This should be arriving on my doorstep very soon in the form of a cotton candy pink hoodie for those dreary winter days, and all the proceeds go to support Breast Cancer research.  How awesome is that!!!  A few of my friends bought one, too.  So as soon as we all have them on at the same time, I’ll snap a picture for ya!

I never miss my hometown more than I do in the fall. At least once a year, Mom and I head out to Apple Annie’s for peaches, handmade goodies and the best apples in Arizona. A few more miles down Ft Grant Road and you can go on a hayride, pick the perfect carving pumpkin, and purchase tons of other homegrown vegetables. This year for the first time Apple Annie’s has created a massive corn-maze, the largest in our fine state.  When Zac told me about it, I was amazed at the detail an eighteen-acre field.  So if you happen to be heading east past Tucson and need a fun family activity, take a detour past my hometown and see what Apple Annie’s has to offer.

This gem hangs in my grandparents’ house.  I remember the chaos of this Christmas season day when 21 members of my mom’s family dressed up to get our picture taken together.  Grandma had bought every blue sweater for the boys and made the jumpers for the girls.  I love how young we looked, and how for one of the last times, we were all in the same place.  Plus, I had some pretty awesome 90’s bangs!!!

Back Row (L-R): Aunt Rena, Uncle Jeff, my Dad
2nd Row (L-R): Evan, Wynn, Kalan, my Mom, me
3rd Row (L-R): Uncle Joel, Uncle Kyle, Zac
4th Row (L-R): Aunt Karen, Kyle, Grandbob, Grandma, Braxton
Front Row (L-R): Ryan, Adam, Jillian, Dillan, Bradley

I’m a camera fanatic. I don’t go anywhere without at least one camera and have annoyed more than a few family members with my requests for picture time. But, with family is pretty as mine, could ya blame me?

With twelve cousins on my mom’s family between the ages of 28 and 18, it’s no wonder we’re as close as we are.  I mean Wynn is 28; I’m 27.  Zac, Kyle, Evan and Kalan (twins #1) are 25.  Ryan, Brax and Brad (twin #2) are 22.  Jillian and Dillan (not twins) are 20, and Adam is 18.  (Brenna is the 13th AND the baby at 13.)  We grew up together, literally and figuratively.  We’ve attended each other’s high school and college graduations and cried at each other’s weddings.  We call, email, text, MySpace, and Facebook regularly and consider one another more than just family.  So with all of that being said, I probably shouldn’t have a favorite cousin, but I do.  Maybe it’s our love of music or our reliance upon each other during hard times, but as much as I love and adore each of my cousins, Evan is my favorite.

Even as a lil kid Evan had this way about him that just made you wonder if he was a wise, old man trapped in a three-year old’s body.  The story’s been told a hundred times of the early morning when my mom and dad were out sleeping in the bunkhouse one summer when Evan (no more than 3) busted in and asked, “Aunt Jamie, who’s that man sleeping in your bed?”  He’s just that way.  His humor and insight catch you off guard and make you wonder about all he has to say.  It was with great trepidation that I stepped on that plane to fly north and seeing Evan was one of the sole reasons I mustered up some intestinal fortitude and went.

I’ve spent a lifetime treasuring my time with Evan, and this trip was no different.  From the moment he picked us up at the airport until he had Zac, the grandparents, and me laughing so hard we were wheezing at his ‘hairy eyeball’, Ev brought happiness wherever he went.  No other cousin could get away with playing The Verve’s “The Drugs Don’t Work” on Grandbob’s acoustic guitar in the living room and have grandma say, “play another one” or pull off the ‘chimo’ look of wool vests, old man beards, and ranching Levi’s.  Without realizing it, he’s just that special.

Of all of the stories I’d love to share with you if I had the time about Ev,  the one I have to tell still causes me to just shake my head and mutter under my breath, “oh, Evan.”  Somewhere on the drive home from the airport during our usual speed catching up, we found ourselves on the subject of dating.  Always the gentleman, he asked about us first.  Zac told him about Victoria, and I tried to change the subject upon the  Laurel’s ‘life, love and other mysteries’ segment of our drive by asking Evan if he had a ’special lady’.  I should have known by his sigh and stammering that this was going to get good.  Apparently, as one of the unclaimed bachelors in SE Montana, Evan was a hot commodity.  The community where he grew up and now returned to live and help his dad ranch was full of family and families he’d known forever, but somewhere in those Montana buttes were two women who had piqued his interest, the new schoolteacher and another girl.

Listening to him talk on that drive, you would have thought if anyone had a chance at catching this boy’s heart it would have been the teacher, but as the details of Bachelorette #2 unfolded, we realized the real story lay there.  Maybe it was in the Levi’s her parents had bought him or the countless calls her mom had made trying to hunt him down to have dinner at their house.  It might have been in their request for him to travel to Wyoming with their family to learn to sheer sheep or how they believed in hands-off courtship (think…. Montana arranged marriages).  But somewhere in the tidbits of information he leaked to us over the next five days, we realized that this way way more serious than even he realized.

The climax of the ‘Evan gets stalked by the Hans’ story came after his mom confessed to him upon returning home from a community women’s banquet that a lady from a nearby town had told her that Evan and B#2 were ‘together’ in that courting/promised kinda way.  Didn’t she know?!?! Always one for rational thought, Evan decided that his best course of action upon realizing he was unknowinly courting this girl was to flee the country instead of telling the family that he was unaware of the ‘courtship’ or being honest about his interest with her.  I’m dead serious.  Within five minutes, he was planning on moving to New Zealand to do an agricultural exchange program so he wouldn’t have to upset her… (I don’t think he realized that his sudden departure would have done just that.)

Then, all of a sudden he realized he couldn’t leave yet because he’d already paid his fee to go to sheep sheering school with them.  To say that the rest of us found this whole thing comical would be an understatement.  Anyone else would have stormed out of the house and threatened to never speak to us mean cousins who were laughing at him, but not Evan.  He just shoke his head and let it roll of his back.  Why do I love him so much? Do you really have to ask.

Even as a child one of my favorite places to visit was my aunt and uncle’s ranch in southeastern Montana.  There’s something about driving out into the middle of nowhere and then going fifteen more miles down a unkempt dirt road that reminds you we’re all still small in this big world.  Imagine living miles from your mailbox, neighbors, and a store to buy a loaf of bread.  How about not traveling to civilization for weeks in the winter and traveling to school by snowmobile when the roads were too covered to navigate a truck.  It’s a different world then the one I grew up in, and yet every few years I find myself craving a retreat to this corner of land.  I ache to shed the technology and responsibility of my everyday life and recenter who I am and what’s really important.  In the days since I stepped off that plane in Mesa and drove back up the mountain, I’ve longed to return to the ranch.

Before I can really tell you about my trip, you have to allow me to gush about the gorgeous area I was in for most of my time away. The Black Hills of South Dakota have always been one of my favorite places to spend time, and with surroundings like these who wouldn’t want to get away there. At least once during every trip to see my grandparents in Spearfish, we drive through the canyon to a little cafe for the best breakfast north of Denver. Everyone at Cheyenne Crossing Cafe knows my grandparents by name and that warms my heart just a bit. Lucky for us, we had the time to really soak in the drive after breakfast and stop to enjoy the magnificent waterfalls found buried there. Zac and I had to hike a teeny, tiny bit to see this one, but it was so worth it. Especially when the group of foreign tourists came up to the creek right as Zac stepped into the arctic water with his feet clad in MY pink Crocs and howled. Good times…