Christmas Letters

The year started out with a terrible cold spell. We spent our mornings chopping tanks that were frozen nearly solid. The children, bored from being cooped up, got to come outside with us. Usually they helped. Occasionally we assumed they were old enough to be left unattended. They are not.

After watching “A Christmas Story”, one of them decided to try licking a metal post. Somehow she was surprised to have the same outcome as their movie role models.

After Larel bought Megan the Escalade for Christmas last year so she would have something to pull a trailer with, Megan went looking for a trailer to pull. After picking through twenty year old trailers for hardly less than new ones, she decided to go ahead and get a brand new on with everything she wanted on it. The beautiful new three horse slant with a tack room may be used far more as a portable tack room than for hauling but was well worth it for the tack room alone.

Rusty foundered from the cold. Again. It had been a few years since he had any trouble so it did come as a bit of a surprise. He is doing alright, just a couple months of lameness and a year long battle to get his feet healthy again.

Larel took the Hay Springs winter Esports team to state. Again. While he was gone the kids and Megan sneaked up to Hot Springs. They went to the Mammoth Site and Wind Cave, followed by swimming at Evans Plunge. Then drove home in dense fog.

Calving went well over all. Pulled calves out of a lot of heifers. Both kids’ cows calved! And both had beautiful heifer calves. Their herds are growing.

Larel took his Esports team to state again in the spring session. During which cousin Cade and his teammate Arian won state in Fortnite. Go Cade!

After school got out for the summer both kids moved out to the tent in the yard. They decided to spend the summer feral. Which lasted until their trip to Illinois.

Megan and children met her parents in Iowa again. They’re getting to be quite the regulars. After a day spent enjoying the surprisingly large amount of tourist destinations in Iowa the kids were off with their grandparents. The trip to IL was long with many detours to see the sights, an aquarium, Dubuque IA, all sorts of great things.

When they finally got to IL they spent a couple of weeks seeing the sights. Riding bikes all over with their uncle Justin, going to Lake Michigan, up in Wisconsin where it’s far more wild and beautiful, and of course freezing that day. They explored much more of the beautiful state of WI. They saw huge trains at a train museum. All sorts of fun things before it was time to come home again, where they promptly moved back inside.

As soon as they were home we had terrible hail storms. One came through by the house and damaged the corn crop and killed our swimming pool. A later one covered anything the first had missed and almost completely wiped out what had been a promising wheat crop. They were the only rain we got all summer and came so fast the water all ran off.

Back to school again! Elly is in middle school now. Nearly a teenager in sixth grade. Gus is in fourth grade and enjoying learning Nebraska history this year. Shortly after school started, everyone started getting sick. Elly developed Pneumonia. She spent the whole month of September sick and really ruined our fall plans. Then Gus got it for not quite a month, followed by Larel.

All the sickness meant very little Halloween fun. No time or energy for the usual Halloween party and didn’t even make it to the haunted house. We did of course manage trick or treating with a hippy and a terrible monster of some sort. The weather was even nice for it.

Corn harvest was going nicely. Weather was good. The crop had held in there after all the hail damage. Not great. Not awful. Just going. Until the second to the last round when the rear axle snapped in half. There the combine sat with its hind end on the ground. But, God is good. It was in the best spot and mostly done. They were able to get repairs done and the field finished. Just took a couple weeks longer than it would have.

Having earned her Guinness World Record last year Ghost received an offer for her own personal, personalized copy of the book. We waited excitedly to find her listed within. And when we did we were nearly overwhelmed at the one full sentence mention she received. Yay Ghost! But it’s fun to have a copy of the book with her name on, and in, it.

The cows are home now for the winter. They were happy to get out of there with the pastures nearly picked clean. It was a very dry summer and the dust was making them and everyone else sick. Hopefully we get good snow this winter or there will be even less grass next year. Gus got to drive the pickup over and back for the big move. He’s turning into a real hand.

Christmas is coming quickly and the kids have been busy practicing for the church Christmas Program. Elly will be playing her guitar again accompanied by her friend Whitten on his Saxophone. She is going to play Elizabeth, without a guitar, this year and Gus will be a wise man. Looking forward to the program. It is a wonderful church to spend our Christmas eves at.

Megan and Larel started the year off exhausted from trying to keep cattle alive through the horrible snow storms of last December. The rest of the winter was spent fighting snow drifts as high as the barns and doing a lot of digging out. The church Christmas program was finally held after New Year’s Day, once the roads were plowed out enough that people with good 4-wheel drive could get through. Elly played her guitar for the performance while both children joined in the singing. They are getting ready for this years Christmas program. Hopefully there wont be as much snow and the program can actually be on Christmas this year.

The last of the snow drifts melted in June leaving a pile of fence to fix. Somehow we did manage to fit a few things in beside fence fixing.

Elly is in HAL(High Ability Learners) again. Gus missed being eligible by a painfully small margin. However, that was alright by him. He is completely uninterested in scholarly pursuits. Instead, he has learned how to drive. He is very useful to have around when we need vehicles moved, or people need rides. By the time he is actually old enough to drive, he’ll be a pro. For now I’m not quite brave enough to let him drive down any actual roads.

Elly was in Girls On The Run this spring. She did it with her cousin, Ava, and they ran a 5k together at the end of the season. They practiced every Monday, running laps around the football field after school.

This summer the children got to go see their grandparents for two whole weeks. They saw the sights, road the train to downtown Chicago, and enjoyed the pleasures of the big city. Gus enjoyed going to the big swimming pool with lots of good slides the most. Elly’s favorite was Lego Land.

Elly is still doing guitar lessons. She switched from her acoustic guitar to bass this fall so she could play it in the school band instead of switching instruments entirely.

Gus decided to stop guitar lessons and started taking roping lessons while we were there instead.

Elly also got a new horse. After much arguing she managed to convince her mother that a palomino was needed and color was more important than anything else. So once they found a horse who was perfect in every other way and just happened to be the right color, Sunshine came to live with us. He is learning to be a trick horse while he begins his riding training and Elly may get to ride him some time in two or three years. Maybe.

Gus and his good mare Lady are still running around causing all sorts of trouble.

Both children are doing mid level robotics through 4H. They get to build robots then program them to accomplish ‘missions’. Fun AND a great learning opportunity.

In September we had the interesting and unusual experience of having a moose move into one of the pastures. She, and possibly a few other moose, had been spotted in the panhandle and we had gone out searching a couple of times when we heard reports of them in the area. Then one day there she was, laying happily by the creek, not far from the road. She stayed in the area for a few weeks before moving on. It was a thrill to get to have a moose choose to stay with us for however long she chose to stay.

Some really good friends and neighbors managed to get to our house last March, despite the deep snow and bad roads, to witness Megan’s Guinness World Record attempt with her pet/trick cow Ghost. Ghost performed ten tricks in one minute to achieve the goal. Then everyone had to wait until June to see if it was accepted by Guinness or not. Once they approved the attempt, Ghost was proud carrier of the record of Most Tricks By a Cow in One Minute. She got to be on the front page of the newspaper, on TV, featured on a Canadian podcast, and enjoyed her 15 minutes of world wide fame. Not something often accomplished by a cow.

This next year Megan plans another world record attempt with her trick horse Rusty.

All that is an off-shoot of her job with the Horse Tricks Club which is still growing and doing well. Between work with the Club, book promotion for Understanding Horse Whorls, and taking care of the cattle herd all the time, there hasn’t been room to fit much else in. Other commitments have been slowly cut back to find some time to spend with family, maybe get to work with her horses and cows once in awhile, and finding time to finish that next book would be amazing.

Larel has been so busy in his support role, making sure all the work gets done on the place, and helping the rest of us to do all the fun things he makes it possible for us to do, that he hasn’t found much time for himself. He is an amazing father and husband. His daughter says we can’t say completely adored by his wife and children, so I’ll leave that part out. Work has been crazy for him as always, at home and at work. He kept all the equipment repaired and running to make it through a good hay season, severely drought damaged wheat harvest, and a late corn harvest, despite many unusual and complicated break downs. Somehow through all that he managed to find enough time to grow a beautiful garden that kept us in fresh veggies all summer with plenty to can and freeze to continue enjoying through the winter.

Larel is coaching e-sports once again this year with a much larger and younger team than the last couple of years. They haven’t made a state play off yet this year, but it’s a pleasant break from the constant trips the last couple of years.

So far this Christmas season has been warm and dry. As much as we need to get some snow this winter it’s hard to be sad about missing out on another white Christmas as we look back on the carnage from last year. The year has had its ups and downs and was never anything less than a mad scramble trying to get to all the things. But busy is good and we are happy to all be together here in our snug little house.

Wishing you all a safe and Merry Christmas