Glory

In May of 2005 a friend of mine, Mardel Connell, called me and said she'd like to breed her mare for me and give me the foal. I was extremely excited! I had dreamed of having a foal for a long time. Actually I had tried to breed my mare twice and both times she didn't end up getting pregnant. So, for the next 11 months I waited, and waited and waited... Finally on April 30th she was born! A little blue roan filly! She had to stay at Mardel's place until she was weaned, but I used every excuse possible and went and saw her often. :-) She is now home, at our place, and fitting in quite nicely. I would just like to introduce the newest member of our herd:

"Very Darling Glory"

aka "Glory"

~Lacey


Glory enjoys a run in our pasture.


Ain't she pretty? :-)

Thank you, Mardel! She's a dream come true.

If ya'll want to come out and see her, I certainly don't mind showing her off. :-)

Wishing the residents at Garden Square
Nursing Home a Merry Christmas!




It was a pleasure to spend the evening singing and enjoying the
fellowship of the the people at Garden Square. The food was amazing!
Thank you for having us!

December Project

This month, while we are at home, the men in our house have taken on the project of removing and rebuilding the front porch. Our century-old house has begun to shift this past year, so the guys decided to see if our sagging front porch had anything to do with the problem.

Nick and Bristol did most of the tear-off work

Digging holes for footings

Aaron Wubbels, a good friend, stopped by one night and ended up joining the work crew

The new porch is considerably higher than the old one

The old pillars were salvaged to keep as much history intact as possible

Add a porch swing, a few seats, a clothesline and some cats and it looks like home sweet home again.

P.S. A little piece of information...for those of you who noticed that our house has two front doors side-by-side, we've been told that it was built by Czechoslovakians, whose tradition was to have two front doors (we're not sure what the use is!). Since Mom is part Czech, we figure we belong here!

Merry Christmas!

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us." Ephesians 1:3-8

A Christmas Gift

This past weekend some friends of ours, the McKay family, came to visit from Wisconsin. Before they went home, they blessed us with a long-needed gift: a new dishwasher!

Look, Mom, no more adding gallons of water during every cycle!

A huge "thank you!" to Scott and Brenda for your generous gift!

Havilah

We kids were betting quarters as to whether Havilah would be a boy or a girl. We awaited her arrival with much anticipation and Havilah must've picked up on the excitement because she came almost too fast to make it to the hospital! On December 14th, 1993, forty-five seconds after Mom arrived to the emergency room via ambulance, baby Havilah Rose Hitch was born.

"There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid!"

Havilah with bottle lamb, Hosanna

Havilah's first horse was an old mare named Queenie. Havilah quickly learned how to hold on because Queenie loved to lope and hated to stop! (We tried to keep the pair within the bounds of a fence...)

Alaska is Havilah's snow white kitten

Happy thirteenth birthday, Havilah!

Look Who's Fifteen!

We were staying at Grandpa and Grandma's house when Sterling James Hitch was brought into the world on December 9th, 1991. We kids were ecstatic when we heard we had gotten a new brother during the night!

Sterling fell asleep everywhere...especially in his high chair every day during lunch!

One-year-old Sterling

Singing "Just Call on Him"

Games on horseback

Sterling bought his best horse, Haily, when she was 15, and did the finishing touches in her training to make her into one of our best horses today.

Happy fifteenth birthday, Sterling!

Who's the Secret Friend?!?

Every beginning of December, our family exchanges names and for the entire month we have a "secret friend." This is the person we buy a gift for on Christmas, but each person also does special things for their "friend" every day. We find gifts on our pillows, our beds made or our cars cleaned. This evening, Blake had a wrapped box on his pillow...and it was moving!

"Bagheera," the black kitten, is happily getting used to his new home, and the big question remains:

"Who did it?"

Lucas

Last night in Arnold, Nebraska, Lucas hit a milestone in his life. He was invited to do his very first solo concert in a remolded theatre and he performed an hour-long concert of all original songs with Nick and Blake backing him on bass and drums. We cheered him on and laughed at his rather unexpected moments of humor.

We're so proud of you, Luke!

5-year-old Jace Connell eagerly took the front row of the theatre and was all eyes and ears