I know............it's about time I started writing again!!!!

The Christmas tree is still up here but today is the last day of our church's Christmas season...........so we are ready for 2023!!!

Since I spoke to you, we have been training 2 teams regularly - a team of 10 we are sure that will be in our 14 dog pool at the Wyoming stage stop race and the other 10, who for a variety of resons, got a bit behind in the training speed and miles (some age, some illness, etc.)  We have plenty of snow for the training trails (even though the Tahquamenon race that takes place within 5 miles of our rental house up here at Deer Park).  The race was canceled because the first 4 miles of the race leaving from the Muskalonge Lake State Park are on a dirt road and that part of the road didn't have enough snow on it when it came time to make the decision to go or cancel, to be safe for the dogs.  The rest of the trail system is beautiful!!!  As Randy just told some of our friends "you'd have to drive 5,000 miles to the Open North American race in Fairbanks to find a better trail!!!  Right now there is at least a foot of packed dense snow in the trails and miles and miles to choose from!  So far we have over 1000 miles on the dog trainers and about 800 on most of the dogs!!!  We will be sad to leave these beautiful trails when we leave the latter part of this week to travel to what will be our first race this year - the Pedigree Stage Stop Race in Wyoming - you can go to their website if you want to see the schedule of the races and the all different locations each day - include one race in Lander, where our grandaughter Aeja DeKuiper is going to college!!!  We are really looking forward to that leg of the race!!!  The first race day is a ceremonial race held in downtown Jackson and Randy goes our number 1 both for the ceremonial race and the first day of the stage races (because we entered first and that was because I was sitting on the computer waiting to be on time - I was so on time I did it first!!!!  so I guess I win the computer portion of the race..................)  The first real race day is at the Grand Tetons park near Jackson on January 28th and the next day we race in Lander and can see Aeja!  We are praying for good weather for the drive out there takin I80 west - it can be pretty unpredictable and was terrible the first year we went!!  We will go first to Alpine to train the dogs for a week or so and try and get both them and us used to the altitude (last time we both had some difficulty breathing and being tired!)  We are familiar with the area and so it seems like a safet bet to go to Alpine - that doesn't mean that we might not end up someplace else to train - we just saw some pictures of the training at west yellowstone and it looks great!

We were also supposed to go to a race this next weekend at Baldwin to our friends' (Moe and Lydia) race, the Baldwin Sled Dog Derby but they unfortunately also have cancelled due to little snow.  They have it re-scheduled for the middle of February (so our daughter Mitzi will still be able to run a team in the 6 dog) but it's not likely that we will be around.........if we are we will just enter again!!!

Also since December we have had some problems with the snow machine that we traded for our 2003 Harley - it has needed patching of the exhaust, new spark plugs, a solenoid x 2, new spark plug wires and it still sounds a little rough (I do love the rear view mirrors so I can see Randy when I am leading him and the team when he is on the sled!!).  The yellow truck had blown fuses twice and lost the tail lights (with our neighbor Frank Caldwell's help those are fixed) and the trailer had a flat tire that we needed to replace ( the tires were brand new last summer).............and all that before we even leave on a several thousand mile trip!!!

I hate the idea of packing up again (the 3 months have gone by really fast!!) but the thought of new places and people is exciting!!!

When I think of more I will write again!

Happy 2023!!