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Elliot, Libbie, Aaron, Maya
Wilson
Spring 2025 |
2025 has been some year!
Here's an update on each of us:
Maya (13) loved her first summer at German language camp (Waldsee) in Concordia Villages near Bemidji, Minnesota; she hopes to return for high school credit this summer. Seventh grade marks the first time since fourth grade she hasn't been the new kid at school, a fact she relishes almost as much as her main adventure this year, a week with Aunt Kelcie in the Bay area. Closer to home, her adventures number honors baroque orchestra (cello), chorus recitals, piano lessons, youth group, robotics club, honors society, speech & debate, and a lot of homework. Her busy schedule is, in her words, "really teaching me how to lock in and learn." She also serves as our congregation's chorister. Her favorite book in 2025 is Lois Lowry's The Giver, a dystopia about sameness and memory fit for rapidly developing thirteen year olds.
Master of creative side quests, Libbie (16) entered her upperclassman years at Holland Hall with polymathic force, circling summer ACT, FSY, girls, and architecture camps, long hikes through Arches National Park, managing and then playing on her school's soccer team, and stake youth council sessions. Her job evolved from scooping ice cream to mathematics tutoring. She continues to prosper from early morning seminary at 5:45 am in the morning to late evening tutoring, leaving us wondering if sleep is merely an optional cultural construct. She successfully convinced her parents not to move abroad for their next sabbatical, much to the delight of her high school teachers. Her favorite book of 2025 is The Princess of 72nd Street, a witty novel about a New Yorker whose radiances border on mania. With her academic record, she's aiming to prepare college applications outside of Oklahoma next year.
Having hopefully topped out at 6'5" (about 195 centimeters), Elliot (19) graduated in May from Cascia Hall with many accolades. After admission to enough colleges to fill two athletic conferences, he has just completed his first semester in the Honors College at the University of Oklahoma, a short two hours from home, where he is studying on scholarship some combination of economics, philosophy, and mathematics. His favorite book of 2025 is Plato's Republic, a foundational philosophical text on justice whose paradoxical method of written conversation interests him. The rest of the family has enjoyed his self-taught love of Oklahoma Thunder basketball and, as ever, piano played at forte.
Aaron (22) fell in love with skiing this year, spending two weeks over Spring Break and then most of the winter holidays in Brighton, Utah. When not shredding the slopes, Aaron is writing his senior thesis on the relationship between statistics and truth after Nietzsche; not unrelatedly, his favorite book in 2025 was Nietzsche's The Gay Science (1882), a famous exploration of freedom and free thinking. He also completed a remote summer internship creating financial frameworks for value-based investment. With college graduation coming this May, he is exploring job market opportunities, especially introductory research and analysis positions that reward his love of statistics, reading, and problem solving (his LinkedIn profile). He is also applying for more collegiate and postgraduate study in the United States and Europe.
We are excited to follow each of their next steps, wherever they may lead.
Ben spent a summer fellowship revising two book manuscripts in Siegen, Germany, where he collaborated with colleagues researching digital networks and their discontents. During an upcoming reprieve from chairing his department, he aims to spend an upcoming sabbatical finishing those manuscripts. The May trip with his father to Rome, which happened to coincide with the announcement of Pope Leo XIV, proved especially memorable (read more here). Universities in Urbana-Champaign and Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC, Ephraim, Utah and Stillwater, Oklahoma welcomed him as well. A part-time recovering audiophile, he serves as leader of our congregation's Sunday School. His favorite work of 2025 is Schelling's 1809 "Freedom essay," a high mark in German idealism.
Kourtney has settled into her new full-time career as a mathematics education consultant, contributing to or coauthoring a number of new mathematics curriculum books and traveling to Atlanta, Austin, and Washington DC for work. She regularly donates blood and platelets, enjoys a serious book club with friends, and serves as leader in our congregation's youth group. Her favorite book for 2025 was Russell Cobb's The Great Oklahoma Swindle, a fascinating account of Oklahoma's history. We have lived in that state for more than one-eighth of its history and one third of ours.
As a memento mori, we remind ourselves that in about twenty-five years (the same period between our first courtship and now), Kourtney and Ben will be seventy years old.
We welcome it, wherever the future takes all of us.
We seek to make hope realistic for our country; perhaps our volunteering with a 2024 refugee family, and now dear friends, from Nicaragua has felt the most meaningful. Meanwhile, as a colleague recently pointed out, this short video somehow represents our views of the changes in US politics (and tech) in 2025.
Our guest room awaits: come visit us in Tulsa. We wish you a peaceful, joyful, and restorative 2026!
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For a deeper scroll, a few out-of-order photos from 2025:
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| Aunt Kelcie and Maya whale watch and celebrate a week in the Bay area together |
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Elliot graduating from Cascia Hall with Libbie and Maya
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| Libbie and Aaron in Arches National Park |
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| Libbie pointing out her trails in Arches |
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| A watercolor of peach branch, one of Libbie's many morning side quests |
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| Aaron, enjoying the vistas (below) in his newly adopted habitat |
Kourtney and Libbie, spotted in their native habitat
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| Aaron and Ben at a chess tournament in Houston |
Homemade Thanksgiving dinner, plate close-up
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| Dropping Elliot off at college (with cousin Tucker top left) |
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| Visiting great Grandma Carolyn in Salt Lake City (with Aunt Kelcie and Winston on right) |
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| Thanksgiving Dinner, full table version |
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| All four kids, playing four square in the school park near our home |
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| Maya, in her native habitat on the back patio at sunrise |
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| One half of the homemade Thanksgiving pies |
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| Libbie and Grandpa John at U Chicago |
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| Cousins at a Christmas lights park in Utah |
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| Grandpa John, Libbie, and Ben in the Windy City |
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| More foursquare action |
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| Kourtney and Maya perform a Christmas cello duet at the Gathering Place (public park) |
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| Libbie and Aaron set out on Libbie's first ski trip ever (at Brighton) |
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| Summer family vacation (with the Pinegar family friends near Dallas) |
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| Friends assembled at Grandma Marsha and Grandpa John's in New Haven, CT |
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| John and Ben in London |
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| Colleague and friend Sebastian Giessmann and Ben in Freudenberg, Germany |
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| Elliot and Ben at Elliot's high school graduation |
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| Daniel, John, Marsha, and Ben in New Haven, CT |
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| The C family with Maya and Libbie at the Tulsa zoo |
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| Ben before the Dom in Cologne, Germany |
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| Grandpa John observes the Turner in London, with trip insights narrated here |
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| A typical lunch salad in Siegen, Germany |
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| Marvelous clouds in New Haven, CT |
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| Friend Ravenia and Maya |
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| Elliot (fourth from right) and peers at a senior scholastic awards ceremony |
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| The family, minus Elliot, gathered in Libbie and Kourtney's native habitat |
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| Ben, Grandma Marsha, and Grandpa John in New Haven, CT |
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| Ben and John before the Colosseum, Rome, Italy |
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| John and Ben in Rome, Italy |
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| Aunt Susa, Cousin Beau, Grandma Carolyn, and Ben in Salt Lake City |
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| Manuel, Jordi, John, and Ben near St. Peter's Square in the Vatican (more adventure here) |
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| Elliot and friend at high school senior party |
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| Maya, Kourtney, Libbie, and Ben at Elliot's high school graduation |
Happy 2026 from the Peters!
