Merry Christmas!

From the Ratliffs:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

& Blessings to you and your family!

Have a happy & safe New Year!

Tis the Season!

Well Christmas is almost here folks and that makes me happy and sad. I LOVE the Christmas season. There is so much energy and beauty and pretty things and happy feelings! I love it that a reminder for the truth of the existence of Jesus comes around every year and people just can't avoid it! :) I love to Christmas shop to whether it be online or out in the crazy world...I do wish that I had been able to shop more though (the out in the crazy world kind). I had one day in Victoria, and that's pretty much it. With Derrick's back going out, we've stuck around home and laid low for two weeks....which is extremely rare for us. Not gonna lie, it was AWESOME sleeping til noon on a Saturday :) Even though the back situation has been stressful, its kinda nice that it forced us to slow down. D has another appt on Friday and they'll decide whether to do a second steroid injection or surgery. He's actually been feeling so much better, much to our surprise. We thought he was too far gone for an injection to work, but its looking like it just might have worked. So...we'll see after Friday. Either way, we'll probably be headed to Agarita Ranch afterwards on Friday to try to get another episode filmed. THEN, the next weekend, ITS CHRISTMAS! :)

I've actually had a lot of fun shopping this year. I was way ahead of schedule compared to past years which is nice...usually I'm using the last day of possible shipping on Cabela's or Amazon :) Living in a small town pretty much stinks around Christmas. I need a Hobby Lobby close by!! haha or at least a super Wal-mart...

Unfortunately this year, we've missed out on a lot of the activities that so beautifully highlight the true meaning of this season. We didn't know about the live nativity scene in town and we missed the fantastical pageant in the neighboring town due to filming for the show over Thanksgiving weekend, but we know in our hearts that Jesus' birth is why we celebrate. His existence is why we live. His appearance on this earth was His way of redeeming humanity and was his plan from the day we chose sin. Thank you Lord for your mercy!

Anyway, tis the season! Love and joy and hope and peace to you and your household. May this Christmas season be refreshing and meaningful...and may you find Christ in Christmas in every way possible.

"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Might God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace." Is 9:6

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all." 1 Tim 2:5

Side story: Last night, I was in Dollar General in line to check out and there was a grandma and her granddaughter checking out. The grandma was obviously being very money conscientious, but she was spending some special time with her lil granddaughter. For some reason that I missed, it came up that the little girl needed to wrap a present to bring to school. The couple behind them overheard it and actually had a ream of wrapping paper they were about to buy. The lady sliced open the package and borrowed scissors from the cashier and cut a chunk of wrapping paper off and handed it to the little girl. She was SO excited. The grandma got all happy and said "You tell me God ain't in here!! He's sharing right here in this store. God bless you!!" and then hugs were given all around. :-D

Make someone's day this Christmas season...look for the opportunity to give!

Tis the Season!!!

Derrick's Back....For Those Who've Been Asking

As some of you know, Derrick has been going through an excruciating time for the past two weeks with massive back pain. I've been occasionally posting on facebook and texting long answers to a lot of people, but I figured if I told the story here, then I can just refer people who ask to my blog so I don't have to type it all out several times :)

So exactly two weeks ago today, Derrick's back started bothering him. A nagging, seemingly worsening pain as he guided a deer hunt down in South Texas. He has had back/hip pain about once a year for about 4-5 years so he kind of assumed it was an onset of another one of those episodes and didn't worry too much about it. On that Sunday, he helped load a deer into the back of the truck, and after that, it was downhill from there. By Monday, he was in debilitating pain and couldn't even get to work in the morning. On Tuesday, we had a meeting in College Station that we had already had to cancel 2-3 times so he said he could suck it up and ride along in the reclined passenger seat and tough it out for a couple of hours. So we did that and then went for his favorite BBQ afterwards. He couldn't even get out of the truck at the BBQ place and was nearly throwing up he was in so much pain. At that point, I knew he would have to endure the 2 hour drive home and it had gotten too bad to assume it would just fix itself like it had the other times. The pain had gotten way beyond the other times. So I took him to St Joseph urgent care and he literally crawled around on his hands and knees in the clinic. They gave him a steroid shot and pain killers and muscle relaxers. The next day he felt good enough to get to work, but of course sat it his chair all day long. He thought he was getting better but by Friday, he couldn't walk again. By Sunday, he had run out of pain pills and that night was miserably horrible. 

Monday I got an appt first thing with a family practitioner to try to get some more meds fast and then to ask his recommendation for a specialist. We got an MRI lined up that afternoon and he suffered through a drive to Victoria and the painful process of getting him into the MRI machine in a position that he could bear and they could get their pictures. Tuesday they sent the MRI pics off to a highly recommended Dallas doctor but the doctor never called back on Tuesday. By Wednesday noon, we still hadn't heard back, but fortunately in the meantime, my uncle had talked to his family practitioner doctor friend who volunteered to look at the MRIs as he'd seen a lot of back injuries. He called Derrick and told him he had a pretty bad situation with a ruptured/herniated disc and that he was pretty confident that neither time nor steroid injections would fix it. Derrick and I were both on the phone calling doctors all over the place trying to get an appt for Friday but no one was available til the following week Wednesday or Thursday and he sure as heck didn't want to sit around for another week in this pain. I finally found a doctor at the Spinal Clinic of South Texas in San Antonio who had an opening Friday morning.

That brings us to today. I got him in at 9:45 and they made quick work of getting xrays and seeing the doc etc. Now most surgeons seem to be quite conservative, which I appreciate and understand, as back surgery is never an attractive option if its not the only option. He showed us the MRIs and jiminy Christmas, no wonder he's been in so much pain. He showed us the L5 vertebra and the disc that cushions it and how the disc had squirted out this blob of stuff that was completely compressing the nerve that runs through that joint. That nerve runs all the way down the back of the hamstring, knee, calf, and into the toes....hence the extreme pain, sensitive skin, charlie horses, and numbness. He said a microdiscectomy is a very likely treatment where they go in with a scope and cut out that blob of gelatin material that was causing all the pressure/pain; however, he wanted to try a steroid injection first to see if maybe it would reduce the inflammation and his body would reabsorb that substance. He said there was a 50/50 chance of that happening so he wanted to try that first. So basically, 2 more weeks of pain management and hope it gets better and if not, surgery. 

So he sent us next door for the steroid injection where we walked 50 feet from the spinal clinic to the spinal hospital....and this is where the problems began. We had checked the Spinal Clinic and both doctors names against our insurance to make sure they were in network and they were (after spending all of Thursday afternoon fighting the insurance system to try to find an in network doctor that was close and recommended by someone we knew). However, when we were going through the paperwork, the lady said we owed $370 for the shot he was getting because the facility we were standing in was not in network! So the neurosurgeon was, his clinic was, the anesthesiologist was, but the facility that the neurosurgeon and anesthesiologist worked in wasn't!! At that point, I made the decision to just order the show despite the cost to try to give my poor husband an ounce of relief...but I was afraid that if he needed surgery, we'd have to start this process all over again with a different doctor. We waited about an hour and a half for our appointment as he was an add on and they had to fit him in. Then when the insurance issue arose, we waited another hour. (I think they forgot about us for a while). They had sent us through the double doors and we were sitting on a couch where the doctors and nurses were coming and going for about a half hour when all of a sudden, the fire alarms went off! Sirens were going crazy and bright lights were strobing all over the place and everyone came pouring out of their offices and I heard the words "fire drill" once or twice. No one ever looked at us or gave us any direction so we just sat there having no idea what was going on. By this time, Derrick's nerves are a millimeter from insanity so when they called us back into the lobby to fill out more paperwork, he was about as grouchy and rude as I've ever seen him to say the least. 

Finally they called him to the back to get him ready for the procedure. Now when I say injection, I don't mean just a shot. They prepared him as though he was going into surgery. Asked a million question (a million times)...apparently no computer in any of the buildings are connected to any other computer so I can't tell you how many times they asked him if he smokes, drinks, or chews tobacco....or where his pain was...or if he was allergic to any medications...or how much he weighed. They inserted an IV and finally wheeled him away. From what I've gathered thus far from a very groggy Derrick is that they pretty much knocked him out with drugs and then lit up his back with an xray machine and stuck a long needle into his back using the live xray images to finagle it through his vertebra into the disc. The goal is for the steroids to shrink the disc up alleviating the herniated pressure on his nerve. 

They then notified me he was in recovery and finally when he was ready to go home. He woke up enough to be hungry by the time we hit Seguin and he wanted some Bill Miller chicken strips :) 

We then picked up 3 movies for the weekend and will be vegging out hoping and praying that some of the terrible pain goes away.... Not gonna lie, this whole thing has been hard on me in an emotional/physical way. You don't realize how much a 2 person team gets accomplished versus a one person. I unlock the door, he lets the dogs out of their kennel in the backyard, I start lunch, he washes dishes, I find something good to watch on TV, he takes out the trash etc etc. When its one person, I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off for 2 weeks now. Plus, he is my partner in crime at work too and of course with the TV show....its all terrible timing and only heightens the stress we've been under to meet deadlines....but it will all work out in the end. For now, I just hate seeing him in pain. It makes my heart sad...my eyes welled up with tears a couple of times today when the doctor was cranking his leg around trying to identify the exact locations and sources of the pain as Derrick was crying out and wincing and holding his head in his hands. I just wanted to hit him for hurting him so bad! ....I just want him to be able to stand up straight again. 

Verse my mom shared with me today for encouragement: 

"The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." Psalm 18:2

Blessings Piled on Top of Each Other!

Wow, its been a while since I've posted! Its finally a Friday night, and I think this might be the first time in about 3 months that we've been home on a Friday night. I have been wanting to catch up on the blog for a while, but now I'm just going to have to post one big long post with lots of pictures to tell my stories :) In mid-November, we went to a beautiful wedding of my 4th cousin (lol...yes, we figured it out once). Below are some pretty family pictures of some of my loved ones. Congrats Daniel & Sarah!

My favorite wedding date in the whole wide world!

Two handsome dudes

The best aunt & uncle a girl could ask for!

3 handsome generations, my beautiful mom, and my incredible husband!

The next weekend, we headed to High Places to get some more footage for our TV show and to hang out with "newish" friends :) Derrick hunted hard and found this beautiful sitka buck. He was like a kid in a candy store. Such a cool creature and he was tickled pink to get him...and on TV!

The Ratliffs, the Siegels, the Ulcaks, Krause, Smitty, Hali, and Jason at High Places in the Texas Hill Country

 The next weekend was Thanksgiving and we started the holiday at my grandfather Kaspar's house where we had the incredible pleasure of meeting the very first great grandkid...Baby Arthur Elias! Daddy Don took to him in a precious way...I think he was honored that Claudio and Carli chose to name their son, Arthur, after Daddy Don's father who was also born on November 3rd!

I got to hold the precious lil guy! 

After dinner, we headed to the wrap up of the 118 year tradition of Texas A&M v. UT football game. It was an INCREDIBLE game...I've never felt that much energy in one place in my life. It was a lot of fun until the last 60 seconds of the game. A&M lost, but Aggies are still awesome and I'm still ever so proud to be one! 

We left College Station after the game at 11:45pm and arrived back in Shiner at 2. We switched vehicles to Derrick's truck and got back on the road to Agarita Ranch and drove through the night arriving at the ranch at 5:30am. Derrick wanted to be in the stand Friday morning to try to get a shot at a buck he's been chasing before the commercial hunters go there, but to no avail. The Swenson family from Henrietta, Texas then arrived that evening. We hunted with Travis Swenson in Henrietta this past spring at Turkeyfest and he became our biggest fan. He's such a great kid and we wanted to give him a south Texas whitetail hunt experience. I'm pretty sure he had a blast. 

Travis shooting the gun he'd get his buck with...making sure he was comfy with it. Tye and Derrick, his biggest buds

We got to play a little pool! 

Derrick guided Travis' dad, Cliff, on a great south Texas buck!

Travis got his buck too! We were so proud of him!

Not gonna lie, life has been stressful. Its non stop deadlines and stress and budgeting with the TV show going on and Christmas around the corner and our jobs being busy and so much more....however, I won't ever forget how blessed I am - no matter how crazy life gets. I understand that the craziness is just a whole lot of blessings piled on top of each other at one time. I'm grateful for the holiday and last night I finally got a chance to to put up the tree, kick back for some online Christmas shopping, eggnog in a cup, and Christmas music in the background. I LOVE the time of year between Thanksgiving & Christmas! 

Happy Fall Y'all!

Happy Fall Y'all!! Fall is definitely my favorite time of year...and in Texas, I consider fall from October 1st to January 1st. :) The greatness of fall starts with the first college football game and the first cool front and includes all of the yummy fall foods and smells like chili and pecan pie and eggnog and nutmeg and that fresh natural scent that blows in with the first cool front. It then culminates into the Christmas season where buying presents for the ones I love is a total blast and Christmas lights and Christmas trees just top off the year!
Our first true fall festivities this year definitely included Aggie football, but as far as the color orange goes, we got to hang out with some very special folks last weekend in College Station and take our sweet Goddaughters to the punkin' patch! We got to spend the whole day which started with a wonderful church service and lunch and then we went with the Maders to find the perfect pumpkins for carving.

Our precious memories with Karis & Kelsie

We love these folks!

2 of my favorite dudes!

My sweet bestest friend

Kare Bear & Kels enjoying the punkin patch

We took the pumpkins back to the Mader house, ate a yummy burger dinner, changed into PJs, and carved away. Derrick & I couldn't decide what to carve so our minds defaulted to marketing and we decided to do the Ranch Hand logo so we could post on the Ranch Hand Facebook page on Halloween. Karis and Kels got to help for a while before bedtime and Kelsie decided that she liked raw pumpkin seeds....icky! As Ian so eloquently put it "I prefer the smell of a deer being gutted to the smell of the inside of a raw pumpkin." LOL! Pumpkin innards are pretty gross. We did a pretty darn good job for a bunch of amateurs.

mmm...pumpkin guts! :)

Karis quite fascinated by the inside of a pumpkin 

Karis: "Pretty gross, Mom!"

Kelsie: "Not too gross, Mom!"

E, D, B, & C: "Yeah....pretty gross"....even with brown sugar or garlic salt

Artists at work

Final products

After the carving was complete, we started up a game called "Things" that B had given me as a gift a while back. We had no idea what we were in for. I wish I had gotten a picture of Derrick laughing, because I seriously have never ever seen him laugh so hard. He was nearly hyperventilating, and if you know Derrick well, you know he starts crying when he is laughing REALLY hard - the tears were tumbling! It was awesome. Milking cows and Spandex and Dope and Piggies going to Market and "....." and Big Fat Tub of Lard and so many other hilarious things took on a whole new meaning! (sorry, you had to have been there). 

From the Mader house, Derrick and I left for Kansas on another Ranch Hand Horizons adventure...only this one turned out to be a total colossal failure. We desperately needed the film but 6 days and 51 hours in a tree stand later, we had seen 1 mature buck too far to shoot. It was terribly terribly miserable. I'm pretty sure my bum is flatter from sitting on a 9"x9" piece of expandable metal for so many days. So, that was pretty disappointing, but life moves on. 

Traditionally, November is a month to express gratitude....and I just want to say I am grateful for a husband who is adventurous and loving - even if he does drag me to Kansas (Dorothy was wrong about Kansas by the way!) and amazing friends to make amazing memories with. There are a couple of other friends I'd like to see very soon as I miss them very much, but hopefully that will be sooner than later! 

What are you grateful for today??

Our Time in Wyoming...

As many of you know and some may not, Derrick and I are filming for our own TV show on the Sportsman Channel, Ranch Hand Horizons. It will be airing the last week of December through June 2012. Ranch Hand Truck Accessories, Leupold Optics, and Bison Barrels are our main sponsors and we just got home from a trip to Wyoming where we harvested 4 beautiful animals and got them all on video for the show. We were blessed with a great stay with Hazer Bulkley with High Velocity Outdoors in his home with his wife and beautiful lil girl. Wyoming is unique country, but its gorgeous. Here are our harvest photos. Derrick was quite proud of me :) Which is the #1 reason why I do this. I don't love the killing part, but I enjoy the time with my husband and I appreciate his appreciativeness. I love him so very much, and this whole TV thing is a part of his dream. It is nothing short of TONS and TONS of work. I know most people thing we just get to galavant across America on cool trips, but if everyone only knew how much work we have put into this. First, we spent an entire year earning the opportunity to do this. We competed on North American Safari Challenge on the Sportsman Channel last year which cost a lot of money and tons of time, and then the Sportsman Channel approached us to have our own show. Now, we have full time jobs with this on top of it, which is definitely another full time job. We have the traveling time & expenses, sponsor relations, media kit creations, filming, video editing, scheduling, finding outfitters across America, handling everything at work while we're gone, etc etc which pretty much requires us to work from 6pm to 1am every night after we get home from work. Its extremely stressful, but Derrick wants to see it all through, and I will support him as long as its important to him....

Derrick's Beautiful Mule Deer

Derrick's Trophy Antelope along with Hazer, the best guide we've had!
Check out our Schnazzy new Horizon T-shirts!

My mule deer...may I point out he's bigger than Derrick's :-D

My antelope...ok fine, he's not as big as Derrick's

If you want to follow our adventures, please "Like" our facebook page. The more people we have, the more valuable our page is for sponsors and such. And, we can communicate with everyone as to when the show airs. We'd surely appreciate the support!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ranch-Hand-Horizons/139740802765765

Argentina Days 2 & 3

Whatever your concept of what Argentina looks like, I'm guessing you're wrong if you are anything like me. Holy schmoly...Bariloche, Argentina is BEAUTIFUL!! It is the Swiss Alps of Argentina. In fact, the original European founders of Bariloche were Swiss! They must have come over and found this area and settled here because it reminded them of home! Yesterday we met in city center to meet up with Tarek & his wife, Kate, and us ladies went to Rapa Nui while the guys went to iron out some traveling details for our return flight. Rapa Nui was a chocolate paradise (as Bariloche is known for) and we had a pleasant lunch with Kate and her beautiful kids, Marianna & Sebastian. Interpreting menus here has been a challenge, but a lot of fun. I Love the Spanish language and so wish I was immersed in it in some portion of my life so I retain it better. I've actually been amazed at how much I've pulled out from my high school days as well as my banking days (thank you MaryLynn & Lucy!). We then spent the afternoon visiting the shops & artisans looking for souvenirs and such. We then headed out of town around 5:30 to do some off road sightseeing of the countryside of Bariloche to see some unique parts of Patagonia. Later that night, we ate dinner at a neat little restaurant that had great ambience AND great prices! Argentinians typical schedule is work starts around 9-10. Siestas occur & business shut down between 1ish and 5ish. Then business open back up between 5 and 10 and restaurants open around 8pm but most people don't eat dinner til 9-10pm. That's my kind of schedule!! :) Below are some pictures of our first couple of days adventures!

My first taste of Argentinian chocolate! Thank you Tarek for our welcome here gift.

Lunch at Rapa Nui with our new friends Kate, Marianna, & bebe Sebastian

Just the beginnings of LOADS of chocolate we would see!

Beautiful Helado (ice creams) 

Chocolate!

Did I mention they love their chocolate! :)

A gorgeous Catholic cathedral with a gorgeous view overlooking the lake

Offroading in Patagonia!

Our first dinner out at Bahia Serena

The next day Kate took me, Aunt Laura, & Mom on the Llao Llao hiking trails. It was a GORGEOUS day!

Marianna with her baby, Rosie

We hiked to the water's edge....what beauty!

The Llao Llao hotel...an internationally known destination

We had tea at the Llao Llao...tea was open to anybody who wants to come! See the two 3 platter trays filled with desserts?!

We played on the Llao Llao's playsets...cute big brown eyed Sebastian sliding with Aunt Laura

Whee!

Amazing views!

And then back at the house....Our adorable cabin on the lakeside

Day 1: Argentina

So some of you know and some of you don't that I am currently in Argentina!!! It was a very random trip in the making and was initially inspired by my brother, Jason, whose business partner works down here in Bariloche, Argentina. He had talked my dad into traveling with him just for a new fun experience and after that he had presented the concept to my aunt and uncle who thought it an exciting proposition. After my mom found out that my aunt had committed, she had agreed to go as well. At that point, I DID NOT want to be left out of a once in a lifetime experience so after a small emotional breakdown, Derrick realized how important it was to me to go and he lined things up so that he would have a cameraman on a couple of the hunts for the TV show that would have hindered me from going....thanks babe!
Anyway, we started out on Oct 5th around 4pm. Headed to Houston International for a 9pm flight to Buenos Aires. I am not very good at sleeping on a plane, so I was concerned about this one and sure enough...it didn't go all that great. I slept about 3 hours and froze my tail off the rest of the time. We arrived in Buenos Aires around 9:20am and went through many lines of customs before meeting up with Uncle Doug & Aunt Laura who had gone on a different flight. We found a taxi (remises) service as we then had to change airports from the international to the domestic airport. We bumped along in Buenos Aires traffic for over an hour and finally reached our destination. Buenos Aires is the 2nd largest metropolitan area in South America with ~15 million people!! (Houston has a little over 2 million)....shows you how HUGE this city was! We then boarded our flight from Buenos Aires to Esquel. We were originally supposed to fly directly into Bariloche but there is an active volcano eruption since June near Bariloche and depending on the wind direction, the airport opens and closes due to ash in the air. So, unfortunately, it was closed so we landed in Esquel and then boarded a bus for a 4 hour journey back up to Bariloche. I didn't get much more sleep the whole journey as my plane mate on flight #2 was an elderly Argentinian lady who didn't speak much English and who sat in the window seat instead of the aisle seat like she was supposed to. (I can only sleep if I am able to lean up against a wall). Then on the bus, we were the last ones to board and the only available seat for me was an aisle seat next to a tri-lingual man from Switzerland. That was kind of cool though as my heritage (Kaspar) is Swiss so we talked about the home country for a while :)
We arrived at the Bariloche airport around 9pm where Tarek, Jason's friend & business partner) was there to pick us up. He brought us back to our cabin, which is TOTALLY cute. Reminds me of a little chatel you'd find in Wyoming or Colorado...all made of cypress and overlooking a gorgeous lake. Bariloche is known as the Swiss Alps of South America! This was my morning view!!

Thank you Lord for making the beautiful world of Bariloche, Argentina!