12-31-13 Last Px of 2013

**Any guesses?!!**

12-31-13 Trail Boss In Pigtails

Pa wasn’t going to get well! Watching him, Emma Jane was suddenly sure of it. The long trip to Texas from Illinois three years before and the hot dry Texas climate had not made Pa better. And soon Emma Jane knew that Pa knew it too.  He knew it and had made a plan. The Burke family was going back to Illinois, back to where they had relatives.  More than that, they were going to drive a herd of long-horn steer from Waco clear up to Chicago. The price the cattle would bring there would buy a farm for the family to live on.

So one early spring day the whole family set out with eighty-two head of cattle and Emma Jane as trail boss of the herd.  Pa and the whole family were counting on her to bring the animals through.  But even Pa, who didn’t live through the journey, hadn’t counted on all the problems they met. Emma Jane’s resourcefulness was tested again and again.

Emma Jane really lived back in the 1850’s and she really made this trip.  Yet her story is more than history. Emma Jane is every girl who has ever tackled a grown-up job.

 

So reads the inside flap of a recent read-aloud. Written by Marjorie Filley Stover, whose parents were friends of Emma Jane, and published by Atheneum New York in 1972, this true account kept us all clamoring for ‘just one more chapter’ from start to finish. Although it is not on our bookshelves yet, I can see this being a good addition to our home library someday.

12-30-13 Saturday Report

by Kate

Saturday after lunch we went down to the south grove and cut some wood and cleared out brush, branches, and trees.

The ground was thawed about an inch down so it was very muddy and slick. Josh was a piggy mess.

 

Break time.

 

Everyone is in this picture except Mom.

 

Back to work.

This big hedge tree got saved for a climbing tree.

 

We finally got a good fire going after we used some gas and oil.

 

 

 

Ben in the climbing tree.

 

 

Jesse made mom a shelf that Tori and I painted. Dad helped a little. And I think it was even clean when it got taken up to the house.

Levi made some new hockey goals.

Fun with the cats\kittens.

 

 

Cute dirty face.

Everyone came home except Jacob and Ben.

 

Jacob and Ben stayed down and messed around.

 

Jacob messing with the fire (I think).

 

They managed to get a chain around the trunk so they could pull it more into the flames with the four-wheeler.

                                                                                                   THE END.

12-28-13 A Few More Px

12-27-13 Family Christmas and Christmas Day

by Kate

Family Picture.

 

 

 

Our last good bike got ruined after Jacob drove it into the lake several months ago.They got it back out but all of the gears were jammed. So now Ben has finally got a good bike that no one will drive into the lake.

 

 

 

I think we have enough bobcats now.

 

Christmas morning.

After church we had a dinner with G’pa & G’ma K., G’pa & G’ma S, A. Sarah, and Tricia.  A. Joyce came later.

 

U. Mike & A. Janet, Samuel, and Kinsey came out to ice skate for a while.

 

Later the older kids came out, and we played some hockey.

THE END.