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Private Notes
Robbie and Katie move into an apartment on the next block and widower Steve Douglas becomes the target of Katie's relentless matchmaking. However, Steve meets a remarkable woman in a high school corridor and the two are quickly attracted to each other.
Robbie needs to talk to his dad-who seems unreachable
The whole Douglas clan conspires to encourage Steve's romance with the lady in question, Barbara Harper. After dinner, Steve and Barbara go back to her house where Steve is predictably nervous around her. They are both serious about their relationship, but neither of them realizes it.
Everyone (Except Barbara) knows Steve is going to propose to Barbara
With the ring finally on her finger, Steve and Barbara's engagement is exciting for everyone except Barbara's five year old daughter who isn't sure she wants to share her mother. Meanwhile, Barbara employs her considerable store of diplomacy in an effort to gain acceptance by Steve's family.
Steve and Barbara have different ideas on how their wedding should go.
After a series of events at which the Bride and Groom wonder if they are doing the right thing, Steve and Barbara have an argument serious enough for them to consider cancelling their wedding.
On Steve's wedding day the groom is predictably nervous. Recalling certain mishaps from his own big day, super efficient Robbie determines that his own father's wedding will be perfect and after a few hours of hectic, last-minute preparations, Steve and Barbara are married in a simple church ceremony.
Steve and Barbara's Honeymoon in a remote fishing village is bustling with hordes of other, younger honeymooners. They end up counselling several couples who are not adjusting to married life. When a bottle of champagne arrives from the family back in Los Angeles, the other honeymooners realise that Steve and Barbara are indeed honeymooners as well.
With Steve and Barbara due back from their honeymoon in Mexico, Katie forces Robbie to lecture Uncle Charley on politeness, and the result of his very puzzling behaviour nearly drives Barbara out of her mind.
Little Dodie feels out of place among her three stepbrothers and her often grumpy uncle, and discovers that being a member of the Douglas family can be a rough and tumble proposition.
When Katie panics as she detects a few gray hairs in her youthful head, a family crisis is not far away. She further worries Robbie by suggesting they discuss preparation of life insurance and superannuation.
When her brothers have more pressing commitments, Steve gets cast in Dodie's school play as a tree, more or less proving Robbie's point that females are instinctive manipulators.
Barbara faces a fiasco when she prepares her first dinner party for Steve's business associates and their wives. The event has Barbara worried to death after a few schedule changes ruin most of her plans. Finally it is Barbara's mother who saves the day.
Barbara is jealous when a glamorous special secretary enters the lives of both Steve and his son, Robbie, and causes a double domestic crisis. Barbara ends up consoling a heartbroken young lady who is eventually fired from her position.
Little Dodie goes to the hospital for a tonsillectomy and insists that her new father stay overnight with her. Barbara understands because she knows that Dodie is finally accepting Steve as her real father. Meanwhile, Robbie and Katie go on a trip to Mexico and leave the triplets in care of the Douglases.
Hoping to renew her funloving friendship, Steve's old girlfriend from Bryant Park, who is now a rich divorcee, comes to town and gives Barbara a few jealous moments.
Robbie is asked to be the best man at the wedding of an old friend from Bryant Park. He decides to go back a week early to show Katie around the town where he grew up but ultimately makes a disappointing visit when he realises that time and years do change things.
Barbara tells her mother that she feels rejected when the boys never tell her their troubles and go to Steve or Charley instead. While Steve is away on business, she is forced to confront one of Chip's teachers when he and another student are accused of cheating in an exam.
Barbara feels that Uncle Charley is lonely playing his Cello, so she talks to a msuic store proprietress who invites three lady musicians to help join in a string quartet.
A Special time consuming project keeps Steve and son Robbie so pre-occupied that they are tired when they arrive home. After the project ends, the co-workers throw a celebration party and when Barbara and Katie arrive with supper for their hardworking spouses, and see a party in full swing, they storm out.
Young Ernie Douglas becomes the unwilling object of the affection of Dodie's six year old friend while Barbara is asked by the Board of Education to take a substitute teacher's job at a local high school. She finds her stepson Chip in the class and he embarrassingly becomes her prized pupil.
A bearded man of mystery confounds the Douglas family and the authorities alike, while Steve is working on a top priority project at home. Barbara soon identifies him as her former father-in-law.
Dodie calls upon her big brothers to help her fight her battles in the school playground when some girls say that Douglas is not her real name. Steve feels he should formally adopt Dodie to make it official but this only solves half of Dodie's problems.
Robbie and Katie have an unpleasant personality clash with the young couple who move into the next apartment in their building. Meanwhile, when Uncle Charley assures Dodie that Katie is her sister, she phones and leaves a message with Robbie. When he forgets to pass it on, a family crisis is not far away.
Chip turns on to economics and is enthralled by the latest book by his accounting teacher, and vows that he will become rich early in life by instituting a break-neck money earning schedule. Whilst working at several jobs, he doesn't take into account the expenses he begins to incur along the way to his goal.
