It’s been over a month since the last post, but not for a lack of things going on. No, it’s actually been quite a full calendar!
The month of November was memorably characterized by the strains of tunes from the musical Oliver! floating through the house, as Chad, Tyler and our sheep-ranching, music-teaching neighbor were all invited to play in the Williamsfield (Billtown) High School orchestra for their performance. For a town of just 600, they did a great job! The only issue is that we still have the lingering effects of so many catchy tunes being drilled into our heads for so long.
We traveled to my Dad’s house for Thanksgiving—all of my brothers and their families were there, and we had a great time together. Dad made his traditional waffles for breakfast:
Goofiness (as usual) ensued with my brothers and I:
(for those of you who have never heard of the Beatles, that’s a spoof of one of their album covers)
The weather still hasn’t decided whether to go hot or cold yet, and while I’m quite ready for some snow at this point, the above-freezing temps have allowed me to get a lot of outside projects done that would have normally had to wait ’til spring, including trenching a new water line down to the hay barn:
(I designed the Cat decals on this Skid Steer Loader!)
All done and backfilled…
The weekend after Thanksgiving, I took Tyler deer hunting for the first time (I used to go years ago in high school and college, but have never actually shot one myself). We only saw one deer the whole day, and I almost hit it when it ran in front of the car as we were driving to the field.
Chad reached the ripe old age of 23 in early December, and enjoyed modeling a few of his birthday gifts:
The week of December 10 was *very* full, and included the Oliver! performance previously mentioned. The next evening, we drove up to Bishop Hill, IL, where the boys and a friend (The Cantabilé String Trio) played Christmas, classical and sacred music at one of the venues open for their annual Christmas event.
We finally got our Christmas tree up on the 8th (we always wait until after Chad’s birthday):
And we were also able to enjoy our family tradition of going to Geneseo, IL for their annual Christmas Walk and for the boys to play along with Chad’s former violin teacher:
And that now brings us up-to-date!