Have Tent, Will Travel...

Hi Everyone,

We took a very spontaneous camping trip to the Big Horns Friday night. We tried out a new tent. We've been trying to decide what to do for camping for the next few years. We want something smaller with a lower profile than our Outback camper. We've looked at lots of really small trailers and some pop ups. We talked about going back to tent camping so this weekend was a kind of test. I think we came away convinced we'd still like to have some kind of trailer - perhaps a hard-side pop up or a regular tent trailer. It was EXTREMELY cold Friday night and we didn't get much sleep just worrying about the kids being warm enough (they were!).

Still, it was an amazing time to be in the mountains. We hiked some, drove some, heard elk calling, heard owls in the night, found a hidden pond and where the deer sleep by surprising them there, had a spectacular moonrise in a star-spangled sky, trout fished, roasted hot dogs and were breathless at the sight of the mountains in fall...something we've never seen.

Here is our campsite at Sitting Bull...Dad and Mom A., you'll recognize this one! :O) Drove into Tensleep for a fishing permit...Todd got us enormo cones from Dirty Sally's. The waffle cones were made fresh that day and were the best we've ever had!:

Brennen...what can I say? He is so much fun right now and has a fantastic immagination, especially when it comes to Legos and Star Wars. He thought he looked pretty funny with his chocolate 'stache! And the mountains...Wow! Wish the photos could do God's creation justice!

8 Let the rivers clap their hands,

Let the mountains sing together for joy;

9 let them sing before the LORD,

Psalm 98

After a day of playing outside on the rocks and logs, fishing, hiking, eating ice-cream and being so adorble we can't hardly stand it (she asked us on the way home if "Jesus was God's only forgotten son" and told us at one point she wasn't asleep but was "fast awake."), this is what our little angel did on the way back to camp after looking for wildlife:
Our tent worked great, but we hadn't sealed it, and thunderstorms piled up all around the campground at dusk so we decided to head home rather than risk another cold night that could get wet as well. We are still so grateful to live in a place where going home is an option! It means we can do one or two night trips like this with memories that will last forever!

Love,

Christy

It's a ____________...

Hi All,

Just a quick note to tell you that, after several failed attempts to find out due to modesty on the baby's part, my sister and brother in law, Carleen and Jeff, today found out that I am going to be the

Aunt of a Niece!!!

Hooray!
:O) Auntie Christy

Read the post below this one first...

Well, I went back to watch him some more but trouble was brewing...a squirrel (the first I've ever seen in our neighborhood - we have oodles of bunnies, though) of questionable sanity decided to attempt a raid on the hawk's dinner table! You can imagine the hawk's reaction to that! And, more trouble for what had been a peaceful dinner for the hawk, while he was defending his hard earned lunch from the squirrel, along comes another, slightly smaller hawk to try to take advantage of First Hawk's distraction with Mr. Squirrel and get himself a little free lunch! First Hawk successfully defended his dinner, but apparently has now abandoned the remains. (Waiter, can we get this table bussed, please!!) The two hawks, First Squirrel and yet another squirrel continue to keep a wary eye on one another with lots of posturing and action. Kindrid and I are enthralled! :O)

Theses next few were taken from the back garage door on the main level looking out to the deck.


I think Mr. Squirrel had an early Happy Hour today...what else could make him so stupid??? :O)

OK...unless there's some more major action, I'll leave it at this! Hope you have a great weekend!!

Christy

PS Here is Kindrid's picture of the hawk. Don't know why it came out sideways but you get the idea. :O)

The Circle of Life...

I know, I know...two posts in one day! But, I couldn't resist sharing what happened here a few moments ago. I came into the kitchen and noticed outside the patio door there were feathers floating down from somewhere up above. Crouching down and trying to see above the lathe stuff that shades part of our deck I could see this big guy enjoying a lunch of what appears to have been a morning dove (don't feel too sad for the morning dove, Mom S...there are dozens and dozens of them here). I snapped these shots from a window in our bedroom upstairs. Kindrid and I enjoyed watching him literally tear into his lunch with cautious gusto. Though I know he heard and likely saw us, he apparently decided we were worth the chance to finish his main entree! :O)

What a cool Close Encounter we had with nature today!

:O) Christy

PS Likely this kind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_Hawk although I can't tell for sure...he's still sitting out there contemplating the dessert menu...perhaps I shall go and ask him!!

Rash action...

Hi...
Brennen came home from AWANA on Wednesday evening with an all-over, itchy body rash. We think it's hives due to an allergic reaction as it responds to Benadryl. However, we have no idea what it was that caused the reaction. He's had no fever and feels fine except when the Benadryl wears off and he gets swollen and itchy. He missed school yesterday but woke up clear this morning so I sent him off to school. Hope that is the last we see of it, poor guy!!!

In other news...

The kids had a great time at AWANA. It's nice for them to have something familiar that transferred from what they knew in Peoria to here. Want to know what AWANA is? Follow this: http://www.awana.org/

We had a good visit with my Uncle Steve and Aunt Theresa. They came Tuesday evening and left early yesterday morning. We visited Lou Taubert's, or what the kids call, "The Cowboy Store." http://loutaubert.com/ Come visit...we'll take you there! We feel pretty blessed that we've already had four sets of house guests come visit us in the very short time we've lived here.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Christy

Go Vikings!...

Taken Saturday... I was informed they weren't actually Vikings but some sort of Indiana Jones duo. Kindrid, with her pink, fuzzy slippers is especially terrifying, huh? And Brennen's whip is actually a floral, silk-textured belt that came with some pants of mine. Still, they are pretty tough...hope the team their shirts depict are this year, too! Life is always much better at the Sandberg House when the Vikings have a good year! :O)

BTW...save your breath, J.O. from Peoria...if the word "bears" appears in any comment without reference to actual wild animals, we automatically delete it without reading it. :OP

Hope everyone's week is off to a great start!
Love,
Christy

Diving into Denver...

Hi Y'all,

After our building tour, we headed over to the aquarium. http://www.aquariumrestaurants.com/downtownaquariumdenver/flash_content/index.html
It was very nice and the kids really enjoyed it. Here they are panning for: gems on Kindrid's part and minerals on Brennen's. They each got about 8 stones and a chart to identify them. They thought this was pretty cool!



Apparently if you work at the aquarium, you DO do windows!! This gentleman has the privilege of cleaning the fishies' side! All the better for them to see the people, I guess. :O)
The kids took these next few pictures...

After the aquarium we headed back to the apartment to exercise the doggies, Bodie and Macy (sorry, Girl, if I spelled your name wrong). Brennen had a blast using the thrower to toss out tennis balls for Bodie. The "get a puppy" itch grew stronger. :O) After we'd rested some, we headed over to a gorgeous "retail resort," as this beautiful mall is termed, to put our name on the list at Cheesecake Factory - Todd's choice for his birthday supper. While we waited - and waited - and waited, we shopped a bit. Carrie took us over to a little pet store. Can't say the puppy itch subsided at all after that! :O) We had a fantastic supper, opened birthday gifts and rolled home full and tired!
http://denver.citysearch.com/profile/1816543/littleton_co/park_meadows_shopping_center.html

Sunday we went out for breakfast, hit REI for some winter coat shopping, played for hours at the apartment pool and then headed into the mountains for a pizza dinner at Beau Jo's in breathtaking Idaho Springs. If you are going to Colorado...EAT HERE!! Excellent pizza, cool old building, lovely views. http://www.beaujos.com/ The kids got some more pretty polished rocks at a tourist shop there and later amazed me by identifying them with the charts they got at the aquarium. My kids are so smart...must get that from Daddy!! :O) Oh yes, on the way up the mountain we saw a full, gorgeous rainbow. It was amazing!! Of course, I didn't get a picture, but we all agreed it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of rainbow!

Not sure why Todd took this one of Kindrid, but here it is for your viewing pleasure! :O)Alas! We had to say good-bye on Sunday after a great breakfast at The Egg and I. Wyoming was not to be outdone by Colorado and shared another amazing rainbow with us for a good share of the drive north of Cheyenne. Wow! Two rainbows in two days. No flood worries for us here Out West!

Some observations and snippets...

...Denver was emptied of its DNC crowds by the time we got there on Friday, but signs of it were everywhere. Much graffiti had been cleaned up, a mural of Mr. Obama graced the side of a building downtown and huge "welcome DNC" signs hung on the walls of big hotels. It was strange driving past the quiet stadium Friday night after watching the Big Show from our family room Thursday night.

...Kindrid is into asking me questions these days that have no easy answer. Things like, "Is today yesterday, Mom?" have me pausing to try to think out a rational reply.

...School is going great. Brennen is rapidly catching on to the totally different phonics program and has really changed over his handwriting with an almost unbelievable speed. Despite his protests, I think he actually likes school. Ft. Caspar Academy encourages parent involvement. Today Kindrid and I told him at breakfast we intended to get McDonald's and bring it to eat with him at his lunch time, thinking, of course, he'd be pleased. Instead, he replied, "but then I won't get to eat with my friends." It Begins. :O(

...Todd got rear ended in the Corolla last week. He is fine and was not at all at fault. We have a nice check to get it repaired but haven't decided if we are going to do that or not. Since we've been looking at changing up, this may actually be a blessing in disguise.

...now that the Olympics are done and both DNC and RNC are over, whatever shall we watch on TV?? Anyone know when LOST starts???

...Word has it that it snowed on the south side of Casper Mountain last night. Don't know if that is true or not, but the point is that it COULD have since it was cold enough and we had precip. Cool!

...Kindrid and I attended a play group on Thursday. I got to meet some other moms, many of who attend the church we've been going to. Kindrid had so much fun playing with other little kids...she really hasn't got to do that very much since we moved.

...We re-enrolled both kids in AWANA at the church we've been attending. It kicked off with a carnival on Wednesday and begins in earnest next Wednesday.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thanks for reading and for the comments you leave. They encourage me to keep this up! :O)

Love,

Christy

Up High in the Mile High City...

Hello Everyone,

Our Labor Day weekend adventures were too numerous to include in just one post so I thought I would split it up. Our trip down to Denver was fine - we stopped and ate at Famous Dave's which the kids loved. Well, so did the grown ups! I know the couple will never read my blog, but I want to acknowledge this super nice lady who, by giving us their table in the not-very-bar-like-bar prevented us from having to wait 45 minutes for a regular table. Wasn't that nice? They had kids and she said someone had done it for them when they were waiting. Love that whole "pay it forward" thing! Anyhow, we got to Matt and Carrie's pretty late and enjoyed a visit before bed.

Saturday morning, our lovely hosts made us pancakes and bacon as is our Saturday morning tradition. :O) Yummy, Carrie!!

Carrie and Matt are both in property management and have a friend who manages one of the BIG downtown buildings. We were so thrilled that she was willing to give us a tour. Here we are in a corner office on something like the 27th floor. This is looking west, and, though hard to see, the mountains loom on the far horizon. The kids loved this area as the entire floor is currently unoccupied. We visited all four corner offices - closest I will ever get! Then, she took us through the mechanical floor...think huge, noisy, mysterious!!! Then we stepped through a door to walk around a parapet that wraps the entire building. Staci was so gracious to give us her time, and we have some pretty cool memories for which to thank her!!

Kindrid, mountains, breathtaking view!! Yeah, yeah, yeah...Uncle Matt's pix will sure to be better than mine. That is, if he can get the camera to work. :O) Remember what I said? Think Big, Noisy, Mysterious here!And so, on to the Parapet...
Please don't do it, Honey....41 is going to be a great year!! (BTW - this day was Todd's birthday! Isn't this tour a cool way to celebrate??)

Even up here there is wildlife, and Brennen found proof!!
After our eyes drank their fill of the views, we went down so we could see the view from the bottom. The building we toured is the US Bank building. You can make out the sign at the top...the parapet is just below it.
My beautiful sister in law... ...and her friend, Staci, our lovely and generous tour guide! Told you I would make you famous, Staci!! :O)
Now of course, I always have to hone in on something educational! And, there are links in man's creations and God's. I found these stalactites[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalactite ]growing in the parking garage under the building. How cool is that?! Staci thinks they are ugly and is arranging to have them removed, but I think they are amazing. It's from salt coming from the parking floor above, she said. Wow! Love it! Who knows? Maybe Carlsbad is just an ancient parking garage!!! :O)

And with that profound thought, I bid you good night! I will post more about our trip soon!

Love,

Christy

Middle of Nowhere...

Hello....Happy Monday!!

One week of school done, and all is well. Brennen did great last week! He has already more or less switched his printing from the D'Nealian he was taught in Peoria to the more traditional printing this school uses. This is huge as it was one of his greatest fears about attending a new school. He played each day with the other "Brennan" and a few other boys so he feels like he is making friends. He does mourn the loss of his days of play time, but that would be at any school! The school seems very strong academically, very organized. I think it's going to be a good fit for him.

Friday and Saturday morning we spent doing things around the house. Saturday right after lunch we left for Buffalo, a city on the eastern side of the Bighorn Mountains to the north of Casper. We dropped our stuff at a hotel and headed up the mountain to see what we could see. Brennen had fun using a sling shot to plop rocks into Meadowlark Lake and we stopped to visit with lots of cows. No deer, elk or moose to be seen however. On our way back down to Buffalo, Kindrid was sick to her tummy. She seemed totally fine after that, and she wasn't too happy with us that we made her lay low for a while. Later in the evening the kids swam and we had pizza in our room while we watched the Olympics. We all slept great!

Sunday morning we had breakfast and swam some more until check out time. I'd been studying the map and found some back roads that would lead us from the southern part of the Big Horns through some country we haven't seen before and, eventually, down to Casper. We stopped first to explore Middle Fork campground which my bro and sis-in-law said was an awesome place. They were so right! We played by the water for a long time and climbed on the hill for a little bit until we saw this fellow watching us from the top! It was a magical place with sounds of bubbling water, cool, shady places beneath the pines, and stones and logs in and across the stream just perfect for climbing around. We definitely want to camp there some time soon! Thanks, Nic and Heather!

Now, the route I choose for us to get home was, as Kindrid says, through the Middle of Nowhere. Really. It was good that it was dry as it would have been impassable in parts if it had been wet. It was rocky, bumpy, up and down, dusty, muddy and a GREAT drive! I loved it. Brennen complained that his Lego creations kept breaking due to the huge bumps. We did this for hours - a lot of concentration for Todd. We had lunch on the top of the world with views to the west of mountains across a basin, to the east of rolling, pine-covered hills and snow capped mountains to the north. Brennen built a cairn to remind us of this place.

We drove and drove, seldom seeing anyone. Here and there were sheep wagons (follow this link if you don't know what a sheep wagon is...sort of an early RV used by, you guessed it, sheep herders when in remote places), http://www.wyomingsheepwagon.com/gallery/sale.htm a few cabins, RV's seemingly used by the ranchers that lease grazing rights to tracts of this public owned land. We saw just a handful of other vehicles and none the further south we went. Late in the afternoon we did see a truck parked off to the side of the road with no one around. We commented aloud, wondering where its owner was as there was no one in sight. Three miles later we came to a major junction and paused to consult the map to make sure we took the correct fork. We decided on the fork to the right and got a block or so down it when we saw a man and woman walking. Remember what I said Kindrid calls this area? Well, to see folks just ambling along with no packs, no vehicle, like it's a Sunday stroll is very odd indeed. We stopped to ask them if all was OK. The man in his hat calmly said, "Nope, it's not." They were the owners of the truck we'd passed miles back They had taken their 4-wheeler out to check on fences and their cattle. The 4-wheeler died and they'd been walking for an hour and a half seeing no one and with only a bottle and a half of water between them. It was beginning to get late in the day, and they were glad to see us!! Todd left me with the lady (wish you could have seen us sitting by the side of the road in the M. of N. in camp chairs chatting away like old friends) while he took the man back to his truck.

When they came back, we followed them back all the way they'd walked so Todd could help the man load the ATV. We felt like we had backstage passes getting to go through gates and on the OTHER side of the fences!! Turns out the man really didn't need much help as he had (DAD, are you paying attention??) a COME ALONG!! This device is one of the world's greatest inventions allowing one person to move huge weights with a sort of ratchet/winching motion. http://cvfsupplyco-store.stores.yahoo.net/hanpowpulcom.html It's long been one of my dad's favorite tools, and he's used it along with patience to move some pretty amazingly heavy things all by himself. (Of course I put a link to it...once a teacher, always a teacher!!)

Soon the ATV was loaded and we were all on our way once again. We hope to meet up with Sonny and Marlene Hoburka some time again. They were jolly and fun and friendly and chalked this up as just one more adventure in their world of ranching. It was an adventure for us too. Nice people, beautiful country, a hand lent, memories made!!

Oh yes, and rush hour traffic on the range...

After this small hiccup, we still had hours of going left before we finally hit a "real" road and got back to Casper far later than we'd planned. It was a day full of images of beauty and remoteness. We know yet another part of this incredible state we now call home.

We stopped at a campground for a quick picnic supper...the kids climbed the rocks...

Have a great week!

Christy