We are new parents!!!!

Our baby goat was born August 13, 2008!!!

Justin has named it Bailer (like the tractor). We are so excited to be real farmers and seeing our animals multiply. ha ha ha!!:)

Our little family got so excited when we looked out the window to see another goat in the corral. Justin and I ran to get our "mosquito gear" on and then run outside. The "gear" did nothing since my son came in the house with about 10 bites on his face and neck...pretty sure we are looking at malaria or west nile or somthing. bah!! the only bad thing about living in the country!!

Our Little Lindsy

We are finally home from the hospital. Lindsy had some problems with her heart and had to have surgery to repair her PDA valve. We have spent the past 3 weeks of her little life in the hospital trying to diagnose and then waiting for our surgery date. Gary, Justin, and Lindsy are finally home with mommy and we are learning what it is like to have two children....no sleep. We have had such a great support from all our friends and family members during this time. It is truely a testimony building experience to receive such acts of service and love. We have truely felt the comfort from all the prayers being asked on our behalf. Thank you all so much we appreciate that help and support so much!

Gary participated in theQuestar Gas Rodeo. His team took 4th place and it was such a fun time for our family and the whole Questar gang. His team name is the Gashouse Gang (it does have some sort of baseball connotation, don't worry it's not all about the gas :)

This is the Westergard family of 3 before we add to it and become a family of 4!

Lindsy is here!!!

We have a new family member at the Westergard household! She was born Friday and was 7lb 15oz and 20.5" long. (SOOOO much smaller than Justin that mom's recovery has been lots better). Just after Lindsy was born she was monitored for her oxygen saturation and was a little too low. It turns out that she has a valve that didn't close in her heart that is causing the distress and a little time spent in the NICU on oxygen and more testing is what we have been doing. She is growing like a weed and eating like a champ and so we are so excited even though we are not at home yet. Check out how cute she is and how much she looks like her brother...except maybe a bit darker.

Christmas Letter December 2007

This year has been a wonderful year for our family. Our little family has experienced a lot and seen a lot of change. We moved 1 1/2 miles away from our A-frame rental home into a multi-level home on one acre. We are discovering how to manage weeds, build fences, plant grass, install a gas line, paint, carpet, exterminate mice, raise goats, plant trees, rototill, kill zuchini, attempt tomatoes, oh the list goes on an on. With the addition of our two goats, Torro and Kenneth, our family has more than doubled. Torro is an old goat who is onery and doesn't like to listen to me very well. The first time that I met torro in the corral at my house he looked at me and knew I was no match for him. He darted past me and ran out the gate that I had left open. I tried to catch him but I was wearing Gary's boots (as if that is a good excuse) and so couldn't run very fast. Gary ended up chasing him to our neighbor's house where the goat began to run with the horses. They were kicking and raring so much that when Gary reached to grab the goat he got kicked in the hand by a horse. It was his first wound of our new house, but definately not his last. Even after that experience we are considering babysitting horses in the future but that hasn't happened yet (much to my neice Megan's dissapointment). We are pretty happy to take care of ourselves and our little boy, it may be too much to ask to take care of a large animal like that. :) THis is a picture of Justin at the property at Sunridge. All the Hadley's have rediscovered it this past year and have had a fun time going up and clearing weeds and trees in hopes of getting a truck down there one day to camp.

Gary is still working at Questar Gas in the Operations Department, which means whenever there is a gas leak at a home or on a construction site he is the one who can go fix it. He is happy there and really enjoys his co-workers. He doesn't get in as much hunting time as he would like and so to compensate he will regularly call his friends and co-workers over to our house to check out the antelope we have hanging in our family room. ( it's downstairs at least). I think the whole reason we moved to where we did was for
Gary and his love for hunting. He can leave the house and go down the street for 1/2 hour or so and get his hunting fill for the day (even if he doesn't see anything he likes it). I am trying to break into the hunting world and this christmas took Dave and Elise shooting clay pidgeons. It was an adventure as I strutted my non-existant "stuff". :)
I am working at McKay-Dee Hosptial as a Health Educator and Student Coordinator, which means I'm a know-it-all who orients employees and students to our hosptial. :) I do this two days a week and then the other days I am able to be home with Justin. I like being a mom and am learning what a play group is. The thing I covet most right now is a season pass to the Tree House Museum in Ogden. My my how my prioroties have changed. This picture is of the Hall Christmas party and Justin is proud as he wears his Yankee hat that Santa gave him. Jerry and Joanne Hall had gone to New York this year, during one of the coldest bus rides they were on the ducked into a little Yankee shop to warm up. While in there they had a great idea to get Justin a yankee hat and an antenna ball for Gary. They knew Gary loved the Yankees! When they got home the news was broken to them that Gary loved the Dodgers and the only baseball words that Justin knew were "Yankees BOO! Dodgers Yay!!" Santa still gave the hat and antenna ball to us and everyone thought that was really funny!!



Justin turned two this year and as a two year old has had some major accomplishments in the past year. He is walking...wait scratch that, he is RUNNING, JUMPING, SKIPPING, everywhere. He likes to talk on the phone and responds really well when you ask him closed ended questions. "Yeah", "No", "Good". He amazes Gary and myself when he sings songs to us, when he asks us questions, or responds using small sentences. It is great being the parent of a genius! (Who in this pictures shows his love of tomatoes (rotton or not) and the fruit that causes extreme exema in my Justin...live and learn)

The Hadley family is doing well this year and seems to be relishing in its grandchildren. Mom and Dad are doing really well. Mom is still in remission and receives glowing reports from her doctor about her health, she is also looking super skinny lately due to her great eating habits (which I am jealous of). Dad is still as busy as ever working on projects and trying to convince me I need to have more of them. :)

We have exciting news at this year...we are PREGNANT!! We will be having a baby girl the first part of July and are very excited!! Hope to see you soon!!

Long time no write, I know I know!!! I really think about everyone all the time but it took Mother Russell to snap me out of my "no-communication" phase. :) I want to let everyone know that I love reading the emails from you and hope you are doing well in everything you do. I wanted to update you as to what is going on in my life...cause it's been a lot in the past 6 months :)
Gary and I have now entered the world of grown ups and we bought a house!! (I put our new address in the email so you all know) We got the keys to our new home the day after christmas, so it made our christmas time one of little decoration and lots of painting and cleaning (BORING!!) We have 1 acre with a barn and two corrals. The only animals to our name are two dogs, Zip and Gunner. They take up 1/3 of the barn and feel very important doing so. Justin is growing up like mad!!! He is so cute and fun! He is walking everywhere and saying words that suprise us he knows....not those 4 letter words. :)
This is a picture of our kitchen with a very cute boy just learning to walk in it. These are the red cupboards that scared us at first but now we really like because it feels so warm and nice.









This is the only picture we have of our house that I could find. It doesn't show the whole house or the backyard but it is showing you what it really looks like with dirt piled up and a back hoe all over the yard breaking sprinkler line (we didn't realize it would do that but it certainly did a number on all our sprinklers, they are almost all fixed now thankfully. Just in time for summer).

A story of our family :)

Welcome to the Westergard Family Blog! Since your flying with someone with little experience please keep your arms and legs in at all times and HOLD ON!!! :)

It all started (or eneded) in December when Gary and I were expecting an un-named little boy who was promised by their OB/GYN to be under 10lbs at birth. I had a pretty okay pregnancy and a wonderful labor (didn't remember any of it thanks to the lovely epidural and how sleepy it made me) and we gave birth to a 9lb 13 oz 21inch long baby boy who much to the annoyance of our family still didn't have a name.

It did take an extra day and a half but we finally figured out a name for our little boy, Justin Frank. He had lots of sandy blonde hair with highlights that made the nurses smile. Everytime he came back from the nursery he had a new hairstyle. We had a lot of great visitors at the hospital and people called in as well to wish us luck and tell us congratulations. We really felt the love of all our friends and family.

After maternity leave I went back to work at the credit union three days at 20 hours a week. It was hard to leave Justin but he was being watched by Mom and Dad and Julie so I knew he was being extra loved.

This May a lot of things happened in the Westergard family. Mom had finished her chemotherapy and radiation and was recovering, so we all decided to go to California and celebrate the end of that time in our lives. We headed to SanDiego and stayed in a very fun condo right on the beach. We went to Sea World, the outlet malls, DODGER STADIUM!!Petco park (to see the Padres) and the temple. It was such a great week we all really enjoyed it. We only missed one family, but Dave and Elise are going to come for Christmas so we will all be together then. We are trying to raise Justin to be a good Dodger fan and so when we caught the dodgers game we made sure to take this picture so we could frame it in our house to remind ourselves who we need to be loyal to. Justin fell asleep through most of it but it was fun to hang out with family at the game and listen to Gary give me play-by-plays.

In June of this year I was able to get a job at McKay-Dee using my degree in Health Promotion (shocker, I didn't think that was ever going to happen). So now I only work 2 days a week and still leave Justin with my newly retired Dad and Julie.

Gary is working for the gas company and really likes it there. This summer I liked to call him on really hot days and ask how things were going. My office is kept at a frigid temperature of 67 degrees and it just made him jealous to hear my teeth chatter as he was working in the sun. :)

Justin is now 9 months old and just figured out the crawling thing. He has four teeth and is heavy as a log! Gary and I are trying to baby proof the house but it is more and more difficult since we don't anticipate Justin grabbing as many things as he does!

This picture is the first of the four teeth that Justin has. He got all his teeth within a three week period and also began to crawl at the same time. We think if he progresses at this pace he will become a genius by 1 yr old. :)

That is all for now, the rest is history in progress. :)