Brooklyn's Graduation

Brooklyn graduated from preschool! Well...since she has a late birthday she will actually go to preschool again next year, but they still had her graduate. I guess you could say that she was at the top of her class. At the end of every year they perform placement tests to make sure the kids are ready for kindergarten. Even though Brooklyn isn't going for two more years, they tested her anyway and she scored the best out of everyone. The only thing the teachers wanted to see improvement on was her understanding of rhyming. (Nothing that a little Dr. Seuss can't handle!)

Steph's 26th B-Day!

Steph is 26! Whitney and I stayed up late the night before and decorated the dining room with pink streamers and set a place for her at the table. I left her a note that said that there were french toast sticks and toaster strudles for her in the freezer. I brought Arby's for lunch and then we went to Applebee's for dinner. We even survived the embarrassment of having the waiters sing happy birthday, just so Steph could get a ice cream sundae! Instead of going to a movie, Steph wanted to be home to watch the American Idol finale. (Which was a disappointment!) Steph's two presents were a fireproof lock box to keep important documents and precious keepsakes in, and she also got a new bedding set. She says she feels like a queen every time she walks into the bedroom now. We love you Steph!

Tornado!!!

Ummm... I had no clue that we were moving to tornado territory. Ooops! This morning at work we started hearing reports of a big tornado that ripped through Windsor, Colorado which is located about 50 miles south of us. One person died and about 100 homes were destroyed. (4th picture) The next thing we heard was that the tornadoes were headed our way. It started getting really nasty around 2:30pm and the tornado sirens in town started going off. We tried to alert everyone at the hotel and make sure that everyone was as safe as possible. I called the girls at home and told them to make a safe area on the landing of the stairs in the middle of the house and so they hunkered down for about an hour. (1st picture) The tornado hit the community college here in town which is about 2.5 miles from our house. Things cleared and I went home. Around 7:00 it started to get nasty again and turned really ugly quick. Again, the sirens went off and I got online to see that another tornado was headed our way. We again got comfortable on the stairs and read the updated posts online. This time the tornado touched down at a Flying J gas station that is right across the street from my hotel! At around 8pm they lifted all alerts and warnings and things cleared up again. In Laramie, which is 35 miles to the west, a high school, Walmart, and several homes got hit. Here in Cheyenne, several semis were flipped over (pictures 2&5), we got a couple inches of hail, and some houses got damaged as well. We are glad to be safe after things were quite scary for a while.

A Day In the Sun!

It was a beautiful day today! We decided to take advantage of it and go to the park. We played Bocce ball and tried to teach Brooklyn lessons about winning. As you can see by the picture of her sulking in defeat, the lessons did not completely land. (She got better as the day went on.) After that Drew & Whit went jogging while Steph and the kids played at the playground. It was so nice that we even got a little sun-burned. Poor little Riley and her cute red cheeks! We hope that the bad weather is gone for good and that we can enjoy many more days like today.