A Summer of Blessings… Wyoming

We had so many great reasons to be in Wyoming this summer, but the biggest reason of all was just to spend time with our daughter and her fiancé…and of course, all of the sweet animals that always come out to greet us when we arrive!

Time on their ranch is always so beautiful and relaxing, but as everyone knows, there is always something that needs to be done on a ranch.  And so just as with Steve’s parents, we always try to help around the ranch a little bit while we are there.

Our daughter had started all of her seeds indoors months ago, and had put weed cloth down in her entire garden in preparation for planting this spring, but Mother Nature had not been kind this year, with super late snows and record breaking wind.  So all of her seedlings had overstayed their welcome in her house and just really needed to be put in the ground.  This is the weed cloth they had installed.  It was holding up well, but just needed a little more reinforcement before planting.

So Steve and I helped her with the final touches on her weed cloth to make sure it was well secured, and then we all started frantically planting everything she had raised from seed.

Our daughter also had a really fun surprise in store for us once the work was done. The College National Finals Rodeo was in town, and she bought tickets for all of us to go.  We were incredibly impressed by how talented all of these college age kids were!  They were incredible athletes and put on a great show!

On our way home from the rodeo, we had a heart pounding and tragic event.  We hit a deer.  It was the first time for both of us, and it left us very shook up.  The deer didn’t fair well and our car wasn’t in great shape either.  We were able to limp it back to our daughter’s house, only to find that it was dripping some sort of fluid.  It was dark and late and we were home safe, so we decided to wait until morning to see how much damage there really was.  Steve went out by himself the next morning to assess the damage at his own pace.  The next thing I knew he was tearing off lights and hunks of metal and pretty much dismantling the whole front passenger side of the car.  I went out to see if I could help, and he said “yeah”.  He had figured out that the leaking fluid was just wiper fluid…Wyoming blessing number one! We carefully started taping up all of the stray electric wires so they couldn’t short anything out, and then started taping the front end of the car back together so Steve could test drive it for road worthiness.  She wasn’t the most beautiful thing ever, but we were hoping she was at least drivable.

Our next worry from this incident was getting home.  The car seemed to be driving okay, but we didn’t have time for anything to go wrong on our way home.  We had a very exciting commitment with our youngest daughter on June 18th here in Wyoming, then we had planned to drive home on the 19th and catch a plane for North Carolina on the 22nd, so we could be there for our older daughter’s scheduled c-section on the 24th.  All of it in a very short timeframe, and now we had a car that we weren’t sure could make the trip.  So we bought airline tickets from Denver to Phoenix as a fall back plan in case the car started giving us trouble once we hit the open road.  Now with our deer debacle in the rear view mirror, we could concentrate once again on our youngest daughter and her upcoming event.  Her sweet sister sent her well wishes and some beautiful flowers to bring her luck.

Unfortunately, I can not talk a lot about our daughters exciting experience on this platform, but I can tell you that she had a huge honor bestowed upon her!  (Wyoming Blessing number 2).  She has a lot of work in store for her, but she’s already proving that she is up to the task. We are all so proud of her and are excited to watch her as she continues down this exciting road with her fiancé by her side!

Our car made it back to Arizona safe and sound, and we were able to cancel our just-in-case flights without any problems. And as an added bonus, Caliber Collision took our car during our short two days at home, and said that they would keep it while we were in North Carolina and fix it!  Blessing number 3, they ended up completing the work early, and with the help of one of our neighbors, Caliber delivered it to our garage and it was waiting for us when we got home! Thank you Caliber Collision!

As an update to our daughter’s garden, it has thrived throughout the summer and is looking beautiful even though it got off to such a late start. Here are some current pictures of her in the garden 6 weeks later with her beans, onions and squash.

They love their garden and have done such a great job on it this year.  The hope is that with some preservation, it will be enough to get them through the winter again!