The Two Week Contrast

(These two were first to bite the dust. Thankfully, thankfully, I spent this day cleaning and grocery shopping for anything that could be loosely counted as the BRAT diet) 

February (and my life for that matter) are going by like a whip. I remember toward the end of January looking at the calendar thinking how crazy this month was going to be and then it got here and we ALL got some sort of stomach flu. We all just laid there like slugs. All meetings, lessons and obligations were cancelled, our house was under strick quarantine and that first week of February disappeared into a black hole somewhere. 

Thankfully, by the Monday of the second week, we all had retained our health and were ready to get back to our normal lives--which was good because our schedule wasn't throwing us any softballs. In fact, after reflecting on a week of our usual stuff plus doctor appointments, additional church meetings, hair cuts and Valentines Day--I'm beginning to feel like that first week of sickness was a distant memory.

However, I must state here and know, that out of the two, I prefer the latter. We had been on a good run of health and during such you sometimes foolishly fall into the trap of thinking it might be kind of nice to snuggle sick kiddos, let them watch obscene amounts of TV while having an excellent excuse to bow out of your usual obligations. Complete foolishness, I tell you! Complete and utter foolishness. 

(One evening they were all feeling so rotten, the only thing I could think to do to cheer them up and kill time before bed was a bubble bath. At one point Ryder said, "Ahhh, this is the life." And Penny replied, "You said it, Brotha!"

And just to bring my message home, here are a few things that I would like to remind myself when I'm basking in a long, wonderful phase of great health and the lines of pain vs enjoyment get blurry, and I begin losing my good, common sense: 

-Despite your state and the kindness and understanding of others, you feel like a flake for cancelling everything and having to call the school morning after morning to tell them yet again your child won't be coming in that day. 

-Food. Wonderful, delicious food no longer holds any joy. 

-It's a little lonely (...sniff). 

-You also have to cancel on the fun stuff. Like playing with cousins and book club. (Luckily, book club was the week before...phew!)

-Shockingly, it's not doing the work that's hard--it's the lack of motivation to do the work and then still having to do it, that's hard. And who has motivation when they're sick? So you sit there in pain, like a sloth while watching your house take on new layers of dirty dishes and dust. 

-Finally, not that I'm going to go to the extreme of saying I miss working out, but I do miss the option of working out--ya know if I wanted to. Or to go outside... breathe some fresh air! Feel the sunlight on my face! Okay, I'll stop now. 

So, just to be clear to my grade-school self: it is not fun or relaxing in any way to be sick. The end. 

Rewind: August Vacation

Before I wrap up the twenty-fourteen year, I need to blog about our August road trip. I was going through what you could a say a bit of a mid-blogging crisis this summer and was seriously contemplating whether or not I wanted to keep my blog. I gave a lot of thought to the purpose of why I blog, what I hope to accomplish with it, blah, blah, blah. As you may have noticed Instagram and Chatbooks have made it super easy to document life, so I was like-well, what's the point of this thing (my blog) then? And I was like...I dunno. And then, I was like, oh yes--it's because I like doing it. More so than the picture part, I like the writing. And therefore, the blog stays...at least for now.

But it did take me pretty much all of summer to come to this conclusion, so as you may have noticed I've been going back to a few summer events to make sure all the important stuff is documented and our final summer trip was one of them. And it was also the biggest. So here we go.

We spent the first two weeks of August spending time with Phil's extended family at a reunion in Albion, Idaho. Afterwhich, we drove up to Seattle, where we spent a week with Phil's parents and then spent the last few days of our trip waterskiing at Lake Chelan. So let's break the photo overload up into parts:

Part I: Pugmire Family Reunion, Albion, ID

I really, really enjoyed our time here. Phil's mom is one of ten siblings and they're so great to plan reunions so a family of that size has the opporunity to spend quality time together. Obviously, not everyone can make each one, in fact, his has been the first one we've been able to attend since I was pregnant with Ryder, so it was great to hang out and get to know better some pretty wonderful people.

Albion, Idaho is a quiet, well-maintained town, that I found rather charming. We stayed in an old dorm building from what was once a college campus. The family that owns it, renovated the building for the purpose of hosting family runions and other large gatherings. Ironically, they turned the rest of the buildings on the small campus into the Albion Haunted Mansions that they run for two months out of the year. They were getting it ready while we were there and they even gave us our own haunted tour...yeah, it was creepy. We also took a day outing to the City of Rocks National Park where we explored really large, crazy-shaped rocks. The rest of our time was spent playing games, riding banana bikes and running back and forth between the pool and the hot tub. Oh, and of course, what sort of family reunion is complete without a bouncy slide?

Also, because I like food--as you can imagine feeding a group this size was no small feet, but Phil's mom and aunts have this down to a fine art and every meal was plentiful and delicious. I just wish I got a picture of the fruit bowl (think: the size of an exercise ball cut in half).

(All of the really good pictures below were taken by Phil's uncle, Jon Pugmire--who generously let me use them on my blog. :)

Part II: Seattle

Seattle is always a good time. Phil and I actually spent our anniversary of nine years in a car all day with three small children to get there. That's how much we like Seattle. We spent our time here mostly chilling with Phil's parents, sneaking in a trip to go swimming, meeting up with good friends, going to the beach or hiking when the menfolk weren't busy working. A highlight for sure, was our anniversary date night where Phil and I attempted to be slightly more adventerous than usual and went canoing on Lake Union and ate dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant in U Village. So fun! Knowing lillies are my favorite flower, Phil even (perhaps illegally) picked one for me on the lake. He's so romantic.

Part III: Lake Chelan

Before heading back to Utah, we took a detour to beautiful Lake Chelan. Truth be told, we boated on the Columbia next to Lake Chelan, which left the river to ourselves for most of the time. Skiing, wakeboarding was had by the adults and the tubing was for the kiddos...and myself. It was a beautiful area to see and a great way to end not only our vacation but our summer vacation!