New Year, New Blog

  Sarah took the top picture on our way back from Wyoming in 2009.    It had been a rough trip back for Laura.    One of the horses at the ranch was going to be sold at the end of the season and she so wanted to bring Callie home.  We though a stop at the Burns BLM holding pens for the wild mustangs may give her a little lift. We went on the drive through tour and then to the viewing area to look at all the beautiful horses that were being readied for adoption.   Laura grabbed every piece of literature she could find and began planning a way for us to adopt one.   ~They were far more reasonable to adopt, we only needed a proper pasture, barn and feed budget.    Of course, we had none.    But our young dreamer held onto her dream.     That winter we met a wonderful lady at our home school group.   We started talking about our kids and I told her how my middle had longed for some horse time her whole life; and as we were entering the teen years I longed for her to have her dream and mostly I didn't want her to give up.   Carla handed me a card and said to email Wild Ones Youth Ranch.   We were put on the list for lessons; lessons so reasonable I couldn't pass the opportunity up for all three kids.   The first day we drove to the ranch I don't know who was more excited, the kids or I.     I don't think they stopped smiling for the entire week after that first lesson.    Soon they were in the JUMP program; learning to serve.   Serve others, the horses and the ranch and they were loving every single moment of it.    They went to their first horse camp and were eventually paired up to help care for two younger horses, Elvas and Rompe.    Jeannie approached Erik and I with the idea of our family raising first one, then both of them.    We were speechless!    That Laura's (Josh and Sarah too, they just weren't as vocal about it)   dream could actually come true was incomprehensible to our human, finite minds. Oh, the nights we laid awake talking about having them for our own, what that would mean and how excited we both were!  On December 23 2010 Sarah, Laura and Josh were told that Elvas and Rompe' had their forever family.    They were to come out to the ranch, meet the family and say good bye to the Boyos.    They were speechless, overwhelmed, joyful, shocked and had the biggest surprise of their lives when they walked into the barn and were handed two of the cutest Christmas packages they will ever receive.  We have been so blessed by those Boyos, by the loving, wonderful people at Wild Ones and how God so lovingly provided a place for all of us to be blessed every single time we turn into the driveway.