All in One Weird Week

Life has been a little weird lately and I'm tired.    

No, I didn't say I'm weird,  though some would argue that that's also a true statement.   I'm referring to the fact that in amidst our normal busy life stuff, there has been a whole lot of really weird stuff making life even busier than usual and maxing out my mental bandwidth!     This blogpost shows a glimpse at one single week.  

Let's take a look at the somewhat normal stuff first.   

 It started off with dinner for the masses.  Yes, somehow hosting dinner for big groups has become a normal thing in our lives.   Glen smoked brisket and we had a ton of food:  

We had a decent turnout of people (about 30 all together)...

We love having our ward members in our home and feeding them home-cooked food...

And the food was definitely a hit, though I made too much corn and too many lemon bars...

I did a postcard challenge with some of them (everyone in this picture) and that was fun.  What is a postcard challenge, you ask?   It's when I challenge them to give me a word/theme and I go through my stash and send it to them in the mail.  It's a really fun way to share my postcards with them and to challenge myself to dig into the depths of my postcard stash.  Some words that challenged me this round were rutabaga, carrots, and garnishment.   

We have an awesome ward!   

It's been a very warm and dry winter overall, but we've had a little more rain lately.   One of the days we went on a wet walk...

This is what I looked like after...

I found these  cute photos taken by Emma in the camera roll that made me smile...

I hosted book group one night, then went to see Bella M. perform in Romeo and Juliet in the BYU ballet the next night, then went to a Valentine's dinner with a bunch of Kristina's friends that have relocated to Utah.   I do have to say that talking about books, seeing old friends at the ballet, and hanging out with new friends was all good for my psyche with all the other weird stuff going on.   I made these heart-shaped O-Henry bars for the Valentines dinner, then served the rest at our family dinner the next night.  

 

The sister of one of our ward members came to town for the long weekend.  After talking with her, we learned that she had just returned from serving in Ellie's mission.  What did I do?   I started blubbering and crying, because she'd seen our missionary more recently than me, which made me extra excited for June.  I am not a big crier, but I've been missing our missionary extra ever since she went past the year mark in December!  

Here's a glimpse at the Sunday dinner that week...we had burger bowls, which were extremely delicious and enjoyed by all at our full table!   This is where we enjoyed the rest of the heart shaped O-Henry bars.  

So that's mostly all the normal stuff. 

Let's get on to the weird stuff (definitely no pictures of this craziness).

1.  I have somehow become the assistant for helping an elderly relative evict an adverse tenant who has overstayed his welcome.   It's been a LONG, exhausting process which involves talking to attorneys, calling the suicide hotline multiple times, and trying to protect my relative from being taken advantage of.  We are going to great lengths to try to do this in a way that's a win-win for everyone, but it's hard when one of the parties is not a reasonable person.   I am ready for this process to be over.  

2. I left a negative review for a place on Google and the owner PICKED A FIGHT with me!    It was actually pretty bad and we ended up deleting our review, because we are chickens and they totally called us out by name.  We did absolutely nothing wrong, but they said a lot of inflammatory, gaslighting, threatening things (something we noticed they do with all of their negative reviews).  I still get very angry about it every time I think about it, and I really wanted to leave it up, because we did nothing wrong, but Glen was concerned because his name got dragged into the whole thing.  Seriously evil.   Please let me know if you ever want to go to a therapist office in Provo and I would love to tell you which one to run the other way from.  The way they attack any critique on them whatsoever tells you all you need to know about the way they do business and does not reflect well on a business that has to do with mental health.  We deal with a lot of  therapist offices with Glen's calling and every single interaction we had with them was an exercise in extreme frustration.   The owner of this office is clearly not mentally well himself, because mentally well people do not treat other people {even those that disagree with the way they do things} the way that he does.     I  started listening to "Let it Go" on repeat and did some hard exercises trying to burn off some negative energy and get my brain to a more positive place. 🙄

 <deep breath>  

And lest you think that's all of the weird stuff...it's not. That's just all that happened in that one week. I'll blog more about the rest of it later, but the weirdness definitely did not subside after that week was over. Some things to look forward to in  upcoming blogposts: an out of town funeral, a serious injury on the way home from said funeral, an apocalyptic snowstorm for some of my kids, an unexpected trip, and a sacrament talk ...plus more eviction drama.   yay.



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Mid-Summer Visit from Some of Our Favorites

A few weeks ago, my sister and her kiddos came to visit!  Then my brother joined the fun.    

As always with their visits, it meant life got a little extra chaotic for a bit, but it was a {mostly} happy chaos, so we loved it!  

Highlights of the visit included: 

* lots of time with J, Manuel, and Isaiah!

* Denali LOVED all the extra attention with them there

* With three of the four C. girls (and Mom) there, it meant we got to do a lot of talking time

*  My Legos got well-loved again 

*  We took a trip to the aquarium

*  Silliness and potty humor was abundant

* I got to expand my repertoire of music to way more "exciting" genres (according to I, M, and J anyway)

*   Lots of combined family dinners and culinary offerings not normally found at our house...

*  Pete came to town and we  had a big family dinner down in Provo to include the college kids

* 7 of the 10 boy cousins were all together...just missing Ben, Jack, and Lincoln

* Had 2 of the 8 girl cousins together...just missing Cam, Ellie, McKenzie, Lauren, Bridgette, and Anna

*  4 of the 8 siblings together!   

*  We don't see Pete often enough, so it was fun to have him there! 

* Pete's son, Davin, is a superstar baseball player who had come to participate in a BYU sports camp.

Lowlights included: 

*  I had a  major meltdown that I can only assume was fueled by hormones,  lack of sleep, and lack of routine.  It was of the epic sort I have only once every few years, so that was stupid.  I got to practice all the skills I had recently learned in my emotional resilience class at church (FSITL).  

* Nate came into town a few hours after Pete and Davin left, so we barely missed having 5/8 of the siblings together

In other news:  

* Some big changes are happening and life has taken a turn for busyness in the extreme and the next few months/years are going to be crazy {and good...we hope!}  I'll probably share more details eventually...

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Sweet Home Alabama Love

I've recently returned home from visiting some of my favorite people in the universe!   

Right now they happen to live in Alabama, but they'll be moving to Rhode Island this summer for G's hem-onc fellowship, which will mean my regular easterly treks will take a northward turn later this year.   

This trip was filled with "Princess Lucie" stories which Lucie  requests several times a day and has a whole host of stipulations she wants included--like bad guys, a mean witch who messes up her room, Rapunzel, Flynn Ryder, and a giant cake.   I'll be honest, my stories were getting pretty ridiculous there at the end, but she didn't seem to mind too much.  😂 As mentioned in my previous post, this trip also included little Ollie's first birthday, so that was a fun thing to be a part of!     Both Lucie and Oliver are sweetie pies and I loved the chance I had to love on them while I was there.  

Another fun part of this trip, included visiting a collegiate track meet that UAB was hosting and my nephew, Andrew, was participating in as a shot-put thrower.  He attends the University of Louisiana-Monroe and this was his first time competing collegiately and his first time competing indoors.  He didn't end up performing as well as he'd hoped, but he performed solidly in the middle of the pack, so not bad at all for his first time!   Afterward, we took him out for lunch at T-Bones, a taste of Philadelphia right there in Birmingham!    It was his first time meeting Lucie and Oliver and the first time I'd seen him in about a year. 

I truly enjoy my visits with the B crew and I'm already looking forward to my next visit coming up in May...most likely my last visit to Alabama in quite a while! 

💗 Have a lovely Valentine's Day! 💗




 

The End

WARNING:   I am hereby dumping all the rest of our pictures from Utah into this post, and there is nothing chronologic or interesting whatsoever about it.    

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What trip to Utah would be complete without a visit to the ubiquitous LIGER found at the Monte L. Bean museum?  What is a liger, you ask?  This particular liger has an African lion for a father and a Siberian tiger for a mother.   Ligers do not occur naturally and they cannot reproduce,  but this beautiful one lived  at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City for 24-years.  

This is a zebra, not unlike the one Cami saw in Yellowstone. ;) 

Are you scared? 

Trying all sorts of ice cream on vacation is a tradition of ours, which made the BYU Creamery  a favorite stop whenever we were in Provo. 

The Salt Lake temple is beautiful and so distracting that the kids kept wanting to look at it instead of the camera! 

Weirdly I can't remember exactly what this building on Temple Square was.   Maybe the old tabernacle??  

We stopped at Cove Fort on the way home from St. George.  Don't laugh at my obnoxious hair that desperately needed to be dyed.  

We learned interesting facts about the cove...

and the kids enjoyed the old-fashioned activities.  

Park City--expensive, hot, and a my-stomach-hates-me-attack. 

In other words, the kids loved it, but you'd have to twist my arm... hard to go back.  

K and Nana

Nana and a few of her great grandchildren

Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Koi pond. 

Thanksgiving Point Natural Curiosity Museum.

Aunt H with Ellie and Adam. 

Ellie and Nana. 

Us with Nana.

Me and Mom. 

Ellie and Mom. 

Fancy hair-dos and trying on old formals. 

Granny's milkshakes in Heber

A random beautiful sunset one night. 

3/4 of the sisters. 

And this hereby concludes the travelogue.  The next post will be our saying-goodbye-to-Cami post and then I'll be on to blogging about life, the universe, and everything again!