Oh what an emotional and crazy week this has been. I'm thankful for it to be over and slept in pretty late today which felt really, really good! We started off our Monday morning with the most beautiful sunrise. I dropped Lexi off at school and was pulling in to drop Kaylee & Izzy off at the grade school when the sun hit the mountain just right and I was kicking myself in the butt for not bringing my camera with me. But I was hopeful because I only live a couple blocks away from the school and surely I could get home and grab my camera and race back and grab that shot. Just as I was thinking that, Kaylee pipes in from the back seat, "I need to go home. I forgot my trumpet." WHAT!? Okay, breathe because that means you can grab your camera too. So I rush back to the house and send Izzy in after my camera and Kaylee in to get her trumpet. Kaylee comes out with the phone and the caller id says it's the school. Lexi forgot her spandex for gym class (her 1st class) and wants me to bring them up to her. So much for capturing the sunrise. LOL! So I take Lexi's shorts to her and drop the younger girls off at school. By then the sun had shifted and it wasn't nearly as pretty but I did grab a couple of shots anyway.
Same sunrise...different angles...very interesting how the color is so different in a matter of a couple of blocks.
I came in and settled down to work on a kit but my mind was busy thinking about Andy's best friend. He had tripped down the concrete stairs going to his house and smashed the side of his face in and was having surgery that morning. He is like an uncle to my kids and has always been known as Uncle Chris at our house. So I was worried and hoping his surgery was going to go well. That afternoon, another of Andy's friends (who works at another mine) called me to ask if I'd heard anything from Andy because there had been an accident at the mine. Oh man, that was the end of my workday for sure. I remember when Andy first started working at the mine, there was a cave in and one of the guys on Andy's crew was killed. The first call I got that day was from his brother who called and said (this is a direct quote...I kid you not.), "Did you hear that Andy died today?" Oh yeah, that's exactly what any miner's wife wants to hear from her brother in law. Logic said that if Andy was killed, someone surely would have notified me before it hit the rumor mill. So I said, " No, I haven't heard anything but I'm sure it's not Andy and I'll call you if I hear something." All day that day, the phone rang over and over with relatives and friends and people who were tuned in to their scanners calling to see if I was okay and asking if they'd been able to get Andy's body out. I tell ya, I never let it get to me until he was late getting home and my kids started asking where he was. Then I thought, how in the world am I going to tell them? That pretty much did me in and I stopped answering phone calls until Andy called me 2 hours later.
I have this weird 6th sense when it comes to Andy and if he was hurt, I feel like I would know something was wrong. The day his work truck was run over by a semi truck on a mountain road, I begged him not to go to work that morning. I just didn't feel right about it. And the moment it happened, I knew something was wrong because my entire body was covered in goose bumps and I was on my way out the door when the phone rang with his boss calling to tell me what had happened. So, I told his friend that I hadn't heard anything but would let him know as soon as I heard something. I know now that if he was involved, I would have been notified so I'm a little worried but not over the top. But, the not knowing part is really hard too because it's such a small town and whoever it is has family too and it affects us all.
It turned out to be Chris's partner who was hurt. So I said a little prayer that Chris had to be out for surgery that day because obviously, this wasn't the time for him to be at work. God had it worked out whether we all knew it or not and for that I'm so thankful!
I also said a little prayer of thanks that night as I listened to this snore while I worked into the wee hours.
Of course, I comforted myself with a whole bag of these....:(
The next morning was a beautiful foggy morning and Kaylee said it looked like she was going to school at Hogwart's when I dropped her off. LOL!
This is what my street looked like as I drove back home.
I wanted a picture of the high school mascot in this fog too but I was on the wrong side of the school this morning. So I pulled up on the other side of the school the next morning but the fog wasn't nearly as good. Oh well...I'm sure I'll get another shot another day!
I did a little scrapping this week while playing along with some digi challenges and speed scraps. I also finished up a couple of new things you'll see soon in the shop.
Credits: Temptations Vol 2 by me, Wynken Blynken & Nod by Busy Crafting Mommy Designs
Credits: You Play Like A Girl by Scraps N' Pieces
Credits: You Play Like A Girl by Scraps N' Pieces
Credits: You Play Like A Girl by Scraps N' Pieces
Credits: You Play Like A Girl by Scraps N' Pieces
Credits: Ginger Scraps Buffet: Reading Room
Credits: Serenity by me
My mom called me on Thursday and said she was going to have a load at her house to unload on Friday so we moved some stuff around and worked through the night to get stuff done that I had planned to do on Friday. LOL. Lexi had an orthodontist appointment on Friday afternoon though so we had to stay in town long enough to take her to Idaho to have that done. She had some Halloween colors put on this time and then was a little bummed to find out that she has to wear those colors for 2 months! Bummer! Maybe the purple will fade to brown by Thanksgiving, ROFL! Poor kid!
After her appointment, we came back home and the girls packed up their stuff to take with us while I squeaked out the Saturday blog post and uploaded a few things to give away. Andy came home and we loaded everything up and headed to my mom's to help her unload the trailer full of schtuff she brought with her. On the way down we saw some of the most beautiful skyscapes. Unfortunately, Andy was in a bad mood because we were leaving a lot later than we had planned to leave and probably a little irritated that we're doing this in the middle of the rut (hunting season) so getting him to stop so I could take pictures all the way down there was pretty much out of the question. I did snap a few from the window though.
After a quick stop at Taco Bell to grab the girls some 9pm dinner, we arrived at the place I called home from 6th grade through my senior year in high school. Technically the place I still call home even though my family hasn't lived there for 16 years. I am so happy to be calling it home again and to know that my parents will only be 3.5 hours away soon!
Of course, it wasn't such a bad thing to see my nieces and nephew and their mom too! LOL Izzy and Makalyn were happy to see each other again!
We chatted a while and headed to bed so we could get up and get to work the next morning. As we unloaded and put boxes and furniture in rooms, we assigned the kids to removing some grass from the irrigation ditch that cuts through the property. The renters hadn't left it in very good condition so I'm sure there will be a lot of groundskeeping to catch up on next spring! Iin the meantime, the kids were pulling the grass out of the ditch and it was so funny to watch Luke & Izzy working together as synchronized grass throwers.
Until they spotted me, that was. ;)
They were pretty excited about getting to get up in this fort too!
I love this look I got from Luke while taking his picture later that afternoon too...
You think a boy would smile at his aunt after she was nice enough to pull his tooth the night before, eh? But no, this is the look I get (he was hamming it up for me). It's a dang good thing I love him like crazy! ;)
After we got everything unloaded and moved in, we were going to go pick out some carpet for the basement and then have lunch together before we parted ways for the weekend. Well, we had all of the kids with us and the rest of the adults (and Addy) were in my mom's car with all of the cell phones. We head downtown and it was never really communicated if we were going to look at carpet first or go to lunch so we were following my mom. Were, being the operative word here. We got held up at a stop light because, let's face it, Andy is not from the city and has no idea how to drive in the city. You should have seen him in Vegas...it was hilarious! But that's another story for another day. On this day, my mom turned right and Andy sat at the light for about 50 cars before he decided to jump into traffic. By then my mom was long gone and we had no idea where the carpet store was she was talking about or if she went to lunch somewhere. So we drove this way and that way and the kids were in the back saying, "I guess we just have to go home with you, Aunt Wendy." and I was thinking, maybe we should get a cell phone. ROFL! So after driving around and looking for about 20 minutes, we stopped and asked someone where the carpet store was and decided to just go sit there and wait and hopefully they'd show up sometime soon. If not, we would just head back to the house and wait for them there. Thankfully they were at the carpet store and all was good again. Apparently they had pulled over and waited for us at one point and then had turned around and drove back looking for us but we had gone in the other direction so we had missed each other completely.
After we had picked out carpet and gone to lunch, we went back to the house and said goodbye and they headed back to West Yellowstone and we headed to the car dealership. Andy had his mind set on trading in my car. The car I have loved ever since before I got it. I fell in love the first time I saw an advertisement for it and told him it was the car I wanted. Bad news...it was a $40,000.00 car and that simply wasn't in our budget at the time. So no biggie...I loved my mini van that I had at the time. It could wait. Well, it was about 5 months later that he was driving by the car dealership that we've bought several cars from and thought he'd just stop in and see if they could find me one. It was our lucky day because the owner had been driving one as a demo car for the past couple of months and was ready to sell it. We picked it up for less than half price with only 408 miles on it. Not a bad deal! I've loved that car from day one. Everything about it makes me happy except for the fact that there just isn't a lot of room in it for going on trips. We replaced the brakes last year and it went through tires pretty quickly. But I still loved it. Lately though it's been pulling suddenly to the left out of nowhere and it's started to really vibrate when I'm driving on the highway. Not exactly comforting. Andy has been hinting that it's time to trade it in but I love my car and I'd rather fix it and keep it since it's almost paid for. Well, on the way to Missoula, the car jerked really hard to the left and we narrowly missed another car so Andy said it was getting traded in, no debate. I get it, but I still would rather fix it. But when he decides he wants a new vehicle, he pretty much always gets his way. It's one of the few things I've learned isn't worth arguing about with him. So off to the dealership we go. He had already been talking to a salesman and they had a vehicle there for us to check out. So we took it for a drive and really liked it and the fun of negotiating began. They came back to us with a price that was about $5,000.00 more than what we had researched and decided we would be willing to trade for. Not good. So we told them no thanks because we had already been talking to another dealer in another town who had the same vehicle for $5,000.00 less. Of course, that sparked the "Let me talk to my manager and see what we can do to match it." conversation. So while we were waiting, the girls and I got goofy in the car with the camera...
And when I saw Andy coming out with this look on his face after taking Izzy in to use the bathroom, I knew he was excited and I was going to lose my car...
and as it turned out, they had already found a buyer for our car the day before when Andy had called to find out some information from them. Apparently the manager's friend had just wrecked her pacifica and wanted a new one and ours was just what she was looking for. So he wanted to make the deal and actually came down another $6,000.00 on the deal. Which put our price $1,000.00 less than what we had anticipated or wanted to spend. Bonus! But I was still pretty hesitant because, dang it, my car was only a couple of months away from being paid off. We started the paperwork process and while it was all being written up (when did this process become so dang long and complicated? Sheesh!) we walked around the dealership and took some "I'm bored" shots...
Some of use weren't as good at acting as the others but I'm not naming any names!
While we were waiting, we took some walks and Lexi found her dream car...it was only $70,000.00 so I told her that if she could come up with half I'd pay the other half. ROFL!
I found this great purse but couldn't quite choke down the price so settled for taking a nice picture instead.
And after 3 hours of waiting around to do the paperwork (which only took about 30 minutes), we said goodbye to my pacifica...
And hello to my Ford Expedition...
Which despite these happy faces and excited nonstop-talking voices, almost got returned within 20 minutes of taking ownership of it.
Why? Because I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the dang stereo system. My last couple of cars would never pick up radio so I have religiously put all of my CDs onto my Zune and always used it with a casette adapter in my car. Well, this expedition has no casette player but it has a USB and a Line In spot. Cool, so I should be able to just plug in my Zune and have my music library at my fingertips, right? WRONG! I plugged it in and it synced up and when I told it to play something (because you can't just push a button...no good for me!), it said that everything on my Zune was protected and it wouldn't play anything. WHAT?!! I was so frustrated. I am a music loving girl and I want to be able to listen to my music. So we sat in the parking lot at Target and I read through the books and we still couldn't get it to work so I told Andy we needed to go pick up a CD because I couldn't do 3.5 hours of driving home without some music. The radio never even came to mind because, like I said before, the radio never really got a station if I wasn't in a bigger town in my last couple of cars. So after perusing the music selection (when did these become so small in stores?), I still didn't find something I didn't already have on my zune that I wanted to own. So disgustedly I gave up and went to work shopping for my niece's birthday presents. Andy disappeared and came back with a cable that would be a go between for the zune and the expedition, bless his heart. Because seriously, that would have been a big deal breaker for me (and I think he knew it). And I may have stomped my foot a little and probably pouted a lot to spark his motivation to make it work.
So we swung into DQ and grabbed a late dinner again and then headed home where we arrived just before midnight. We unpacked everything and crawled into bed not to be disturbed for at least 12 hours. We were all that tired. By the way, the radio in my expedition not only picks up Spokane stations but Missoula and Kalispell too...right from my driveway. :)
And that was my week. What a week.
I hope you had a great one!
You crack me up. And sometimes I think my life is crazy....well, yes, it is but it is comforting to know one is not alone in that.
Posted by: Connie Ireland Holso | October 02, 2012 at 08:24 AM
Wow, Wendy, you all sure know how to pack in a week. You definitely have a lot going on and it sounds like you all like being busy for the most part. I enjoy your writing because I almost feel like I am there with you. Thanks for sharing such great details. Congrats on the new vehicle. While you may not love it like your Pacifica, it may fit your lifestyle better.
Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a less emotional week this week!
Posted by: Jeanne | September 17, 2012 at 06:55 AM