We woke up to a big snow storm on February 25th. I left for school early, knowing that traffic would be slow due to the slick roads. The roads were even worse than I had first thought, so I was only going about 5-10 mph. As I came up to the stop sign at the end of the road, I knew that I would have to stop early. I tried to slow down several yards ahead, but not only was the car not stopping, it wasn't even slowing. The street that ran perpendicular to ours was a major road and the intersection was right next to a grade school, so I wasn't surprised to see a minivan coming straight at me.
The van was only going about 20 mph, but I could see from the look on the driver's face that she had no control over her vehicle. I turned my car toward the shoulder of the road to lessen the impact, but the front of the van still hit the front of my car,
then fish tailed and hit the back of my car.
It then slid across the oncoming lane, through a fence,
through another fence and a hedge,
then hit a railroad tie, broke its back axle, and came to a rest in a flower garden after having driven through two yards.
The police determined that nobody was "at fault" due to severe weather conditions and didn't give any inattentive or reckless driving tickets. I think the fact that both officers slipped on the road and fell on their behinds helped my cause. However, according to the insurance agencies, someone had to be at fault. And of course, since I was the one who didn't stop at the stop sign, my insurance shouldered the cost. Thank goodness I had full coverage on the Hyundai! Costs of repair to just our car was almost $6900. The car was in the shop for over a month! The van was totaled due to the broken axle. I didn't get an exact figure on the cost to replace the van or on the property damage for the yards, but they told me the total figure came to over $10,000. Although the deductible was $500 we didn't have, we happily paid it, knowing that it could have been a lot worse.
This post is dedicated to Sandi who threatened to remove me from her blog list if I didn't post an update soon.
Since yesterday (when I started working on this blog) was July 25th, I figured this would be a good time to write about Christmas! I have been trying to be more positive on my blog, so I won't go into the details of why last Christmas was so difficult for our family. Honestly, it isn't even necessary because last Christmas, we were reminded that people are amazing. They are kind and generous and mindful of others. All throughout the month of December, friends and neighbors anonymously left food and gifts for the kids at our doorstep. We were so grateful.
Mike and I weren't able to afford any presents for Christmas, so we relied on family activities to make the holidays memorable for the kids. We spent one weekend decorating our house. Thanks to our mischievous kittens, Buyo (the black one) and Diaho (the orange one), the tree was never decorated. The tree was a hand-me-down from my aunt Judy and has been getting progressively more ragged every year. Thanks to our wonderfully thoughtful kittens, we will probably be getting a new one next year. Someone should invent a kitten proof tree. They'd make millions.
Another weekend was spent making gingerbread houses from two kits which were left on our doorstep. One kit was a traditional ginger bread house while the other was made of Rice Krispies. Both kits were so stale that we couldn't eat them, but we had fun decorating and making a mess!
The Rice Krispy Treat house turned into a large amorphous blob, so we ripped it up and turned it into snow men... kind of. The weird looking one on the far left was Emily's.
On December 20th, we were driving around Pocatello looking for something Christmas-y to do. I think we were contemplating heading to Idaho Falls when I got a phone call.
"This is Alex Guerrero calling on behalf of the Ryan Clady Foundation."
Now, in the back of my mind, I knew who Alex Guerrero and Ryan Clady were, but I couldn't think of any possible reason why they'd be calling. As a result, all that came out of my mouth was a skeptical, "Uh-huh...?"
"Would your family be interested in going to the Las Vegas Bowl?"
"Very much..." I remembered hearing that Ryan Clady had asked for names of Boise State fans who might be having a rough year and would appreciate a trip to the bowl game, but a family had already been chosen.
"Well, we'd like to invite you at our expense."
"...Seriously? Um... yeah... I mean... yeah! That's amazing!!"
Our conversation continued while Mike remained oblivious in the seat next to me. Apparently, after seeing how well things had worked out with the first family they selected, Chris Carr decided to fund a second family's trip and asked for the list of names. Our family was on the list. Alex told me that Mike was selected because they were impressed by a congratulatory note Mike had sent to the winning family. Alex asked how many were in our family, what our kids' ages were, and what size shirts they wore. Then he told me that, if we were going to go, we needed to be in Boise by 5:00 am the next morning.
Yikes! I handed Mike the phone so he could work out the details. I don't think he believed me when I told him who was on the phone. It was fun to watch him go through the same disbelief I had just minutes before. He turned the car around, and we headed home to pack. We debated whether we should leave then and ask our friends and family in Boise if any of them could put us up for the night, but we decided it was too short of a notice, and opted to sleep early and leave at 1:00 am. Wrong decision. We couldn't sleep.
We arrived in Boise early and had to wait for about an hour and a half in the cold car for the charter bus to show up. When it finally came, the bus was as cold as our car! We tried to sleep in the bus, but it just didn't happen. The drive was long and terrifying as we drove through some horrible snow storms with white-out conditions. Luckily, Alex had all sort of fun activities to help pass the time. We had raffles and trivia contests. Mike and I had brought DVDs for the kids which the bus driver let us play on the bus's system. Thankfully, the other passengers didn't mind watching Cars and Toy Story. We had brought snacks, coloring books, and video games as a preemptive measure to keep the kids entertained on the long drive, but they surprised us by being incredibly well behaved. The other passengers kept commenting on how they were worried when they saw such young kids board the bus, but were impressed by how well behaved they were. Emily would always answer them by saying, "Nobody wants to hear me cry, so let's all have fun!" Despite the long drive and lack of sleep, nothing seemed to upset the kids except when Emily misunderstood and thought that we were going to Lost Vegas. She insisted that she didn't want to be lost, she wanted to watch Boise State.
We arrived in Vegas that evening. The rest of the passengers took a shuttle from the hotel to the strip, but we didn't have any money for the taxi ride back. Instead, we stayed in the hotel, ordered a pizza, and took hot baths to warm up from the cold bus ride. We were all too exhausted to do anything else anyhow!
The next morning, we hit the strip. We figured there must still be plenty to do without spending money. What we didn't take into account was the amount of walking and the amount of rain. Our hotel was "just off the strip," but we didn't realize how far off the strip it really was! The kids and Mike had their fun at my expense as they watched my hair get curlier and curlier from the rain. I don't look good with curly hair. It only got worse as the rain stopped and my hair dried into a nice gravity-defying frizz. However, we were much more concerned about our shoes and pants. It wasn't until after we got back to the hotel that we found out that Vegas was under a flash flood warning. All we knew was that the water was often ankle deep and we were soaked through from all the walking. Still, we were enjoying ourselves too much to care.
When we got back from the strip, we all changed into dry clothes. Mike and I used my hair dryer and the hotel's hair dryer to try to dry out our shoes. In the end, it wasn't worth the effort. By game time, it was raining again, and it only took seconds of being outside before we were soaked. We headed to the stadium early and went to all the free tailgate activities we could find. We didn't have ponchos, and vendors were selling them for as much as $20 a piece. That's a bit too much for a garbage bag with arm holes, if you ask me! We finally found someone who offered to sell us a two pack for $5, and give them to the kids. Later, we saw a kid pull off his poncho and throw it on the ground because it had a hole in it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I snatched it up and put it on right then and there.
The game was the coldest I've ever attended, but it was totally worth it! Hyrum kept telling the Ute fans behind us, "Boise State wins by far." He wasn't trying to taunt them, but I don't think they appreciated it much, and they changed seats before the fourth quarter. An older couple in front of us kept fawning over Hyrum and Emily, and the kids ate it up. Best of all, Hyrum was right, and Boise "won by far."
After the game, we went down to the field and managed to get pictures with Joe Southwick the backup quarterback. Hyrum begged for the chance to meet a real football player, but he was stunned into silence when he saw just how tall he really was. Also, although we didn't get any pictures with the real Doug Martin, we did get a picture with the Muscle Hamster. Back at the hotel, we dried off and piled our beds high with warm blankets.
The next morning, we boarded the bus to Boise, then drove to Pocatello. We arrived home at 1:30 am Christmas Eve, and promptly fell asleep. When we woke up, it was to another surprise. Someone had given our family money to buy Christmas presents! Mike and I dumped our kids off with my parents and went shopping. We all met up at my Grandma Sears's house that evening for presents with the extended family. That night, we gave both kids new pajamas. Hyrum's had Mario, Luigi, and Bowser on them, and Emily's had zebra pants and a zebra applique on the shirt and came with a stuffed zebra. Hyrum ran around pretending to be Mario, collecting coins and jumping on blocks. Emily was in heaven pretending to be a zebra. I think that in her mind, zebras are as close to perfection as anything on this earth. The next morning we opened presents and enjoyed a nice Christmas at my mom's house. I promise you we had a good time even though I don't have pictures or videos. I didn't have time to recharge my camera after Vegas. Oops!
My birthday was December 31st, and I turned 30 this year. It's funny because I don't think of other people in their 30s as being old, but when it's me...
We had a small party at home on my birthday. Hyrum and Emily got me a necklace. Mike got me some gloves, a hair dryer, and an antenna for our tv. The best part of the day was when I went to see my mom at work and my step-dad was there. You'd think my kids would know Sherwin well enough to know that he loves to tease, but I guess Emily is just too gullible. For your enjoyment, here's the condensed conversation.
Sherwin: Well, it's your mom's birthday. Should we give her birthday spankings?
Emily: NOOO!! Don't give her spankings! She'll be good and happy, so please don't give her spankings, Grandpa!
Everyone in the credit union could hear her panicked yelling. One guy in the corner was trying to pretend he wasn't eavesdropping, but his whole body was shaking from suppressed laughter. Most people openly laughed and commented on how cute the kids were. It made my day.
New Year's Day brought with it a lot of snow. In response to this, my mom issued a challenge to all her kids and some of Sherwin's. The contest? Who could build the best snowman! We took on the challenge along with Mom and Sherwin and Dale. I was jealous of the kids' new snow pants and grateful for my new gloves by the end of the very cold and wet day. As always, if you want more pictures, they can be found on Facebook.
And the finished product:
Ta-da! It's a cat, in case you were wondering.
Meow!
Now, lest you snowman purists out there say, "That's not a snowman, it's a cat!" yes. We know. However, it was constructed in the traditional 3 part fashion. The hind quarters were the largest ball, the medium one is the shoulders, and the smallest is, of course, the head. Mike named him "Dave" since his brother loves cats so much. Here is my mom and Sherwin's entry.
RAWR! It's a bear.
...with a golf club.
I'm guess the bear didn't have a great game. He looks a little upset. Dale had piled up some snow to make a sculpture, but hadn't gotten any farther before the deadline. So, who do you think won? Comments?
Although this didn't happen on either my birthday or on New Year's, it's still worth mentioning. Dave and Hilerie, if you're reading this, you might want to skip down to the next part. BSU beat TCU in a great Fiesta Bowl! Congrats Broncos!
Well, now the holidays are over. Hyrum is back in school, and Mike and I start the semester tomorrow. Wish us luck!
Christmas Eve we took a break from our unpacking to spend the evening with my extended family opening presents to and from my Grandma Sears and eating pizza and junk food. We had a really great time. On our way home that night, we needed to stop at my mom's house to pick up some of the stocking stuffers we had left there. We could see that the roads were already starting to drift over a bit, and the thought crossed my mind that maybe we should spend the night at my mom's house. I brushed aside that notion, and we went home.
I must say, I love Christmas. I love it even more after this year when the, "You'd better go to sleep or Santa won't be able to come," threat worked so perfectly. There was not even one peep from the kids that night. In the morning, the kids looked in their stockings and played with the toys from Santa while we waited for word from Mom and Sherwin about if we could get through the roads to their house for breakfast and presents. The news wasn't good. All the roads to my mom's house were completely closed, and there was little hope that the snow plow drivers would want to take time away from their own families on Christmas morning to clear the roads. Eventually, one of their neighbors shoveled out a corner, and Sherwin was able to get through in his truck to pick us up. We packed an overnight bag for our family, anticipating the possibility that we would have to stay the night.
Christmas breakfast was great, and soon we were opening presents. The kids had a great time. Hyrum is just the right age to really enjoy it. Among their mountain of presents were dishes (which go perfectly with the kitchen Emily got for her birthday), Legos, a race track, walkie-talkies, and a fridge toy to help Emily learn letter sounds and help Hyrum spell 3 letter words. Hyrum is now a spelling pro, and Emily knows nearly all her letters. Mike got me a NintendoDS Lite, and I got Mike a computerized telescope. The snow continued to come, so we spent the day playing with the kids' new toys. After they went to bed, we adults played board games.
The morning brought visitors in the form of stranded drivers on their way to work. Someone who was obviously mentally unbalanced had told them that the best way to town was through those country roads. The driver called a cab, which of course, couldn't get through the snow. However, they were able to get out with a truck, and soon the plows came through to clear the roads. Mom was able to get to work, and Mike and I were able to return home to our lonely cat.
I was able to play with my DS right away, but Mike has had some trouble with his telescope. It has been too cold, windy, and cloudy to use it much since Christmas even though he has taken it out nearly every night. He hasn't been able to train the drive or set it to the alignment stars yet. The telescope has an on board computer that will search out stars, planets, and galaxies for you once it is aligned correctly. It has just been entirely too cold to stand to be outside for that long, and the lenses freeze and fog if we're out too long. However, we did get one video (there's also a camera that fits into the lens drop in) of the moon a couple nights ago when we had a clear night. It's not super great. The best part to view through the lens without the camera is the line between the dark and light side where the shadows define the craters well. However, the camera went out of focus and began shaking at this point in the video. Mike tried to adjust the focus as we filmed, but that only made it worse. There was also junk on the lens. Probably fuzz that fell off our gloves as we switched to different magnification lenses and the camera. It looks so much better through the telescope than through the camera. Mike added music to cover our geeky sounding voices the camera had picked up while we filmed. By the way, the camera/telescope isn't panning. That's just how quickly the moon moves in magnification. When the on board computer is turned on, it'll track objects across the sky gradually so that they won't move out of the viewer.
Ta da! Ok, not the best video... We'll take better pictures and videos when it gets warmer. Maybe we'll post a picture or video of one of the planets. The telescope can supposedly see Jupiter at about the size of a dime.
I said I would post again after Emily's birthday on December 6th. Well, if you didn't notice, it's now January 6th. So now I have to go back over a very eventful month and try to remember it all. Sadly, I never had the time to make Emily's birthday video, so pictures will have to do. I also don't have any Christmas pictures or pictures of my own birthday. Sorry. It's been a really crazy month.
We had been in East Idaho until 3 days before Emily's birthday, so we weren't able to plan much. Emily loves anything pasta, so we took her to a local place in Meridian called White Water Pizza and Pasta to open presents. Among her presents were bottles for her doll and Dora and Boots figurines which she loves to hug.
She also got a Dora umbrella, a doll stroller, and a mini stove/oven play set from my mom which is now her's and Hyrum's favorite toy. I didn't take many pictures of our trip to White Water, but took several videos. However, my camera was dying and the videos turned out badly. I'll see what I can do to clean them up. Maybe I'll just take new videos of her playing with her presents or something so I can make a video for her.
Mike and I finally moved out of our apartment in Nampa on Saturday, December 13th. We had planned to move out on the Thursday before, but U-Haul did not have our reserved truck in time so we had to push it out for the weekend. Lucky us -- It started a light snow as we loaded the final boxes in the truck. After cleaning the house and vacuuming the last Easy Mac noodle off the dining room floor, we drove out of Nampa at about 5:30pm. We got a call from both my mom and my step dad while stopped at a gas station in Nampa. They both warned that we shouldn't come because of a bad storm. However, everything was packed. There was nothing left to go back to, so we pushed forward. The roads were icy from the first snow of the year and many Boiseites had no clue how to drive in it. This was the cause of 12 accidents beyond the Vista exit which left us at a dead halt for 1.5 hours. Once it started going again, it was by no means fast. I think our average speed was 35 mph and at one time I topped it at 45 mph to pass someone. By the time we got to Mountain Home, 3 hours from when we left Nampa (normally a 1 hour drive), we took shelter in a Best Western and waited out the storm that night. It continued to storm all night, but the roads were mostly bare by the time we got away from the Mountain Home area. They got bad again around Pocatello and increased in severity all the way to Shelley. We got to Shelley white-knuckled and exhausted.
There was a little time between when I arrived in Shelley and when Mike came with the U-Haul. I took that opportunity to shower and unwind from the drive since, as soon as he showed up, we had to hit the road again to go to my Aunt's house in Firth for my Grandma's 90th birthday open house. I adore my Grandma Page and was so glad we were able to honor her in that way. My dad was also at the open house. I haven't seen my dad since the summer I was pregnant with Hyrum. He got to meet Hyrum and Emily for the first time ever. Once they got over their initial shyness, they loved him.
Monday started a week of madness. We had gone ahead with the move from Nampa because we were supposed to have our apartment by no later than Tuesday. U-Haul had agreed to let us keep the truck a few extra days for free when we let them know of the situation. The truck would be due back on Wednesday. However, on Monday, the apartment manager told us our application was rejected because we would make too much money with Mike having a part time job. This was a load of bull. Her numbers were all speculative. There was no way Mike could make as much as she assumed he would while going to school full time. She returned our holding deposit to us, and we began the search for a new apartment. We looked all over Shelley and Idaho Falls the following few days, but nothing looked as good as the apartment we had originally applied to.
On Tuesday, Mike went back to the apartment office and begged the manager to review our application, saying he wouldn't be making that much at part-time. He even went as far as to tell her he wouldn't work if it came down to getting the apartment or not. Living in Shelley was a priority to us because child care in Idaho Falls is twice as expensive as we can get in Shelley. The manager agreed to look over the application again, but said she couldn't promise anything, and told us to keep looking since our U-Haul was due back the next day.
Mike tried to follow up with her on Wednesday, but she was screening his calls, and wouldn't answer. We called U-Haul and told them we needed to extend the rental on the truck at a rate of $40/day.
Thursday, Mike finally got a hold of the manager who told us that she had been up all night working on our application and didn't foresee any problems. Worst case scenario, we could move in Friday morning at 10:00. This was great news because if Friday came and went with no apartment, we wouldn't be able to sign a lease and move in until Monday. Keeping the U-Haul over the weekend would be very costly. The apartment manager had already deposited our $300 security deposit check (without giving us keys or a lease).
10:00 came and went with no word. Mike called at 11:00 to ask what was going on, and the manager told us that the compliance manager had rejected our application because she needed a slew of ridiculous paperwork. For example, she saw that we had a foreclosure on our house, but for whatever reason said she needed proof that we no longer owned the house. We didn't have this paperwork. She also asked for proof that I wasn't a student because I had student loans. Well, duh. Of course I still have student loans. That doesn't mean I'm going to school, just that I did at one time. She also wouldn't accept my letter of hire from Center Partners even though it supplied all the information she needed. We were so sick of the run-around they were giving us, and took matters into our own hands. I went to Center Partners and was told that they couldn't fill out the paperwork the apartments needed because I wasn't yet an employee, but that they could send a letter to the management with the exact same information that was in the letter of hire that they wouldn't accept before. We asked HR to go ahead with that, but had little confidence that the manager would accept it. We had no other choice. We also called my student loan holder who said that they could just look online to prove that I wasn't a student, but that no documentation existed on the matter. In the end, Mike and I had to sign an affidavit saying that we no longer owned our home in Ammon and that I wasn't a student. If they had just asked us for this information a month before, when we started the application process, we could have spared ourselves a lot of headaches.
We sat in the apartment office for 3 hours waiting for the compliance manager in Seattle to approve or disapprove our application. She kept sending emails back to the apartment manager asking for different documents, explanations on the documents she had received, and explanations on how the apartment manager had figured our income. By the end, the apartment manager was as fed up with the compliance manager as we were. Finally, a little after 5:00 pm, the compliance manager gave in. The apartment manager told us she wanted to go home, and didn't want to go over the lease until Monday, but gave us a key so we could move in and return the U-Haul.
Unfortunately, it was too late to return the truck without being charged for the day, so we kept it over night and moved in on Saturday. I'm pretty sure it was well below 0° on the day we moved. Because it was so close to Christmas, we were unable to recruit any extra help . Mike, Sherwin, and Sherwin's son Dale unloaded the truck themselves while Mom and I stayed home with the stomach flu. By the afternoon, we were feeling a bit better and went to the apartment to unpack boxes.
We took a drive in the car a few days ago, and I turned around to look at the kids and saw this.
So sweet! I thought maybe it was just a one time thing, but since then, I've noticed they hold hands in the car every time we go out.
I'm so glad that they love each other so much. I hope they're always close even when they're grown up.
We got our taxes done and got a good amount back. It was really wonderful to pay off old hospital and doctor bills as well as paying back unemployment. We were able to pay off everything but our student loans. Mike was in a state of euphoria when he called me today to tell me he had paid off everything. I bought a new coat (I didn't have one before and was always stealing Mike's) and a phone (my old one had... issues) and Hyrum got a new booster car seat so Emily could upgrade to a forward facing seat. After all that, we still had a rather large chunk of money to put into savings. Maybe someday we'll be able to get back into a house again.
It's been cold here with lots more snow that you usually see in the Boise area. Mike loves it, but I could sure do without it. I'm just glad, after seeing the pictures Jen posted, that we don't live in Wyoming!
I really enjoyed watching the prophet's funeral. I thought it was really nice. I was hoping to find the closing song and video clips they showed, but I haven't been able to find it on youtube or the church website yet. I always liked that arrangement. Gotta love Wilburg! I was surprised today to see that Dieter F. Uchtdorf was appointed as the second counselor. I guess we'll have to wait to see who will fill the vacancy in the Quorum of the 12.
Ta-da! It's a cat, in case you were wondering.
Meow!
