All About My Mom

Where did your mother grow up? Did she tell you about her life when she was a child?   She grew up in Almo, Idaho on a ranch/farm.  She liked being on the ranch and helping her dad with horses and cows.  She would do the outside work and her twin sister Edris would help her mom in the house.   Her dad told her he wouldn’t trade her for any boy.  Once after a rain, a rainbow was over her and her sister Edris, the rocks on the road were all colors.  They thought they were so beautiful, they put handfuls in their pockets to show their parents.  When they got home, the rocks had lost all of their colors.   That was the only time she was ever under a rainbow.  

Did your mother like to cook or sew or garden?  Mom would mend clothes, but she really liked making quilts for our children (which she gave to each child as a wedding present), and making dresses or other things for our daughters.   She never had any really big gardens except for a few times that I remember.  

What were some of her talents?  It seemed to me that she could do anything!   She really loved and adored me.   That was all that mattered to me!   She sang with her sister Edris in high school in talent contests, really enjoyed going dancing with my dad to the big conventions for Rodeo people, she was a great cook (as evidenced by the size of both dad and me), she exercised every day of her life when she got up in the mornings, never got mad or swore, went back to college after my dad died and received her bachelor's degree in History with a minor in English (or the other way around) and was accepted into membership in the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society at Idaho State Univ. where she graduated with honors at the age of 70.  Previously she had only graduated from high school.  My dad dropped out of high school one semester before graduation to go to work to earn money for a wedding ring for my mom.  He picked up and hauled potatoes.  

How did you two spend time together?  She was my caregiver, so I was always around her and did everything with her except I never learned to cook.   She was EXTREMELY PATRIOTIC, and so am I.   We both really love history, and the church.  We are both also very conservative.   She loved to write and wrote the book,  To Albion with Love.    That was a pretty cool thing to do.   She was also a teacher of Gospel Doctrine classes in church and was the ward historian in her senior years.   She really liked flowers in her yard, she did almost all of the yard work until I got big enough to help.  Dad was always out in the fields working.  All of my memories of her are my favorites,  she loved me so very much and I did her also.   I had a Wonderful and Awesome mother !