To all my avid and regular followers I know you have been waiting with bated breath for my next post.
 My annual post.

 My Christmas post.

Merry Christmas!!!

    Who would have imagined what a year could bring???? 

After searching long and hard Jenna found Jerry and they were married Feb. 1, 2014. 

She will bring forth her first born child this April.

 She also now has our oldest grandchild Nick who came with the package.

My sister Julie and I took this occasion to dress up in our mother's dresses.

 Mine from the 1950's, Julie's from the 1960's.It helped us to feel like she was there.

She would have loved it!

Merissa and Jason have been hard at work training 

Otto to kick balls and feed chickens.

 Otto would like to announce that he will be getting a "sister baby" this Feb.

Grant and Tiffany gave us an early Christmas present with the birth of

 Corbin Joseph Wilson born Dec.5, 2014.

Garrett and Brinley are delighted.

Thayne and Jennifer have taken up residency

in sunny California with their kids 

Mckaylee, Miya and William. We do miss having 

closer but now we have an excuse to go south.

Parley looked far and wide for a wife and was rewarded for his

efforts with a beautiful bride, Launa. They are also in the line up with 

a new grandchild for us in March.

That will be four new grandbabies by spring...

but who is counting?

Alesa and Billy live close and help 

on the Beard Farm

and the Wilson Farm.

Eliza Jane and Will help on the tractors.

Tav and Tate returned from their missions 

and are now eligible bachelors

attending BYUI

Lorin and I celebrated our 40th anniversary.

 Whew! What a year!!!!!

Merry Christmas from the 

Wilsons of Wyoming

Merry Christmas

   

    No, we don't  line up and shine up our tractors and then take pictures from the air but AGCO Corporation does because they like the backdrop of the Tetons that the farm offers. (Too bad they don't leave the tractors when they go)
 It was pretty much just Lorin and me trying to keep the farm going with Tav and Tate still out on their missions.
 Our big news is:
 Jenna is engaged to Jerry Budd and will be married Feb. 1st in the Draper Utah Temple.
 We have two new grandsons, William Wilson (Thayne and Jennifer) and Otto Davis (Merissa and Jason). Tavner and Tate will be home from their missions in less than a month and we are all pretty excited.

 Part of our winter was spent in Bolivia helping in the Cochabamba Mission with my sister, Christy and her husband Dan. So fun to feel like we were doing similar things as our sons were on their missions.

  We are blessed beyond measure to live in peaceful Teton Valley and enjoy beautiful scenery, family and friends. Our greatest blessing is to have the Gospel of Christ in our lives. We celebrate his birth this Christmas.

    We wish you all the peace that is found in following His teachings.+

Lorin and Liza

Oh Holy Night

On that holy night long ago in Bethlehem God sent us the most precious gift of His son, Jesus Christ.
He has blessed us with five wonderful sons and three daughters along with spouses and grandchildren now. How could we be more blessed than to have wonderful family, friends, good health and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In a small way we return thanks and send out our sons Tate and Tavner to Angola and Mongolia to share the good news and glad tidings of the Gospel with the people of these countries.
We send our love and best wishes to all.

Merry Christmas, Lorin and Liza

Martin's Cove

This is Tiffany on the right and Garrett beside her pushing and sometimes hanging and being pulled.

Promises
D&C 2: 2
And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers.
I think this may mean that the “fathers”, the early members of the church, some of whom were my ancestors, promised to sacrifice that I might enjoy the freedom of religion and the freedom to build temples here in the West. I think my/our promise to them is that since they made that possible for me/us that we will in turn remember them and previous ancestors and see that their temple work is done.
I experienced this “turning of hearts to the fathers” in several different ways as we trekked at Martin’s Cove. First I thought of the pioneers who sacrificed so much to bring their families to Zion, I thought of my own ancestors one of whom was Anson Call who lead a rescue party. As I shared his story to my group I found that one of the brothers in our ward was a descendent of Anson’s also, so I found a cousin.
In sharing our experience with the rest of the ward I knew that they wouldn’t understand the whole import and significance of our trek. Words just couldn’t express it. You can try to recreate with words the wind, the dust, the camaraderie of the group, the poignancy and triumph of the “woman’s pull”, the stark, rugged, exquisite beauty of viewing the Sweetwater River with the rocks behind as we had our testimony meeting, but they can’t feel it and smell it as they sit in the air-conditioned chapel. What they understand compared to what we experienced is minute. Likewise, although we experienced a mini trek, I am sure that we have but little comprehension of all that those pioneers suffered. As one quote said, “neither word nor pen can describe the sorrow and suffering.”
The question I have to ask myself is “My ancestors fulfilled their promise to me, how am I doing at fulfilling my promise to them?”

Prayers for Sale

Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Sandra Dallas always puts a surprising twist on a story. She did not disappoint with this one. A story set in a mining town and Sandra has done her research on mining, quilting, and personal relations. I was sorry when it ended I was enjoying the language and story so much."Tap her light." ( or in non- mining terms, "take it easy").



View all my reviews

A Year of Lasts

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. –Henri Bergson
This week brings the graduation of my seventh and eighth children, twin boys. As I gather the pictures for their Senior posters to display on graduation night, the past 18 years converge and distill on one 28”x22” piece of flimsy white cardboard. Even though I have walked this walk six times before I still ask myself, “How did this happen? How did these little boys who I used to pull onto my lap together to read a story turn into young men who now tower over me. Where did the last 18 years go?” I know that I am not the first parent to entertain such thoughts, I think every parent who has watched their child leave the nest has had similar thoughts. “Sunrise, Sunset, One season following another, Laden with happiness and tears” as Tevye from Fiddler On the Roof so aptly sang.
Last August I took the last “First Day of School” picture. After putting miles and miles on our car chasing cross-country runners all over the state this year we attended the last cross-country race, served the last prom dinner, and held the last parent-teacher conference.
Tonight as I sit with the other parents they seem like family because we have car pooled to so many of the sporting events and shared so much bleacher time together. I watch their sons and daughters march into the gym to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance” and feel a tug at my heart strings as I realize that they are moving on too. The days of zip-your-coat-here’s-your sandwich mothering have passed and the nights of the basement overflowing with kids, popcorn, movies and Mafia in the dark have quieted. I will still see the parents, on occasion, and their kids on rarer occasions. There is a sweet sadness as I quietly grieve the end of our close association.
So as the graduates stand to change their tassels from one side of their cap to the other and look forward to new time of life, I too look forward to a new time of life. A time that I have watched my friends arrive at, some years ago, that time of the “empty nest”. After 29 years of sending kids out the door to catch the bus I look to open a new chapter in my life. It is both exhilarating and unsettling for both the graduates and me.
The wave of nostalgia passes and I collect myself. My mothering of the past 18 years has been to prepare these boys to leave home, do their own wash, be independent, go to college and serve missions. So why the tears as that is exactly what they are doing? I should be happy, right? I am! I am! But could I just go back to the days when they would hold my hand as we walked and I could nuzzle into the downy softness of their just washed Johnson’s Baby Magic hair? Could I just savor a few more ordinary days? I guess that is what pictures are for.

Dancing in Blue Lace

Dancing In Blue Lace
Today I set about mending a dress of my mother’s. This wasn’t just any everyday dress, this was a formal blue lace ballroom dancing dress lined with blue satin. I believe Mother made it to wear in a ballroom dance floor show. Each year the stake sponsored the Gold and Green Ball and perhaps she made it for that event. At one time she and Terry were called to the ward dance directors as a couple. This would have been in the early 1950’s, possibly in between her sixth and seventh pregnancies of Christy (1952) and myself (1954). Terry recalls that, “Mother and I could waltz really well.”
When I first tried the dress on I was surprised that is really wasn’t that much too big for me. I am a bit shorter than Mom was but always in my mind she was or at least she was always complaining that she was heavier that she wanted to be. There of course are no size tags in this dress because she made it but I am guessing that it is maybe a size 12. I wonder where she bought the fabric, did she go to Salt Lake or Idaho Falls or was such yardage to be found in Afton, Wyoming?
The dress is made in two parts first the under dress/slip of navy satin and then the lace overdress. It is waisted with a long skirt cut to flair gracefully at the bottom as she turned and danced. It has a fitted bodice with a unique sweetheart neckline with no shoulder seam but the back coming over the shoulder and down 3 or 4 inches to meet the front bodice which was gently gathered to create fullness across the bust. The front neckline folds over ever so slightly to create a soft lapel on the lower part of the neckline. I have not seen a similar treatment and wondered if she had seen it in a magazine or if she just designed it and draped it into what she saw in her head. Being a seamstress myself I know that some designs evolve as they are being created. The sleeves are a short softly gathered puff with a slit, there is a ribbon that runs underneath from the shoulder seam to the end of the sleeve which lifts it up and creates fullness along with a small shoulder pad. She made a belt out of three different colors of velvet ribbon sewn together, light blue, wine and navy. At the end of each sleeve is a knot of matching ribbon.
As I looked at her neat stitches inside and out I could easily imagine what enjoyment she experienced as she fashioned this elegant costume. What sheer joy in the creation process as it took shape and from yards of flat fabric as it became a beautiful dress. I could see this dress had been worn a fair amount as it was showing signs of wear as the lace was pulling apart in places. How many times did she wear it and where I wondered. I can just see her smile and her face light up as she danced around the room complimented by her handsome son Terry. Was she doing the waltz, the foxtrot or the Viennese. Dancing was one of her great loves and she passed this onto her daughters and I see it surfacing in her granddaughters as well. I could see some places that had been mended and altered. I think she must have loaned the dress to someone shorter than she and they shortened it at the shoulders but it was done with red thread and basted. I don’t think it was Mother’s work because she would have never used red thread. There was also some mending done at the waistline with a turquoise thread and again I don’t think she would have used any other color than what matched.
As I finger the hand stitching on the facing of the underslip I can see her fingers with the needle and thread deftly and gracefully moving in and out to make it lay just perfect. Has she become more perfect than she really was in my mind? I don’t think so because I have this dress and others to prove of her abilities. Pressing and mending the fabric that she so lovingly sewed I feel connected to her. I feel great gratitude that she in turn shared her gift of sewing and creating with me and that she instilled in me a love for beauty and refinement.
The thought ran through my head that she would have been a wonderful designer and could have worked with Rose Marie Reed designing swimsuits or formals, she certainly had the talent. She chose instead to be our mother and use her creative talents sewing for us girls and teaching us to be mothers ourselves. I think she would be pleased if she could spend a day with us as we delight in our recreational sewing gatherings, she would appreciate the décor of our homes and how we set a lovely table. I think too that she would be pleased to see how we have emulated her in our domestic and mothering skills, but then we had the best teacher.
Now if I could just come up with some place to wear her dress and let it dance once again.
Liza B Wilson March 2011