The Blessing Dress

I am the grandmother to nine grandchildren. We have four grandsons and 5 granddaughters. The old cliche "if I knew grandchildren were going to be so fun, I would have had them first" is so true. Grandkids are the best! This past Sunday we blessed our ninth grandbaby. She is my oldest daughter's first child. While trying to decide what to dress the baby in for the occasion, my mother suggested that she wear the same dress that her mother wore. It was the dress that I made for my daughter 30 years ago. And so we pulled the dress out. It had yellowed a little, but my mother offered to give it the tender loving care it may need to restore it so our little granddaughter could wear it. Mom soaked the dress, and made a new slip for it and replaced some ribbon. When they slipped the blessing dress on our little granddaughter Sunday she looked absolutely gorgeous in the heirloom. Thanks mom for your work and care in doing this and thanks Cali and Chris for the beautiful granddaughter.

35 Years Have Passed

Today we are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary.

My husband and I had a rather typical courtship. We met in high school and attended prom together. Not so typical, I fell down the grand staircase, landing on the ballroom dance floor. He chased behind me the whole way down, trying to catch me and stop the fall. My senior year in high school, he asked me to marry him. I said yes and he sold his 57 chevy pickup truck to buy my engagement ring. He then left the country for two years (Serving a mission for our church). When he got home, we prepared for the wedding and got married three months later.

My mother sewed my wedding dress. It was the object of some tension in our wedding plans. I knew exactly what I wanted and had a hard time describing that to her so she could understand and execute. But somehow she succeeded, and we both survived. And the wedding dress was gorgeous.

Those 35 years have passed quickly, or so it seems. Looking at the results of those 35 years, I guess it has taken some time. We built our own home, in my grandmother’s tomato patch where she raised a lot of tomatoes. We raised our six children there. Five of those six children are married and we have nine grandchildren. And what beautiful grandchildren they are. This land has been good to us these past 35 years.