Just a re-cap

Goodness....how do you briefly recap 6 months of goings-on???

Maybe just a few highlights.

Bear with me here.

Tyler turned 14. Tanner turned 16.

I am that old apparently.

Here they are the Sunday they were ordained a Teacher and a Priest. So good to have both Grandpa's there.

The boys are now old enough for this (just for the record....I totally FOUGHT this one. I didn't want them to start.) (However....Tyler's got more of a 'stache' than any 14 year old should have........which, also just for the record, frustrates Tanner to death. He only has enough hairs on his face that you could mostly count them on one hand) (but....he will remind you that you can see them.....and that's what's important, right?)

We had a combined birthday of indoor soccer for the boys - with all their best buds. Fun times for sure.

Tanners birthday fell on a Sunday this year.But, rest assured that bright and early Monday morning (no kidding people.....we were THERE at 7:00 AM)....we were pulling in to the Utah DMV to get this:

Now he can drive his car.... (which he bought at a yard sale for $150 bucks) (kid you not).

Jason and I have been able to run several races this year. The Salt Lake half marathon.

TheOgden Marathon (Awesome. Hard. But Awesome.)

And the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay, which runs from Logan to Park City. Had a fabulous time! (Thanks Aunt Carol for letting our whole gang hang out with you for the afternoon!)

Jason was also "Spartan" for a day - running an 8 mile obstacle course with everything from fire, mud bogs, 9 foot high walls to scale, barbed wire to slide under, and of course Gladiators to battle. He said that the 8 miles seemed harder than the full marathon. (Having run the entire 26.2 miles......I don't actually believe him though) :)

And I ended the summer running the top of Utah half marathon.

I'm not a real runner. Those of you who are my neighbors know that. You see me plodding down the road at my turtle-pace with my non-runners legs. In the middle of these races I am asking myself over and over "why oh why am I DOING this??? This is NOT one ounce of fun". But as soon as the finish line is in sight, and then behind me, I know the answer.

It's the feeling of accomplishing something you didn't think you could. Slow as it may be, I can DO hard things. And I love that feeling.

Life is good. And hard. And did I mention busy?

Grateful for opportunities and reminders to not only DO hard things, but more importantly to Enjoy the Journey while we're here.

Hushpuppies, cancer, and ice!

Goodness - this was going to get updated a little faster I thought......however, life just apparently 'happens', and then all of a sudden it's been a couple of months. So once again, this is a slightly old-ish update, but for family history sake - now it's a documented old-ish update :)

A few days after Christmas, we got a phone call from Jason's mom. She was diagnosed with Multiple Myloma, a type of cancer.

WHAT???? Back up a second. We were Not prepared for that announcement. That isn't something we were planning on. At all. Cancer is something that happens to other people. For the first month or so, it seems fairly surreal.

However, 3 months later - What a remarkably positive attitude Carol has about this whole thing. And how well she's responding to treatment. Truly inspiring to all of us.

Nearly 5 rounds of Chemo down, and soon a bone-marrow transplant (and WHO KNEW the miracles of modern medicine?....She is actually going to be her OWN DONOR for the transplant!)

Truly a blessed time we live in, and what a remarkable woman she is!

With in just a few days of mother in law being diagnosed with cancer, we got another phone call that her mother - Grandma Britt had passed away (my mother-in-laws- mother) (got that?)

So last minute arrangements were made, Chemo was put on hold for a week, kids were shuffled around, and thanks to many wonderful friends picking up our parental duties - we were able to spend 5 days in North Carolina with some remarkable people.

GrandpaWoody Britt is quite sincerely the cutest southern man you'll ever meet. There's a sparkle in his eye, and the best southern accent you'll ever hear! He spoke at the funeral and it was truly touching.

Almost all of Jason's siblings were abletomake the trip, and we had a fabulous time experiencing a little of NC and just visiting together. Some of the NC highlights were visiting the U.S.S.North Carolina, eating at Captain Ratties (best darn clam chowder I've ever had !), and of course eating authentic North carolina barbecue and hush puppies with the whole fam! Husband and I both agreed hushpuppies could become a staple at our house, AND that we'd weigh much MUCH more if we lived in North Carolina!

The day before we were to leave there was a big storm on the weather front. Stores were closing early, gas stations all but deserted,and you've never seen the canned food isles at Walmart so bare! And honestly, there was no more than a few flurries in the air. We spent a good chunk of the night chuckling at everyone's apparent terror about the impending storm, which we were certain would be no more than a 'light-dusting' of snow.

So.....imagine our surprise when we woke up the next morning, ready to head to the airport and this is what we saw:

The pictures may not do it enough justice, but the ENTIRE van was completely ICED over - 1/2 inch to an inch thick. (it sort of looks like water in the picture - believe me, it was ICE). Completely.

We then embarked on the scariest 2 1/2 hour drive of my life. If you've never driven in an ice storm, then there's absolutely nothing to compare it too. The roads don't do that here where we live. Thick thick ice - not black ice - just plain old thick ice covering every part of the roads. I think we lost count of cars that had gone off the roads after 20 or so.....and that was in a relatively short distance too. My heart was a pounding! Just having experienced a crash in poor weather the month earlier, I think I was a little hyper-sensitive to the driving conditions, and quite honestly I don't know if I had ever been more relieved in all my entire life than when we FINALLY reached the airport.

It's always good to find your way back home again.

Me, Stef, and Heather back at the airport.

Much ado

Sheesh! So much has happened in the last few months, I'm truly not even sure where to start.

This post should probably be 4 separate posts.....but we'll try and condense it as best we can.

I think Chronologically is probably the bestway to go here, so here it goes....

Thanksgiving weekend (I KNOW that was a long time ago, and this is technically very OLD news. But news none-the-less, and since this blog is serving as a bit of family history project for me......it's better documented later than never, right?).

Thanksgiving weekend. Winter storm. En route to a family vacation, we were involved in a car wreck. Roads were super slushy and slick, and the visibility was poor.

Just coming down from the summit of a mountain pass, the car startedsliding, spun around, and hit the concrete barrier in the middle of the freeway head on. Spun around again, and hit again- this time in the back.

After first assessing that there were no injuries, we offered a prayer of gratitude.

The car sort of limped off to the side of the road where we hopped out in the snow to see the damage. The front end of the car was quite literally DRAGGING on the ground. Back end a bit squashed as well.

Realizing that we were most definitely not in a very safe place on the side of the freeway, and realizing that the car, for now at least, as still somewhat drivable, we decided that our best option would be to try andmake it to Beaver (the next town which was about 11 miles away). A prayer wassaid, and we literally plowed snow with thefront end of our car as we s l o w l y made our way into a Beaver gas station.

It was a Sunday, and our insurance agent informed us that for 'some reason' it appeared that not only was there no rental car place open any where close, but all the auto shops were also closed (only in Utah....). Our only option was to stay in a hotel in Beaver until the morning, or somehow get to the St. George airport, where there was rental caravailability.

The van was becoming a spectacle. People were gettingout of their cars to take pictures. Seriously. Embarrassing.

Jason wrangled up some tin-snippers, and with the help of the boys they were able to cut OFF the front end of the car so it looked like this:

Said another prayer, and headed s l o w l y again out to the freeway headed for St. George.

There's no reason we SHOULD have made it all the way to St. George. After the van was looked at by the auto collision center and declared a 'total loss', we were again reminded of angels watching over us.

All the engine mounts had been broken. The frame of the car was bent. Radiator smashed in. Every sensor and light ON (check engine. Check brakes. Check oil. No airbags. Low tire pressure. Seriously, you name it, the sensor light was on).

The trip was slow. Andloud. There were a few 'stray' pieces of the front end that husband couldn't quite cut away with the snips, so things were rubbing against the tires the whole way down.

It looked pathetic I'm sure.

But, we made it. All the way to the St. Georgeairport.

And rented a newer van.

The kids loved it. And wanted us to buy it. It had TWO TV screens. Awesome.

The crash was inconvenient. And expensive. My heart started wishing that the concrete barrier hadn’t been there in the first place. Wouldn’t it had been better to just slide into the median and gotten stuck in the snow, instead of hitting a slab of concrete? There wouldn’t have been near the damage (if any) to the car. Perhaps we mighthave needed a tow-truck to pull us out, but other than that - that damage would have been minimal, and we could have continued on our trip much easier and cheaper than we are now.

Of course as we were coming home from our vacation later that week, - children and parents alike were eager to see the ‘site’ of our crash earlier in the week (remember, it was stormy, and visibility was not good. We knew about how many miles outside of a certain town we were when we crashed, but that’s about all)

Imagine our audible gasps as we approached the crash site. We hadn’t realized that the place we wrecked into the concrete barrier was a place where the Freeway is divided. The North bound lanes lie 30 - 50 feet BELOW the South bound lanes.

That same concrete barrier, the one that I complained about causing somuch inconvenience and trouble, was the same one that saved our lives.

I was much humbled that day as we drove the rest of the way home. Thinking about a loving Heavenly Father, who kept our family safe with a concrete barrier. And couldn't help but think of how muchsafety there is in the gospel.

Well goodness....that story went and got a little wordier than I had planned (is that a sign that I talk too much????). If I tackle everything else that has happened since then, this could potentially be the longest blog post on record.

So......I think I'll end there.

Stay tuned for more adventures coming soon :)

Oh BTW....just for the record - even after all that - we still had a fabulous vacation. Disneyland was fun as ever. And the beach was completely awesome.