The Best Part of Getting Older

The best part of getting older is becoming grandparents. This picture was taken a few years ago with our #6 and #7 grand children. We live very close to most of our family. Only Greg and Jess live in Utah. We try to see them as often as possible, but we get to see the others a lot. We are so blessed with the privilege of being a part of each other's lives.
This week Jenny went to a scrap booking convention and I was able to spend some quality time with her kids. Interacting with them as I did my own children so many years ago was so fun and brought back many fond memories. I am amazed at the amount of work it takes to care for them and keep everything else in order. I loved that part of my life so much. When I get to fall back into that roll or find myself in that situation, I know that is what I did best, and the part of me that just came so naturally as I mothered my babies. It's hard to imagine doing it day in and day out, it's very tiring, especially now, at 55.

Everyday in the company of little children is a great blessing!

Thirty Five Years Have a Way of Changing You

It was thirty five years ago today, that I became Mrs. Gene Wilson. I can't believe that it has been that long. It's hard to even see ourselves in the images of these two kids. We were so young and unprepared for marriage, and life in general. Luckily with the Lord's help we have been able to make it all work out, and have found joy in the journey. We are very proud of the family we have raised and for the ones who have joined us by marriage and become part of our eternal family unit. We are grateful for our beautiful family who continually bring us so much joy.

We don't have many pictures from that day and the one's that we do have are very poor quality. This was taken just minutes after the "I dos."

I made my own wedding dress and was just as happy as could be with the small ceremony that we enjoyed.


Look at those side-burns! Well, it was the 70s you know, we were stylin'

More 24 hour Book of Mormon Marathon Pictures

There have been some wild stories going around about the adventures of our wonderful experience with the Book of Mormon reading marathon. So I have been asked to post all of my pictures to let anyone who is interested see for themselves! We did have fun and it was a very good bonding experience between the youth and their leaders. Well, at least I feel a lot closer to them than I did before. I love working with the kids and wouldn't change my calling for any other. We love having the kids in our home, and feel privileged to work with them. I know that we're old enough to have a Beehive grand daughter, but I still feel grateful to share my love and testimony with the Young Women weekly and with the boys occasionally. I'm not going to re-post the ones that I did earlier. Go back a few days to see the other ones.

This first group of pictures were taken at the beginning of the night around 7 p.m. When we were all ready to go!


Staking out our spots, and getting comfortable


I know I brought my scriptures, they're in here somewhere.


Savannah, not asleep yet!


Evan didn't even pretend to not be sleepy.


Tim kept moving around to stay awake.

Poor Tyler slept here all night, I should have found him a better spot!

You should hear how fast Megan can read. At this point the kids were kinda like, oh Megan, you're crazy and so dramatic. But when it was mentioned in the morning that we were behind scedule and Megan was gone to play practice, someone said, "where's Megan, we need Megan!"

And the Bishop gave himself a sore throat reading so fast and so many pages out load. He's awesome!


Someone found a comfortable spot.


Oh man, who's idea was this?

When you get up at 4:30 a.m. for 5:15 a.m. seminary night time is for sleeping!

Oh Camie I'm so sorry you had to stay awake all night long!

Even Ema, who I said stayed awake all night drifted off for a few minutes here and there. It made her so sad, she cried.

I don't think Evan will claim that he stay'd awake the whole time.

Or Kaylin, she found a comfortable spot!

Is that Coral or Chantell?

24 hours is a very long time especially when you consider that all of these kids are earily morning seminary students. Their day starts at 5a.m. every school day! They are very good kids!

Here's Chantell and Lamara.

Awake again and horsing around, how much reading is really going on?

Who's asleep here? Not that crazy Secrest kid. But uh oh, look at Savannah and Page, either they are sleeping or just faking it really well. Maybe they are trying to ignore Dallin. How much licorice did that kid eat?

I don't think Logan will claim that he stayed awake all night.

Why did this kid come?

It was like in Finding Nemo where Dori said,

"Just Keep Swimming" We had to "Just keep Reading!"

There were some who didn't even pretend to want to stay awake.
But at least he was there!

We had to "Just kept reading!"

Oh, Savannah is still awake, but she was in between three cute boys who wouldn't leave her alone!

Camie still awake and reading, but Tyler is fading fast!

This side of the room, still awake. But I think this was taken early in the evening.

So now you can be the judge for yourself. Who stayed awake all night???

I know one witness who claims, that only three people stayed awake all night long, because she was watching and keeping tabs.

I'll let you guess who that was, and it wasn't me. But I am on her list!!! : P

A Senior Moment

Oh my gosh, it just hit me, that the President of the United States is younger than me! First it was a new Bishop that is almost young enough to be my son, he's surely young enough to be my son-in-law, (huh Steve) Now the US President is younger than me too! Even though I didn't choose to vote for him I am sure pinning my hopes on his ability to get things done for our country. Heaven knows we are in need of some changes. Good Luck, Mr President, let's see if you can keep your promises!

I Love You More Today, Than Yesterday . . .

I just realized that I don't take enough pictures of Gene. I have lots of pictures of the kids and grand kids but not many of Gene and I. That's going to have to change.
Right now I am feeling very grateful for the blessing of having a happy marriage. Oh, don't get me wrong, as everyone who has known us for the duration of our fiery can attest, we haven't been without our big issues and trials, but hanging in there and sticking it out has been so worth it. To be able to say that I am still married to my children's father is very rare these days. I am so glad that I can say that. We have clung to each other and weathered the storm as the firey darts from the advissary have been flung at us to drive us apart, but we have prevailed. I know it comes from the healing power of the third partner in our marriage, Jesus Christ.
Gene is truly my best friend. From the first few days after we became acquainted we have been almost inseparable, only being separated by the hospital stays when I was having our babies. Time flies so fast, we were married and had our four children during our first five years. Back then when we were so busy with just getting from day to day, imagining being married 10, 15 or 20 years seemed so far away. It was something that was almost beyond imagining. How has it all gone by so quickly?
We are so blessed with our life and with each other.
Happy Anniversary Gene, I love you so much. So much more today than on that day 35 years ago. Thank you for our life, our children and your love!

24 Hour Book of Mormon Read-a-thon

This last weekend we did something in our ward that was a huge undertakeing, but something that the kids are sure to remember for a long time. Gene is our Young Men's President, Dave Rall is the Bishop and Christi Jones is our YW President. The Bishop decided that he wanted to do a 24 hour Book of Mormon reading marathon. It was decided that it would be held at our house instead of at the institute, which made it more homey and comfortable, but crazy for us. While it was going on, I think that all of the adults were asking ourselves, "Why are we doing this?" Especially when most of the kids were sleeping. When it was all said and done, it was one of those things that you were so glad that you had been a part of. We did it too, in just under 23 hours, front to back, the whole Book of Mormon, it is possible, I was there and awake for every minute of it! It was AWESOME!

So, Who's Idea Was This?

It was this guy's idea, Bishop Dave Rall, he's great. He grew up in the ward and he's very young, with a young family. The whole ward loves him especially the kids. It's going to be fun to see him grow in this calling.

Steve Stockard is in the YM program too, he's so fun and is a great example for the boys. We are so proud of him and glad he's our son-in-law. Megan Stricklin, pictured here was a "die-hard" reader with lots of energy, she was one of the only kids who stayed awake almost all of the time. She's great!

After several hours of reading
even Steve keep falling asleep, but never for very long. As soon as he did he would wake himself up by snoring! He was so funny.

And even our Megan the die-hard reader had a hard time staying awake after about 20 hours.

About halfway through the very long night

This is what happened to most of the kids when it wasn't their turn to read.


24 hours if a very long time at 2:3o am.



This one said, I was awake for 36 hours straight! I told her, don't say that around anyone that was there!


Our sweet Ema wanted to join us for this project. She has tried to read the BofM a few times on her own, but this time Ema was the "Rock-Star!" She stayed awake for the whole time. Reading many times to keep herself awake. It was wonderful for her to be with us for the experience. I am so proud of her, she is growing up so fast and is so beautiful inside and out.

A few years later

This is Jenny, guest blogging for my mom. I posted this layout on Facebook and she asked me to post it here too. So here they are a few years later with me! This is about 1976, before Julie. I have always loved this picture and I'm glad I was able to create something with it! Thanks Mom for making a copy of the photo for me. Love you!

Where has the time gone? I can't possibly be this old!

Another picture from that day in 1973. How could I help but fall in love with this guy? I didn't even realize how sexy he was then:)
I'm at a stage now that I need to repeat the steps of doing a certain task many times before I forget how to do it. For many years I have needed to scan and digitally save my boxes of pictures to be able to share them with my children. So hopefully this blog will keep me going as I cronicle our life and learn how to blog. It is going to be the modivating factor that I have been needing to help me get my 35 years of snap shots and portraits organized. (I promise I won't post them all.) I could never even begin to scrapbook, because I didn't know were to begin. This blog will be my journal, life story and new hobby. I hope it's not really boring too.

Our First Picture Together ~ 1973

This year Gene and I celebrate 35 years of marriage. This is the first picture that was taken of us together. We were at Lake Elsinore where we had gone with a group of Young Adults on a impromptu waterskiing trip, instead of classes one day in October 1973. Picture taking has come a long way since then, but any picture going back that far is very precious.

Do you want to know why "I Love LA?"

That's right folks, tonight after the windows and sliding doors have been open all day long, this is the temperature in our living room.

This is why we love living in good ol' SoCal! How can this be bad?

Something new to occupy my time

I'm so excited about this new blog:

So, after complaining to Jenny about not knowing how to fix the one attemp I had made at setting up a blog, she took pitty on me and helped me this morning. She's so good at it. Anyway, it only took her about 5 minutes to set up my new blog. This is my first post . . . I'm sure I'm going to need a lot more tutoring sessions.

Thanks Jenn, you're awesome

Rose Parade

We kind of have this tradition of going up to Pasadena a few days before new years to view the building of the floats. We are going to try harder to do it every year, it's really fun and makes the parade on New Years Day a lot more interesting. Here we are waiting in line to get into one of the big warehouses were they were working on about 8 floats.

Every year since Greg and Jess have been married they have faithfully traveled down here for Christmas with us. We are so lucky to have such a sweet daughter as Jessica. Thank you Jess for being so good to all of us Wilsons, we love you and your darling family.

More 2008

Our sweet baby Abby, Brandi's little one. She loved her little stroller and she had a hard time keeping it away from Wade.

Our beautiful Brandi. She and Jess keep those presents under control while the kids took turns opening them.

Ema is growing up to fast. Sh's 12 now and just as sweet as can be.

Kylie modeling a new apron that Great Grandma Haws had made and sent to her, look at that smile. Dylan is wondering where his apron is and Wes is just waiting for his turn to open another present.

We try to keep it somewhat under control so we can all see what everyone is opening and it doesn't become ciaos. We love Christmas at the Wilson house.
Now this is Christmas!