The Best Kind of News!!

We love Danny's sister Darlene and her husband Doug. They are 2 of the remaining real american "ranchers." When we lived in Huntington Beach, they owned a 7 acre mule ranch in Nuevo, CA. (about 20 minutes from where we live now in Murrieta).

When they bought it, it was pretty run down with a run down trailer on it. They got to start working on it to turn it around. Then they had a fire one year that burned their trailer down and all their belongings along with it!! Not to be deterred, they got a travel trailer to home base from and plowed forward with working on the ranch. They had a beautiful manufactured home put in and turned that ranch into a real working thing of beauty! It had several corals, a real pond you could swim in, and a beautiful barn with facilities to breed mules. Yes, they were real mule breeders! (interesting process I must say!) They got such a good reputation that the county would ask them to house abused horses they had confiscated from various abusers. At one time, they were housing about 60 horses. They nursed them all back to health and those horses were able to be put up for auction and found new homes!

We LOVED going to visit Aunt Darlene and Uncle Doug. Darlene was always so gracious saddling up a horse and trotting the kids around and teaching them some equine basics. She would let them ride around with her on the gator and help feed the horses.

Uncle Doug would let them drive the gator and a go-cart he had bought (I wonder how much fun he had on it) and drive our dirtbikes all around the property he worked so hard to maintain. (if any of you have had some real horse property, you know what a chore that is!) And he would fill the kids' heads full of all kind of fun stories and ideas I must say. We would laugh, cause a ruckus, eat good food and, at the end of the day, sit around the fire outside watching the tarantulas crawl around and maybe even brave picking one up!! It was a blast!!

Then, about a year before we moved out here, they found a 160 acre parcel of land (yes, I said one hundred and sixty!) in Pie Town, NM they fell in love with. Next thing we knew, they had sold their ranch and moved out to Pie town, to a trailer with a log home that had been started, and they were going to finish it.

And finish it they did! We got to visit this last Thanksgiving and it is beautiful! You can go back in my blog records to see the specs. I have to say, they outdid themselves this time! It is really a beautiful ranch in every sense of the word! We had a blast! They have always been so kind and gracious and hospitable to us in every way. They have their own fan club, all 5 of them, right here!!

At Thanksgiving, Darlene said she had been going to church. You know the church is everywhere if they even have a brach in Pie Town, NM population like 500!! Doug had even been going with her occasionally. Of course we were all so thrilled for Darlene! We had been praying she would join the church. Doug likes to get us all riled up on occasion about points of doctrine of the church. We would answer his question and kid him back. My sister-in-law Linda, and I, always felt he might join the church. Linda would always tease him that he was a "closet Mormon."

Needless to say, when Darlene called us in March and announced her intentions on getting baptized, we were thrilled! She hadn't set a date but was in the process of it all. In our home, we all started praying the spirit would touch Doug too!

In April, Darlene and Doug surprised us by dropping in on us at our new home to watch General Conference with us! We had such a great time listening to the words of the Prophet and the Apostles. They were both asking questions. It was so fun to see Darlene's countenance all lit up by the spirit! Doug's questions seemed to be a little more than idle curiousity.

So, when I read the announcement this morning of Darlene AND Doug's baptism this coming Saturday... I must say we weren't completely surprised but we are sure THRILLED beyond words! What wonderful blessing for our family and both of them!!

WE LOVE YOU DARLENE AND DOUG!!