December 2021 Randoms

Kanyon started playing with the Pep Band at home basketball games. He liked it because Mr. A gave the students donuts every time afterwards! I got to listen to him several times, because Josh and I volunteered to help at several Booster Booths: for the senior class, music department (multiple times), National Honor Society, and freshman class. I was trying to make up for the lack of Booster Booth shifts I haven't taken the past 4 years when I lived/worked out of time, but it just made December an even busier month!

 

Josh and I both had some medical problems and health concerns in December. We both had several visits to the doctor's office and hospital. We were both concerned and feared the worst, but thankfully, we're both okay. Josh had his first colonoscopy, and the result was he had diverticulosis. I had an MRI scan with a contrast done (that was such a weird feeling having the contrast done!), and it was determined I had diverticulitis. We were both grateful that we didn't have cancer!

Josh had a job interview at the golf course in Kemmerer, Wyoming on the second Friday of December. I went with him, and we decided to make a mini-getaway out of it. We spent the night in Lava Hot Springs on Thursday at the Lava Hot Springs Inn. We were surprised that the pools were pretty busy (we didn't know at the time they are open to the public), so we soaked in their private pools out back along the river, and only a few other people soaked with us. Because we stayed there overnight, we had 24-hour access to the outdoor pools, and a hot pool in our room, too. I woke up really early, and had an early morning soak in the main pool all to myself! It was snowing that morning, and it was magical to feel snowflakes on my nose and eyelashes as I laid in the hot water! The hotel serves an incredible breakfast, and I took advantage of it before we hit the road for Kemmerer. The roads were snowy and icy, and a bit sketchy at times, but we made it safely on time. In fact, we had time to spare, so we stopped to use the bathroom and walk around for a bit at the Fossil Butte National Monument Visitor's Center outside of Kemmerer. When we got there, Josh had an interview, a tour of the golf course, and met with the city financial director as well. He felt good overall about how the interview went. I mostly stayed in the car during the interview because I wasn't feeling well. On our drive back to Idaho, we stopped at Lava Hot Springs again, this time soaking in the city's Geothermal Pool complex. I loved the design of it, and the variety of pools with varying degrees of heat. We spent the night in Pocatello at the Red Lion Hotel. We ate dinner onsite at the hotel, and slept in the next morning. We did some Christmas shopping on Saturday before driving back to Salmon. It was a nice getaway mid-month!

Josh and I both processed some foods in December that we'd been putting off for a couple of months. Micah's deer meat had been sitting in the freezer in bags since October. We finally worked to process it thawing it, packing a couple roasts of it, and the rest of the meat we thinly sliced, marinated overnight, and dehydrated into jerky. It was delicious and it was all gone within a few weeks! 

Our pumpkins grew really well this year, and we had several left over after carving them for Halloween. In December, I finally got around to processing them: gutting them, cutting them into chunks, baking in water, blending with sugar, straining out the water, and packing them into freezer containers. I produced 10 freezer quarts of pumpkin puree in December!

We hosted some get-togethers in December: a game night with the Berube's, Judy's, and Vermaas'. We ate, laughed, played games, and had a great time! We also started meeting with the missionaries and the twins' classmate Avery on Monday nights beginning mid-December. We'd eat and have a discussion. I wasn't sure how we'd be able to squeeze one more thing into our schedule, but we did! I really enjoyed the spirit that the missionaries and Avery brought into our home! 

I started a crazy project in the middle of the month. In retrospect, I'm not sure the timing of it was the best, and I don't exactly know why I did it when I did! I ordered two new sets of shelves to flank my entertainment center, and I wanted them to be turquoise as the accent color to match my armchairs. I couldn't find any turquoise shelves, so I ordered white shelves, and then decided to paint them all. I put a double coating of turquoise paint on every surface of the shelf--top, bottom, and front-facing sides. I wanted them to dry faster, so I did it in the family room where the wood stove was. When I thought it was all done drying, I started to assemble the first pieces, and the paint peeled off where I'd bumped them during the assembly. I went to the hardware store to see if there was some clear coating spray I could apply that would keep the paint on longer, but the paint representative wasn't there. Instead, the worker said the pieces had to dry longer--like a week!!! So, my family room had the "drying" pieces all over the place for another week! The boys were good sports about it, and the pets seemed to make do. However, even after a week, some of the pieces had parts of paint that peeled off when I worked to build the shelving. I didn't care anymore at that point! I cleaned out existing drawers and shelves full of photos and files and books, and put it all back together on the new shelves. I got rid of a bag full of garbage and a couple of furniture pieces. I like the new look!   

BEFORE

AFTER

Car problems, just like health problems, seemed to also plague our family in December. On the last week of school before Christmas break, a deer came running at me one night on the highway about a mile before I reached home. I braked and swerved, but I still clipped it. The front passenger tire took the brunt of it, and the deer's life ended as a result. The front corner of my car was all bent up, and my headlight coverings were all smashed out. I didn't even stop; I was afraid if I did, I wouldn't be able to get the car going again, which is what happened last summer when a deer took out my Equinox's radiator. Josh was out of town, and the boys were still in town, and I wouldn't have a ride or a way to get the car home if I was unable to get the car going again. So...I drove the car slowly home the remaining mile, and I could hear something rubbing on the tire. I parked it, observed the damage, and was happily surprised that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The previous day, Ammon had been on his way home from Moscow for Christmas Break and his car died at Lost Trail. I went and picked him up that night, because Josh was out of town then, too, and I paid to have his car towed to Salmon on Monday. Josh had left on Sunday morning to go to our nephew Joel's mission homecoming in Pocatello, then he had another interview in Kemmerer on Monday morning, so he'd stayed overnight in Kemmerer. Within 24 hours, 2 of our vehicles were out, which frustrated Josh that it all happened when he was gone!  Ammon's car got fixed, and it wasn't as major as mine. My car was in the shop for over a month. Originally, the insurance bid to fix it was only $5,000 so they decided to fix it rather than total it, but then when they started fixing it, there was a lot more problems that they weren't aware of on the surface, and the total cost came to over $8,000. We wish it would've been totaled! It still has had problems since then, but we're still driving it. 

See the deer hair chunks stuck in the rim?
Apparently when the wheel took the brunt of it,
the frame bent due to the impact, but we didn't
realize it at the time--nor did the body shop!

Josh had spent so much time replacing the burnt-out lights last
summer, and it was sad to see them affected again!