November 2023 Randoms

Josh had surgery on his neck in Salmon on Wednesday, Nov. 1. His arms have been itching and burning for years, and his dermatologist doctor friend in Idaho Falls (who he met on his mission and they've stayed in touch) told him in January that the burning was coming from pinched nerves in his back/neck. After months of going to different doctor appointments and having an X-Ray and going to physical therapy, Josh FINALLY got an MRI approved through his insurance in October to see the bones and nerves in his neck and upper back. A pain doctor specialist comes to Salmon once a week (also from Idaho Falls), and he met with Josh a couple of times about his itching/burning pain. The Dr. said the MRI showed the nerve canal in Josh's neck is narrowing, causing the nerve pain, so he performed a short surgery by placing an injection of steroids into the neck, to hopefully stabilize the nerve canal and stop the nerve pain. I couldn't get work off that day, but I used my lunch break to go pick him up from the hospital and take him home. He rested all that afternoon, because the anesthesia made him tired and groggy, but the surgery went pretty well. It took some time for the injection to take effect, but his arms did stop itching and burning as intensely. 

Amanda and Ryan came to Salmon on Friday, Nov. 3rd and stayed with us for the weekend. We went out to Bertram's on Friday night with them and John to celebrate Josh's upcoming birthday. On Saturday morning, she cut and colored my hair, and cut Kanyon's and Josh's hair, too. Josh hadn't cut his hair for over a year--it's the longest time he'd ever gone without getting a haircut! I may have cried a few tears because I loved putting my fingers through Josh's long, wavy hair, but after I adjusted to his new 'do, I loved it! It was an amazing transformation! 

On Saturday night, Amanda hosted the Salmon Idol event with me (it's now called the Sound of Salmon). We also did a half-time show in between the junior and senior shows. To prepare for the event, I created a trivia all about the 15 years that Salmon Idol ran for. I did a lot of research about past shows to come up with the questions. There were 30 questions in all, and Amanda and I took turns asking the questions and giving prizes to the winners who answered correctly. It was so much fun! There was also a dinner in between the shows as a fundraiser for the upcoming spring musical tour, and special musical numbers performed by my friend Darcy and her daughter Emmy. The Senior show was also amazing, and we had a fun time emceeing the Senior show together. We didn't perform any special musical numbers ourselves this time, but we had a lot of fun bantering on stage and talking to each of the contestants. Shay Woolf won the contest with a song by Whitney Houston. The performers did an excellent job, and we really enjoyed the show! It was an all-around great night!

We went out to celebrate the occasion afterwards
with Phil & Darcy and Emmy.

When Josh and I were at Quinn's Hot Springs for his birthday weekend, I did a lot of soul searching. I was thinking through all the hardships I'd experienced over the year, and I finally came to terms with my current situation. I realized that I could learn to live with the permanent damage done to my vocal cords from injuries sustained while working at the Leadore School, but what I could not live with was being treated poorly at work anymore and putting myself through mental anguish on a daily basis by staying in a toxic environment. I started working at the pharmacy in Saveway in March part-time after school and on weekends, and I went full-time in June after the school year was over. When I went full-time, the only other full-time tech quit because it was hurting her back. I was the only tech working with 3 different pharmacists in the months of June and July. It was very stressful and overwhelming, but I made it through, thanks to our many hot springs outings. In August, another tech was finally hired and my boss was outright mean to her every day. I started realizing that my boss was an unhappy, judgmental, narcissistic, toxic person--she'd been nice to me at first, because I was so badly needed, but as time went on, I started seeing a side of her that was so ugly. When I spoke up for this other employee, my boss also started targeting me. I hated going to work every day, punching in on the time clock, putting 10 hours in a terrible environment all day, and punching out. I kept thinking as I walked from my car to the front of the store each morning, "Is this all there is to life?" I became extremely unhappy. I went from a physically toxic environment at my teaching job in Leadore to an emotionally toxic environment at my job at Saveway Pharmacy. I felt broken; my body, my mind, and my spirit. Sadly, my brokenness was a result of both of my jobs in 2023. So, as I was contemplating my current life situation on that trip to Quinn's, I realized that I would need to end my job at the pharmacy sooner rather than later. I wouldn't survive much longer under the daily duress I was experiencing. And just two days after we returned from that trip, the opportunity presented itself. On Thursday, Nov. 9 there was a little hamburger lunch for all city employees and their spouses at the Sacajawea Center as an end of season thank you for all the seasonal employees.  Josh told me the night before about it and invited me to join him. Mid-morning, I was coordinating my lunch schedule with the male pharmacist for the day. I told him I might be 5 or 10 minutes over my daily allotted 30 minutes for lunch due to travel time. I didn't think it would be a problem because I usually only took 15-20 minute lunch breaks. He was fine with it. However, my boss overheard me, and she instantly blew up in my face. She said that any lunch times have to be pre-approved by her, and you can't just take 5 extra minutes without permission (which she'd never said before). It just seemed so ridiculous, because I worked 10-hour days without ever getting any breaks other than the short lunches I took, and it was a harsh reaction to my 5-10 minute one-time request. She wanted to know when I'd found out about the lunch, and I said Josh informed me just the night before. She said I should've told her about it when I found out about it, but James and I always communicate about our lunch breaks right before lunch happens on a daily basis--I'd never had to tell her my lunch plans beforehand. I told her that since she needs to know things "ahead of time" now, that I had a 15-minute phone call scheduled with my lawyer for the following day. She went even more ballistic at that point, demanding to know when I found out about this scheduled phone call. I told her it was re-scheduled 3 days prior, when I was on vacation. She said I should've told her then. "When you were at Disney World? To let you know about a 15-minute phone call?!" I asked. She shouted back, "YES!". I told her I WAS telling her in advance--and asked her what's the difference between telling her now with one day in advance versus two days earlier with 3 days in advance. She yelled, "I JUST NEED TO KNOW!" Her true colors were shining through. I wasn't going to put up with her irrational behavior anymore. Very calmly I said, "Well, I've got advance notice for you. Consider this my two week notice." She was finally speechless. And then I realized that she told me once that the state board of pharmacy only requires a 10-day notice, so then I said "actually, I remember you telling me once that the notice only needs to be 10-days, so consider this my 10-day notice". Then I walked out and went to lunch with Josh and I started to feel so free and less burdened of this heavy weight that had been dragging me down from working under the conditions that she created. She made the next 10 days pure hell for me, whispering behind my back, telling other coworkers lies about me, spreading knowledge about my past medical history with staff members. It was all completely unprofessional and I was appalled at her childish behavior. My last day there was the day before Thanksgiving. It was hard for me to start over, but it would've been harder on me to stay. As Josh was telling the boys about the experience, he said, "This should actually be a good thing. It has been a hard year for mom dealing with 2 different toxic employers! There is so much more to life than work, and if you can't be treated with basic respect and decency by an employer there is absolutely no need to subject yourself to that kind of treatment." SO TRUE! 

Josh bought a new motorbike for his birthday. One of his goals for the year was to purchase a new motorbike, because his other dirt bike was over 20 years old. He'd gotten it brand new in 2001 and it had been a trusty companion and a great bike, but he wanted something lighter, more maneuverable, and with better suspension. He bought it new from Myron; it was the previous year's model on clearance special. It was a great deal: it was cheaper brand new than other used motorbikes for sale that he'd looked at. He had Friday off for the observation of Veteran's Day (which was actually on Saturday), so he took it for the first time on a little camping/motorbike excursion with the camper van back up the East Fork. After parking the van at the campground, he rode the motorbike up to, around, and past Jimmy Smith Lake. He'd never actually been up to it before despite all the twins' camping adventures there with Ted. He was going to do some more riding on Saturday, but it was cold and windy, unlike the sunny weekend that had been forecasted, plus the new motorbike inexplicably came up with a flat tire Saturday morning, so he just came back home instead.

Grandma Kathy hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year. All of Josh's siblings came and arrived the night before Thanksgiving and stayed at their own Air BnB's in Salmon. It was nice to see everyone--we were only missing Coral & Eric, Ammon, and Jonah & Micah. It was the first time we'd met Gideon's youngest son Charlie (who was 3 months old) and Malachi's youngest son Calvin who is almost 1 year old! We got together at Kathy's house on Thursday at 1:00 for a very simple Thanksgiving meal of deep fried turkey, mashed potatoes (made by Josh), gravy, stuffing, corn, fruit, and rolls. There were zero salads! For dessert, Tiffany brought apple and cherry pies and thankfully I had made pumpkin pies, because Kathy told me not to bring pumpkin pies, because there would be plenty of pies, but then she discovered there were zero pumpkin pies, so I went home and brought them down to her house. Afterwards, we hung out at grandma's house chatting for a bit and our missionaries and Ammon called, which was so wonderful! Jonah was recently transferred to a town called Oshawa, an hour or so east of Toronto. He spent Thanksgiving in a YSA ward. Micah was doing well in his area of Santiago. Ammon hosted a Friendsgiving event at their apartment in Mesa. That afternoon, we were hanging around together outside watching Molly & Malachi's oldest boy Caleb and Jessalyn & Syler's son Rayden play with each other. They were riding little Strider bikes around the driveway and basketball court, and their interactions and stunts were SO adorable! It was delightful to watch/listen to them and it reminded us of when our boys were smaller. It made me miss my boys so much! It was my favorite part of the Thanksgiving day in Salmon! 

Josh resting while we watched the Macy's Day Parade that morning.

An extra table was set up in the living room for the meal.

The little kids ate in the kitchen.

Group phone call on 
Thanksgiving Day. Jonah called later.

Ammon hosted "Friendsgiving" in Mesa.

It was the first Thanksgiving they'd 
cooked and hosted!

Watching the little boys play outside.

 I thought Gideon's daughter looked so cute,
like a little teletubby with that hat!

After Thanksgiving, I started looking for new jobs, and I spent my days exercising, blogging, and re-decorating my bathroom! I suddenly felt inspired to deep clean parts of my bedroom, closet, and bathroom, and I was suddenly tired of my previous bathroom decorations of birdhouses. I switched to a Mediterranean theme and purchased a new shower curtain, new wall decor, new towels, and new comfy floor mats. I really liked the updated space. I didn't take any "before photos", but I downloaded these old ones from 2010 for comparison, from when we first moved into our home.

BEFORE

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

AFTER

Since we were planning to go to Arizona to visit Ammon again for Christmas, I didn't want to get a real tree in our house and have it dry up while we were gone. Instead, I decided to make a mini tree forest with the small artificial trees I've purchased over the years to decorate our home for the holidays. I put out one tree for each of our boys, and one tree for Josh & I--it was the tree I purchased from our very first Christmas together! I placed the 5 trees all around the piano and decorated them with lights and placed tinsel on the piano top in between them. I absolutely loved the look! I thought it appeared so festive! And I loved that the trees represented everyone in our whole family, even though 3 of our sons would not be home for the holidays. 

Brisk Trip to Boise & Bruneau

Josh and I went to see our favorite band The Jeff Crosby Band perform in Boise the third weekend in November. They play a series of 3 shows in a row every fall in Boise called their "Annual Homecoming Run", and we were able to watch them on both Friday and Saturday nights. We took the camper van on Friday afternoon and got to Boise after 8pm. We headed straight to their venue, and after the show, we just slept inside the van in a hotel parking lot downtown. That was a first! We didn't sleep too great, though, due to a fight between some homeless people that woke us up in the middle of the night!

We had a great view of the moon as we drove into Boise

On Saturday, we drove to the Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park outside of Mountain Home. We had never been there and found it to be very unimpressive.  The Visitor's Center was closed because it's the off season.  The park consisted of a couple of campgrounds with no trees, and one singular large sand dune amongst the sagebrush hills. The St. Anthony Sand Dunes are much more impressive and are much larger in size, so it's weird that the Bruneau dunes are a State Park when the St. Anthony ones aren't. We did take a selfie by the entrance sign so we can claim we went, we saw, but we probably won't ever go back. We drove back to Boise that afternoon, and shopped at Barnes and Noble bookstore, ate at a Chinese Buffet restaurant, and napped in the back of the van. We went to the Saturday night concert at a different venue in a different part of the city; it was at an open art gallery--the venue itself was cool, but the seating and dance floor were not really ideal. After the Saturday night concert, we drove about an hour out of Boise past Garden Valley to a campground that ended up being closed.  As it was nearly 1am at that point, we just pulled off in a roadside pullout and spent the night. Even though we were right by the highway, we slept better than we had the previous night! 

The only "dune" at the state park!

We woke up Sunday morning to rain, wind, and snow. We had plans to hit up some hot springs on the way home, but we didn't do as many as we'd originally planned due to the weather. We stopped at Kirkham Hot Springs and had it mostly to ourselves which was awesome (it's always busy whenever we drive by), but the water wasn't overly warm and the wind was howling, so we didn't stay for very long.  We were going to hike into the waterfall pool at Pine Flats, but due to the weather, and a campground full of little Boy Scouts, we changed our mind on that one. We encountered snowfall over Banner Summit and it continued to snow on our drive until Clayton.  We stopped for a break at our favorite little hot spring in Cronk's Canyon, and watched a Bighorn ram on the cliffs across from us.  It ended up being a fairly successful trip! This was our longest trip in the van so far and it ran really well with no breakdowns. It was also the latest point in the season we've taken it, and we stayed fairly warm huddled together inside both nights in the late fall weather!