Weston Family: Motorcycle 2 MiniVan: August 2013

We're all getting settled in down here in Casper. The boxes are unpacked and this house is looking more like our home. We decided to sneak in a camping trip before the kiddos started Kindergarten.

I took a Friday off and we headed north to Buffalo, WY. I found out the morning we left that this was the "Longmire Days" weekend in Buffalo aptly named after the Longmire books (and TV show) by author Craig Johnson. For that weekend the town is known by its fictional name of Durant, WY. The stars of the TV show were going to be on hand and it was supposedly quite a "to-do". We bypassed all that and headed to up into the mountains for a relaxing weekend in the woods. We had another uneventful camping trip, we all came back with all our appendages and no mechanical failures... I'm starting to get spoiled! I remember growing up the camping trips would almost always have some sort of excitement (brakes failing, truck vapor-locking, dad just about drowning) you know... the usual.

The next week was the beginning of Kindergarten. We took turns taking the girls to a initial orientation session on Monday where they each spent an hour in their new classrooms with their peers and teacher. I took Madison and she wouldn't let me get beyond arms length from her. Audrey fared a bit better with Krista a bit later and Zoie did okay in the afternoon session. Tuesday they each had about a 1 hour one-on-one with their teacher then Wednesday off. Thursday and Friday they attended school for a half-day. My mom came down Wednesday night and was able to partake in the girls first days of Kindergarten. They took right to it, they are making friends, participating in the classroom activities and absolutely love the playground time before school starts in the morning.

We are all enjoying our new surroundings but miss our families. Hope all is well this Labor Day weekend with everyone out there!

Playing ponies, princesses and trucks!

Zoie assisting with gathering the wood I was splitting.

Our little rock climbers...

Amazingly enough, the only injury sustained was a little scraped knee.

Madison with a "peek-a-boo"

Zoie says, "stick a fork in it... make it two"

Chef Krista and Chez la Campeur

Audrey pointing the way

Zero joined us up on the rock pile.

Madison hitting the S'mores.

Zoie showing off her S'more skills.

Audrey enjoying her creation.

Madison roasting a 'smarshmallow'

Toasting pop-tarts in the morning.

Breakfast in the woods.

Hello deer.

Looking back thru the pines.

Madison found a nose ring...

Audrey playing camping ponies.

A collection of pine cones for Merida

Waffles for breakfast... yeah, we got that.

Audrey on her 1st day.

Zoie

Madison

Grammy leading Audrey over the pedestrian bridge to school.

The girls finding their way to their classroom lines on the playground.

Madison hanging up her backpack.

Audrey getting ready to say goodbye.

Zoie saying goodbye.

Audrey finding mom after school.

A picnic in the park after school.

Reading books with dad at bedtime.

Reading books with Grammy at bedtime.

1st full day of school for the girls, I wanted to play too!


An 'overhead' view of their school and playground.

Greetings from the Cowboy State...
I've really got to update the blog a bit more than once every 4 months. This feels a bit like a drama series on TV.
..."last time on motorcycletominivan: *POW* snow showers *BAM* Easter *SHAZAM* preschool *KAPOW* moving to Casper... "

Fast forward to August 5th...
We are all settled into our house here in Casper. Things have gone smoothly with no (knock on wood) catastrophes. First we should point out some corrections from the last post.

1. Allegiant Air no longer flies to Casper.
2. We were able to move the girls to a Elementary School closer to our house.
3. I was in fact, NOT cast to play the part of Captain America in the next Avengers movie.
4. Closing was June 18th... not May 17th.

Now we have that all clarified we can move on, erorr free!

The girls "graduated" from preschool and have a full ride scholarship to the public school system in Wyoming!

Packing, moving and unpacking was all a blur. I reported to work a week before we closed on the house. I came down and stayed with a family friend, and at the time we were unsure if we were even going to be closing on this house at all. I was prepared to do more house hunting. But we lucked out (the sellers had moved to Hawaii, a day after closing they had a family emergency and had to move back to Casper, we didn't find out about that part of the story until last week). During the home inspection it was determined that a new roof was in order. The seller's didn't like the fact the roof was inspected by a roofer and didn't agree to replace the roof until an independent inspector took a look, then the insurance adjuster had to check it out as well.

We received the notification from our real estate agent of our closing day the same day a packet from the Billings Police Department arrived at our house in Billings. The letter inside said "congratulations" ..I was into the final round of the background investigation, then congratulations Officer Weston. This is a potential career path that I've chased for a couple years now, and just when the opportunity avails itself.. I'm in the middle of moving! All in all this is for the best... I am a Commercial Engineer for Charter Communications and have normal working hours, weekends off (except for the pesky on-call, and I cover the state from Jackson to Gillette, my counterpart in Cheyenne covers the southern part of WY and norther CO). Cisco routers are not armed, they don't do drugs and get into fights or burglarize property, so Krista and the kids don't worry much about me coming home in one piece. I enjoyed my time as Deputy Weston with the Yellowstone County Sheriff's Department; hopefully I contributed as much to the Department as I learned. I have no intention of doing Law Enforcement (volunteer or other here in Wyoming) although I might look into the Search and Rescue side of things next year.

We are all adapting to our new surroundings; as with anyplace there is good, bad and indifferent. I have an office all to myself where I can put up pictures of the family and generally make it home. But this is the 1st time in 15 years that I haven't been around a large operations center/office that is open 24/7-365. The second day on the job, there was a knock at my door.... "hey we're headed out, make sure you set the alarm before you leave." it took me a minute to realize that the office closes at 5 and I was the last one there. Whoops.

The town of Casper is interesting. The oil money is flowing through here, and it appears that the schools are one of the benefactors of this cash flow since they all appear to be well maintained and rank pretty high nationally for their scholastic placement. The playgrounds and city parks are well maintained with new equipment. The 4th of July was fun with a small neighborhood parade that starts just a house up from us and ends at a park with treats and water gun fights. The fireworks display was as nice as any I've seen in recent years (although less exciting than the ones we've had at mom and dad's the past 2 years. You haven't lived until you've had to run from a rogue/faulty firework). Parade Day kicks off the Rodeo and County Fair and the parade route runs along the street a block south of the Charter building. So I took the girls with me to work in the morning, then walked down to the street and caught the parade (and about 10lbs of candy). Casper seems to have kept some of the fun "small town" activities and yet is able to offer many of the same amenities of a larger city like Billings and for the big city stuff, Denver is only 4 hours away.

Kindergarten starts on 8/19.. I know "the girls are going to school ALREADY!?!" yeah, Krista and I are probably not ready for that day either. Verda James Elementary School is about a mile from our house and the girls will each have their own Kindergarten classroom. It'll be interesting to see how they do apart from each other during the school day.

I need Krista to add a few lines in here; since I know, but also have no clue just how much work she did to get things packed up for our move. The realization set in when I attempted to unpack a box or two when we moved in... and I realized I may have packed 2 of the 22,093 boxes that we unloaded. We work as a pretty good team, but this move was more a credit to her organizational skills and just flat getting it done. I don't put much stock in A.D.D. (at least to the extent that it seems like 85% of kids are diagnosed with it)... but wow. In the midst of packing a box, I would get distracted by the littlest things *squirrel* sorry, where was I?

Krista's mom and her husband Bob came for a visit in July. We had a good time, took in the Casper Municipal Band concert in the park a couple of times. They even got to eat at the big person table at our house! Last fall we left a few zucchini in a box on our dining room table and one rotted and seeped zucchini juice onto the table which ended up eating the varnish off the top. I figured that I would make an attempt at re-finishing before we put it upstairs. It took me a couple of weeks, but I got it done and it looks pretty good (if I may say so myself). But while it was in the garage we were eating off the kids table... and yes it sits about 30" off the floor. Nothing like eating dinner and looking at your kneecaps!

Now we're getting used to being "city-folk". It took the better part of a week for the girls not to leave the sliding glass door open or to realize they can't just go play in the front yard unsupervised, or that they can only let the dogs out into the back yard. We received our 1st water bill... which made it pretty obvious that we won't be able to water the yard like we did off the well in Billings; It's time to put down rock and cacti! The backyard was a bit overgrown, and that is putting it mildly. We've been able to get a bit of the overgrowth cleared, but the bulk of it won't be done until fall. It's good enough for now, we cleared a spot for a swingset and that's good enough for now!

Anyhow... here are a few pix from our adventures. From scouting the house in mid May to Preschool graduation, Strawberry festival in Billings, Parade day in Casper and just around the house.

Our new house @ 981 Waterford Street

The overgrown backyard.

Looking at the backside of the house.

The bar built in beneath the stairs.

Madison holding the front door.

The girls love the movie 'Brave' and decided they wanted to have a bow and arrow like Merida. Krista fashioned weapons out of branches and rubber bands.