The Bremer Family Christmas Letter 2013
(Through Sara's eyes)
We have a closet outside of our bathroom that holds all of
the bath towels. There are days when you
climb into the shower and realize part way through that you were not focused
enough to bring a towel with you. Now
standing in the shower, you think to yourself, “How am I going to get through
this?” There are really only two
options- sulk, or adapt and use the hand towel that is already in
the bathroom. We have had numerous hand
towel moments this year. There have been
some challenges; but we’ve dried ourselves off and made it through.
This past year we lost two family members. Dad lost his grandmother, Dorothy, and Mom
lost her dad, Glen. We were fortunate to
be able to spend as much time with them as we did, but it is still a deep loss
in our family to lose both of them. This
has been a trying year, but also a year that has showed our family that we are
there for one another.
Mom has also been spending extra time with her mother,
Lorraine, as she has had a series of health problems this year. She suffered a stroke in August, shortly
before Grandpa passed away, and has had problems with her diabetes. She is continuing to fight, and we are amazed
by how strong she is. She is now in rehab adjusting to the loss of her leg
above her knee. She, as mom put it in her blog, is a tiger!
During all of this we have found moments to lift our
spirits. Believe it or not we have
become a staunch Vikings family. We seem
to be having quarterly meetings with the team.
In January, Michael won an ultimate fan experience and got a VIP weekend
with the team. In May, Mom was asked to
speak at a Fuel Up to Play 60 event with the National Dairy Council. This meant that we got to spend a day ogling
the players while they attempted to build a playground. For Michael’s birthday, in October, we went
to a Vikings game. I’d never been to a
game, and I’m not really sure if it’s my cup of tea. Our biggest adventure happened this
month. Through mom’s blog,
we were made aware of a photo contest that resulted in the winning picture
getting a visit from a member of your favorite team. With the help of family and friends voting,
our picture won. MN Viking running back Toby
Gerhart spent an afternoon with us on December 17th. He got a tour of our farm and even helped me feed
some calves. I hope it was as enjoyable
for him as it was for us!
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| Toby, Michael, John, Sara, Jan |
|
Mom seems to always be getting calls from various
organizations asking her to assist at community events or speak about dairy
issues. Her blog has made her pretty
gosh darn famous. As I type this, she
has over 25,000 page views. She has been
on WCCO radio in the twin cities multiple times this year, and was also asked
to write a guest blog for Verizon. There have been trips around the state of
Minnesota to explain the dairy industry, and she traveled to Kansas City to
mentor other #DairyMoms about social media.
People are now sending questions her way to be answered on her blog as
well. I think this whole blog thing is
gonna work out for her.
Mike is still working at HCTV in Hastings. He is the program director, manages the
student workers, hosts Take a Hike, Mike!
and has a new program called The
Pixel Power Hour. With his new show, he actually gets paid to play video games. He
reviews and summarizes video games, past and present. Both
of his shows have fan pages on facebook and clips from his shows are uploaded
for you to see. People in Hastings still
awkwardly walk up to him in Walmart and McDonalds wanting to say hi to Take a Hike, Mike. HCTV has become
Mike’s second home, and it’s perfect for him.
Dad is going to have to invest in a new shed, should he
continue finding new toys. This year he
got a new wagon specially designed for moving round bales, and he purchased a
TMR wagon. Both of these are time-savers. The new bale wagon holds more than our
previous wagon, which means fewer trips and more time to do other things. The TMR wagon is used to feed our cows
quicker, and we can manage their food intake easier. We have been amazed by this magical
machine. What used to take twenty
minutes and two people, now takes three minutes with a single person. Dad wasn’t focused on looking for time
savers, but this unintentional decision has paid off big time. He and I also teamed up to try something new
this holiday. We put Christmas lights on
our barns this year. That meant him
hoisting me up 20 feet in the air with our loader tractor bucket. With his steady hand, we have quite the
festive farm.
Along with decorating for the holidays, I’ve found lots of
things to do at school. This year I have
been putting my reading license to good use
in my English classes. I officially received my Masters last spring! I was also
offered the opportunity to take on the role as one of two Literacy Coaches at
the middle school; and will soon be working to help Social Studies and Science
teachers with different reading initiatives in our building. I also had the “good” fortune to give the
staff commencement address at this past spring’s 8th grade graduation. Let me tell you, it’s hard to come up with
motivating words to students that are more concerned with hair growing in funny
places than the fact that they are done with middle school. It’s been an interesting experience doing this
the past two years.
That’s our year in review, hand towels and all. We hope that your year has been just what you
hoped it would be. If not, good thing we’ve
got next year right around the corner.
Smiles and Happy Thoughts, The Bremers
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