Before.... After!

I've been stuck in the house all summer (minus my very lovely 2 week vacation to Idaho and Utah). I just sit here, clean and do nothing. The highlight of my week is usually grocery shopping. Sad right?

So I made a bit of a stick about it. Gary was so sweet and decided we'd make Saturday special. 

We went to the Cheery Creek farmers market. It was fun to walk through and see all the silly vendors. Gary knows I LOVE shopping so he took me into the Cheery Creek mall after and pulled me into stores to look at things. It was so cool of him! He hates shopping but he just sucked it up and had fun with me! It was so incredibly sweet. Part of the deal was that he'd get a special drink as a reward, an Orange Julius or something. Well we forgot. We were almost home and turned around to go head to Sonic for a drink. We ordered one of their Cream Slushes and a Cream Chiller, both strawberry. We were headed home and I reminded him that we were going to go to Home Depot to look at gravel for the fish tanks. He asked if I wanted to turn around. I said "I don't care but if I think we're going somewhere and you take me home, I get disappointed". So he did a little U turn and....

BANG CRASH CRASH. In slow motion I saw a truck hit us, our bumper and other parts our my precious beautiful car fly around in the street.  UGH! Are you kidding me!?

I was horrible. I was the worst wife in the whole planet. My sweet husband had done everything he could to make my day special and perfect and I yelled at him. "What on Earth were you thinking? Why wont you just pay attention when you drive? I am so TICKED at you right now." I was mean. I was so mean. I would do anything to take that back and just hug him instead. I'd tell him "I'm so sorry!" it's not like he wanted to or meant to get in an accident and I knew that.

I was mad almost all day. He kept saying "What can I do for you? I'll do anything. I'll go get a second job and buy you a new car. I'll get a bus pass. I'll walk the 3 miles and back to the store for you". I just replied "I just want my car".

Well it's amazing how Heavenly Father works. A little knock came from the front door. Surprise! It was the missionaries. They were in the area and wanted to stop by. I grabbed them ice water and Popsicles thinking they needed refreshing.I later realized that they didn't come for themselves. They came to talk to me. 

They didn't know we had been in an accident that day, they didn't know that I was angry. They didn't know that I was upset and frustrated that Heavenly Father would let something bad happen to us after we've been doing everything right.

The new missionary asked if he could share a thought with us.  He went on to tell us a story of a member in his last area who went in for a meeting with the Steak President. The President asked "what commandment are you struggling with the most?" at which the man replied "happiness". The missionary then told us that you are always being worked on by either the Lord, or Satan. Obviously if your unhappy, Satan is winning. If you are happy, Heavenly Father is winning. Heavenly Father knows when trials come upon you and all he asks is that you have faith and stay happy.

I knew as he was speaking he was inspired to stop by and share that message with me. It was great. They left and I changed my attitude. I hugged Gary, sobbed and told him how sorry I am that I was mean to him. I told him sorry that he got in an accident and that I knew he didn't mean to. I know it'll be ok. I don't know how we'll get to church or go shopping. I don't know how we'll ever afford to get our car fixed but I know it'll work out. I just need to stay happy and have faith. 

I'm so grateful that we are safe and healthy. I am the luckiest girl in the whole world to have a sweet husband who made yesterday special for me. He's the love of my life and I'm so thankful for all that he does for me!

Before:

After:

1,500 Miles!

So far this month we have traveled though 4 states and driven 1,500 miles. We have attended 4 family reunions, camped at a camp ground in Heber, visited Preston ID, stayed at a nice condo on the lake in Huntsville UT,  and stayed with family in Mapleton. I toured UVU, BYU and sat so close to a firework show that I felt debris falling on me (ouch). I loved every second of our long trip and enjoyed meeting some amazing family members!

Huntsville Utah

Memorial Day Weekend

Last weekend Tanya came to visit us! I was SO excited to have her and her friend Rachel come stay with us for Memorial Day weekend and even more excited that they wanted to spend their time here shopping and exploring Colorado.

They rode in on a train on Friday. I picked them up from Union Station at 8:00 pm then we went home and just chatted.

On Saturday we went down to Castle Rock to visit the outlet mall. I tried my first caramel apple. It was amazing! Oh, I have been missing out. It was so sweet, juicy, healthy and unhealthy all in one! Tanya was one lucky shopper! She found cute stuff in quite a few of the stores. Rachel and I walked away with a single bag.

After Castle Rock we came back up and visited Cheery Creek Mall. It was fun to check out the mall in Colorado's richest neighborhood but it sure was hard to find an item under $600. We did find some yummy frozen yogurt though!

After our extravagant trip to C.C mall we ended up at very favorite store in the whole world. Super Target. I am so ridiculously in love with Target. I didn't buy anything fun really, but I did find some sweet deals in the clearance sections.

When we got home we whipped together a Tortellini salad for dinner. Then we watched the Fantastic Mr. Fox while Gary continued to entertain himself in the office.

Sunday started off with church, just like any other Sunday. We came home, changed and headed out to Red Rocks! We took some pictures there, walked around a bit and headed over to Kent and Jeanette's since Rachelle was also in town for the weekend.

We had Chicken Bundles and fruit. So yummy!!! After dinner we played Quelf. It's a silly game but I enjoy playing it. I don't think Tanya or Rachel enjoyed it much, but I sure did!

We left just in time to drive up to Boulder to show Tanya it's majestic view! I love the drive up, with the green luscious mountains and the green fields. It was pretty. I also enjoy roaming Boulder. There are some pretty unique folks up there but everyone is so kind and welcoming! It's the perfect little tourist, college town. We walked through Pearl Street Mall and watched the performers. That's my favorite part!

Finally we went home and got a few hours of sleep. We got up early Monday morning so we could go check out an "AM eatery" that I've been wanted to try. Kent, Jeanette, Mark and Rachelle all met us at our house and we headed over to Snooze. After our delicious breakfast Gary and I drove Tanya and Rachele back to Union Station to say our goodbyes. I was sad to see them go but we had a great time visiting with them.

Rachelle wanted to go see Prince of Persia:The Sands of Time so we went from Union Station up to Westminster to see it with them. We were thrilled that morning movies are so cheap! I'll admit, I slept through half the movie but I was dead tired from my amazing weekend and early morning.

After the movie Gary was so kind in allowing me to shop TJ Maxx while he sat in the car. It was my first time in there so I took a good hour! Though I was looking for shirts for myself, I came away with a whole new outfit for Gary for just $15! I'm a fan! Oh, and don't worry. I found myself a new outfit later at Old Navy and Target PLUS I got 2 new pairs of flip flops also all under $15!

It was certainly the best Memorial  Day weekend I've ever had!

Gary Gary Gary!

Click on any of the pictures to view full size!

Gary turned one year older yesterday morning. After making him his favorite muffins (orange cranberry) for breakfast we sat to enjoy our meal and he opened his presents. I gave him his gift (Mass Effect 2) the day I bought it because he thinks "If I buy it, why would I then wrap it up and wait to use it"? Good point I guess, though I like the anticipation.

Anyway, he received a nice pair of sunglasses from my parents along with a wireless XBox 360 controller. He was pretty excited!!!

He played Xbox for a while while I read about Gary's childhood. His mother has a detailed journal of what he did practically every day his first year. Then it tapers off to a couple times a week then to a few times a month til he's in middle school. I of course didn't read all of it, but enjoyed reading about his first year.

Then we went to Boulder and spent some time enjoying the Pearl Street Mall. I loved watching the street performers. We also had reservations to eat at a fancy restaurant called Med. I was excited that we got to order half off Tapas rather than a whole meal. We got to try about 6 of their dishes which filled us up for pretty cheap. I loved the lamb meatballs and the shrimp.

Then we went to Glacier Homemade Ice-Cream to try some of their most popular flavors. I was in Heaven!! My favorite was the lemon raspberry gelato! Yum!

Then we went home, watched a movie and waited to hang out with some of Gary's friends that were in town for the weekend. At 12:30 we figured they weren't coming over so we went to bed. Around 1:30 we got a text from them asking if we wanted to hang out. Gary jumped right out of bed and got ready to go! At 2:00 AM we pulled into Denny's for a midnight party! It was fun! We loved seeing some all of them!

Finally at 5:00 we got back into bed again and decided that we'd skip our church which starts at 9:00 and go to the noon one so we could at least get 6 hours of sleep. It was a great day!

Pics of the cool street performances!

Bad luck everywhere but smiles on our faces!

Today alone, I survived off of little to no sleep, I found that one of my favorite shirts has a huge hole in the arm pit and had a water bottle leak in my purse causing all sorts of messes! Luckily Gary's birthday package from my family contained chocolate. Gary kindly donated a piece to me and I'm as happy as can be! I also got to spend my day with two cute kids. We had fun singing silly songs, reading books, played outside avoiding the bees and even did hide and seek!

Yesterday I started off my day by running to Walmart for a couple of items. When I came back Gary said he was about to call the police due to a very offensive, obscene and threatening voice mail from a random guy in LA. Whatever. I handed him my phone since I happen to have Denver police non emergency on my call list. The police said they would come by to see if we needed to file a report. After the officer listened to the message he said we could file a report since it wasn't just harassment but a few threats were thrown in there too.

He said he'd turn it in to the detectives to start an investigation to find the guy and what not. I had little faith that they could or would do anything about it. I am 99% sure the phone number he used to call us was a fake since there are handfuls of reports online of pranks from the same number but from different people. Today however, we got a call back from the officer. He said that the case has been handed over to the FBI because this guy has called some government officials as well. The good news is that when threats are thrown at government, they do everything they can to find the suspect and as a result, I feel safe again.