Hello Friends & Family –

Wow, another year gone by! I decided to type a letter this year since I always write pretty much the same thing to everyone. We hope your year was a good one. Ours was just fine. The kids are doing great.

Nate is 14 & in 8^th grade, Noah is 11 and in 5^th grade, and Naomi is 8 and in 2^nd grade. They are all doing well and keeping busy with school and their hobbies.  Nate and Noah play a game called Warhammer 40,000.  This entails making and painting tiny models and then doing “battle” with their armies.  There is a store at the mall where they do battling events with other people too.  Naomi is our little character. She just finished Iceless Hockey (floor hockey) her team finished in 2^nd place. She can’t wait to get another big trophy. Hopefully the boys fair as well when their season starts in January. Waba coached Naomi and will be coaching Nate in his last year of Iceless Hockey with Dave (Waba’s brother) and Devin.

I would say the highlight of our year was our summer vacation. We went to South Dakota and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. We saw the usual sites – The Mitchell Corn Palace, The Badlands, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We also hit a couple of caves and Bear Country USA, which is a zoo where the animals roam free and you drive through it. It was so beautiful down there – the starkness of the Badlands, the lush Black Hills and the overpowering structure of Devil’s Tower. I had never been there so I was awestruck. Waba went when he was young so he was reliving his childhood memories of picking up cactuses and how things were back then. Mount Rushmore facilities and Crazy Horse had changed quite a bit in the last twenty one years I guess.  We also visited Waba’s Aunt  and Uncle in Minnesota.  They have a lovely place on a lake.

I think the kids really enjoyed it but were getting tired of all the site-seeing for the week. I think they like the ‘stay put’ vacations like we took with my family on Little Saint Germaine Lake in the cabins – no schedule to keep and more swimming.

We meet Lee at Devil’s Tower which was a nice surprise for the kids. It was very hot but the sites were too good to slow us down! It was a wonderful vacation.

Waba and I are at the same jobs. We’ve both had our ups and downs but we’re okay, nothing new there. I celebrated my 20 years at the hospital, I guess you don’t do that all the time.

Our last bit of news is we just got a new dog – Dakota. He’s a husky mix. It’s been a year since Daisy has been gone so I guess it’s about time – at least that’s what the kids thought. Hopefully the cats will accept him.

Here’s hoping you all have a great year.

Love,

The Zilligen’s