Christmas in Oakland

Jons father Steve ist a farmer and therefor he needs a BIG tractor...	..a Pick-up-...	... and a BIG truck, with which he brings his soybeans and corn to the selling point. He took me for a ride from the farm back to Oakland, the little town in Iowa where Jon grew up.
In Hancock, a small town near Oakland, there's a park with elks...	... and buffaloes.	Buffalo riding is fun.
An elk with large antlers.	Sometimes the neighbor's cat comes visiting my parents-in-law. Somehow it can always make it into the house.	The horse of Steve's friends that I rode lives in this barn. During the daytime in winter the horses live on a paddock behind the barn.
There are no official trails for horse riders or hikers between the endless corn fields and pastures. That's why we rode next to a little creek on their private ground and on a pasture where we could let the horses lope.	It's so great to be back on a horse again!	We visited a farm full of beautiful belgian draft horses. The girl in the picture is Krystal, Jon's sister's niece who went horseriding with us.
The foals a quite shy and don't approach us to closely.	For these enormous horse they need a decent trailer, because they drive them on horse shows.

Christmas with my new American family was very nice, because they are all lovely people, open and friendly and maybe a little crazy. I really enjoyed our stay there.
Kansas City, where we stay tonight, lies on the border between Missouri and Kansas and is an interesting town with much live music played in bars, but we are not very motivated to got out and discover. It was a short drive today and so we're just stay in the hotel room tonight relaxing after the holidays filled with action and visits of the different branches of Jon large family (he has more than ten aunts and uncles who were all curious to see his new wife).