Christmas Letter
This has been a busy year. It’s also been a great year full of fun exciting things and so much growth for the children. Looking back I can’t believe how much they have changed since last year!
January: The Goblin Child got to go with her loving father and experience Ice fishing. They caught tons of fish. She loved it! Gus learned how to climb out of his crib, he got to graduate to a toddler bed. My hard working husband plowed all the snow in the driveway from the Christmas blizzard into a great sledding hill behind the house. It provided great entertainment until it melted.
February: Most of the snow melted and I have pictures of the kids playing out side in only a diaper, 8, and no coat, T.G.C. Then it snowed more. We celebrated 8’s birthday at the bouncy houses.
March: The Goblin Child was loving preschool. I started serving on the library board.
April: We got the potatoes planted in the garden! We also went to Missouri to see Grandma. The Goblin Child and 8 loved it, They’re crazy about their grandma. We all loved Silver Dollar City and seeing Grandma, Grammy and Different Papa, and playing with their cousins. T.G.C. got her first driving lesson from her brave father while we were hauling cattle to pasture. Everybody survived!
May: We got baby chicks for the kids to raise. They spent lots of time playing with them trying to get them calmed down and made into pets. It may have backfired, the chicks were terrified! T.G.C. was a big hero, she found our cat with a baby bunny she had just captured and saved the bunny. All by herself, what a good girl. We finished planting the garden. And discovered that rats had eaten the entire inside of the combine!
June: With school out for the summer and the pool open the children and I spent most days swimming. If not at the pool then at my personal favorite, the lake, wading in the warm water. The garden was growing by leaps and bounds, we documented the pumpkin vines growing six inches overnight!
July: The summer really started to get busy! The library started our summer reading program. Once a week the library filled with children for reading and a craft. It was great but exhausting. My hard working husband spent the early part of the month frantically reconstructing the wiring in the combine. One hundred and seventy five connectors and what seemed to be miles of wire later the combine ran on the first try and made it through wheat harvest! My whole family made it out to visit us. We camped at Fort Robinson with my parents then spent the fourth with my brother and his family. It was good to see them all!
August: We celebrated T.G.C.’s fifth! Birthday at the bouncy houses. Notice a trend here? She’s getting so big. We went to a little rodeo with a friend, T.G.C. and 8 both participated. T.G.C. a little more enthusiastically. 8 wanted to play on tractors. They both did well and had fun. Their loving father received a much deserved thank you for all the help he gives at school and around the community in a slight roast from the PEO. It was fun and funny and he was caught totally unaware by it. It was perfect.
September: The Goblin Child started back to her second year of preschool. She loves it and was so excited to get to go and play with her friends again. 8 and I enjoyed riding out to meet the school bus on the horses to bring her home afterwards.
October: Both got to go through their first haunted house. They loved it! No nightmares here, kids after my own heart. We had our usual pumpkin carving party, kids and pumpkins everywhere! When Halloween finally came we went trick-or-treating a few different times, can never have enough of that. The Goblin Child was the most beautiful vampire ever, or princess, or whatever she decided she was at the last minute, while 8 made a wonderful ghoul.
November: Once again we hiked into the back woods to pick the perfect Christmas tree. This years is wonderful. It may also be bigger than our house. We got all got to travel to Kearney with my hard working husband for work. We took advantage of the hotel swimming pool, saw Fort Kearney, and explored the archway. It was so nice to be able to go with him.
December: We went with friends on a little winter vacation up to Rapid city to see the lights at story book island, eat, shop, and, of course, swim! We also ended up ice skating downtown, which turned out to be the, my, favorite activity on the trip. The kids liked the slide at the hotel pool best. we got to enjoy T.G.C.’s preschool Christmas program, She made a wonderful mother choosing a Christmas tree. The Goblin Child also made a wonderful Mary at the Christmas eve service at church this year. She and Joseph had been practicing hard and did a wonderful job of remembering their lines. 8 had been vetoed as the Christmas dragon and made a wonderful wiseman instead. He sauntered jauntily up the aisle and also did a great job in his roll. We were lucky to be joined for the Christmas eve service by my second cousin who was in town for Christmas to see her in-laws. We are always happy to see her when she’s around and it was so nice to have her come with.
what a wonderful year!