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A 1957 convertible Chevrolet Corvette with surfing and swing decals. It was beautiful.

I liked to get an old tractor tire — the big kind — and see which one of us six kids could make it the farthest down the driveway without the tire falling on its side. Most of us played the game, but a few wouldn’t. Sometimes we would tuck ourselves inside the tractor tire and see how far we could roll. We usually ended up with scratches and bruises.

I also loved bicycle races down the hill to see who was the fastest. We rode toboggans down the big hill on our property, and it was huge. Most of the time someone would fall off. We did that with the kids up the road too, and it always seemed like I was the one who had to pull the toboggan back up the hill after everyone else went down.

We also played Monopoly and went fishing up at Silver Lake, usually two or three times a week. Most of my sisters wouldn’t go because they didn’t want to put worms on the hooks, but my brother did. It was fun and rewarding. I will never forget the day my little brother John came running down the hill carrying the biggest bass I had ever seen. He was hugging it all the way down the hill.

Everything about being outdoors was my favorite thing.

If I could walk, I would save my husband, dog’s, and my bible.

I would have to say Pennsylvania. Coming home from Virginia Beach, it was beautiful, hilly, and curvy. You would go down one hill and right back up the next. It was gorgeous.

My mother’s armoire was Putsy’s favorite piece of furniture, and there was also a dresser that was given to my dad that I refinished. We used it for everything.

I had more than 20 dogs and probably 30 cats. My brother used to throw the cats off the corn crib by their tails. Shep was my favorite dog. He could climb the ladder into the haymow, and he would go everywhere with me. We would go up into the woods just to find some quiet, and he would lay by my side.

I actually came home from college when he got sick after being mauled by a pack of dogs, and I slept on the basement floor with him for at least three days. He eventually got better. Later, when I had my son Jesse, Shep became jealous and snapped at him, so I learned not to let them be around each other.

I got it from my Uncle Rodney and Aunt Jerry, and I hated getting up every Saturday morning.

Being from Wisconsin, I felt that it was the best college in the state, so I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, home of the Badgers, and I still watch them to this day. It was very hard to get into. When the acceptance letter came in the mail, my whole family was screaming. It was a really big deal.

I was planning to become a neurosurgeon, and my favorite class was chemistry. I attended for one year and was going to transfer to the University of Michigan for my second year, but due to many problems, I didn’t go.

Instead, I moved to Virginia Beach to get away and start fresh. It helped me leave a lot of those problems behind. While I was there, I worked at McDonald’s and at a fancy restaurant. I rode my bike to work every day.

A trip to Yellowstone where I took pictures of moose only four feet away from me. We also saw Wall Drug, visited Mt. Rushmore, and camped the whole way there and back. We went on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, but there were too many glaciers to travel the full distance, so we got out and walked on some of the glaciers instead. It was so much fun.

We also went to Canada and saw Winnipeg and a number of other places. We stayed at a campground and made a lot of friends there. We climbed up into the rafters of the pavilion, which was at least 20 feet high, and got into a little bit of trouble. It was a very, very fun vacation.