I have had several requests to post pictures of the ranch. So, here are some pictures I took today… First. The picture above is the view from our backyard. The white house on the right is the house we are renting. See that big window? That is the window to the “cold room”. We originally named it the “play room” but that name didn’t stick.

Yesterday, the weather warmed up and the snow started melting away. So, we took advantage of the “warm weather” to venture out to feed the horses some apples. About 20 feet from the house runs a barbed wire fence. And, enclosed in that fence are horses! Okay, I admit. That is pretty dreamy! I look out my back window and see a field of horses.

Brighton was a little afraid to feed the horses out of her hand. She opted to throw her apple into the field and watch the horse walk over to eat it!

View from the side yard:

The snowman melted and the girls did their best to kick away the remaining pile of snow:

I do have a picture of the snowman when it was still alive. Once I find it, I will add it to the blog. On Christmas day, BJ helped Kennady and Brighton build their first snowman and they even dug their own snow cave. Meanwhile, Addy…who prefers to stay warm, stayed inside and worked on the puzzles that she got for Christmas. When she sat on Santa’s lap, she asked for a mini kingdom doll and a movie. When Santa asked her what kind of movie she wanted…maybe a princess movie? She replied, “No. A pirate movie!” She did get her mini kingdom doll and we rented the pirate movie. Thank goodness for clearplay. With the movie filtered and plenty of parental censoring, she got to watch her pirate movie. We did have a nice Christmas. I had purchased toys at the 75% off sale at Target last January, so each of the kids got a couple of gifts and you are not going to believe this…but Santa really did send them a gift. UPS delivered it. We were all surprised to find that the big, beautiful dollhouse really was from Santa! It said so right on the tag. So, thank you Santa. The girls have been having a lot of fun with their new dollhouse

And, finally just a few pictures of the girls playing in the slushy water in the driveway, which was feet of snow until yesterday. Thankfully, the owners of the ranch come over and bulldoze out our driveway while they are plowing the snow off the ranch. Otherwise, we would have been stuck in for sure!

Yesterday, the school had planned to have the elementary children go caroling to all the widows in the commmunity. However, they could not go out because it was ONE DEGREE!!! With the wind chill factor, it was 7 degrees below zero. Starting the first of December, we started renting a little house outside of town a few miles on a ranch. I know…my life keeps getting crazier and crazier. I live on a ranch. With cows. The main source of heat in the house is a pellet stove in the kitchen. So, really…the only room in the entire house that ever gets warm is the kitchen. We bought a few little space heaters to heat the bedrooms. Unfortunately, the wiring in the house is so old that if too many things are plugged in, everything shuts down. So, I have to be careful which outlet I plug the vaccuum into because if I guess wrong, the fridge and vacuum and everything else connected to that circuit turn off. Then, I get to trudge through the snow to flip the breaker switch. So, we found out that we cannot run three heaters at the same time. The wiring cannot handle it. This morning, when I woke up, the back room was 30 degrees. The main house hovers around 56 degrees and the kitchen is relatively warm. So, the entire family huddles around the stove in the kitchen. So, there is our update. We don’t have internet/telephone/television at the house yet. So, I do feel isolated and disconnected from the world. A bit of homesickness has started to settle in. But, despite all the ice-cube toes and fingers, we are happy and thankful. We are together. We are healthy. We know that the Lord is providing for us and blessing us…even if it is not exactly how we would have planned it. He has a plan for us and we continue to trust His will for our family.