Time again for that annual event - the Rains Christmas letter, full of good cheer, news of minor and major import, doings, disaster, near disasters and the like. Where do I start - it has been an incredibly busy, action packed year.

I was diagnosed hyperthyroid at the end of last year, and since the beginning of February have been trying alternative, New Age ways of healing a large nodule on the left hand side of my thyroid. I have had some astonishing successes, and then slow relapses, so it has been a very up and down thing. It has done me personally a whole lot of good, but I am getting a bit tired of "the gift that just keeps giving" and plan to have surgery some time in the New Year, so that I can get onto something new. The boys are both in great health and very active and demanding - pity their poor parents. Jack is in great shape for the shape he's in - his doctor is quite envious of his cholesterol and blood pressure. All I can say is he does not have time to be sick - the boys won't let him.

This year was indeed the year of the Garage - but not until we finally got the basement finished sometime in May. Even at that it is not quite finished, but it was time to move onto other things along with the weather. We now have a massive 3 (truck) bay garage with space for several ponies, a large workshop, megatons of garbage, several hundred bales of hay, lots and lots of beer, the winter wood pile etc etc - what can I say? Oh, you think we should park our vehicles in there???????? Good heavens, what a concept!!!!! Said garage is missing the gable ends and doors to close out the weather - hopefully we will get that done pretty early in the new year and then it will be more useful, when we can exclude the neighbors burglarous and larcenous offspring, along with the winds carrying leaves, snow and the occasional uprooted tree. (Hurricane winds are 70 mph and up - we regularly get winds of 65 mph, and gusts over that.) Until we have the garage closeable, all Jack's tools and stuff are jamming up my basement, right along with megatons of baby stuff we are trying desperately to donate to someone, anyone - actually we have a home for it, but it is several truckloads worth, so the pile is not going down very fast.

We also went to Rondyvoos a few times this summer - JJ was off for hours everyday with a gang of other kids, but the baby is still too young for that, so we had to take turns keeping him out of all the traders merchandise. He chose a hat for himself (and wears it) made of 'kunk. The last Rondy in Angel Fire in September was about an hour from the house, so we decided to try a food tent, food being an item sorely lacking at all the Rondy's since the most popular caterers, a family outfit called the Hungry Henrys, got burned out. So "Rangy Lil's Home on the Range Cookin'" was born, and quite successful considering the lack of expertise, planning and advance advertising for the event. We decided on breakfast and lunch only, basically one item per meal, and had this nice little vision of breakfast 7 to 9, lunch 12 to 2, all nice and orderly and no overlap. Yeah, right ---right on the bottom of the learning curve again!!! However, we did pretty well cover actual food costs, but no capital costs, and we saved lots of money because by the time I got out of the kitchen I was too tired to go shopping, and too stingy to spend any of what we'd made. Jack thought it was quite neat, as he got to take the money (she wouldn't let me keep any of it) and schmooze over gallons of coffee with all the other dubious characters!! The boys thought it was neat - their depredations on the chocolate brownies we had bought for resale reminded me of the gophers in Popeye's spinach patch.

We are planning to try again Memorial Day weekend, when hopefully thousands of bikers will be descending on the Rondy to buy everything in sight, and if it goes well and we actually make a profit maybe Rangy Lil's will become a fixture in the Rondy circuit for a few years.

JJ is now in first grade and getting on very well - his teacher is a super lady and she and her husband might be interested in joining us at Rendezvous - smart people. JJ is rather a geeky type - likes nothing better to sit in front of any screen and watch the test pattern if that is all there is. We have given in to the 21st century and bought the brat a computer, with educational software and no internet, so when we won't let him watch any more TV he goes off to the computer in his room. Periodically we exile him to the great outdoors for a real break.

The baby is a dab hand with the various buttons for the TV etc, and has been for the last 6 months - his absolute must watch all the time favorite is a dvd teaching kids baseball - "pla' ba'bow" is his demand first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He's getting pretty good (for a two year old) at hitting a whiffle ball off of a tee. I dread to think how upset he'll be when JJ starts in the tee-ball league and he is not allowed to play. It is really too cold outside, so we put Don Diego in the hallway with his bat and tee, and one of us gets to keep putting balls on the tee for him to knock off, and with all the doors closed it is not too hard of a job to find and pickup the balls, for another go round, and another....

We are pretty contented in our valley in the middle of nowhere, but it is a pain to be so far from EVERYBODY - and for those brave souls who have gone the distance to visit us, the altitude has been a serious issue, so it pretty well looks like we have to do the visiting. How nice that in this modern world we have email huh!

We shall close now, and wish you and your family a Very Merry Christmas, and a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous New Year

Love, hugs and kisses,