No excuses, but this is where I've been

"The girl who vowed to blog a post a day," scoffs you... Well I got through the entire month of January and knew that daily wasn't really very realistic, but still I thought I'd do better than disappear for over a week.  "What happened? Where have you been?" asks you...

Well Friday I ended up at the car wash. The free car wash.  I had decided to go ski by myself for just a couple of hours and by the time I got back my car was dirty. Nasty dirty. I was afraid my clothes would get dirty just climbing into it. The problem is that it was raining.  Not enough to clean off my car raining, just wet enough to make all the car washes in town close up shop for the day.

My only option was one of those drive through kind with no workers. I went to buy one at the newly re-opened gas station around the corner.  A man approached me and asked why I would buy a car wash today? And why here? I just pointed to my car. He nodded knowingly, but then listed off several other locations that would be more thorough in getting the job done.  I explained to him that all of those places required workers to scrub your cars down first and none of them would be offering that today. He smiled and said that one of them would.  He made a quick call the the Chevron he happened to own and let them know that there was a lady in a silver Infiniti that was crazy enough to want a car wash on this rainy day and that they were to take care of it on the house and to do it well.  I left the station around the corner and the kind stranger and one mile and one car wash later he had a new customer, and I was one happy lady! 

Me and my clean car headed over to Beamer park to watch Garrett at my first ever rugby match.  It was the muddiest, slipperyest (so what if I totally made that word up just now!)roughest,  most confusing thing I have ever watched.  I don't understand that game at all!  

While this was going on Wes was on quite the adventure with the priests and laurels trying to get up to two cabins near Huntington Lake.  The neighborhood the cabins were in had 8" of fresh snow and a steep uphill grade.  Getting there ended up involving tow ropes for almost all of the vehicles at some point.  

 With everyone else occupied, my parents and I took Brynne to the movies to see Nut Job. She cracked up laughing the whole time, and we just laughed at how happy she was.

But the night was still young after our flick and all the guys were gone, so I went back to the movies with a friend and watched Matt and George in The Monuments Men. Those men don't even need last names, you know who I'm talking about. And yes I went out to the movies twice on Friday night, whatever!

Jeff was totally unaware of all the excitement going on at home since he left thursday to work in Sacramento for two days and from there went straight to Idaho to spend time with his dad.  He's been battling cancer for the last 6 years but it had recently spread to his brain and Jeff knew this might be one of the last times he might have to spend time with him.

Saturday was one of those dumb days where everything took longer than it should.  My 7 mile run turned into a 7 mile walk because of my dumb hamstring and all I could thing of was Gilligans Island and how they were only supposed to be on a three hour tour and ended up being gone years! Yeah that was last week's run. It made me late/almost miss the a baby shower for a dear friend, but I snuck in for the last few minutes.   The rest of the day was equally as frustrating but I did my best to be productive. By Sunday evening we were all a little nuts.

Wes was laughing and rolling around on the counter tops

And I got roped into a game of war with Brynne! 

 Somehow she magically won! (wink, wink)

 Monday there was no school so after a quick run I was back up on the mountain skiing with Drew.  But skiing would be a generous term.  It was actually closer to downhill ice skating. It was a gorgeous day though and we had lunch with some friends who happened to be up there too. In all though, we were there for less than 3 hours.

 That night after I picked Garrett up from rugby practice Garrett told me he'd been having stomach pains since before practice.  They continued to get worse over the next hour until he ended up on the floor bawling in pain.  This from my big tough guy, I was pretty nervous. He said he hadn't been in this much pain ever not even with any of his 6 broken bones.  Since it was after hours and Kaiser had no more urgent care appointments available for the night the only option was for us to go to the emergency room which usually consists of several hours of waiting.  I tried several non Kaiser urgent care facilities and in the end wound up back at Kaiser's ER. They did a quick intake and then sent us back out to the waiting room.  Some friends came and gave Garrett a blessing as his pain had started to subside.  By 1am we were tired and sick of waiting  so we just went home and I scheduled an appointment for tuesday afternoon.  They ended up doing blood tests and still arent sure what the deal was, but he's been taking it easy and has been feeling fine.  Hopefully it was just some kind of a fluke thing.

 Tuesday Brynne had activity days.  She's been spending lots of time with a bunch of the girl in her primary class, most of whom have moved here in the last several months.  Above is Brynne tackling Jess Blackwell.  Her daughter Isabel and Brynne have been spending tons of time together and I just have to say she is one awesome lady!

 She just moved here and has spent hours of her time helping people move, she's organized an exercise group, thrown a baby shower, and is constantly stepping in and vlunteering to help anyone out who might possibly need it.  It's so incredible to me to see the way she has just jumped into everything in such a short time and is always at the middle of anything fun that is going on in the ward.  I totally thought of her when I saw the picture above on Facebook. She is not one of those ladies sitting on the third row letting life happen to them, she jumped right into the front car is all in.  I always want to be like that!

 Wednesday night I got to go to celebrate with my friend Kacie who has just  had the sequel to her first book published by Harper.  It's the third book of hers published in the last year and she has another on the way.  It's sooo cool to see awesome things happening for her!

On Thursday that has often been dubbed in social media as "throwback thursday" I saw these beauties in Target. Really. I have seen a ton of crazy styles come back into fashion recently. It's one of those indicators that you're getting old when fashion starts to recycle itself.   But honestly of all the things to come back around iI never thought I 'd see the likes of these again! If I wasn't so dang lazy I'd round up a picture or ten of me in a pair of these, much younger, with big hair, but I'll spare us both for now. 

It had been a busy and eventful week. I had been going to bed pretty early and sleeping til late and still feeling pretty wiped out so I played hooky from all responsibility thursday morning and enjoyed my favorite room on a comfy couch with the sunshine pouring in and a good book.  Sorry for palying hooky from the blog too.  I got lots of texts and calls wondering where my posts had gone.  This is where they've been, but we're back now.