We got it, we got it!

Some of you may remember way back when Brecken was born, a photographer came around Denver Children's and took our very first family picture, for a calendar the hospital was putting together. He took the picture, we signed the release and gave him Brecken's information, and they said they'd mail us a calendar when it was published. We never got it. We thought either a) they ended up not printing it, or b) our picture didn't make it in there so they didn't mail us one.

Today, we got the calendar in the mail! It's like a planner- it has monthly calendars in it and then each month comes with two postcards that are already filled out, to mail to senators and people like that, in support of child advocacy. On the front of each postcard is a picture of a child from the hospital. We made it in the calendar twice! Once in the front cover (a big picture!) and then we are on a postcard for November, too! I'm so excited! It's going in my cedar chest so we can keep it for always, but I emailed the hospital to see if we could buy some more, since I know some other people will want one too. (Grandmas especially!) Hopefully they will email back and say how to buy some! If so, I'll post the information on here so anyone else that wants to buy one can do so.

Just had to share! I'm pretty excited about it!! Brecken looks so different now. The picture was taken when he was five days old and still in the NICU- his face and eyes were swollen because he had just gotten his CPAP out. He's still beautiful though!

strange question of the day...

I got asked after school today if Brecken was my GRANDSON. It was a kindergartener, and kindergarteners have no concept of age, but this girl would ask me every day before B was born if I was having a baby, and then when I came back to school, she asked every single day for three weeks if I'd bring my baby to school... So you'd think she would remember he was my baby, and not my grandson!!

Brecken stayed in Saratoga today because Dana had a dentist appointment. (That's why Brecken was at school this afternoon- Deb coaches basketball in Encampment so she brings Brecken to me on the days she watches him.) Deborah and Jake both went to BYU and don't like Wyoming, so I made sure Brecken wore his Cowboy onesie, hat, and the sweats I bought him at the bookstore. :) I saw Jake at the store tonight and he said Brecken was fussy all day until Jake put a BYU shirt on him and then he settled down. I said, "Yeah, right." :)

Josh's basketball teams went to Rawlins this afternoon. They're playing an A, a B, and a C game so he won't be back until 8 or after. So it's just me, a tired Brecken, the cat, and two annoying dogs for a while tonight.

I think Brecken is catching up to Ryan....

The first picture was taken the first time Brecken and Ryan met, on September 23 when we got transfered back to Laramie's hospital after being in Denver. The second picture was taken this past weekend, on January 20. I think pretty soon Brecken will be bigger. :)

weekend with the cousin

We haven't seen Kristen and David and Ryan since Thanksgiving, so we figured a visit was due. Kristen and David just moved into a new house too, so we wanted to see it. We packed up the car and headed over to Laramie on Friday night. The dogs came with us since their new house has a fenced yard for them to play in. The dogs loved it, since they found a sack of garbage buried under the snow- in it was a pair of old underwear (gross), a phone book, a pop can, and a DOG TOY! They thought that was pretty neat.

The babies had fun looking at each other. Ryan would reach over and touch Brecken and Brecken would grab Ryan's hand, it was pretty cute to see them play together. And Brecken was totally interested in watching Ryan play with toys, since Brecken hasn't quite figured out what to do with them yet. He might know now, since he just stared and stared at Ryan playing. It was almost as if his brain was saying, "OH! That's what you're supposed to do with those! You put them in your mouth!" :)

We also got new phones this weekend. We were on Union Wireless, which sucks. They are really expensive- we shared 900 minutes a month and spent $110 for it. Absolutely ridiculous. Verizon didn't have service here when we moved to Saratoga, so there went our great plan and the IN network! HOWEVER, just a few weeks ago, Verizon put a tower up outside of town! Hip, hip, HOORAY! So we went to the Verizon store in Laramie and got back on their plans. Those of you that need our new phone numbers, an email with them will be coming shortly.

More snow today, glad we came home when we did. In fact, our EMTs were called out to help Rawlins and Hanna with a "multiple car wreck" on I-80 last night. Josh went to see if they neede more help since he wasn't on call last night about midnight, but wasn't needed so he came home. That's a scary stretch of interstate- glad we weren't on it. We're under a snow advisory today.

busy day for Josh.

So no relaxing for Josh today: The pager went off this morning around 10, I think, for a guy that possibly had a heart attack. He works at the nursing home and that's where they got called to. Josh went, because he didn't think there was anyone signed up to be on-call, but there was, so he got to come home and didn't have to go to Rawlins.

Then at noon, he went snowmobiling with Dr. Jake for a couple hours. He had just gotten home and walked in the door, didn't even take his coat off, and the pager went off AGAIN, this time for the fire dept. to respond to somewhere a block away from us for a possible gas leak. He just drove over there and met the fire chief, and found someone who had accidentally run over the line. So they blocked traffic and waited for a fire truck to show up, and they called the gas guy who came and shut it off. So no big deal.

Then, we sat down to dinner, and the pager went off AGAIN, for Search and Rescue to go up above Encampment to find some missing snowmobilers. He's still out there. I hate when he goes out on S&R because I always feel like he's going to get lost too! But he promised never to go anywhere by himself. And if he were the one lost, I'd sure want everyone out there looking for him, so I'm glad he goes, but I breathe a lot better when he comes home!!

So, in one day, he's been on 3 different calls, for all 3 different departments he works for! Not very often that that happens!! And the weird thing is, that's twice in a row now where he's gone snowmobiling during the day and that night, he gets called out to find lost snowmobilers. Strange.

4 months old!

Brecken went in for his four month check up yesterday. He's doing well! His head is in the 50th percentile, he is now 25 inches long (50th percentile) and 12 pounds, 4 ounces! (10th percentile). Everything else checked out perfectly. And each time we go to Dr. Jake, he hears less and less of Brecken's murmer, so that's awesome.

We got more snow again in the past couple days. It started snowing Thursday night. By the time I got to school on Friday, there was 13 inches of snow in Encampment. By the time I left to come home, Encampment had another 6-8 inches! I drove an average of 35 mph on the highway home. The roads were terrible. We got a lot in Saratoga too, but not as much as Encampment. I bet Saratoga got another 12 inches though. The snow is now level with our front porch again. Our neighbor brought home a tractor/plow from work last night and was nice enough to plow our driveway for us. Then he plowed our roads because the plows hadn't been out yet. Pretty sad when you have to plow your own roads. The plows here are terrible. They don't get around to plowing until it's been on the ground for about 24 hours. A bit ridiculous, in my opinion.

Josh was supposed to go to a science conference in Casper yesterday and today but it was cancelled due to the weather. His jr. high basketball games got cancelled today also. He just got called out on an ambulance call though, so hopefully he'll get to enjoy this afternoon by snuggling up on the couch with a warm blanket- it is 3 degrees below zero outside right now!

food

It seems that our little guy sure likes food. He's been eating cereal since Saturday night and gobbles it right up. Tonight, he was LUNGING for the spoon. He wouldn't keep his head back and wait for Josh to bring the spoon to him, he had to go to the spoon. At one point, Josh was being "slow" getting more cereal on the spoon so Brecken put his head down and started licking it off the high chair tray. I couldn't stop laughing. What a goof! Then we put his jammies on and he had his drink of milk, and fell asleep while nursing. Until I put him in his crib, then he woke up to smile at me for a while. I kissed him goodnight and told him to sleep well, and left and he fell asleep all by himself. He's really good about that- he doesn't cry when I put him down and tell him goodnight. Just falls asleep.

Brecken goes for his shots on Friday, so we'll see how much he's grown!

We had quite the ground blizzard storm this weekend. We could hardly see across the street Monday morning because the wind was blowing so hard, it was blowing all the snow we have on the ground already all around in the air. It was gusting to probably about 70 mph- and the wind was steady at 40-50. Here's how strong it was: Our neighbor has a snowmobile trailer with two snowmobiles on it sitting on the edge of the street in front of his house. Monday morning, the front end of the trailer was pointed at a 45 degree angle TOWARD his house instead of parallel to it. And on the way to Encampment, one of the ranches has a HUGE log archway over the road to the ranch. The logs are giant. The wind blew it over Sunday night. There were logs laying all over the entrance to the ranch and nobody could get in or out.

That's some serious wind.

sitting up

Brecken really is wanting to sit up lately. If we recline him back, he'll throw his head forward and grunt to try to sit up all the way. And he must have strong stomach muscles because he's succeeded a couple times! He would've thrown himself out of the carseat the other day if he hadn't have been strapped in!

We got more snow last night. I was on my way up the hill on the street where our babysitter lives, and her husband (who teaches with me) stopped me to tell me there was ice on his walkway to the house. That was very nice of him to tell me that, but since they don't plow the streets in town and he was on the "good" part of the street, I had to be in the snowy part and got stuck while stopped. Clint (the teacher/husband) tried to push me out but it didn't work. So he loaded up Brecken and myself and brought us up to his house, then brought me to school while I left the car stuck on the side of the road. He took my car keys and took a couple of his boys in 1st hour to go get my car unstuck. That was super nice of him. He felt bad for getting me stuck but I told him I'd rather get stuck than slip on the ice with Brecken!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Welcome to the year 2007! 2006 was an amazing year, I can't wait to see what 2007 brings.

We had a great Christmas vacation. We started off with a snowmobile trip on the 22nd, our first official day of break. Josh and I had great fun until we got completely stuck in four feet of powder. Thank goodness some big strong men came to help Josh get us both out- I wasn't going to be able to lift much! Brecken stayed at Josh's secretary's house for the day and did a great job.

The 23rd we went to Lingle for Christmas Eve celebrations with Craig's side of the family. We had a great time. We went to church on the 24th, then had lunch with everyone and presents. We left there about 4:30 and headed up to Gillette for Christmas. My grandma, aunt, uncle, and two cousins came over too. We had a great time and had a lot of fun. We got wonderful gifts that totally filled up our van- we weren't sure we'd make it home with all of them! We celebrated my dad's birthday on the 28th and then headed back to Lingle on the 29th for Christmas with just the Sandlian family. More wonderful stuff to shove into our van! We had a good time though. On the 30th, we were able to take Brecken to meet his great-great Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Earl (my grandma's brother and his wife) for the first time. We also got to help Josh's great aunt Lois and great uncle Bob celebrate at their 50th anniversary party.

Brecken changed a lot over the break! He's now able to reach for things, yet not consistently. But he'll get there. Two weeks ago, he had no idea he had hands, and is now grabbing his baby keys or linkadoos. His new favorite thing to chew on is his hands. He LOVES sticking his fist (or both, if he can manage) into his mouth and chomping away. He's a drool monster because of it. He also had his first true giggle on Christmas Eve. And he graduated to size 2 diapers. He's sitting up with just a little bit of support from us on his waist, and loves to stand. he's got very strong neck and leg muscles. He's getting so big!

Hope you all had a great Christmas! Happy New Year!

PS- Dodi, I stole the picture of us off your website. Hope you don't mind. :)