Is it spring yet?

I just realized that I haven't posted anything since September. Let's just say it's been a busy winter and I'll be glad when spring arrives.

Let's try to do a person by person update.

Mike is working as hard as ever. Between keeping wood cut for heating the house and feeding hay and silage, his mornings are filled. He usually doesn't have much down time. We did get a new toy for Christmas for the entire family and we have taken time to enjoy that together. We built a theater room in our basement complete with a projector and surround sound. We had family over for the Super Bowl and completely enjoyed the Patriots loss. Last weekend Mike spent a lot of time clipping calves we sold for a show this weekend. It's exciting to see people excited about the animals they got from us. Mike has also begun serving in the early church service by running the power point presentations. He does an awesome job and seems to enjoy doing it.

Chris is enjoying driving a lot. He turned 15 in October and quickly got his learner's permit. Mike and I rarely drive him anywhere now; he drives us. It's been a lot of fun watching him grow and mature this year. Thankfully he doesn't have much of the typical "teenager" attitude that we often hear other parents complain about. He is very into the cattle still and is trying to find a career path that will allow him to work with them once he's done with school. This spring he will be attending artificial insemenation school. Chris is showing a heifer raised this year. At our first major show of the season his heifer was the MO Reserve Mainetainer heifer. Not too bad at all.

Jesse turned 13 in October. I cannot believe that we now have 2 teenagers in the house and yet we still have a great deal of peace. Jesse enjoys the cattle and also enjoys helping in the fields. He has grown physically so much this year we can hardly believe it. Jesse is now taller than Mike and isn't showing any signs of slowing down. I'm hoping we'll make it to Easter before he's 6 foot tall. How crazy is that???? At the state fair he was about 5'6"!!! Jesse is showing a Maine heifer we bought at the Girls Gone Wild Sale in Iowa Thanksgiving weekend. She was the MO Champion Maine heifer at the first show this year and boy, was he one happy young man.

Melinda - hmmm.....well, I'm still homeschooling the boys and helping Mike out. I actually have NO 4-H responsibilities this year. Can you believe it? I'm glad I don't because I don't think I could've kept up this year. I'm also teaching our adult Sunday school class and enjoying it a great deal.

We're gearing up for another cattle show this weekend. After that we'll have a little more than a month off from showing before we hit the circuit hard in April. We should be having a bunch of calves in March, so it'll be good that we'll be home more. We also plan on hitting the school work rather hard in March so that we can play a little more when the weather is nicer.

Melinda