anonymous

I've changed the settings on here, so those of you that don't have google accounts can still comment on here if you want to.

new look

Thanks for all of you who commented on the new look- I'll have to tell Josh, because he is the one who did it! He wanted to learn a little about blogging last night and changed the page. AND he was the one who posted about B getting the door open. AND, he thought it was kinda fun. :)

We have a busy day today- Graduation has FINALLY come. We need to go up to the school about 12:30 so I can get all the last minute thing done, like get out the Valedictorian medals I didn't remember I had until I woke up this morning. After graduation we'll have some cake at the party. Encampment is so small that the whole class sets up tables in the gym and has one big party afterwards instead of everyone having them at their own houses. Each kid has a table and puts their name and whatever else on it (a girl who's dad died last year has her table covered with pictures of her and her dad) and people can leave their gifts on their table and eat cake and mingle. I think that's neat. Our class is one of the bigger classes in the school- we have a whole 14 kids. Coming from a class of 442, I giggle at that still. :)

the child can escape!!!

Brecken has been pulling on the door handle for a couple of weeks. Tonight he learned how to pull the handle and pull the door so it opens! We are going to have to turn the deadbolt on the door to make sure Brecken can't get out and think he can go swimming in the irrigation ditch.

beth has a blog!

http://jbsandlian.blogspot.com

four years

Four years ago today, I married my best friend. What a ride the past four years have been- buying and selling a house in Lingle, changing jobs for me and careers for Josh, struggling with infertility, having a baby, adding neices and nephews to the family, adding a sister-in-law to the family, fantastic vacations, two Masters degrees, and soon getting ready to move into our 3rd house. I am a very lucky person to have Josh in my life.


I had a great surprise at school today- I got the most beautiful bouquet of roses delivered to me! 12 red roses with 4 yellow roses mixed in- one for each year we've been married. I was the one everyone was jealous of today. :)

more beth

As I go slowly through my photos from this past weekend, I found this one tonight that I really like. Have I mentioned that she's gorgeous?!

beth

Here's my beautiful new sister-in-law. She's awesome. We're very excited for her wedding to Josh's brother! She's a perfect match for Jeff and will be a fantastic addition to our family.

new word

B has a new word this weekend: MINE.

Oh, joy.

We had a housefull this weekend! What a great time we had. My sister Kristen, her husband David, and their son Ryan came over Friday night. The boys had a GREAT time playing Friday night and Saturday. They ran all over the house giggling and chasing each other. It's nice that they are only 2 months apart in age, they have a ball when they are together. Saturday afternoon we played outside and they practiced jumping off the wood border around our yard and into the grass. Giggles galore. They practiced and practiced jumping on the floor inside, too.

Saturday night my mom and dad came down. They haven't been here in a long time so it was good for them to come. Unfortunately, Kristen and David had to leave shortly after my parents got here, but at least they got to see Ryan for a bit.

Sunday, the rest of our company came. Let's see- we had Craig and Lennie, Josh's uncle Dwayne, our friends Mark, Erin, and their daughter Avey, Jeff and Beth, Beth's parents Carol and Wayne, Josh's cousin Brady, his wife Stacey, and their son Parker, and probably some other people that I'm leaving out (but not on purpose!!). We had a great time. The guys went golfing in the Saratoga High School Football fundraiser tournament at Old Baldy and the girls and kids hung out all afternoon. We played at the park, we got to see the new house, and we went on a photo tour and got some great pictures. Unfortunately, I have misplaced the cord that connects my camera to the computer so I will have to post pictures later.

Today after breakfast with Craig and Lennie and Jeff and Beth, they all left for home (my mom and dad left early this morning) and we relaxed all afternoon. B is WORN OUT. Sharing his toys and playing hard all weekend made him a tired kid! He slept in this morning, only woke up once last night, slept in his OWN BED all night long, and still took a 2 1/2 hour nap this afternoon and went to bed early tonight!

We've had an afternoon full of thunderstorms and hail today. Good moisture, at least. Birdie is a big baby when it comes to thunder so she's been freaked out all afternoon and refuses to go outside. Hopefully we can convince her to at least go potty before we go to bed.

Happy Memorial Day!

jumpin' on the bandwagon

Since everyone else in my family (except my sister, which I'll get to in a minute) wrote about tornado experiences, I'm jumpin' on the bandwagon and doing it myself.

My sister spent the entire afternoon, about 4 or 5 hours, in her basement with her crabby almost-2-year-old, her husband, 4 other adults, and 3 other crabby children. They were all at the house when the UW texting alert system had it's debut, alerting everyone to get shelter because here comes a tornado. From what I can gather, several tornados touched down in Laramie yesterday. Kristen's power went out but I was calling her constantly throughout the afternoon and so was her father-in-law, who was watching the weather service in Wisconsin, where he lives. And Kristen said the new texting alert systerm that UW put in place worked fabulously- updating with text messages every 5 minutes. Awesome!

Kristen drove around last night to see the damage and called my mom. Walmart was closed at the time of the tornado because of a power outage so no one was in the store at the time the tornado hit it. Her friends Debbie & Sean were working at Gem City Bone &Joint (right next to Walmart) at the time and there was a surgery going on at the time of the tornado and a window was sucked out of their van in the parking lot. They saw some uprooted trees, siding torn off motels and homes but no destroyed buildings. Another tornado was said to go right past the high school. Around the high school area, they saw sports equipment (hurdles, soccer goals, etc.) blown up against the fences but no other damage that they could see. Josh had heard the bus windows had all been blown out, so kids had to wait for their parents to come get them. As a teacher- what a nightmare. Trying to keep all those kids calm and not let them leave until their parents got there? And man- they spent 4 hours in the hallway doing the tornado drill. Yikes. We've never even practiced that drill at our school this year. Perhaps we should.

Watching www.wyoroad.info yesterday showed some scary pictures of the interstate right as you get to Laramie- there was a semi tipped over in the middle of the road, and then the strangest one I saw, a big huge BOAT that got blown off a semi. Scary stuff.

I'm glad all we had was rain yesterday. LOTS of rain though. On my way home last night, there was flooding all over the fields. Canals are flooded. The ditch that runs in front of my house is only about a foot from running over with water.

I see on my email right now that Kristen emailed overnight, so her power must be back.

Praise the Lord that everyone we know (including Annie's sister, Stacey and Brady and Parker, and my family and anyone else we all know!) is SAFE! What a freak storm to come through this area. Makes me glad my new house has a basement!!

sold!

Our house, that is. In 2 1/2 days of being on the market. Holy smokes, that was fast. When we moved here, we put our house in Lingle on the market in May. It sold in 10 days. We thought that was a record. We thought with this house, there would be no way we could get that lucky again. And we weren't- we were LUCKIER!!!!

It wasn't a full price offer, but close. We asked $139,700 and the lady offered $135,000 with no other requests. So we said yes and signed the papers! We're working on getting a really fast closing date so we can move before we go to Florida. The lady buying our house would be OK with that, and hopefully the other people can get out of our new house that fast. They were in the process of moving out when we looked at the house last week, so it shouldnt' be too difficult.

YAY! We're pretty excited right now.

sounds of summer

and the air was full of them today...

• birds chirping
• kids playing
• parents taking walks with strollers
• lawnmower
• sprinklers
• Brecken slurping a slurpee on the front porch

it's official

Our realtor already put the sign up in front of our house!

under contract!

We bought a new house today! Kind of.

The house we've been waiting and waiting to see finally opened up to buyers on Monday. The owners are building a new house outside Laramie and that was behind schedule, so the showings of this house kept getting cancelled. Finally, we got to see it on Monday. It's just about perfect for us! It's in the neighborhood we have wanted to live in since we moved to Saratoga. It has a beautifully landscaped yard. It has a dog kennel already built with acess to a kennel inside the garage. The back yard is fenced. It has a big wooden deck on the front and a brick patio out back. It has 4 bedrooms plus a playroom. It has a fully finished basement. For us at this moment, it's just what we're needing. So we put an offer in on it- FULL PRICE (it hurt to do that!), they pay closing costs, they pull the carpet flat downstairs where it is a bit bubbly, and fix the two heaters that aren't working (the owners were going to do the two previous things anyway...) and then wait 60-90 days for us to sell our house. We thought it was a pretty good offer.

They counter-offered yesterday. Full price, they will NOT pay closing costs, and they will give us 15 days to get our house under contract. If after those 15 days ours doesn't have a buyer, and someone else comes along and offers full price and can move in right away, we have 72 hours to come up with the money for our house AND their house. Otherwise they can void our contract. We fretted all night about that. 15 days is NOT a lot of time! Our house in Lingle sold in 10, but surely we can't be that lucky twice!

Today we went into the office to list our house, and the other houses' agent said they would go to 30 days instead of 15 for us to sell our house. That made us feel a lot better and we signed the deal.

Our house already has an appointment to be shown on Tuesday. And the agent who has the house we are buying has two other parties that want to see the house, too. And the broker has a list of people to call, too. HOPEFULLY, it won't take long to sell. It's the ONLY one for sale in this price range right now. We're listing it for $139,700. The next cheapest is $112,000 and the next expensive is $165,000. So hopefully someone only wants to spent up to $140,000 and buys our house. :)

There is some work that needs to be done in the new house, but nothing major. The three upstairs bedrooms need new carpet, and the whole house needs painted inside. (This lady likes pink!) And eventually, we'd like to update the floor of the upstairs guest bath and some things in the other bathroom upstairs. But like I said, nothing major. Here's what it looks like!:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8EctXLRw1atDk

graduation

My baby sister graduated from the University of Wyoming on Saturday. She's now Kristen M. Winegar, BSN. She got her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree and we are all very proud of her! Way to go, Krissy!!

Senator John Barrasso was the speaker for the Health Sciences Commencement:

Josh graduated yesterday, too. He completed his Masters in Curriculum and Instruction. However, his graduation ceremony was in Bozeman, MT. And since we were in Laramie, WY, we weren't able to make it. :( We're very proud of you too, Josh! It's not easy to finish your Master's while working full time, adding a baby to the family, coaching, and being a great husband!

picture day

Today was the day my Senior class, who I co-sponsor, went out to take their traditional Senior class picture. It will go on their composite which includes all their Senior pictures and will hang in the hallways of Encampment School for eternity. We have frames dating back to the 1940s in our hallways! Today we left school and headed to Baggot Rocks outside Encampment. We climbed up what seemed like miles of rocks to find good spots to take pictures. It was high noon, I was fighting direct sunlight and shadows, but I compromised and took pictures where they really wanted to, because to get these 14 kids to agree on anything is a miracle in itself, so I just shut up and took the pictures. :)

Here is the Encampment class of 2008:

my son has a friend!!

Josh came home from school today saying we had to go to a concert- a really good guitar player that did an assembly for their kids today. He built a new prototype of guitar with a man who has a guitar shop here in Saratoga that builds guitars for all sorts of famous people. So, we went to the concert tonight. B came too. Deb and Jake and their kids sat one aisle down and across from us. While waiting for it to start, Chandler, their 3 year old, came to say hi to Brecken. B thought that was great. As Chandler left, B ran to his diaper bag and got out two rolls of Smarties that I had in there to bribe him into being quiet during the concert, and ran over to where Chandler was sitting and gave them to him with a big ol' grin on his face. Chandler said, "Thank you, Brecken!" and B nodded and then ran back to us. He shared with a friend! How nice. That's the first time he's shared like that. He shares food with us, and with anyone else that happens to be around while he's eating, but this is the first time he's gone out of his way to get something and bring it to someone!!

He liked the concert but had a hard time knowing to be quiet. He danced and danced, though. He really liked the music. The guy was excellent. Writes his own songs. He's kind of a motivational musician- Josh said he talked about bullying in their assembly this afternoon.

i see london, i see france...

I see Brecken's underpants! His pants got dirty today so I threw on some of his new shorts that were handy. I just bought them a month or so ago, for the summer. They are size 6/9 months.

And they are falling off.



I feed my child, I swear!

same word, different meaning

When we woke up this morning, B had a runny nose and a cough. I asked him, "Do you have a cold?" He replied, "Brr!"

Time to teach him the meaning of homographs. :)