I could do it at a trot, I could do it at a gallup, but I did it real slow so my heart wouldn't palpitate.
Military families get in free to the Puyallup Fair on Mondays, and I was keen to take advantage of the deal. My mom and I planned to go with my cousin Amy, but when morning came mom was too sick to go.
Amy and I had fun checking it out together, though. It's not often that I get alone time with her, so it was nice.
We started our visit out by admiring the arts. This one was modeled after Amy.
We somehow got lost, and it took us a long time to find the barn with all the cattle. For a few minutes we thought that we'd be leaving the fair having only seen bunnies and birds. We were thrilled when we finally found the big boys.
We milked Mabel!!!!
The pigs were probably our favorite part.
I loved this picture. Look at that cute little pigglet butt right by the momma pig's snout!
It had been four or five years since I last visited the fall fair, and it was good to be back. As usual, it was sad to do something so fun without Donald. I miss him very much, but he'll be coming for a visit in less than a month!
I'm planning on going again next Monday, and I can't wait!
Today was supposed to be my first official day in our new ward. Instead, I spent my first official day in a ward I didn't belong to, and then spent my first official day in our new ward, which was also my second day in the Graham ward.
Official and technical are two totally different things, btw. And today... it was official. Donald and I went to the Graham ward a few weeks ago.
The Graham ward clerk took 20 minutes intensely consulting with the other ward's clerk on which ward we belonged in. Not only were there 3 different wards in our area, but there were 3 different stakes. Is it Graham? Or the Elk Plain ward? Or perhaps Spanaway?
Their final decision? None of the above. We were sent to another building.
I went the Pioneer Valley ward today... but guess what? We're not in that ward either. No worries though, they gladly informed us that we would be in the Gem Heights ward, which meets in the same building. He then took me to that Bishop's office. One interrupted Bishopric meeting, eight men, and twenty minutes later... I was sent back to the Graham ward.
...and that's leaving out a lot of exciting details.
Apparently we're 200 yards away from one ward, and mere blocks away from two others.
All is well that ends well, and I love our new ward!
Oh, and being in a new ward involves one huge detail. Yes, we have a house! Well... sorta. We're under contract for a house that's being built to our specifications in a new community out there in Graham. Unless it fails inspection or there's a freak gas leak at the site and everything blows up, we'll be moving into it in early November!!
I've been hesitant to blog about it, because the last house we were under contract with fell through. This one, however, has nothing to fall through OVER. I mean... it's brand new! The only downside to this place is that it's not on 1.21 acres, but we're coping.
I have some pictures, but obviously they're not of our house. It's a model home in Maple Valley that's the same floor plan we're getting. We're getting the white trim like it has, so it looks almost exactly like ours will.
The pictures were taken with my camera's phone, which explains the odd angles and not being able to capture the entire exterior in one shot.
The entry-way, viewed from the stairs.
The powder room, stairs, and entry-way, viewed from the dining room.
Dining room to the left, kitchen straight ahead, back door, and living room to the right.
Living room.
Upstairs computer nook/loft.
The master bedroom. Door on the far left, my closet down the mini-hall and on the left, Donald's on the right, master bath at the end.
This is the blog of Katrina and Donald Winn. The blog's domain name (or whatever you call it!) has long since been katrinamaye.blogspot.com. I've been aware for some time that this needed updating. I changed the banner several months ago to at least reflect both of our names, but the problem with changing the blog's actual URL until now was two fold.
1. I had no idea how to change the URL. A Minor detail.
2. I could not, for the life of me, come up with a cute name. And believe me, I tried. For over a year, I have tried. Even my own name doesn't flow with it (Say it out loud: Katrina Maye Winn). Having enlisted the help of friends from time to time, and we always agreed: there's just nothing catchy out there that works with "Winn" without sounding ridiculous. Maybe we all fell victim to a group brain-fart, or maybe my friends just weren't clever enough. I wouldn't rule either out.
Well, I jumped those hurdles and we have a new domain name. How'd I do that? I got bored and starting figuring this website out for the first time. Once I learned how to change the URL, I changed it. Just like that, with no thought. Such things are pretty easy at 4 a.m.
I didn't think, I just did. Story of my life, and it usually works for me.
Last month Donald we took a trip down to California to visit some of our good friends and family. While there, Donald did the Orange County Mud Run on a team with 3 of his friends. It was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen him do.
For four young men who are native to SoCal (two of whom aren't even white) they certainly are a very pasty bunch.
From left to right: Adam, Rudy, Donald, and Albert.
The only place to pin their numbers was the tooshie. Justin didn't seem to mind helping out.
I, however, did so reluctantly.
It was just a 5k course, and wasn't very difficult (which I'm sure is much easier for me to say, since I didn't run it!), but they made the most of it!
This one was taken toward the start of the race, before they met the mud!
Okay, bad news. The mid pits weren't placed in an area that was accessible to bystanders. Bummer, right? I really was looking forward to watching them prance through the stuff. As you can see here, though, there definitely was a mud pit. However, I'm told it wasn't a very deep or intense one. No, they just LOOK like they had to swim through it. They apparently didn't fight against the stuff. They SAVORED their time in the mud, and got well acquainted with it.
My husband never does things half-hearted, and playing in the mud is no exception!
Now we come to my favorite part of the race. This is where everyone ELSE decided to cheat. After they crossed that little red rope, everyone was supposed to CRAWL through the sand.
Did they all? Only at first...
Crawling 15ish feet must have seemed too hard or boring for everyone else. Some people were even going around the obstacle entirely. Not Mr. Integrity though. Donald believed in the spirit of the race.
Do you love how he folded his shorts over in a sexy yet functional diaper-style?
He low-crawled through the un-fun people. While they stood impatiently in the congestion, he stealthily worked his way through the small crowd. Cheaters never prosper!
Look closely, and you can see Albert stuffing sand down Donald's shorts.
Then they went through some tubes before running off to finish the rest of the course.
The aftermath:
They stood in line for at least half an hour to hose off, and then we called it a day. They ran out of T-shirts in Donald's size, so he grabbed one for me. Isn't it cute? I think so. His loss is my gain!
"Barring any unforeseen and unlikely catastrophes..."
Aaaand we will NOT be getting the house I blogged about.
From the start, we had problems with the sellers and/or their agent. They lied on the full disclosure statement and exhibited a lot of questionable behavior, but we decided to move forward because the house (or rather, the 1.2 acres it was on) was such a fantastic deal. There were a fair amount of repairs that needed to be done, and we agreed in writing to contribute a specific amount to said repairs. Until, that is, the final bid came back. It was several thousand dollars more than the estimate we signed off on, and we were suddenly expected to pay up.
In addition to the added expenses, our patience for shady behavior ran out. We submitted the paperwork to back out, and then waited. Because we requested our earnest money back, both of our brokers had to review the situation and come to a decision. Both agreed that we deserve to have it returned in full. Now, we wait again. Though both brokers agreed we should have it back, we're now in the sticky process of seeing that through. We're cautiously optimistic, but there's still a chance that it's gone forever.
We're temporarily homeless now. The closing date on that house was set as July 16, which has long since passed. I flew home ahead of Donald nearly 2 months ago to secure housing, yet here we sit in my mom's house as perma-guests. We put so much time, energy, effort, and money into a house that we expected to be living in by now, and now we get to start the process again from scratch.
The worst part is that Donald leaves for Arizona on August 20th, and there's no way we'll be in a new home by then. What's the significance of that? No home means no adoption home-study completed before he's gone for 5 months.
I'm beyond grateful that Donald has a steady and reliable job, but sometimes the sacrifices we make for the Army reach so much further than either of us ever expected. Starting our family will happen eventually, but from here it feels like it's always a day away...
A lot of exciting things have happened since March, and now that I (Katrina) am back in the good ol' U-S-of-A, updating our blog with something interesting is no longer the tedious job it once was. You see, the internet in Germany was very expensive, so their standard"high speed" internet took ages for us to upload pictures.
So yes, I am back in Washington. The last I reported, our remaining months in Germany were coming slowly to a close, and we were scheduled to be PCSing (Army lingo for moving) to Ft. Lewis, Washington sometime in the Summer of 2009. That time has now arrived!
On June 1st, Moroni and I kissed poor Donald goodbye and headed off to Seattle in hopes of securing housing before he accompanies us on July 8th. For the last 4 weeks and 3 days, that's what I've been doing. While Moroni has been enjoying unrestricted and unleashed access to a yard for the first time in his life, I've been hard at work! We submitted an offer on "our" home on June 7th and it was quickly accepted! Luckily, we were smart and had a home inspection done. The findings were crushing. Unnoticeable to the human eye, there was substantial was water damage beneath the bathrooms. Rather than giving the house up, we spent the next 3.5 weeks negotiating the repairs. It was a long road, but two days ago we came to a final agreement on all terms. Barring an unforeseen and unlikely catastrophes, the house will be ours. Or closing date is set for July 16th, but it's highly unlikely that the date will be met. An August closing is looking more realistic.
A bit about our home:
It's in the rural town of Yelm(by Roy and McKenna), which is about 45 minutes south of Federal Way, and is 15ish minutes south east of Fort Lewis. It's a bit of a fixer-upper, with a LOT of potential. It has 3 bedrooms, an office, a decently sized spare room/family room, and a small sun room. In total, it has 2150 square feet, which is a lot more than we expected to get on our budget. Built in 1979, it's not very regal or majestic looking, but it's very "us", and we love everything about it. Okay, almost everything. It's brown, and a previous owner had the audacity to paint the exterior trim ROYAL BLUE. there must have been a very alluring sale on ROYAL BLUE paint, because nothing else could justify such horror.
Don't worry, folks, white paint will be our first home-related purchase. When people pull into our drive way, I don't want a visual assault of ROYAL BLUE to be the first thing they experience.
It's a rambler, which I love. They can be harder to find in the Pacific Northwest than other places, so we lucked out. I didn't always like ramblers, but time has changed me. Part of that is because we love giant breed dogs. Due to potential joint problems, they're not supposed to go down stairs during their 1st year of life. Ask me how much I loved carrying a 50 pound puppy down the stairs every day... Yeah. Glad we got a rambler!
Our other favorite thing about it? It's on acreage! Well, technically. It's on a 1.21 acre parcel, so we can honestly toss the term acreage around without lying, lol.
It totally has a hot tub. Big bonus.
The two-car garage is detached. Kinda odd, but it's an old house. We're coping.
A couple pictures, for your viewing pleasure:
living room
hallway leading to bedrooms
back deck & hot tub
back deck & hot tub (notice the lovely ROYAL BLUE trim)
back yard
When I initially went house-hunting and viewed this one, I took heaps of pictures. What I didn't take was an exterior picture of the house from the front. Why? Well, because I was taking the pictures for Donald to check out, I knew he would already have a picture of the outside from the MLS listing online. Silly me, I didn't think ahead. When our offer was accepted, the MLS listing came down, and the pictures went with it.
Here, however, is a short video-clip I took of the outside for him:
We're very excited to be home owners. I can speak for both of us when I say that Heavenly Father has really blessed us with this house. We got a fantastic deal, and if it's the place that He wants us to be, then everything will go as it should and the house will close when it needs to. If something goes wrong, then it wasn't meant to be.
On an unrelated note: Donald comes home in FOUR DAYS. He was lucky enough to go to Prague with some friends of ours yesterday (I'm way jealous!), so when he gets home I'll upload the pictures from his trip.
Due to the war in Iraq, we have only had the pleasure of being together for half of those three years, so we cherish every day we have in each others presence.
For months, we have both (okay, mostly me) been on pins and needles awaiting the official word on where we would be moving this summer. Would we be going to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, or back to Fort Lewis? Maybe they'd give a 3-year-vacation with Hawaii! Then, there was the less likely options of Maryland, Alaska, or North Carolina. But, with the Army, we wouldn't have been surprised to end up in the Deep South or Asia!
Well, rest assured... we've been stationed somewhere decent - one of our top 3 choices, in fact!
On November 21st my mom flew in to visit us here in Germany. A few days later, on the 26th, Donald's best friend Adam arrived. The following day was Thanksgiving, and dinner with the missionaries was only the beginning of our adventures!!
