The End of a Legendary Streak!

The motor home is parked at Mark's parents' ranch while we are enjoying time with family and friends in Oklahoma. While we have planned weekend trips, we return to spend the weekdays at the ranch in the panhandle. This has allowed us to spend time with Mark's family that lives in that area. Mark got private baking lessons from the best pie crust chef in the country. His first-ever crust got a B+ grade from his Mother. We hope he brings that grade up to an "A" before we leave.

Being in Beaver has allowed us to attend several of our great niece's school events. Haleigh is a senior at Beaver High School. Besides being a beautiful young lady with an effervescent personality, she is multi-talented. We attended basketball games, where she is a starter on the varsity team. We also went to the school Christmas program, to listen to her sing with the choir and play her flute in the band.

We were thrilled to go to some of Haleigh's senior year events. Then we realized that this is the end of a legendary streak at Beaver schools. Sixty years ago, Mark's parents enrolled their first child in the first grade at Beaver. For the last sixty years they have had one of their descendants continually enrolled at Beaver schools. That includes their five children, five of their grandchildren, and now two great grandchildren. Haleigh's graduation this year will be the end of that very long streak. We snapped this picture of Mark's sister, Bonnie (the beginning of that long line of students) and her granddaughter Haleigh (the end of that line of students) at that final Christmas program. Many of those years Bonnie has been employed in the music department at the school as well.

Mark's parents weren't physically able to attend the Christmas program at the auditorium this year. So we brought the program home to them. Mark recorded Haleigh's songs on our phones, and then played them back through the speakers at home. Clarence was on the school board for many of those sixty years, so they have enjoyed most of those concerts in person.

While we are watching Haleigh get exercise, we aren't getting much exercise ourselves while we are staying in Beaver. We have taken a couple hikes through the pastures surrounding the ranch. Denisa prefers pasture hikes on cold days when she knows the resident rattlers won't be out.

We were a couple miles from the nearest road when we discovered this old truck in the middle of the pasture. We found that they used to truck some gravel out of a pit in this pasture. It was determined that this truck wasn't worth a tow to get it fixed, so it rusted its way into a skeleton over the years.

With the onset of cold weather, we are spending too much time indoors. But it is fun to be surrounded by the ranch animals.

Even though they are called wild turkeys, this flock spends so much time around the house that they are very tame.

It is amazing to watch them transform from sleek birds capable of flying to the top of the tall cottonwood trees to roost at night . . .

to a puffed up Tom turkey with his tail feathers fanned behind him. They don't even look like the same bird. This morning the guys were so busy impressing the hens that they didn't mind Denisa taking their pictures.

We got here two weeks before Thanksgiving, and we stayed until a week after Christmas this year. That's seven weeks. Not as impressive as sixty years, but another legendary streak in Beaver, Oklahoma!