Can a Girl Just Catch a Break?..

The answer to that question, for today, is no.  I will get to that in a minute.

Sunday was a pretty good day.  Our Bishop taught the lesson in Young Women's so that is always nice to not have that responsibility.  The lesson was on Marriage and Family and he covered why family and marriage are so important to us and our church.   It is always good to be reminded, if you know what I mean?  (it is easy to forget as my kids are duking it out upstairs, ugh)  He referenced a talk by Elder Scott called "The Blessings of Eternal Marriage".  It is a great talk. Elder Scott has a lot of wisdom and understanding when it comes to losing children or a spouse.  One thing that he said in the end of the talk that stood was when he said something to the effect that as much as he loved his wife now in this life that he would love her more when he died and saw her again.  Such a sweet feeling to think of how much we love our children and our spouse, and to think of loving them even more.  I am sure that is true.  When everything about our life plan is revealed and we can see all of the sacrifice and love that we did not recognize here on earth, it will be overwhelming.

Thank goodness Sunday was good and quiet because it gave me a good foundation going into MONDAY!  Monday's don't usually affect me, but today was different.  I woke up to dogs barking right outside of my window for over an hour.  I have only been sleeping in my bedroom off and on for over a year so I guess I never knew that the dogs next door were so noisy.  I have heard them quite a bit in the day, but this morning they started at 6am.  The first day of no swim team, so I was going to try and sleep until 6:45.  Thanks dogs. Grrr.  I finally just got up and started getting ready for my exercise.  I felt good while I was exercising.  I felt like I had some good energy for a change.  When I finished that I went and grabbed Holden and took him and two of our friends kids to swim lessons just a few doors down from my house.  I love sitting in their back yard because it is beautiful.  When I got there one of my neighbors had her grand kids there and so we visited for just a second.  I sat down and enjoyed drinking the rest of my protein shake that I made before we left the house.  It was super yummy because one of my neighbors had picked me some of her fresh blackberries!  Delicious.  As the swimming lesson was ending one of my neighbors from our old ward came in with her daughter.  I haven't seen her forever.  She came over to me and gave a big hug and told me how much she enjoyed reading about Tatum and her legacy.  That just made my day.  (I didn't know that I needed to hold on to that feeling because that would be the only real bright spot in the day:)  We talked for a few minutes.  As I was leaving the lesson I noticed that there was an instagram from Halea:

Well, that was hard.  We talk about missing Tates and we sometimes even cry a little.  It just squoze my heart a little to see her put up a picture and a scripture.  So glad that she is wise and turning to the only source of real comfort.  It is heart breaking to watch our kids try to carry on through this, but also very inspiring.  For the most part I think they do well.  I think that Holden is acting out in his behavior.  He is being really sassy and disobedient, which is not usually like him.  He is also approaching that lovely 10-11 year old age that is always very hard for me.  I was so hoping to avoid this with him because he has always been pretty sweet, but I think that he is giving in to it like all of the others.  Darn it!   Not a good time to morph!

When I got home from swim lessons I got busy getting ready and tidying up a little before I had to hit the dreaded things that I had laid out for myself: Registering two cars, bills, insurance bills, making cookies for my mortician friend, a call to the hospital, and anything else that came up.  When I came out of my room from getting ready for the day, I was looking for Holden and the kids told me that one of his friends from school came and got him to go to their house to play.  (Oh yeah, I had been texting with the mom and said, sure he can play.  They said they would come and get him in a little bit and then I totally forgot to tell Holden that they were coming  to get him because I forgot they were coming. Oh wow I am losing it.)

Then I started in on the fun.  I started looking through our bills and realized that two were late.  I just can't seem to remember silly little things like that.  They were only a few days late, but it just bugs me that I don't remember.  Then I started looking through our hospital bills and trying to figure out which ones we are really supposed to pay.  I decided that I would call tomorrow to talk to our case manager to have her help us figure that out so I could avoid a total headache.

I decided to take the first car down to get it inspected so I could renew our registration.  Well, of course it did not pass.   It is at this point in the day, when I am weary, that I just want to say "Do you know that my daughter just died?  Can you just give me a break?"  Of course it doesn't work that way.  He said that the O2 sensor was out and a turn signal light was out.  He could fix it for a price but it would take an hour.  Of course it will.  I called my friend and she was just across the street so I walked to where she was and she took me home so I could grab the second car that needed inspected and bring it down while we waited for the other one to be fixed.  When I got there the first car was fixed, but now it needed to be driven for about 30-40 miles before it could be tested again.  Of course.  You just can't make this stuff up.  I left the second car and took the first to drive it around.  I drove to Salt Lake and had some good time to think and ponder.  When I got back the second car was finished and they quickly did the retest on the first car and it also passed.  It was too bad that it had eaten up my entire day!!   I drove one of the cars home, picked  up Hilary and Halea.  Then I took Halea down to pick up the other car.  Then I swung over to my morticians and brought him some cookies since he saved my life the other day when i had one of my many flats.

During all of this crazy driving time I had a lot of time to think about a charitable organization that I want to create.  I want to have funds available to families who lose a child to help with funeral costs.  One of my neighbors brought up an idea to raise money that I really liked.   He said that we could have an annual hike to the Y and have people make a donation and then we would all hike.  I really liked that idea and I thought that Labor day around mine and Heidi's birthday would be a good time to do it.   I just wasn't sure if I could pull it together for this Labor day because that seems so soon.  The more I think about it though I think that we need to do it this year while people are still interested in Tatum and Trevin's story.  So, when I got home I made a call to a neighbor that is a lawyer to ask him some questions about starting a 501c3.  He had some great suggestions for me to work on.

After all of this I called Lance to see when he was leaving work so I could possibly meet him on my bike.  I wanted to try out my new flat proof tube.  He said that he would be a little later than usual.  I quickly got dressed and ready to go.   I pulled out some chicken to defrost  and then I took off on my bike.  When I got about 10 miles into the ride, I noticed that the left handle bar was looser than normal.  It has always been a little loose, but now I could hear things rattling.   Uh oh.  I pulled over and luckily I had my allen wrench with me.  I started trying to tighten the screw, but it would not tighten.  I tried for a few minutes when  a lady came over to help steady the bike for me and see if I needed help.  She tried for a few minutes, but she too was stumped.  Then she went off on her merry way.  I finally decided that I was just going to have to ride with it broken.  I put all of my tools back and took off towards Lance's office.

The handle bar on the right hand side of the picture should be more straight up like the one on the left:)

 When I got to the last intersection before Lance's work I had to turn up a road a little off of the trail because there were cars coming.  Once all of the cars passed I jumped back on the trail.  I got down to Lance's work and went to his bike rack and his bike was gone!  Yep, gone.   I wondered if I had missed him at that last intersection.  I called his phone, but he shockingly did not answer.  (are you sensing my sarcasm?)  At this point I was really screaming in my head, "Can't I catch a break today?"  While I was riding towards Lance I kept thinking that I was excited to see him and tell him that I had a pretty decent head wind all the way down so the ride home would be easy.  Wrong.  If you live in Utah you know that the wind can blow in both directions, and today it certainly did.   The headwind going home was way worse than going there.  Ugh.   Luckily Lance had frozen a bottle of water that I had taken with me so I did still have really cold water.  All the way home I was having very unhappy thoughts.  I was trying to see his side of this story, but it was hard for me.  I am so vulnerable right now and when things keep going wrong like today I feel a little attacked.  Luckily I had an entire hour to think about it.  I was not in the very best mood when I got home.  Luckily, again, I then got to do my favorite activity of making dinner.  My neighbor had given us some yummy zucchini and I had watermelon left over from yesterday.  Things were starting to look up.  Dinner was great, and then we started Family Night.

We had decided to have a family council about communicating better with one another.   Being kinder and more respectful.  How can we make our family better?  Those kinds of things.  Well, it was not pretty.  Hayden was snippy, Holden was bored, Hilary was yelling at everyone and when I asked her to be quiet she stormed off and cried in her room.  I went and rescued her while Lance tried to explain to Hayden and Holden why we didn't approve of some of their behaviors.  I had a minny melt down.   Is this sounding familiar to anyone else?  I hope that other families have awesome Family Nights like this.  The night ended fine.  We all knelt in prayer and all was well.  But I am exhausted, emotionally and physically.  Opposition in all things that are good, right?  I hope that I can catch a break tomorrow after this crazy day.