We Have Arrived

You know you're a real Missourahn when...

Santa knocks on your front door at 10:30 Christmas Eve night but instead of wearing a red suit he's wearing a gun and a badge. (You know you're a real parent of teenagers when the first thought to enter your mind upon seeing said santa is, "What did those boys do!")
And instead of bringing presents he brings a message that your black and white cows are out on the highway so you spend a good chunk of the night running around in the dark and cold rattling a bucket and hollering "Here girls!" at the top of your lungs and end up climbing through the over-grown woods getting hung up on thorn bushes and tripping over fallen trees and cutting fence knowing full well you will later have to take the time and headache of mending but there is nothing else to do. Then they all follow you home like a bunch of little (ok, actually big, huge) puppy dogs wagging their tails behind them.

You're even more a real Missourahn when the next morning you get up, get in your Christmas Sunday best and are heading down the driveway with your family on the way to church only to glance across the pasture to the distant treeline and notice a herd of white belts strolling among the trees on their way out to the highway so you find yourself quickly back in jeans and muck boots (but still with diamond earings on--cause I can!) climbing on the four-wheeler again with your trusty bucket to go search for the renegade oreos. And my hair had just happened to have been looking so good that morning too! Of course that was all over after I had run around the pasture with the wind whipping through it.

But that's how it is because, finally, after all this time, I think, I really feel like I just might have, afterall, become a real missourahn.

Merry Christmas!

Anybody want a cow?!