The Muench Bunch

During the winter months, Jayden coordinated arena riding. She had roping nights and barrel racing practices. Herself, she rides all the time. On roping nights, the group can vary from just a few to over a dozen horses. It is fun to see them all lined up along the wall inside and all the many trailers parked outside. Jake, Luke, and I took turns pulling the mechanical hot heels. I am not out at the arena most nights because I am running to taekwondo or other places. When I do, I have a hard time getting horses caught, saddled, fed, and supper on the table and a shower before bed. Jayden has been roping and doing slow work with Tex. Mark ropes both heading and heeling. He can rope all night and not miss.He is quite a roper. He takes a lot of pride in being consistent and is very competitive. He also has been working with Jayden's young horse Joker, getting him in position and tracking. By the end of the night everyone is tired and covered in arena dirt.

Iowa is a funny place to live when you consider the weather.  I am not a fan of the weather, we get all the extreme conditions, blizzards, negatives and windchill's  40 below zero, heat and humidity re into the triple digits, strong winds, heavy rains, tornadoes, we get it all. We can have an 80 degree temperature change in 24 hours. Only in Iowa. I like 70 year round occasionaly getting up to 90 and down to 50. Yesterday we knew would be our last nice day for some time. We got to enjoy a taste of spring for a good week. Temperatures reached 70's and broke many records. Typically in February we are experiencing our extreme cold temperatures. Not this past week it was lovely and the sunshine felt like April. We all got out as much a possible, did lots of work and fixing things up around the farm. It was motivating and everyone was in a good mood. We soaked in the sunshine and chose to skip taekwodno and youth group to be outdoors. Today, the temperatures slowly dropped and here

Jayden got her wisdom teeth out first thing in the morning on the 21st. She is the only person in the family that has never had surgery and never experienced anesthesia. She was a little uncertain but did great. She had three wisdom teeth removed. She was giggly when she came out and a little tippy, but didn't have any funny things to say, unlike her cousin. Maggie had hers out and they have a video of her panicking over a little speck of blood, saying she is dying and heaven will be nice and she sees the light. It was hilarious. Jayden requested a cold Starbucks iced coffee and spent the rest of the day in her chair. Day two she was pretty sore ans swollen. She still had to keep up with her online classes. As long as long as she had her cat in her lap, she was ok. I rode her horse for her and did all the horse chores for several days On the 24th, Karen, Orrie, and our family took Allie and Blake out for her birthday. We went to 209 Main to eat and celebrate.  

2/19/17 It is like something out of a movie, a soap opera, a fiction book, but in reality it is just a story of one side of Ali’s family. It breaks my heart to hear the dysfunctional family situations. I only know the little bits and pieces, but it is enough to make me sick and sad. There has been so much prior to all of these, but the latest, Ali’s aunt, her moms sister is pregnant, expecting a child in May. She is 37 and the father/boyfriend is 19. She is in hiding because she is wanted for over 10 offenses. She is heavily using drugs and the baby will be born an addict with all the birth defects and problems that go along with it. The baby will be taken from her, she already knows. Ali’s mom had been married up until last year. She had a boyfreind, was pregnant and was in prison for the second time. Only because she was in prison did she stay clean and gave birth to a healthy baby at the age of 40. She is living in a half way house with the baby and the father recently made his way

2/17/17 Jake  takes a lot of pride in the old Chevy truck. He hand pumped the tire to his truck so he could drive it. He said he has to drive it at least once a week. He drove it to the shop, gave it a good wash, then drove to Grandma's where she helped him clean the interior. It was a much needed cleaning as he had at least a dozen air fresheners in it trying to mask the cat pee odor. Scrubbing and cleaning seats and floors helped tremendously in the odor problem. His truck sparkled and shined.  Jake likes to be at the shop tinkering on things and Mark had him help with the combine. With the warm weather we are having, Jake has been riding his dirt bike all over. Sometimes he gets his cool Fox racing shirt on. Both boys like to venture to the dog house place to do some more exploring. The property is officially ours and for young boys it is fun and exciting. They love going and looking around for hours. They also like destroying old junk cars and random things. They are clearing

Luke tested for another belt. This time he had to perform the entire purple form for his testing. We practiced it many times because there are a lot of moves. We even practiced a few times out by the beach in Hawaii. Today he did great, did every move correct and takes it very serious. He also did sparring and board breaking. He went from a blue belt to a blue with a black stripe.

2/14/17 The night before Valentines Day, I got a little carried away shopping. I had a bag for each of the kids that were for their treats and cards. I had the kids each make a Valentine for their siblings. The cards they made were comical, especially Jayden’s! I am going to have to hold on to them for a good laugh. Throughout the morning I would add candies and treats to their bag while they did school. At lunch they all got cards and DVD’s of new release movies, including Mark. I also had little sweetheart candies scattered around the house and "love" post it notes. It made for a special day.

2/13/17 Since returning fro Hawaii, we havent slowed down, it has been go ever since. We are still getting over our jet lag and trying to get back into a routine. I haven’t really noticed it affecting me other than being a little tired during the day and not being able to fall asllep very well at night. Today we had a full day that didn’t include any school. I knew we would need another day to prepare for the week and had enough on the calendar for the day without trying to squeeze in school. The boys were thrilled Jake had spent the night with Karen and Orrie and I heard he slept in until 11:30. The kids rarely ever get to sleep past 9 here. Luke went with Jayden and I to take 2 horses to the vet. They were scheduled to have their hocks injected. It is a common procedure for horses that hit their teens and have been worked and competed a lot in their life. Apparently it is done so commonly that some barns will just go down the line and inject all horses whether they need it or not. T

Leaving Hawaii was hard on us all, Jacob the most. Nobody was ready to leave, none of us were anxious to get home. I think we could have easily stayed a few more days. It went too fast, we enjoyed every minute. The sunshine, the warmth, the scenery, the water, the food, it was all so amazing. God's amazing beauty and creation in its finest was soaked in all around us. We awoke to another perfect sunshiny day. Mark took the boys down to the restaurant for breakfast while Jayden and I finished packing. We all laid in lawn chairs around the pool until 11. I tired to stay in the shade. I didn't want to burn and I felt I had enough sun on my skin. My shoulders and back got pretty red the last couple days. Jake swam the entire time. We said goodbye to our hotel and went for a short drive north to where we could look out over a cliff onto surfers and snorkelers. We ate lunch at the fish market, a favorite place of our family. While eating, they brought in the days fresh catch. It was

On our second snorkel adventure, we found a much quieter area without crashing waves. Again we packed our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and a bag of chips. We found an area with dark black sand. Entering the water this time was not a challenge without all the waves. The challenge was the coral. Jayden didn't snorkel long because she cut her foot on the coral. Luke went out with me and felt claustrophobic in the water surrounded by the coral. you would swim and become trapped with coral in front of you and beside you and you didn't know which way to go. He didnt like that feeling and was done in a hurry. i liked the coral, it felt like you were swimming through a maze in which you had to make lots of turns. I saw many fish and sea creatures. Mark and Jake went out and out until I could not see them anymore. i was so thankful we rented floaties along with the snorkels because they went so far out. They swam all the way out to the snorkel boats and whale watchers.