Teton Diaries

As many of you have heard, the Purcells have gone rural. Big Sky Country, Montana. That is where we now live. But I don't want you to be misled. Nothing has changed.

Sure, we do things country-like, such as feed horses...

Go to rodeos...

Bottle homemade crab apple jelly...

and swim in pristine lakes. But just because our activities have become more countrified, that doesn't mean we have stopped being crazy as ever. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to January 1, 2013.

We started the year off by (at the request of our children) taking all our neighbor's discarded Christmas trees and sticking them in our front yard (as you can see in this photo). I think we had 20 trees total. Many a passer-by gave our house strange looks, but we didn't mind.

In February, the unthinkable happened. Our dog Emma died.

We took this very hard.

After a little grieving, we moved on to Bartok.

This was an adventure, as you can tell by this barricade of books used to keep him out of restricted areas. Unfortunately, Brandon was allergic, and Bartok had to go.

Also in February, we picked up a new hobby.

Okay, maybe not a hobby, but an addiction. I went 38 times between February 18th and May 9th.

Also in February was my 44th birthday. We had to call the fire department.

We did many experiments this year, including this one for Brandon's science class (no fire department needed here).

We also did a lot of hanging around in 2013...as usual.

And cooking. Lots of cooking.

Nothing new there.

As usual, we played dress-up.

In July, we came to Montana for the 4th.

It was on this trip that we realized we must move to Montana to take care of Fauneil's Mom and Dad.

To be there for them if they needed something big, like someone to go with them to the hospital...

Or just something small, like take them to the store.

So, we made the move. Big Sky Country, here we come.

But despite this big move, nothing has changed. We are still crazy weird.

We still play in the snow.

We still make that trip every morning to school.

We still work.

We still eat.

We still laugh.

We still camp in our back yard.

We still play in the water.

I still do crazy stuff with my hair.

We are still children at heart. This sign on our dirt road proves it.

Oh but wait! There is one thing that is different...but that is a story for another time.

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas from our crazy family to yours.

We've always wanted to cut our own Christmas tree, and this year we decided to do it. Here is our permit. $5 at the local grocery store.

We went up into the Lewis and Clark National Forrest near our home.

It's was beautiful.

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Once we found our spot...

Brandon grabbed the ax. Not sure a teenager with an ax is a good idea.

We bundled up, as you can tell. It was -17 degrees. We saw lots of other families out there.

We found a small tree for McCann. Here is cutting it. Then all hell broke lose. Two bad things happened:

1. Brandon was trudging up the side of the mountain with his ax. Thank heavens he was carrying it properly, because he tripped on a rock (hidden under the snow) and face-planted on the ground (bit his tongue so hard it wouldn't stop bleeding for a long time).

2. We weren't smart enough to bring rope to tie down the tree, and it blew out of the back of the truck and broke off the top of the tree, but...