Tree Decorating

We put up all the Christmas decorations with weekend. It is always fun to have the house feel festive. Since we put the tree up, our elves also came back for the season. All the kids were excited to see Bella and Blitzen. Emmy was excited to start telling them her list.

We have now went with the artificial tree for 3 years. As much as it makes me sad I think this might be our new normal with all the allergies in our house. 

Emmy needed a tree in her room too. She was really excited.

This might be the last year that Robb can carry Abby on his shoulders to put the star up.

 

Thanksgiving with Lutz's

We did get to finally spend Thanksgiving with the Lutz's the next weekend. They came to Lincoln so that we didn't have to travel. It was fun to be able to see them and we got to eat another delicious meal!

 

Processing the Deer

This entire process has been very interesting! The deer had to hang for a couple days before we could start processing. Luckily Dave had all the gadgets to make things easier. They pulled the skin off of it, this was a little disturbing. Probably more disturbing was finding out that chickens love meat and they ate it like tiny dinosaurs. 

Next was cutting it into large pieces and taking it to the processing room.

This was the tedious part. You had to separate the facia from the meat. 

Once all the meat was cut they started to make the sausage. Caleb decided to do a spicy batch and regular batch.

Learning how to put it in the casings was interesting. Dave also had a very cool set up with all the professional kitchen gadgets to make things easier.

We had to keep reminding Caleb that the entire deer was not just his! This was a lot of work but a really cool experience to have Caleb learn how to do all of this.

 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year looks a little different than usual but that seems to be the theme of the year. Bob and Susie had Covid the week prior and although they were out of their quarantine I didn't feel good about going this close to them being sick. My family all decided that getting together would be a bad idea with Covid numbers being at an all time high. We prepped food and everyone helped. Abby and Emmy helped with the apple pie and stuffed mushrooms. Caleb helped with the chocolate pie and the turkey. Bryce made his world famous stuffing. It was low key and that was fine. We all missed seeing family but when the hospital staff is begging people to stay home because they are at capacity it seems silly to not listen to that.

Everyone humored me and walked over to the neighbors house so that we could get a picture with our favorite turkey, Jessie. Not everyone can say that they have a neighbor turkey!

 

Getting His Deer

Caleb and Robb went to Plainview on Saturday night and stayed in Dad and Cindy's camper. Early in the morning they met up with Lester and headed to Orchard. This was the last day of the last weekend of deer hunting. 6 deer had already been taken off of Grandpa Jim's land. I tried to prepare Caleb for the fact that he might not get a deer this year and that's ok. It can be about the experience too. But....The experience is SO much cooler when you actually get your first deer! Caleb was over the moon and so were Robb and Lester! They had gotten to the farm just before sunrise and got all set up. They had the perfect spot and then at 7:15ish Caleb saw the deer he was going to go for. He shot once and missed but the little buck stopped again and Caleb got his second shot which dropped him quickly. The night before Caleb was really nervous that he wasn't going to be a good enough shot with this gun because he had only shot it a couple of times. He had called Lester and asked him to be his second shot. Lester had a good talk with him and told him No that he would not be his second shot. If it was going to be his deer his was going to have to shoot it himself or he would forever regret it. This chat helped Caleb and Lester was right, it did feel so much better to have been the one that got the deer all on his own. Lester was a great teacher to Caleb and Robb and I were thankful that he was able to help us with this! Grandpa Steve was really excited that Caleb got his first deer with the gun that his dad had given him long ago. Grandpa Jim was also excited that he got his first deer at the farm. 

This was a great morning!

I guess the tradition is that you put the deer blood on your face. Gross! 

No gut shot. Thank goodness. It was close. Lester showed Caleb how to field dress the deer. 

Robb was excited to see Caleb so happy. He was also glad that they got the deer right away in the morning and they didn't have to sit out in the cold for hours on end.

They took it back to Grandpa Steve's to show him and to hose it out.

It was a young buck that he got.

This year has been crazy and one of the things that has been affected is the meat packing lockers. They have been incredible busy and back logged for months. Many of them were not even processing deer this year. Before we sent him off hunting we had asked our neighbor Dave what he would recommend for processing. It just so happened that he had a processing room in his garage and he was willing to help us out.

 

Wanting to Hunt

As deer season started and Caleb saw all the pictures of his friends that had gotten deer, he had this sudden need to deer hunt. I feel a little bad for Caleb at times because many of his hobbies we know nothing about. He is our outdoor hunter and fisher. Robb isn't a deer hunter so we had to pull something together quick if we were going to make this deer hunting dream happen this year because we were coming up on the last weekend. Luckily Grandpa Steve had 2 guns that we could try but we needed to work on the scope. Our neighbor Dave Malcolm is an avid hunter and was willing to help Caleb get the scope figured out. 

 

Turkey Time

Emmy and I spent the evening making her fancy turkey for her school project. All the kids have done some variation of this project and it's always one that I enjoy. We had feather, jewels, glitter and felt. We had fun making this creation while the big kids went to State Volleyball.

 

State Volleyball

When your favorite sport makes it to State, you convince your dad to take the whole crew. Abby and her friends all went with Robb to the State Tournament. They had a blast. Robb enjoys their craziness which I find to be a little over the top but they are a cute group of friends. 

 

Recess Basketball is Brutal

I got a call from the Middle School nurse that Bryce had gotten hurt at recess but he seemed to be okay and she sent him back to class with an icepack. When he got home that night he was pretty miserable. He couldn't hardly walk on that foot. To be fair, you should know that Bryce is a hypochondriac and almost daily has some medical complaint. I tease him all the time that he needs to marry a nurse, doctor, chiropractor or physical therapist so he will have someone to take care of him. To tell the truth, I didn't think it was anything but a bad sprain. He was playing basketball at recess and came down on the side of his foot. The next morning he stayed home from school and seemed like he was in a lot of pain. I decided to make and appt with Dr. David to see if they thought there was a bigger problem. We saw a PA and she thought it also was a bad sprain. She got an x-ray just to be sure and put him in a brace. 

Bryce was less than thrilled with riding in the tiny wheel chair to x-ray. 

We got a call later that night and to everyone's surprise there was a small fracture. Bryce was devastated because this was going to impact basketball. We borrowed a pair of crutches and he was suppose to stay off of it until he could see the orthopedic doctor for further instructions.

We had an orthopedic appt and unfortunately they said this was a hard to heal spot since his bone had fragmented off when he landed on the side of his foot. He was out of sports for 4 weeks and then they would re x-ray and re-evaluate how things were healing. Let me tell you, it was a tense and unhappy ride home.

 

Volleyball Tryouts with NE Juniors

 Tryouts are always nerve wracking for both the kid and the parents. Abby had never really had to tryout for volleyball before. She did the non travel team where they take anyone that is willing to pay for it. This year she has been doing fall “fast fours” with NE Juniors. This has been a good experience and we were tired of the terrible communication at NE One and the girls were ready to play something a little more competitive. They had clinics to prepare them for tryouts and then the actual tryouts were on a Sunday morning. If Abby was incredible nervous she hid it well! Abby is so laid back that it is hard for me to tell if she is really stressed about something. Robb went to tryouts and he said she did really well. I got the call following tryouts that she had made the C team. Abby was sad and was crying because none of the other girls were on her team. 2 had made A and 2 had made B. This is just the mamma in me but it hard to see your kid sad when you felt like they performed very similar to a couple of the girls. Abby had to decide on the spot if she wanted to accept her position. I think for a split second she thought about declining it but ultimately decided that she like volleyball enough that she wanted to get better and hopefully make the team with her friends the next time around. We were really proud of how she handled all of it!