Congratulations!

Well Sue and Jason...you guys have officially made it to your 1st Year Anniversary! Actually I guess it is now 1 year and 1 day but anyway Congratulations none the less. We love you guys and hope that every year is as good or better than this one. Miss you!
Love Jewls and Beth

Happy 25th Birthday Jason

Wow! You are a quarter of a century old, well on your way to 30 and halfway to 50....how does it feel? Good thing you have lots of company coming up right behind you. Hope you had an awesome day! Maybe your professors will give you an A on your test : )
Love Beth and Jewls

Jewls: Beaches, Broken Cameras, Mono Etc.

A couple of weekends ago a bunch of us kids headed out to the beach in Pacific City, Or to try and catch some of the last rays of summer sun. It was supposed to be a gorgeous day so Gail and I decided to be good sports and go along. We have both been sick for about the past 6 weeks with Mono and to say the least our energy is severely lacking. Both sides of my neck have been swollen up with gargantuan lymph nodes and Gail has had a horrible sore throat and a sinus infection to top it all off. Back to the good stuff we had an awesome day at the beach. We sat and read books while the boys played ultimate frisbee and football. Gail and I found a cute little coffee shop out of the wind where we had a great time looking at decorating magazines and sipping coffee. Some of the friends invited us all to their camper for hamburgers and games that evening. All in all a very fun Saturday. Hopefully we will have some energy soon so we can actually join in the excitement. The library will be out of books before this is all over. Sorry to say I have no pictures to post of the past month due to a broken camera. I guess electronics are only made to last two years because mine are all breaking like crazy.

Ever since the Evridge Family moved to Sequim we have been combining our two last names to create the Sandridge Family. Brian came home from a hiking trip last weekend with these pictures as a present for us!

Jewls: Hi Ho Hi Ho its Off to Work I Go

I am finally employed again. After 4 glorious months of living my life without letting such a terrible thing as work interfere : ) I was ready to get back into the life of the working woman. Until....I started working. I arrived in my new home September 2nd with the ambition of finally settling down. I have been working at a temp. agency here in town for the past couple of weeks. I started doing data-entry for a research company which helped the money situation but was not the most mentally exciting job. Last week I braved the Max train and went into downtown Portland to meet with a lady at a higher end temp agency where they handle more Administrative Assistant type jobs. To make a long story short I started working at Wells Fargo in the unclaimed property department today. I work right in downtown Portland and my commute conisists of 3 major interstates and a highway (I-84, I-5,
I-405, and Hwy. 30). The whole trip is supposed to take 30 min. about 18 miles but this morning it took an hour and a half to get there. I work 9:30am-6pm so it makes for some long days. This evening as I was racing home trying to get back in time for meeting it struck me as really funny that I am living exactly the life I always said I would never live. Here I am stuck in traffic in the middle of a huge city with angry drivers all around and basically somedays I really miss the wide open spaces and my Great Falls traffic jams. City life is exciting and fast paced and I am really looking forward to this new experience. P.S if you want a visual of my workplace you might think Office Space. Basically picture cubicles as far as you can see with little heads popping over the top yelling back and forth and people yapping a million miles per hour on their headsets. Yep that will be me! But it is only for 3 months if not a little longer and I hope to really enjoy it in the mean time. On the plus side I work in the Montgomery Park building which is really neat. I will try to post pictures as soon as I can get a paycheck and go buy a new camera! Well goodnight for now. Hope this finds everyone doingn awesome. Brian and I are headed up to Sequim this weekend to meet up with Gail so we can hang out with the families.

Happy Birthday DeAnne!!!

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a wonderful day and that this year will be the best one yet. Love you lots! Thanks for being such an awesome sister. Love Julie

Julie: Lake Roosevelt

Well I just got home from another amazing year at Lake Roosevelt. Our family gets together every year for a fun weekend of boating, camping, tubing, jet skiing, etc. over the Labor Day weekend. It was a little windy this year but that just added to the entertainment. Rob and Mandy Buckingham also joined us for a couple of days which was a ton of fun.

Ashlyn and Cody
Carolyn got the lovely job of holding down the stuff so nothing would blow out on the way back to the launch.
Mandy doing an excellent job of keeping Wade happy

Ashlyn is joining the Sanderson competition of who waterskiis the best. Looks like she about has everyone beat.
Footprints in the sand

While the girls worked hard keeping us off the rocks, DeAnne played the gorgeous blond
Mouse and I doing our best version of the stranded face. Mom and Dad's boat broke a belt when we went to jump off the rocks. A bunch of us girls were stranded for a couple of hours while the boys tried to find a new belt. Somehow we found plenty of entertainment.

Tube wars

Cody practicing for when he actually gets good enough to test out the water

Jason practicing for hunting season

Jason gave Cody a slingshot to try out...not a good ideaCaleb and Tristan were best buds

Crazy Cousins

Mom must love washing dishes, she even does it at the lake

View from the dining room

As you can see it was a little windy

To Beth and Sue: I missed you both a lot! Hope you both had a wonderful Labor Day weekend maybe someday you will both grace us with your presence.

Washington Trip per Beth

I'm not really sure how I came to be this spoiled, but it was my "privelage" to go to fall conventions in Washington this August! Carolyn J. drove me up from Cheyenne to Casper, where I met with Dustin Pilcher. We then picked up Leilani Price in Buffalo, WY and headed West. We spent a night in Billings with Nichole and Eric Moe, a night in Medical Lake with Patty Bible and co., and then on to the Price's in the Olympia area.


Overlooking the Columbia River in Central Washington... me, Leilani, Dustin.
Leilani and Dustin admire the beautiful grey espanse...
Everything here was brown and grey.... including the wildlife. I chased this guy down in my Titanium skirt...(it can do a lot)... even scale eroding rock cliffs above a perilous raging river canyon. ha.
We made a screeching U-turn peel out to arrive here at charming Laura's Kitchen in Kittitas. We all ordered the special...fish and chips. I wish I'd gotten a picture of "Kitchen" but he was a bit piratey. Yaarrrr! (Food was good.)
What's a trip through the Yakima valley without copious amounts of fresh fruit?... Leilani was in search of a peach. We looked at a couple of other fruit stands before this one, but decided they were too commercial to trust. i.e. wrapped 8 piece fruit baskets on tablecloths, and boxes of applets and cotlets. This stand had smushed fruit on the cement floor and free samples. Ahhh... guaranteed delish!

Leilani and I would've enjoyed our peaceful drive through the Evergreen state if it wasn't for the nagging voice in our ear, "free map... mumble mumble...free map. What's wrong with this state....free map...can't find anywhere..." Finally we stopped at this little information center which had, to someone's delight, free maps and information in excess! Guess who's initials were even on the sign!?!



While staying with the Price's we thought it would be fun to explore the ape caves. This is a lava tube created from a 2,000 year old blast of Mt. St. Helens that runs for about 1.5 miles underground. We spelunked our way through the cave, and then enjoyed the hike back across the top to the car. It made for a really fun afternoon! Especially with Jewls in tow! This is the entrance:
Exploring off the recommended trail. It was pitch black in the cave, but some of these pictures appear light...there are more from this adventure in Jewls' earlier post.
Jewls and I try to find the way through this crevass...we thought that it was the only way through. Dustin and Leilani sent us to feel it out, but then when we were almost through they told us that they had found a much easier way. So here we are on our way back out... !

We have huge grins, but this was actually pretty miserable. The ceiling and ground were ice cold, so army crawling through this tunnel was pretty much freezing...

The four of us right at the end...me, Jewls, Leilani and Dustin. You can see the stairs at the exit behind us on the left.

Coming out of the cave... Me...
Jewls.....
Leilani....
Dustin....

The next day Leilani's dad took us hiking up near Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day for a hike!

Tiny little wild strawberries!

We also got to spend a little time with pops. He was working in Kelso, so we picked him up and took him to the Mt. St. Helens overlook for an evening. Yay for pops!

The next day we headed out to Sequim for a couple nights with the Sandersons before convention started. We went berry picking and strolled around the waterfront in Port Angeles...

Then went to Lake Crescent for some boating, swimming, tubing, and picknic-ing with the family as the sun went down. What an awesome night!

On the way to Olympia we took the scenic route down the Washington coast and stopped for a little hike and beach time...


Strolling through "tumor forest." At least that's what I called it... these wierd growths called 'burls' were all over the trees.

Mom and dad and Sue and Jason came over for Olympia convention... Mom turned the other way just as we were taking this picture.... oops!
Me and sis at Olympia I.
After Milltown II Jewls and I went up to Bellingham to spend some time with my Buckingham relatives. We stayed with Auntie Ruth... this is on her back deck...and then had breakfast with grandma and some time with the cousins... It was sooo much fun!
Then we headed back down, picked up Carolyn S., and spent a couple of hours together. It was way too short, but I had to drop them off at the ferry so I could move it back to Wyoming. Here's me and Care just before we were nearly missed by a train. haha... we had to make a run across the tracks so they wouldn't miss the ferry... yikes!

I had a long, but great drive back to Casper, WY... where I met up with Carolyn J. and Heidi. Heidi and I traded cars, and then companion Carolyn brought me back to Cheyenne. I really enjoyed my trip, but it's nice to be back here in the field. Now to make the most of our time here before convention in Kansas toward the end of September!