"The Empty Nesters"

A couple weeks ago after church, Dustin and I decided to sign up for a small group meeting for the series we're doing in church. We decided Monday's would work best for us with Dustin's schooling. There were only 2 meetings on Monday's and one was pretty far from home. So not thinking much of it, we signed up.

Marshall (the leader of the meeting) called me Monday to confirm we were coming and I realized he sounded pretty old. On the way there, I told Dustin that I thought Marshall was older and we joked about how awkward it would be if everyone else was our parents age. As soon as we walked in Marshall told us, "I really think they should tell you the average age of the group when you sign up. We've been together as a group for a while now and we call ourselves "The Empty Nester's". To give you an idea of how old the group really was, Dustin and another man got talking about how he used to work at National Oil and Gas. Dustin told him I bet you know my dad Ked then, he works there. The man (I can't remember his name) said umm... I don't remember a Ked when I was there, I left in about 1958. 1958!!!! Our parents would have been youngsters in this group too.

After everyone's initial shock about age differences, the rest of the night was surprisingly very enjoyable. We're still contemplating seeing if we can switch into another group though.

Quick trip to Mad River Mountain

Sunday, Dustin and I made a sort of last minute decision to go to Mad River Mtn. with Ash and Matt. We had a blast skiing as usual. Except for a small incident we had with me putting too many pairs of socks under my ski boots and losing feeling in my feet. Yes Dustin, you were right, one pair of socks was enough. Let's just say I freaked out a little on the chair lift when my feet started throbbing, then lost feeling.

The highlight of my day was Dustin flying down the hill and Ashley and I trying our darnedest to keep up with him. Dustin hits a jump, gets some serious air and wipes out. I look to make sure he's still moving okay and keep skiing, Ashley, who isn't quite as used to skiing with "crazy stuntman Dustin", skis as fast as she can over to him and asks "oh my, are you okay, that was one of the hardest falls I've seen, I can't believe you didn't see that jump coming?". I had to explain to her, "Yes, he saw it coming and no I have no idea why he doesn't slow down." He must have a very high pain tolerance. If I fell that hard once it would be then end of my day on the slopes.

Ash and Matt - Thanks for inviting us we had a great time!!

Crazy Sunday!!

I haven't been very good at keeping up with posting lately, so I'm doing a couple at once. I thought I'd fill everyone in on our crazy Sunday. After church I went to a jewelery party at my cousin's house. On my way home, just outside of Magley on 224, my car decided to shut down...nice huh! It never even made funny noises, the gas pedal just didn't work. Luckily, I was able to coast into the driveway of a house, since there isn't much of a shoulder on 224. I went to grab my phone to call Dustin (aka...Mr. Fixit) and I realized I'd left my phone at home!! The incident went from no big deal, I'll just call Dustin, to very scary. Looking around I realized if the people at this house weren't home it was a LONG way down the road to the next house. Lucky me again, because the people at the house were home and beyond nice. They let me use their phone to call what felt like million people and offered me hot chocolate. I called Dustin, my mom and my dad, no one answered (it's amazing how few phone numbers you know by heart when you have them all in your cell phone). I was about to call my sister and have her pack up all 3 kids and come get me, when I realized I could try my phone since I left it at home. Dustin answered!! His phone was still on vibrate from church, so I told him it was a "good thing" I forgot my phone at home. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting a rolloff truck from Selking International and towing it up to O'Daniels. If there is ever a car that requires no maintenance and doesn't leave you stranded, I'm going to be the first one to buy it, I hate car problems! Kudos to O'Daniels though, I had my car back by Monday afternoon!

The "CHI"!!

Some of you may think I'm crazy for blogging about something so silly, but I'm in amazement over this thing. I finally broke down and bought myself a decent hair straightener, a CHI. I'm usually the type of person who thinks a knock-off brand is going to do just as good so I've always bought cheap Wal-mart ones. I realized I needed to do something the other day when I asked a girl at work how long it took her to straighten her hair (which is as long as mine used to be) and she said "oh about 15 mins." (my hair took at least that long and it's short). Also I got my hair caught in my old straightener that morning and had to pull out a large chunk of hair to get it out. So anyways, I'm not sure if i think this thing is so great because my old straightener was so bad or because this one is so good, but I love it! I put it to the ultimate test the other day. I went to bed with wet hair and tried to straighten it in the morning (something with semi-curly hair I have never had success at) and it looked the same as it did when I blow dried it straight then did it. If you are thinking about getting one of these I would suggest the thermal protection spray because it gets really hot. Sorry this was such a boring post, but I get really excited about things that knock time off my morning routine and let me sleep a little longer.

We're home already?

I can't believe our week long trip is over already! The resort was BEAUTIFUL. We spent most of the week lounging around the hot tub and trying to work up the nerves to get into the icy cold pool to get new drinks from the pool bar. Such a hard week! I think we made it to both of the beach volleyball games almost everyday and definitely didn't miss any meals. Actually a few days we ate 4 or 5 times in a day. All inclusive proved to be hard on our diets and our livers...lol.

I begged Dustin all week to go out with me on one of those big water tricycles, no luck, but he agreed to go on a kayak. YEAH!! They both look like so much fun, I couldn't understand why no one was going out on them, I mean come on, they're free even. One trip out and I figured it out. They're harder work than I expected, and if you look behind us you'll notice there's really no destination. So we paddled out into the middle of nowhere and then paddled all the way back. WHEW! I also learned my lesson about picking the front seat (you can't monitor to make sure the other person is pulling their weight paddling, I'm pretty sure Dustin wasn't because it was hard work).

This little pavilion was a pretty hot spot for weddings throughout the week, but it was also dangerously close to the volleyball court. Luckily we never directly pegged a bride, but we came close enough to have them ball fetch for us a few times and made it into a wedding video trying to sneakily grab our stray ball back. I'm still not sure why they never postponed volleyball when weddings were going on.

This may look like I was trying to take a cute picture of my pedicured toes, but look closer. I was ATTACKED!! The resort had a private island that you could take a boat over to and eat dinner or relax for the afternoon. What they forgot to tell us was that it is infested with "flesh eating gnats". Okay so they weren't quite flesh eating, more like very small mosquito's, but I was covered in bites from them!! Dustin on the other hand didn't get bite once, not fair! I went to the nurse the next day because I felt like I wanted to cut off my legs they itched so bad. She basically said I was a baby and suck it up... I qoute "I don't give out drugs for only that many bites, you should have seen the guy that came in before you he had many more". I was tempted to ask her if he was contemplating cutting off his legs as well, but held back.