The Webster Family consists of Tim, Cindy, Steve, Laura, and Carla. We live in northern Illinois, near Forreston, about 100 miles west of Chicago. Tim and I were high school friends, but didn’t fall in love until after he’d spent two years in Germany in the Air Force. We were married in 1981 and went on to have three children. Steve was born in 1985 and has no interest in horses. He is serving God as a missionary at Majestic View Ministry Camp and Conference Center in Troy, Montana.  At the camp, Steve stays busy with construction projects, plays guitar and leads singing during camps, and hopes to establish hiking programs through the area mountains. Laura was born in 1987 and is the real horse lover in the family. She volunteers at Pegasus Special Riders therapeutic riding program. She also has a part-time job at White Pines Ranch, where her main job is to lead trail rides. Carla was born in 1989 and prefers dogs and cats to horses. She enjoys singing and playing the piano/keyboard and being involved in church youth activities. We have homeschooled all three children their entire school years. Tim and I have been 4-H leaders and our kids have shown everything from horses, cats, and dogs, to electricity, cooking, sewing, and a huge variety of craft projects at our local 4-H fair.

We moved a mobile home to our 17 acre homestead in 1985. Tim, with the help of family and friends, built our house. We moved in right before Carla was born in 1989. Our land is partly wooded, has a large, year-round creek running through it, and has been the perfect place to raise kids (and horses, too). Our first two years on the property were without running water and electricity. My parents live right down the road from us, so we hauled water from there, recharged a deep-cycle battery for lights, and I went there to do laundry (including diapers!). All of our heating was done with wood from our property. We got electricity while still in the trailer, but didn’t have running water until we moved into the house. Although we still use wood for heat, we now have a gas furnace for the extra cold times. Besides the wood heat, about the only remnant of those “back to basics” days is that I still hang my laundry to dry, inside or outside, depending on the weather.