One Last Hurrah!

 Forrest, Somer and Lily have now been here for almost 3 months now. If you were to have asked me 3 months ago if I wanted one of our kids and their family staying with us for that long I probably would have cringed. Don't get me wrong, we love them all deeply but living that closely with someone for that long when you are used to a somewhat solitary lifestyle can cringe-inducing. 

It is going great though! Daily routines go something like this; Barb and I get up anywhere from 4:30 to 5:30 and spend a quiet morning listening to the news and catching up on blogs. Forrest will come in between 8:30 and 9, Somer shortly after that. Ms. Lily has moved into our upstairs loft area and comes down about 9:30 or so has breakfast and goes back upstairs to do her schoolwork. 

Early on we had activities planned throughout the week but with the colder weather those have slowed down a bit. One of our biggest fears of having them stay this here in the winter was the cold weather freezing up their rig. The weather has cooperated with their rig though fighting through some pretty low temperatures without freezing up. When we had our 5th wheel, we would freeze up with any temperatures under 20° F. Although we had the "Arctic package" we had one waterline that would freeze.

Forrest and Somer have hit single digits and have not frozen so far! How long are they staying? Well, we are leaving on our Great Winter Adventure in less than 7 days, and they will still be here! In fact, they are moving into the house and as of right now they do not have a departure date. Such is the life of nomadic RV'ers.

Speaking of planned activities, one of them this week was to bake Christmas cookies! Barb, Somer and Lily spent almost the entire day last Sunday baking. 

Somer was the baker and Lily was the.... decorator?

We are up to our ears in Christmas cookies! Oh, so delicious!

The weather this week was pretty mild for this time of year, so mild in fact we got the concrete poured for our garage pad! The 3-person team which is usually Kevin, Barb and me, added a fourth with Forrest, making things a little easier. We needed it to as it was a big pour; a 24x48 pad. 

Starting at 7:30am, we did not finish until 7:30pm. It was not 12 hours of constant work, the first 4 hours were constant, then we had to wait for it to harden before doing more work, wait another hour, do more work, another hour, more work..... ending with us putting the blankets on around 7:30 that night. Now, it needs to harden for a week, things dry slower in the winter. 

Nice to have that done! Now we can start work on it when we return in the spring. 

We spent much of the week packing the camper, but we did get out for one last hurrah with Dan, Bonnie, Kevin and Cheryl. We went to The Alpine Inn in Hill City. If you are even in the area, this is a must stop! Several of us also stopped at Miner Brewing Co. which was actually one last hurrah, as they permanently closed on the 22nd.  

The weather actually got up to 55 degrees on Saturday. Kevin came over in the morning spending 3 hours making summer sausage out of his elk meat scraps. Once those chores were done, we needed to get outside and do some ice fishing! As you can see, the ice was melting, so it was a little sloppy. The fish must have been taking the day off as only one small trout was caught, but Lily was the one who caught it!

Setting the alarm for 5am on Sunday I got the summer sausage on the smoker. It typically takes 5-6 hours to get the internal temp up to 160. I needed to get it done early as we were leaving at 10:30 to head to Spearfish for one last hurrah with Ryan and Alana's where we watched the Viking game while the dogs played. 

As you know, Alana is a huge Vikings fan so Barb bought the jersey of every team that is playing the Vikings and tries to sneak it on Sophie sometime during the game. Alana in turn tries to sneak a Vikings jersey on Zoey. Both were successful this trip!

Loki was away at training and Dakota said that she didn't want to go, so she stayed home and relaxed, so it was a little mellower than usual. It was a great visit and game though, and the Vikings won!

Our next post will be after Christmas, so we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas wherever you are. We hope it is filled with joy and happiness!

Finally, one last picture of Jack, Zoey and Dakota hanging out on the couch....