By Garrett Merrick
We lived our first four years in a 10'x50' trailer in south Provo. Julene was born 15 July 1973, and David on 6 Sept 1974.
By Cheryl Merrick
Our lives were now busy with caring for and doing things with our two children. For a few months we had two babies in diapers and who couldn’t walk. Julene gave up feeding herself, so I also had two to spoon feed.
Our days were filled with diapers and smiles. We did most everything together. We made cookies, washed the car, played in our yard, went to church, and went for walks, to parks, and to playgrounds with our little family. Wading pools, trikes, walkers, rocking horses, high chairs, car seats, baths, naps, and toys filled our little world. We made birthday cakes, cut pumpkins for Halloween, ate turkey, made a small rocking chair for Julene’s second Christmas and went to great-grandparents Crane’s at Christmas and saw Grandma and Grandpa Pearson there, went to the zoo on New Year's day pushing our stroller in the snow, colored Easter eggs and hunted for them in our yard, and went to Pioneer day parades in Mapleton. We had picnics at Provo lake in the winter with our small hibachi stove and in the canyons in the summer. When it was warm, Julene and David played in their little pool, and we went to the zoo where we rode an elephant and the train.
These years were filled with firsts. While David was mastering grabbing, eating, jumping, and walking, Julene was learning to dance, play the small organ, color, put on her own coat, and hold a dust pan. Both helped their daddy with his projects, climbed on him while he napped, and giggled when they wrestled with Daddy.
When they were a little older they slept in the crip sized maple beds that Garrett made for them. Since they could get out of the small low beds, we would find them asleep in their dresser drawers which they had pulled out of the built in dresser.
Before David was a year old, Garrett was back on swing shift working afternoons and evenings again and going to classes at BYU in the mornings to get his Building Construction degree. Desiring to know more about taking care of cars, Garrett also decided to take a correspondence car repair course.
By this time, I was exhausted and found out that I had mononucleosis. Since I had to stay on the sofa and rest, we had a teenage girl come to our home after Garrett went to work to care for our children til they went to bed. I decided to cut my waist long hair to shoulder length, then short, so I could care for it.
These years also brought changes to our family. I missed my step-grandmother, Florence Pearson who died, and my grandfather, Lloyd S. Crane, who died in May 1975. Four months later, my grandmother, Ethel Crane, died on David’s first birthday, September 6, 1975, just a few days after Mom and Lew (Arlene and Lew Pearson) moved to live near Grandma Crane. We were glad that we had taken our two children several times to visit their great-grandparents Crane on their farm in Pocatello, Idaho, and that both my grandparents Crane had lived to see their first great-grandchildren. Afterward, we made trips to visit Mom and Lew in Pocatello four hours away, but since Julene wouldn’t sleep much except in her own bed at home, we couldn’t stay for very long.
Garrett’s mother, Edith Conley Merrick, flew out to visit us in April 1976. The kids loved spending time with their Grandma Merrick. We were sad when Garrett’s grandmother, Eunice Conley, died a couple of months later in June.
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