our biggest fan, and so she was at all of Anne and Jim's 4-H square dance competitions even though they were only on the "B" squad, and at the ceremony at Loretto Heights College when Anne was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. It came too late for Mom to attend, but she would have been very proud of Jim being honorered at home plate at Coors Field by the Colorado Rockies Organization. Mom was at all our grade school plays even when I was a wren (that's a bird) with only one line — lots of wasted talent there. She was at Kath's band concerts when she was playing an antiquated saxophone or when she only pretended to play in the marching band at football games — simultaneously marching and playing is tough. And she was there when Kath gave birth to Mom's first grandchild, Brian. Mom was so happy to have a little one to love again.
She was at our high school track meets and football and basketball games; none of us were stars, but we knew were just that in the eys of our mother. It means more to us that she adopted one of Barb's little pigs, Ebony, kept him in a pen near the house and fed him each day; and then was thrilled at her tomboy being crowned Prom Queen her senior year. None of us can still quite believe Barb was a queen. Mom was there with Dad to rush Dave to the emergency room when he got a weed caught in his throat, and many years later at Western State College when Dave was named the top geology student in Colorado and was presented with an engraved hammer to mark the occasion. The honor was somewhat diminished by the fact that the enggraver of the hammer misspelled Westhoff.
And then came the crownig f Mom's motherhood, at the age of 44, when she had us all so excited that #8, Wendy, was on the way. I can remember someone asking Mom if her children were embarrassed by her having a child so late in life. Mom could hardly believe such a question was asked. And as it would happen, it was Wendy who attended to Mom at various times in the ER at the Fort Morgan hospital. Mom was truly blessed with her eighth child.