Maybe this year we can have another cousin reunion. Bill and I have some good news. We are having our 13th grandchild this summer!
Other news is that our son-in-law is starting this month as a teaching pastor at a megachurch in Dallas called watermark. He is a really good teacher and very engaging. I though y’all might enjoy listening to his first sermon before his job there. You can go to YouTube and search – The Fall / The Story / Watermark Community Church. His name is Timothy Ateek. We are excited to be so close to them!!
Thanksgiving together for part of the tribe in Savannah!
2021 has been a challenging but fruitful year of change! As the world around us continues to rock and spin, sometimes seemingly out of rational control, we’ve been holding together as individuals and as a family as best we can. Let’s leave the chaos of COVID and social strife aside for now check out the picture posted above of us gathered to celebrate together with Joel and Julia in their new home city of Savannah.
Unfortunately, Johanna was scheduled to work Thanksgiving weekend in the NICU at Golisano Children’s Hospital, so we had to leave her behind this time to celebrate with the Farnham family in Mayville, NY, while Nana and Grampy (that’s us!) took a leisurely drive down to Savannah, stopping at B&Bs, cruising on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and visiting some of Susan’s old haunts at Pawley’s Island and Seabrook, SC along the way. As you can see, Sarah and Nate and were able to join us, along with Kari, Coral and Jasper, but we’ll have to wait for more stable times for another full family reunion.
In the interval, Facetime, texting, and Zoom have continued to be fairly reasonable ways for us to keep in touch with family, members of the Arnett Block Association, the Police Chief’s PCIC meetings, URMC students and MCCF, Western NY CMDA, CCHF, and many other prayer and support groups that we’re part of, including a Thursday morning Men’s Bible Study group that Bill has become actively involved with.
Susan’s harp has kept her busy with practicing nearly every day, and in recent months her live gigs have started to pick up again. Unfortunately, her community outreach activities are still seriously constricted, but those in our immediate neighborhood, at the Garden Park and Arnett Branch Library, with the Rochester Police Department, and more recently at School 16 have been filling in the gap. In the meantime we’ve had a lot of opportunities to be out and about together canoeing, hiking, and skiing.
Bill continues to work on the series of discipleship study guides he began in 2020 called Celebrate Salvation. His first 3 guidebooks – Saved, Sanctified, and Sent – were published last year as Course 1 and are being used in a number of groups in Western NY and elsewhere. This year he completed the first guide in Course 2 – Awakening – and has just published a 70-page book entitled The Biblical Festivals. More info about his writing is available online for interested parties at www.celebratesalvation.org.
Click here for our full holiday newsletter. Blessings to all! Bill and Susan
2021 is behind us and we’ve survived by being diligent and careful. We truly hope you have experienced the same. We continue to enjoy our retirement years even though somewhat restricted due to Covid.
The photo is of our two granddaughters: Lilly (almost 15) and June (almost 12). Lilly graduated St. Patrick’s School in June and now attends Maury High School and the Governor’s School for Art. June is in 6th grade at St. Patrick’s and has a passion for acting.
Kathy stays active helping her Mom, who at 96 still lives independently at Westminster-Canterbury. She also plays in two Mahjong groups and still cooks delicious meals. Chick is active in Rotary and serves on the Boards of The Botanical Gardens, Westminster-Canterbury, and a soon-to-be independent Hospice House. He still enjoys working in the yard and his shop.
Although we have not been able to travel out of the country, we have enjoyed a couple of “road trips” to South Carolina and New England to visit family. Hopefully we will be able to visit our friends in Brazil in the coming months and try again to go to Kenya and Tanzania next Fall.
What an unusual year this has been for all of us! For so many it’s been a real challenge with real losses among family and friends, economic issues, social distancing in our scattered extended and church families, and the tensions of politics, isolation, and social change. Through it all our God has been so good, shining His love and light and wisdom through the clouds that have been trying to blanket our worlds, and here we are!
Nana and Grampy (that’s us!) have been doing well together staying as close to each other, family, and friends as we can. Susan has been keeping up with her harp every day in spite of a serious slowdown in live gigs, especially in senior facilities. She’s waded into the world of Zoom with her harp as well as her somewhat truncated community involvement. Actually, Zoom has proven so far to be a pretty good way for us to keep in touch with family, members of the Arnett Block Association, the Police Chief’s PCIC meetings, CCHF and URMC students, and other prayer and support groups that we’ve been involved in.
Around the time COVID emerged, Bill read and recorded several “Hank the Cowdog” stories on his YouTube channel to entertain grandkids and others. He also began working on a series of discipleship study guides called Celebrate Salvation. His first 3 guidebooks – Saved, Sanctified, and Sent – were published earlier this fall as a course and are already being used by over 10 groups in Rochester and Buffalo. 3 more books in the series are due out in 2021. More info is available online for interested parties at www.celebratesalvation.org.
Life is abundant and full! Our Lord continues to love, provide for, and keep us healthy by His amazing grace. Click here for full news about our entire family, and please contact us anytime at susan@harpsongs.com and/or wmorehouse@gmail.com. Blessings to all!
May our LORD fill you with more and more of His amazing FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, and VISION for the future this coming year. We appreciate and miss each of you, dear family and friends, and look forward to seeing and being together with as many of you as we can in the New Year. Bill & Susan
The Cabells 2020 – 219 Gun Club Road, Richmond, VA 23221
We are thrilled to say goodbye to 2020 and grateful that most of our friends and family are healthy and making the best of this mess! It has been a quiet year with children growing taller and we old folks growing rounder! We are excited about getting back to normal in 2021 and spending more time with friends and family.
Liza and I have grown even closer during our quarantine time together and we hope that you and your family are doing the same. We are both looking forward to a fun summer when we can all celebrate our love and friendship with each of you.
Happy Thanksgiving, wonderful family! I hope you are all doing well during this most unusual year.
Bill and I are doing fine but disappointed to have a much smaller thanksgiving celebration than we planned. I have a 20 lb turkey to cook tomorrow for just 7 of us! Its a good thing we like turkey. We will be having Nana’s pecan pie tomorrow! a favorite for our family. Bill is doing some writing and his discipleship books are being used in Rochester and Buffalo by a number of churches this fall -all by zoom meetings. I have done a few zoom concerts for senior facilities but nothing in person. I have some in person gigs in December – I am waiting to see if they go zoom. Our kids are all stressed with work (grateful to have jobs!) and teaching kids on and off at home by remote learning. We are really looking forward to a new granddaughter coming in April to our Johanna and her husband Asa. Sending lots of love to each of you! I will look forward to hearing about your lives during a crazy 2020! Thankful for you all! Susan and Bill
From Frank and Gay:
Good morning, Susan. Nice to hear from you. We are still hunkered down and being very careful with the Pandemic. Having a chair lift made to help Gay with the 19 steps from the front hall to the third floor (can’t configure an elevator due to roof configuration of our house) so she doesn’t have drops in her oxygen level trudging up the stairs. It should be helpful with her COPD. Other than that she is trying to be as normal as possible and doing pretty well at that.
She has always used the “left overs” at Thanksgiving to make (and freeze) her Turkey Hash at Christmas for breakfast… a tradition for us. She wrote it out for me last night so I could send it to our boys and a niece who requested it. I am attaching it, in case some of you might enjoy having it. I hope you will give it a try as it is quite wonderful and easy to make. Susan, your large turkey made me think of it as we always bought a turkey a little larger than needed in order to make sure we had enough for the hash. As for me, I’m just biding time until tarpon season. I did slip into Key West a couple of times this summer “with credentials” that allowed me to have a little R&R. Was a wonderful diversion. Other that those trips and few day trips here, nothing else was normal. The art business, basically, shut down when NYC shut down.
Looking forward to better times, we wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, Frank and Gay
Traditional Robison/Fowler/Bell Southern Turkey Hash – ln a large pot, melt 1/2 stick of margarine or butter – Add together equal amounts of leftover dressing, gravy, and chopped up turkey – Add one can of chicken broth or stock. – Mix until moist and soft. – Stir at medium temperature until it ls bubbling and add water, as needed, until it is the texture of hash. – Cover and let it simmer for 45 minutes to an hour on low heat, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot.
It freezes well (we keep it until we use it on Christmas Day. Frank always serves it with soft slowly scrambled eggs, link sausage, bacon, grits, and buttermilk biscuits. These recipes must be as old as time. I’ve never known a Thanksgiving without. There is a very similar recipe in The Nashville Cookbook, but we don’t “ruin” it with celery 😎. My mother said that her grandmother was the first she recalled making it AND that is almost as old as time. It gets around… I was not familiar with it until about 70 years ago. What I sent to you might not even be right as Gay just told me what to write as she never has written it down for herself. The “recipe” or better, instructions we use come down the Nashville side from Great Grandmother’s, to Grandmother’s to my Mother’s cooks who all made it the same way. Mother’s cook shared with Gay. The one I love from your side of the clan was Nana’s Bran Muffins. Harder and gather to find Bran cereal. Frank
From Chick:
Small world, the turkey hash recipe is almost identical to my Mom’s and we loved it. Alex is a master at making it… I remember Turkey hash as a favorite at Mom’s Norfolk family house, the Bell’s.
Susan, what a great idea to reach out to all of us Robison cousins at this time of year when were are all living a different life style… and I hope each addressee will write with the happenings in their world..
First off, we are all OK, and no one within our family has experienced the Covid 19… probably in large part because we have been very careful not to mix in large groups, and when we gather with family and friends it is in limited numbers and in open air… actually set up a couple of tables in the garage, with both doors open, and have cocktails and dinner therein… works well for us.
During this restricted to home time, I have caught up on many unfinished projects/responsibilities, and am actually running out of things to do, and that is not good… now reaching out to friends who may have need of a repair to a favorite piece of furniture, and widows really appreciate my repair skills… particularly those planning on moving to a new life care tower being built now for opening next summer, and wanting to have things just “right”.
Our children are well, and both children and spouses are working from home, and for them and their companies, it seems to be working out OK… actually Charles IV has had one of his best production years in the personal lines insurance business, Keith continues to work towards moving Fitbit from a stand-alone company to being owned by Google, and Kat now edits her work from home about 80% of the time and to the office for the last 20%… interesting that the company was able to so quickly adapt to remote production with all that high tech editing equipment.
Kathy and I lost our most anticipated trip of 2020 to return trip to Africa in Sept… and we hope to go again, when the vaccine is proven and we’re safe to travel… if that does not happen we are happy to stay in Norfolk!
As some of you may have knowledge and experience, beach house have been most popular retreats for house bound families… seldom did ours rent beyond mid-September, and this year it has been full thru Thanksgiving… mostly to small families looking for a respite from home… first question asked is how strong is the Wifi, and does it work well…..to allow for Zoom schooling, etc.
We wish each and all of you the safest and healthiest Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas Holidays…and if like us it will be a much smaller gathering… just thankful all of us are OK, and working thru these times… Love to all…
From Alex:
Susan thanks much for starting a newsletter. We are doing well including new granddaughter Nov 1 Libby and “Jordan” are well along with Michael and Riley. Second time in 41 years we are not hosting Thanksgiving Dinner… a bit too risky.
Gay’s Turkey hash sounds a bit like mine… a sure winner! Hope everyone else is safe and well and remains so! Looking forward to Pawley’s Island next year if Covid allows! Alex
From Liza:
Don’t you know all of our family members who have passed before us are enjoying this conversation among all of the Robison first cousins about turkey hash! Our mother, Betty Robison, fixed turkey hash with waffles for dinner in the dining room. It was one of our favorite dinners! After one or two waffles with turkey hash, then you would have a waffle with maple syrup for dessert… All of this brings back wonderful memories.
Charles and I are visiting daughter Margaret, Jamey and Annabelle in their lovely home in Folly Beach, South Carolina, which is near Charleston. We biked from the house overlooking the sound to the ocean front, down the beach and back… Now enjoying steamed oysters and Bloody Mary’s… Quite the southern feast!
We are all doing fine and feel very blessed to be sharing this time in a small bubble a family. Hugs, Liza
2019 was a year of growth and big changes, with the boys starting kindergarten and the two of us being challenged in new ways at home and work. As the year comes to a close, we are continually grateful to be surrounded by wonderful friends and family like you.
With love, Carl, Sarah, Carter & Weston (and Miles & Davis)
Bill and Susan Morehouse’s eldest daughter Sarah and family
The Cabells enjoyed good health and many adventures this year. Since Margaret, Jamey and Annabelle have been living in Jupiter, Florida, Charles took his boat from the Outer Banks to Palm Beach for three months last winter… and he is still working 🙂 We had a grand time fishing offshore together and spending time in Palm Beach… which is truly another world!
In May, Charles and Liza biked on Ebikes across Portugal to the Atlantic Ocean, staying on a river boat cruising the Douro River and exploring the port wine vineyards. We then visited Normandy and Utah Beach, where Liza’s father’s ship sank during the invasion. It was heartwarming to see how much the French people still appreciate the sacrifices made by the Americans.
In June, Hunter married the love of his life, dear Casey, in a beautiful ceremony at the base of the Tenon Mountains, near Jackson, Wyoming. Many family and friends attended the celebration, making it all the more special. Hunter has finished his first year of law school and is now in business school. He is in the joint JD-MBA program at the University of Wyoming. Jordan finished college last summer and is working full-time in Raleigh and loving life.
In August, Liza biked with the Biking Belles along the coast of Nova Scotia… what a beautiful province and fascinating history! In October, Liza attended the third family reunion of her 11 first cousins outside Dallas, Texas… these cousins that have committed to carrying on the tradition of Robison family reunions that began at Pawley’s Island 50 years ago.
Our two-year-old grandson, Michael, is just precious and had a grand time with Santa at breakfast last weekend. Margaret, Jamey and Annabelle are moving to Charleston in January, where Margaret will be in charge of sales for 32 retirement communities… we are thrilled they will be only 6 hours away.
Truly wishing you the peace of Christmas, its promise of renewal and hope for the future. We hope our paths will cross in the New Year.
robisonclan 