Chapter 1

I was the sixth of eleven kids, only three of us were guys the rest girls, of course. My name is Steven Snow, and found out that we were distant relatives of Lorenzo Snow, one of the early presidents of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Quite fortunately, as far as I was concerned we weren’t Mormon but my father’s grandfather had been.

I said fortunately because all of my sisters including my mom were all gorgeous, not just kind of pretty but drop dead gorgeous.

Our family included,

Paul, dad (43)

Merrily, mom (41)

Paul Junior (20)
Hope (19)
Faith (19)

Harmony (18)
Charity (17)
Me, Steven (16)
Ruth (15)

Esther (15)
Miriam (14)
Joanne (13)

John (13)

Although not LDS, we were still Christian thus the names.

An obvious believer of the rhythm method none of us were more than fifteen months apart from our nearest sibling. As you can see, there are two sets of twins.

Mom and dad must have planned to have many children because we had a house with seven bedrooms.

They also told us that they would be having no more children because eleven is enough. Dad said that, and Mom agreed, with a titter.

We had a family meeting at least once a week to catch everybody up on what was going on.

We talked about school, boys and girls and whatever came to mind. We had no secrets!

Rather often one of us younger kids would bring up the situation that we had more people than bedrooms, insinuating in the process that we needed a bigger house.

Dads typical response to that was that we needed more income into the house, insinuating that some of the older kids (16 and older) could help by getting a job.

PJ (Paul Junior) went to work with dad every day, and now has his own room, leaving us ten kids to share the remaining five.

All of the bedrooms except for our parents had two double beds

With mom and dad insisting that we get to know each other really well, every year there was a draw, like a lottery, with whichever two picking the same colored marble got to share that room for the next year.

We did this the day after Memorial Day, before summer would begin.

This was that meeting!

There were ten marbles, two of each color in a large glass you could not see through.

The girls picked first, they always got to pick first.

Hope reached in and got a red marble.

Ruth was next getting a yellow marble,

Harmony snagged the other red one, moving over next to Hope and they hugged each other and giggled.

Joanne pick next getting the black marble.

Miriam picked the dark blue marble, remembering she got that same color last year.

Charity plucked out the orange marble.

Joanne got the other orange marble.

Faith selected the first of the clear marbles

The last girl to select was Esther, getting the other dark blue, as the two youngest girls got to share a room, making them both very happy.

Before you go and think how progressive this whole thing was, it wasn’t. I had Miriam, my little sister this last year, and I was always picking up after her, and unable to complain due to the house rule, “Get along!”

I had a 33% chance between John, Ruth and Faith, having shared with my brother before, which had been rather cool.

With the diminished sound of only two marbles left, John reached in and picked yellow, meaning he and Ruthie were sharing, which meant that I found the other clear marble and saw Faith coming over to give me a big hug.

I said in her ear, ‘Your place or mine, Faith?”

That was the first time I got somebody older than I in the yearly musical bedroom game.