Christmas with the Sisters...

This year, since I was working Christmas, I got together with my sisters and nieces on the weekend of the 16th to celebrate Christmas. We had a lot of fun!

Makaela and Makenzi with their new puppy, Baby.

Makaela is such a poser!

Opening presents...




Makaela playing with her new camera! She learned this from her Aunties - Wendy and Polly!

Polly, Brenda, Wendy (me) and Megan


Brenda with her girls, Makaela and Makenzi...


And finally, Makaela and I have so much fun doing our "faces" pictures together!









We always end up laughing SO HARD!!!


What a great time we all had!

The Cutting of the Christmas Trees...Part 2...

I know this is long overdue…I’m just recovering now, though I still have a good bruise.

My younger, but taller sister, Polly, and I spent the night at her home in Manti, UT, so we could get up at 6:45 a.m. on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, and stand in line in the freezing cold (10 degrees F) to get our Christmas tree tags ($5.00 each – very economical). We didn’t get there until 7:20, later than we’d planned, but the line wasn’t too long yet. We were wearing about 6 layers of clothing, along with a blanket and hot chocolate, and were ready for the 40-minute wait until the forest service would be there at 8 to sell the tags. I spaced my hot cocoa appropriately, to keep me warm the whole time, and at 8:00, I was just starting to feel a little chilly on my face, fingers, and toes. Great planning!




8:00 came and went, and we started getting concerned. Then someone came and said that the Forest Service wouldn’t be there until 9:00. I thought my toes were going to freeze and fall off! It got really cold in that last hour right as the sun was coming up. We finally bought our tags and went home to warm up. Polly made breakfast for us, and I took a brief nap, and rested, trying to warm up. Finally around 11 or so, Polly said we needed to get going to cut our trees, so we got dressed up again, and left to go up Manti Canyon to a place that Polly knows has good trees. She’d been scouting a little, and found a place that “no one goes to get their trees”. I asked if we could just take 4-wheelers or horses to go and get them. I should have been more concerned with her answer – “The 4-wheelers and horses can’t get up there”, but I was still caught up in the whole magical dream of it all. I mean…how bad could it really be, right?!



We got up there, and ended up hiking up about ½ mile straight up the hillside. Yeah…I wouldn’t want to ride a horse up that hillside…I’d rather take my chances on my own two feet (or my butt, whichever was more convenient). I found a good tree that was about 10’ tall, and yes, I actually chopped it down with a hatchet...





(well, I mostly chopped it down, and sawed the last little bit with a handsaw…Polly got tired of waiting for me to chop the whole thing down because I’d been working on it for about 20 minutes already – with breaks). Consequently, the base of my perfect Christmas tree is now massacred, but it’s okay, we’ll have to cut that part off when we cut it down to go into the stand anyways. We packaged it and drug it over the hill ready to go down the steep part.


Then we went back over the top of the hill and while Polly was scouting for her tree, I was taking pictures and enjoying nature. This is the last picture I took before "The Incident"...



This is where it got interesting…I didn’t want to hike all over the mountain while Polly scouted for her tree, so I was just walking around minding my own business, resting here and there, taking pictures and waiting for her to call me when she found it. That was when I had a great idea to take a picture from off the top of a big rock (waist to chest height). I didn’t set my things down, but thought I could easily get up on the rock. I was wrong. I mis-judged it, and lost my balance…next thing I know, I’m flying through the air backwards, and I realize that I am going to land flat on my back from about 3-4 feet off the ground. It was not good. Many things flashed through my mind…like some of the trauma patients I’ve taken care of with spinal injuries and back pain forever, concerns about a back injury if I did land flat on my back, and wishing I’d actually gotten in the shower that morning so I’d have clean underwear on (which I hadn’t) just in case I was going to be really injured. I think I landed flat on my back, and while the upper and middle parts of my back hit the dirt (thankfully!!!), my tailbone landed directly on the smaller pointed rock I’d been using to climb up on the bigger rock. Yep…I landed on my butt. It hurt SOOO bad!!! Polly heard my yelp, and yelled out asking if I was okay. I answered that I was fine, but I still wasn’t sure at that point. I immediately got up and started walking around, and was happy to see I still had normal movement and feeling in all of my extremities…it was just my butt that hurt really bad (REALLY BAD!), specifically, my tailbone. I’ve hurt my tailbone a couple of times before, and it felt a lot like those times. Then I started getting nauseous and almost dizzy, and was about to sit down so I didn’t fall, but was stripping clothes off instead (not all of them – just the top layers!) to take advantage of the cold air outside – to bring me out of the painful shock my body was going into. I had a big wave of nausea flood over me, and just didn’t feel great for quite a while. When I finally recovered, I looked at the rock I'd landed on and realized that I actually broke the rock! Of course of all the things I took pictures of that day, oddly enough, I didn’t take any pictures of the place I was injured.

I finally recovered enough and collected my things, and walked (very stiffly, and a little bow-legged with my toes pointed out at a 45-degree angle which felt the best) over to where Polly had found her 14' tree and was cutting it down with the handsaw (5 minutes). I laid out the tarp to drag her tree down the mountain on. I wish I’d gotten more pictures, but I didn’t because I was no longer feeling good…I had to measure every movement.





I was somehow able to help her get her tree over to the down-hill slope and while she pulled her tree down the mountain, I went and got mine, and pulled it down the mountain as well. Yep…I was still able to haul my tree off the mountain, though I no longer wanted to go down on my butt, and was VERY careful not to fall on it again. We got them loaded in the truck.





As we drove down the mountain, I made a make-shift “donut” with my two sweaters under my legs to hold my butt off the seat so I could tolerate the drive without hurting too much!

Here's Polly next to her truck with the "controversial" bumper sticker!



One of the first things I did when we got home, was check my bum in the mirror for a bruise. NOTHING! All that pain and nothing to show for it! The next morning, I found a bruise (black) the size of a silver dollar. The day after, it doubled in size. I’d put a picture up, but I don’t want my blog to be tagged as “inappropriate"! Overall it was fun, but I think that if I’m going to do this again, I need to have a boyfriend next time!

The Cutting of the Christmas Tree...Part 1

The Idea – Cutting my own Christmas Tree has always been a holiday dream of mine….there’s just something very romantic about going out into the WILD, choosing just the right tree, neatly cutting it down and bringing it home. My sister, Polly has done this for two years, this will be her third. This year, she talked me into going with her.

The Plan – We are planning on getting up early Saturday morning before the sun comes up to stand in line in sub-zero temperatures with 200 other people here in Manti, Utah, competing for about 50 Christmas Tree tags. Once we get our tags, we are going to come home and take naps before we get up at a much more reasonable hour to actually go cut the trees.

The Forecast – For Saturday, the current temperature forecast calls for highs in the 40’s, lows in the teens, with a CHANCE of sun in the afternoon. So far, no snow in sight. (According to Polly, it’s really too bad, because it’s easier if you can ride your Christmas tree down the hill like a sled.)

The Preparation – Friday night we are watching Chevy Chase’s “Christmas Vacation” for those last minute hints, ideas, and inspiration. Over the last few months, Polly has also been scouting the hills up the canyon on her horses, finding the perfect trees to go cut down.

The Tools – A BIG Truck for 2 big trees (thankfully, Polly has a Dodge Ram), a tape measure (trees always look smaller in the wild than they do in your living room), an ax (Polly doesn’t think I can chop my own tree down with an ax), a handsaw (for when the ax doesn’t work), good hiking boots, warm clothes, good work gloves, a tarp, rope, an Emergency First Aid kit, Bear Repellant, a camera (maybe a helmet cam?), a GPS watch (so we can find our way back to the truck when we get lost), a Cell Phone (so we can call 911 when we can’t find our truck with the GPS), water (they say staying hydrated helps prevent altitude sickness), biodegradable toilet paper (because of the extra water), Repelling Gear (just in case), oxygen (again, just in case – I’m not quite used to these elevations, and supposedly Polly found the perfect trees, but they are on the top of the mountain far beyond what MOST people consider an acceptable distance from the road), and finally, a hand gun to protect my perfect tree from other tree hunters who don’t want to work as hard as we are going to!

The Adventure – stay tuned…I will write all about it next week. (I’m sure I can write from my hospital bed with the free wireless internet they have in most hospitals these days!)

3 Kids, 2 Dogs…and a perfect day at the beach!

I spent a few days with the Felts in Long Beach, Washington, from the 31st of October to the 6th of November. The weather was perfect! One of the days while I was watching the girls so Brian and Tiffany could get out of town, I got the bikes out with the kids, and they all rode while I walked behind (to push, encourage, etc), on the trail right by their house.

I did a variety of things that week, some with them and some alone…trick-or-treating, bike riding, driving around and exploring the peninsula, playing cards, sitting and watching the ocean, etc… I had a great time!



Ready for trick-or-treating!



Brian and Tiffany in costume!



The kids on the trail...






The dogs can't get home fast enough.



Ilwaco, Washington on a perfect day...



I could live here...


The view from their back deck.

This should have been a dare…

I flew from the Salt Lake City airport to Portland on Halloween, and on a whim right before I left, decided to get out and wear my M&M Costume from a few years ago. It didn’t make sense to wear it to try and clear security, so I just packed it all in my carry-on bag, and waited until I arrived. Once off the plane, I slipped into the nearest restroom and took about 15 minutes to change into it. Then I walked out toting a purse and pulling my small carry-on suitcase with my former clothes in it.

It was an interesting study in psychology as I walked through the airport alone, dressed as a big red chocolate M&M. As I walked out of the restroom and onto the moving sidewalk, I heard the people behind me gasp and whisper to each other. My first thought was, “This should have been a dare!” It made me smile. I found it interesting that some people avoided all eye contact with me, but more people would look and smile at me, or just to themselves. As I made eye contact and smiled back, some of them laughed or made a comment if I was close enough to hear. I got several more smiles than any regular day of just smiling at people. I also found it interesting that the 3-4 other passengers that I walked by who were dressed up in costume to travel were mostly looking down and avoiding all eye contact with anyone and one of them even wore shades!

As I met Brian Felt and his daughter Olivia (who picked me up @ the airport), they were amused. Livvy had just woken up from a nap and wasn't sure what to think for a while, but she did sing a song about my costume on the drive home.

November Challenge

Several years ago, I was coming to a very busy holiday season, and I was a little sad that things seem to be so commercialized these days. I was wondering what I could do to make this holiday season special for me – something beyond the shopping and hype. As I thought about it, an idea formed, and I decided that I would start in November listing the things I was thankful for in my life. That way, I would appropriately recognize my blessings, and I would be in the right frame of mind to naturally move into Christmas. I started on November 1st and wrote one thing I was thankful for, the 2nd, I wrote two, the 3rd, I wrote three, and followed that through the whole month. Let me tell you, it’s easy for about the first 15 days…then it gets more difficult, as I couldn’t repeat things. I had to get creative! But what a great experience as I spent the month of November recognizing and thanking the Lord for my blessings daily. Since then, I have moved to a slightly modified version, and I only list one thing per day for the month of November. It’s been a blessing to me, and I even have a special book for it that I get out every November to use. I would challenge each of you to join me this year and keep a list, whether you take the BIG challenge and list as many as the date, or just one per day, I feel confident in saying it will be a blessing in your life.

Poor Coping? You decide...

As we head into this cold, snowy winter season (yes, I realize that technically I’m 2 months early, but tonight it is going to snow here), I’ve been feeling more anxious and “unbalanced” than usual. I feel at times that I’m grasping for anything to keep me from drowning in the cold gloom that goes with the weather, and the season. In this spirit, I have discovered a new coping mechanism for myself – SHOPPING! While I have in the past required an occasional “shopping spree” 2-3 times per year, lately I feel as if I’ve grasped onto it like there’s no tomorrow…like it’s the single thing that will save me from drowning in the gloom of the cold, dark season.

It all started as I was searching for a certain fabric in a certain color, for one of my next projects. I went to various fabric stores, and was unable to find it. I then realized that I could possibly find it in a blanket in a department store, and even save money just buying and cutting up a blanket and using that. I started with the easy ones – Walmart, Target, and the like, and while I found the fabric, I never found the color I wanted. This stretched, and I moved to the mall, and Mervyn’s, JC Penney’s, Sears, and Bed Bath and Beyond. I finally found something that would likely work, but thought I could find a SLIGHTLY better shade…so I kept going… Never give up, right? Isn’t that what they say?

It took 4 sweaters, 3 pairs of shades, 2 bras, a handbag, 2 pairs of tennis shoes, 6 new photo albums (some big and some small), and even some CHRISTMAS SHOPPING (2 months early from my usual routine!) for me to realize that the store I’d gone to does not actually have the better shade of fabric I was looking for. Six more sweaters, and some thinner shirts to go underneath these new sweaters, and I finally realize I might have a problem. Then, because of the stress of it all, I had to go get a massage to help "come down" from it all. I have managed to single-handedly replenish an entire winter wardrobe in the last few days. I have spent enough to go to Disney World for a week!

I must say that this is a new challenge for me. I’ve never been that fond of shopping before, and NEVER spend like a maniac. I have GOT to get control of this before it gets any worse…(except I do still need a pair of snow boots and some clothes to go skiing in this winter). So for anyone who is under the illusion that I lived a charmed and perfect life, here’s proof that I don’t.

Now I’m off to work for the night. I will likely be driving home in 2-6 inches of snow tomorrow morning. Fun.