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.

Genesee was so excited about her salon appointment to get her hair shampooed and cut by Bernadine!

Mom must have been excited, too, because we have no “after” pictures to show for it.

To keep me from getting a case of the lonelies while Dad was away on his hunting trip, mom promised me a sleepover with Wyatt! We decided to enjoy the beautiful fall weather by making our annual trip to Ferguson’s Morningside Orchards. Apparently, Friday afternoon, immediately as school lets out, is the best time to visit if you want to enjoy the place all to yourself!

But it wasn’t just me and Wyatt running around… Mom invited Noah, too, so Genesee could have a sidekick. And Noah brought his parent, Carrie, so mom could have a friend. When everyone has a buddy, everybody wins!

We loved jumping in the new corn pit, mining for gold and other gems, and eating apple cider doughnuts. Mom got her obligatory caramel apple and I requested a take-home bag of freshly-picked apples. We covered every corner of that farm until Wyatt may or may not have tipped over a life-size cow sculpture. (If that actually happened, luckily no one was injured.) Upon returning home, mom made us a delicious spaghetti dinner to fuel us for the intense Nintendo Switch gaming night of Zelda that was about to ensue.

Eventually, mom said we had to go to sleep because it was a “sleep” over after all, and because I had to wake up early for my soccer game. We didn’t want the night to end, but we were excited to try out the never-been-used trundle bed, so mom invited Genesee to snuggle in her bedroom to let us have our boys-only slumber party. But, once the lights went out, Wyatt and I heard a noise and got scared out of the room! And there we were, begging the girls to rescue us by sleeping in the room with us. Genesee was happy to crash the party, but mom was not amused as she laid there on the bunk, guarding our room from monsters.

We survived the night, somehow, and all of our fears subsided when the aroma of bacon filled the morning air… the only way to successfully conclude a slumber party.

When mom signed me up for a competitive soccer league at my request, we had no idea that our first tournament would take place out of state. But there we were anyway, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, wishing we would have read the fine print.

Still, it gave us a fun opportunity to explore another Jellystone Park with our motorhome. And even though we lost all three games, I loved getting to play with my cousin, Maddox, I learned a lot from my older teammates on this U-10 league, and I think I’m going to really enjoy being trained by Coach Zach.

Most importantly, however, in between games, we got to peruse the city a bit and even met up with the Porters at MacKenzie River Pizza, Grill & Pub (although I could have done without that scary thunder and lightning storm that started to flood their front lobby)… yikes!

Okay, Sioux Falls, I see what you did there… you convinced me to return some day… maybe for the 2022 First National Bank Fall Kick Off if I still love soccer by then.