Christmas 2014

We had a wonderful and relaxing White Christmas. It started snowing when we woke up about 7am and it did not quit until we went to bed Christmas evening. This is the most snow we have had all winter so far. We ate a lot of food, opened gifts, watched the Christmas story, played tripoley and ate again. It was a fun filled day.

The Family

Uncle, Moose & Auntie

The Wilson Family

Opening gifts- Guns & Combines

Levi's New Monkey

Moose's tool set, just like his Daddy

Beth's new Hat

The gift of swords from Maxine

Levi's first Bible

Lots of loves

Todd's old man juice and his new replacement hat, because he lost the last one.

Maxine finally got her wagon

Enjoying the snow

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas Eve

I spent the morning baking pumpkin pies and preparing our Christmas quiche for breakfast while Todd ran some last minute errands in town. In the evening we went to our church Christmas Eve service and then returned home for a Christmas tradition of Waffles and White Sauce served with sausage. It turned out great this year compared to last year when our waffle maker died, and we ended up eating pancake-waffles. We invited our friend back over who had enjoyed the pancake-waffle disaster to actually enjoy our tradition. She loved it. We all put comfy clothes and watched a movie. We stayed up way too late, but it was so much fun. Merry Christmas!

Yummy Pumpkin Pies

Christmas Morning Quiche 

Christmas Eve

Diana & Bethany

Getting ready for Christmas

We are getting ready for Christmas and enjoying all the fun things that go with it.

Moose & Auntie baking sugar cookies

He was such a big helper from rolling out the dough to putting on the sprinkles

Making gifts for friends

Decorating the tree and wrapping all the gifts.

Setting up the Nativity 

Enjoying all the Christmas Cards

We are ready for Christmas!

Cheers to Snow

Cheers to the first sign of snow! We only got a dusting but I just could not contain myself. 

Jeff's Mule Deer Hunt

Todd and Jeff have been putting in, to hunt in Unit 2 since Todd graduated high school (14 years). This has been a dream of theirs for a long time and Jeff drew his tag this year. Todd and Jeff spent time scouting the area and looking for big muley bucks.  They hunted hard for 8 days seeing nothing but smaller bucks, big elk, wild horses and tons of coyotes.On day 8 of 9 Jeff got it done at  4pm.  

Jeff checking out a water hole 

3 X 4,  30 inch Mule Deer

At the taxidermy 

Not only was I happy to have Todd home but these little guys were pretty excited too!

Great Job Jeff, we are so proud of all your hard work!

Harvest 2014

We started the harvest year with the purchase of a dump trailer. This little trailer made our lives so much easier getting crops out of the field. Below are some pictures of our harvest.

Jeff and Todd checking out the new dump trailer

Todd combining a corn trial

Beth "The pilot car"

Lots of corn

Todd dumping his corn

I came to pick up Todd from cleaning the combine. He had a lot of help from our pack mule friends.

Carving Pumpkins

We had a great time carving pumpkins with our nephews and Tara this year. This was Levi 's first year to carve a pumpkin. He was not impressed at first, but later dug into the fun. We collected all the seeds and roasted them. They were delicious!

Teaching Levi to dig out his pumpkin

Levi digging into his pumpkin

The boys and their pumpkins, the little one in the middle is for their new baby coming at the end of spring.

Todd and Beth's pumpkins. I used a drill to design my pumpkin and Todd carved the Browning logo into his. 

Todd's design at night

        Our pumpkins only lasted 4 days in the hot sun, so these happy campers enjoyed them!

Otis and Doc

The boys enjoying our pumpkins

Last week in Elk Camp

Todd and I had an amazing last week in elk camp. I almost had a shot opportunity at a cow elk and later that day a nice 6 point bull elk. It was nerve racking but I learned a lot and made memories that will last a life time. We had great weather the whole time except the last day it rained the whole day packing camp out. 

The view on our way up the mountain

The hunters

All our clothes were drying from the afternoon rain

                                                       Beth's new fashion statement!!                                              

It rained and hailed all the way out of camp. It was a wet three hour mule ride, but a first for me. The best part was my mule could care less that is was hailing and raining, but Todd's mule (who was leading the pack) was not happy about the hail pounding her ears. Lets just say we got home a little quicker.

The aftermath of camp brought home

The drying out of everything