Christmas

This year we spent Christmas in St. George at my parent's new place. One of my brothers and his family were also able to be there. It was a little treacherous on the drive down but not to bad on the way back other than the pass was still closed so we had to go around the other way. One of the worst things that happened on the way down on the interstate was right around Orem area. We were in the lane right next to the carpool lane, the roads were slushy and it was snowing/raining still if I remember right and all of a sudden a semi-decided to cruise past us. He was in the carpool lane and through up a TON of slush onto the truck. Lance had to slam on his breaks because we couldn't see even with the wipers going at full speed. Where are the cops to pull somebody over when you need them to?! Anywho, it was tons of fun getting to spend time with some of our family! Abby was so funny around Ace. This is the first time she met him and she really enjoyed him from a distance but got a little worried when he started coming towards her. By the end of the week though she was use to him and enjoying him more and would pet him. We also had fun teaching her to "throw" the Frisbee for Ace and she learned how to tell him to "sit" and "wait" until she threw it. Ace got a little bored with the game of Abby throwing it after a while because it was more of a drop right in front of his face instead of a throw. :) My camera batteries were dead and so I have to wait for my family to send us pictures from the week (I stole the picture above from my SIL's blog). For my birthday we went swimming at the Rec Center there. They have a great pool with slides and climbing stuff for the kids. My favorite part was that the water was actually nice and warm! Since Lance's hand is still in his cast he got to sit on the side and watch. After I get some more pictures from the week I'll post those. It was pretty rainy most the time we were down there but that didn't stop Ace from loving running all over the red rocks and hills around my parents house. He turned into a red healer on his bottom side from all the dirt and mud he'd run through playing catch with Lance and my dad. :) One the way home we stopped to see Lance's brother and his family that are back the way for the holidays. I can't believe how big our little nephew Jaxson is getting! He's a cutie!! We definitely had an enjoyable Holiday. Here's a picture of Ace's present. I took these pictures before we left and my camera died. I made him a new bed with some soft flannel on the top and corduroy on the bottom. When we first put it down for him he was a little cautious sniffing it out and wouldn't walk on it. After we assured him with some coaxing that the bed was for him and he could lay on he just fell in love. When we're at home he now spends a lot of his resting time on it. This is just a side/underside view of the bed because my in-laws were wanting to see it.

The Verdict

So here's the before. It's kind of hard to see in a picture but if you compare his two hands you can see the left one is much more swollen around his middle knuckle. Here's the after. (That's how Lance decided to pose) Lance got an early Christmas present. I tried to get him to do pink or purple but he immediately said no. :) Anywho, turns out he has a small fracture (his first broken bone) on the knuckle so he got a pretty cast to keep it immobilized for the next couple weeks and then we'll go in for a follow-up x-ray. It was pretty cool to see the x-ray and I was pretty proud of ourselves because both Lance and I could see the small little fracture. After all is said and done Lance's response is, "This is still cheaper than if I had to fix the tailgate." So there's the words of Lance.

Lance's hand

So Wednesday afternoon Lance came home with a rather swollen left hand. Turns out he was in the process of moving our trailer (that Lance's uses for the lawn mower during the summer) over to his boss's house who was nice enough to say we could park it back by his horses. I was excited to have it off of the side of our house! In the process of trying to attach it to the back of the truck the trailer slipped (I'll have to ask Lance again what exactly happened). The trailer didn't stop very well... until it hit Lance's hand who was trying to stop it to protect his truck from a huge dent. So the tongue of the trailer hit the inside of his hand right around his middle finger knuckle. The top of said knuckle is still pretty swollen (I keep forgetting to take a picture but I'll post one later today). Lance can move all his fingers, it just hurts. It really hurts on the bottom side of his hand were the tongue hit but not so much on the top. Hopefully it's not broken!! I'm thinking since he can move it so well that it probably isn't but you never know with hands. I guess it could have shattered one of the tiny bones in the hand or something. Lance was just glad he had his heavy duty work gloves on when this happened or else we're sure it would've been much worse. So yesterday, since after waiting a day we concluded it would probably be smart to get it checked out just in case, I called the doctor's office and said get us in with who ever please! So Lance has an appointment later this afternoon. I'll let you know how it goes. By the way, the truck is ok. :)

I know it's a busy time of year but c'mon?!

So I just got off the phone with a place I had ordered some things for my family from. I put the order in just over a week ago and it said it would take 2-3 days to process and then I paid for the 2 days shipping figuring that would give me some wiggle room before we're heading out of town. Online everyday it has continued to say "your order has been received and we are currently working on it." So I preceded to email the costumer service yesterday, getting a little worried, and got a computerized email sent back saying someone would contact me within 24 hrs about my request. So 24 hours came and went so I called them today. I waited on the phone for 24 minutes before Nick picked up. Before I get to the call I'd like to bring up a little more about the waiting. After a couple minuets I decided to switch on the speaker phone so I didn't have the incredibly annoying music blasting in my ear for the next who knows how long (I mean honestly, where do people get that music from?!? If I was trying to break in the music business I don't think I'd every sell/give my music to companies to play as there waiting music. That's got to be a guaranteed way to never sell any songs!) Anywho so I preceded to browse online, play some solitaire and spider solitaire to pass my growing frustrating time. I of course didn't want to hang up and loose my place in line so I kept just doing my thing and trying to block out the annoying whining in the background. At this point I'd like to say, I know it's busy time of year and it's got to be tough luck being in the selling and shipping business this time of year but don't make promises you can't keep! It makes people mad! The best part of this whole waiting was a couple words in a song brought me out of my dull staring for a moment. I thought, "did that song really say what I just thought it did?!!" Sure enough it did! The whining guy was saying over and over again, "How long can I waittttt (dragging out the wait part)?" I seriously raised up my eyebrow in a shocked manner and said, "are you kidding me?!" to my phone. I'm sure he was crying after some love of something but honestly is that the best song to have on a phone line while people are waiting 20+ minuets to talk to you?! Well so to get to the actual phone call, Nick picked up asked me the basic ya-de-da questions. He replied to my inquiry that he couldn't give me an exact date when my order would be shipped since it looked like it was pretty much done but that the vendor that has my order is just backed up in shipping right now. (Silence by me....) But to account for that he told me they are going to up the shipping to next level from whatever I ordered, so I guess that means I'll get overnight.....whenever it actually gets shipped. So I figured I'd ask if I could change the shipping address so it just gets sent to my parents. Nick replies, "Unfortunately we are unable to do that. (more silence) You could however cancel the order and reorder for the different address..." (Did he seriously just say that?!) I was trying to be very nice (Even though he was being very short with me) but I'm afraid my reply probably came out in that duh/dur kind of voice, "Yea but that would make it even longer of a wait." "Yea well..." (Yep, that's right your idea was an incredibly lame one) and more silence with me finally saying alright then and he gave his closing response and we parted our ways. I know it's not personally his fault but he does work for the company so a little "I'm sorry it's taken so much longer and that we're ruining the magnificent surprise present that you've planned for so long for you parents." That's all I was asking for a few answers and a little sympathy. (And before you wonder why I didn't order sooner there were some things that came up in life that I had to re-do the said gift and hence the delay in ordering it). So now that I've put to sleep those who are still actually reading....I'm done with my complaints now and feel a tad better...but not really because I still would just really like my order!

Past few weeks

So I realize I haven't posted in almost a month, sorry! We had kind of an extended Thanksgiving holiday. We started out in WY with Lance's family and had some yummy food and fun times. I don't have too many pictures (Jami, you need to send me the ones you got!) But I'm posting a couple with some of our nieces, nephews. The girls were able to make these cute Christmas countdown signs. I love always having fun projects that my MIL puts together for us! Here's mine but I still need to find some letter stickers I like to make the "days 'til" part on the tag. We were also able to see my family on our way down to our trip to Vegas and get a family picture which was good. So we won a trip to Las Vegas, Lance won from a drawing at a sporting good show at the beginning of the year. The hotel that was included ended up being the same one we had stayed at for our honeymoon which we liked because it's a very nice one but a few miles down from the strip so it's not so noisy! We went bowling there (we won't say who won both games) which was tons of fun! My favorite part is always the Bellagio fountains and gardens. The gardens while we were there consisted of backhoes and other large machinery....they were in the middle of re-doing it. I was sad about that. So we waited and waited out front to see the fountains and they never came on. So we figured well maybe they didn't start them until later. (These two pictures are of us waiting)We went to lunch at Planet Hollywood (had $40 for there from our package). The food was pretty good but over priced in our opinion, which was good that we didn't have to pay for it. Lance had the philly steak & cheese sandwich and I had the chicken avocado and swiss sandwich. I really liked mine but they were both about $14 which I think is kind of lame-o price for sandwiches but whatever, like I said we didn't have to pay for them. We even got dessert since we had money to use which we usually don't do. We both enjoyed the brownie with hot fudge and ice cream! Later that evening we went to the Cirque du Soleil show Mystere. It was very good and we both would recommend it! We got a great deal on tickets (thanks to my aunt and uncle for picking them up for us!) and were only four rows back. If you're curious about what's in the show you can do some searches on youtube.com and find some good videos. If you click on Mystere above it also will take you to the website where there's a trailer. After the show we had success in seeing the fountains!! I made Lance stay for an hour so I could see a few of them. By the end of our trip I think we saw 5 1/2 of them. It was fun because they had a couple set to Christmas Music. The next day we saw the Mac King Comedy magic show since the tickets were in our package also. It ended up being better than I expected. It was pretty funny and clean. After we went to In-N-Out Burger. Yummy!! I'd been before years ago but Lance never had so I decided to treat him to the experience. We both very much enjoyed our burgers! We were also able to meet up with my old roomie Kara & Clay and their adorable little boy Nixon (he has the funniest laugh in the world!) It was so great to see them because we haven't seen them since their reception a couple years ago. We also saw my aunt and uncle who live in Vegas and went to dinner with them which was very nice! They have 3 little dachshunds and Lance has never gotten to meet their pouches before. They were all fun to play with. They sure looked teeny tiny compared to Ace. We also made a trip up to the temple with my aunt right before we headed out of town. It was very nice to be able to get away for a bit and enjoy some time together. The drive home was really long since we had to make a stop in WY to pick up Ace (Lance's parents were great and watched him while we went to Vegas). Lance drove almost the entire way but I finished the last few hours to home. So that's a little of what we've been up to the last few weeks. Now we're back just working and I'm trying to get my house cleaned, Christmas decorations out and finish up on some Christmas gifts.