Nothing Much Has Changed: The Purcell's Official Christmas Letter For 2013

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.

Christmas Tree Hunting

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...

Our beautiful Christmas angel, that Fauneil bought at The Cathedral Of St. John the Divine, is covering it up beautifully. 

Here we are decorating the tree.

When going through Grandpa and Grandma's Christmas tree ornaments, we found an ornament that Fauneil received as a kid. 

This is Lily's owl collection.

Well, a merry Christmas to you all. 

Have a great New Year too. 

An All-Day Trip Into the Big City

With small towns come small grocery stores. They have their benefits: super friendly staff, very close to home and gumball machines that still take only a penny, but the down side is small selection and exorbitant prices. Because of this, most country folk take trips into the city to buy things they can't locally and to save money by shopping at Sam's Club, Costco and Walmart. It's usually a big all-day or half-day trip and we usually stock up.

This post is a record of our first trip into the city - Great Falls, Montana. 

It takes about 45 minutes to get there from my house, and my favorite part about the drive is passing Square Butte. It's a beautiful sight. 

We also pass many beautiful barns (I still swear I am going to do a whole blog post with just pictures of cool barns).

When we pulled into the city and Brandon saw Scheels, he about had a tizzy fit. "I can buy Nike!" That's an exact quote. He's glad there's some part of city life in which he can participate.

First stop: Target to shop for school clothes. 

Here is Lily looking at socks. She insisted on low cut ones this year. 

Of course, McCann did his usual: playing on the clothes racks like they are monkey bars,...

hiding behind belts,...

and doing yoga under display carts. 

Brandon did his usual too...

He wasn't the only one in that situation. This guy looked like he was about to die of boredom waiting for his better half.

Side note: should I buy these superhero undies for Brandon? Nah! Okay, on to the next store: Walmart for school supplies. 

This shot was taken when we were totally lost trying to find Walmart. My wife hasn't lived in Montana for a couple of decades. 

We finally found it. Wahoo! BUT, this is where all hell broke loose. 

First problem: apparently,  we weren't the only ones thinking about school supply shopping the Saturday before school. The place was a zoo. I had thought about buying supplies when we were in Utah, but decided to wait. I didn't want to haul it all the way up to Montana. I had second thoughts, when seeing this crowd. It might have been easier. 

Second problem: Lily was about to die from starvation, so we made a stop at the Subway there in Walmart. 

Third problem: McCann started complaining about his stomach, so we...

grabbed him some Pepto - a deviation from our shopping list.

Then we quickly went down the school list and got the heck out of there.  We were going to stop at Sam's Club and stock up on food, but we said, "forget this!" and bought just the few things we needed at Walmart and...

Our first trip to the city was cut short (only a half-day). Here is a photo Fauneil took on our way home. A couple of things I learned: 1) I took the convenience of the city for granted when I lived there. It's so easy to pop over to a store grab what I need, any time, day or night. 2) In the city, we waste a lot of gas and time driving back and forth to the store. We should plan better and only go when necessary.