When I grow up, I want to live in a gingerbread house and eat Christmas cookies for breakfast each day.

That would be so sweet.

Guess who got cast as Santa in the Melrose-Mindoro holiday concert? (Answer: Me!)

I will now only respond to “Jaeger Clauss” from this day moving forward.

I’ll have you know that I nailed all of my lines, probably because I practiced them religiously for 3 weeks prior to my big acting debut. Unfortunately, my nightly live audience of mom, dad, and Genesee didn’t fully prepare me for the hundreds of eyes that looked back at me when I gazed into the crowd at the actual concert, but I’m still confident that you might find me on the big stage some day. So, let me know if you need an autograph now before I start charging money.

When you Fall quickly, but the memories sustain you through all of the seasons….

That moment when your belly is full of Thanksgiving turkey, your heart is poured into further with gratitude for good health and great family, and then your body and soul start to overflow with the purest excitement, as the start of Christmas season gets marked by inviting a fresh Balsam tree into our house:

We’ve been waiting for you, Christmas tree.

It was a hunting season for the books! Except for the fact that we don’t have a buck to show for it. And except for the part where I had to trade my warm, cozy bed with an uncozy deer stand in the cold, dark woods. And except for that time when I got too close to the space heater and almost started myself on fire. Other than those minor snafus, I always love spending time with Dad, and I also greatly enjoyed the peaceful beauty of nature that I was reminded of every time I looked up from my Nintendo Switch.

After our quiet & lonely meals-on-wheels Thanksgiving dinner in quarantine last year, it was extra special to gather in person this year for our traditional turkey meal at Grandma & Grandpa’s place. It was more apparent than ever how thankful I am for good food and good family. Oh, and a good game of Farkle doesn’t hurt either!

Rush Wisconsin West Soccer Club lived up to it’s name… it was absolutely a rush of excitement and activity! From August to November, we spent every weekend playing 4 games, half of them located 2 hours away, in the Madison area of Wisconsin. We were a young and developing team, but we always played like the score was 0-0, we looked darn good in those uniforms, and we had the cutest cheering section (Genesee and Quinn). We’re gonna miss coach Zach, who had to move to Arizona for an internship, but we’ll carry forward the lessons he instilled in us: 1) Have fun, 2) Stay safe/healthy, 3) Be a good sport.

Throughout the end of October, my family fully embraced the Halloween spirit through solid participation in costume contests, haunted houses, pumpkin carving, pumpkin seed roasting, and trick-or-treating. For the second year running, Genesee chose to live out her best Halloween life as a unicorn. Some dreams never die, I guess.

Ready, set, road trip!

On September 25th, we programmed our GPS for RedCliff Condos in the Spanish Valley of Moab, Utah.

After 1500 miles, 37 license plate sightings, 25 hours in and out of the Chevy Suburban, 19 “Are-we-there-yets,” 4 gas station visits, and one-night sleep at Sterling, Colorado’s Holiday Inn Express, we had finally arrived!

We settled just in time to watch the Sunday night Packer game, and then made plans to soak in the hot tub, frequent the Moab Food Truck Park, discover local playgrounds, shop the downtown boutiques, and eat lots of ice cream!

But, the main reason we made the trip was because Dad drew a muzzleloader tag to hunt elk, after a 12-year lottery wait. This required me to wake up at 5:00 a.m. each morning and trek a cumulative of 60 miles across the La Sal Mountains in my durable Merrell hiking boots (except for that one afternoon when my Crocs had to suffice), just to keep up with Dad’s zest to unravel the mysterious whereabouts of an elk bull hiding on tens of thousands of public acres that we had no familiarity of.

It was challenging and exhilarating, exhausting and peaceful… it was quality time spent with Dad.

Yet, despite giving it our all, the final score was:
Utah Elk: 1, Me & Dad: 0.

But not all was lost.

We gained a new appreciation for the beauty of Moab after visiting Dead Horse Point State Park and recreating our Mesa Arch family photo at the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park.

There exist no words to accurately capture how fabulous this corner of the world is, so we invented our own: “Moabulous.”

It was another trip for the books, especially for Genesee, who got to live her best life with easy access to Grandma, made-to-order bacon breakfasts, and unlimited data for streaming videos and downloading iPad games. The rest of our gang had a blast too, because when Genesee is happy, everybody is happy.

This is how we do summer.