is this thing on?

Lemony Snicket got a hold of our Thanksgiving this year. I realize that things could always be worse but these things compiled together were almost enough to make me go crazy. Thursday Flew from Grand Junction to Salt Lake City and landed with 7 minutes to get from the A gates to the C gates to catch our connecting flight. We ran like Home Alone and then I wheezed and coughed uncontrollably on the flight because I am out of shape. Also, running in cowboy and riding boots is not recommended. We enjoyed a very nice Thanksgiving dinner with 16 members of Brian's family in Davenport, WA. Friday Things were going well. We enjoyed a laid back morning, it was Football Friday so we watched the Apple Cup. We took a group photo and then the Kicha family said farewell. I suddenly didn't feel well so I went to lie down, when I began to throw up violently. Then my nephews began to throw up. We got a text from the Kichas, "Is anyone sick over there? Hannah is throwing up." T

Facebook tells me that November is National Adoption Month. The path I've been walking the past few years has made the word 'adoption' immediately stand out to me when I come across it. It's a word I never used to pay any attention to but has now become everything, especially during this period of waiting. Thanks to Amy Poehler's Smart Girls facebook page, I was introduced to this blog . The blog features an adoption story each day of the month coming from all different perspectives and including both good and bad experiences. I find that I can't stop reading them. I'm reading it like a how-to manual or a textbook and it makes me feel productive, but I also find that it scares me to my core. I keep thinking I can learn how to do all of this the best way, so I take mental notes of what to do and not to do...But then I realize something that was a big no-no in one story wasn't such a big no-no in another story and I get frustrated and worried and c

Well, I guess I skipped September. We can’t all be perfect bloggers. Let’s see… We spent most of our free time in September doing more… can you guess? HOUSE PROJECTS! I painted the mudroom/laundry room We replaced the light fixtures in the kitchen and removed the ugly, long, florescent lights When we took the florescent lights down, we discovered they had painted the ceiling around the fixtures so Brian had to repaint the entire kitchen ceiling We decided to bite the bullet and paint our kitchen cabinets Without further ado…Here are some pics. House Projects The ugly florescent lights we removed. the mudroom mid project. I forgot to take a true 'before' picture After. It's definitely a prettier room for the pets to eat in. Before. Like, REALLY before. We forgot to take before photos so we had to go back to the pics from the previous owners. We don't have two microwaves and that guy doesn't live with us. After

Back in...I don’t know...a long time ago...we invited Brian’s brother out to go on a 4-day backpacking trek with us at the end of August and he accepted our invitation. I hadn’t backpacked since high school (and even then, it was always to a hut or to a place where my youth pastor’s wife could drive to with the food- so I’ve never needed to carry everything you need for life) and Brian had never backpacked, so we were pretty excited. Come August, we realized we were very ill-prepared for such a trek and began to be intentional about hiking every Saturday and Sunday, including a test-run backpacking overnighter to make sure A) we had all the gear we needed, and B) to make sure we could carry heavy packs up a hill. Family visits, our intentional hiking, and our backpacking test-run resulted in a very “Epic” August and one that made me fall in love with Colorado all over again. I will say though, living the YOLO life in your 30’s is exhausting. August, Week 1 My parents c