Long weekend...does everything have to break at once?

Hi everyone,

It's been a nice long holiday weekend for Juice and me out on the east coast. We had a good time. Friday night we went camping with our ward in a forest near our house. It's called Little Bennet National Forest. We took the puppy along and boy did she have fun! All the kids loved her because well, she's so cute! And she's hyper so she would run with them. There was one little girl named Hannah who's 5 who kept squealing with delight whenever Cinder went towards her. It made me think of my niece who LOVES animals.

Juice set up our tent and I played with the kids and the puppy. We had dinner and roasted marshmallows with the ward for a bit. But we went to bed early because I was tired. We took Soot in her new travel bag to get her used to it so when we come to Utah for Christmas, she won't freak out. (Yes, we are bringing her.) She was a very good puppy and didn't wake up until about 5am. That's when we normally get up and that's when we take her out for the morning. So we got up early with her, and went back to bed after she had 'been a good girl.'

We slept for a few more hours and woke up for breakfast, provided by our ward. There were eggs, sausage, muffins, juice and bananas. Juice didn't touch the bananas, but I think I had two. Yum! Soot again was a ball of fire with the kids and she was having a good time running as far as her leash would let her. As we got ready to pack the tent up, we took Soot inside it and Juice burrowed into his sleeping back all the way at the bottom and asked, "Where's Soot?" It was so cute to see her cock her head at the big lump where he was. He asked again and she started to dig on the sleeping bag. She was determined to get him out of there! It was so cute. We played that for awhile, and then packed up everything to take home.

As I was packing the car up, I noticed that it was looking a little lopsided. I thought maybe we had parked in a ditch but no, we had a flat tire. Again. This is the second flat tire we've had in a week. Both times because we had a screw stuck in the tire. So, Juice put the spare tire on and I went on a short hike with the puppy. It's very beautiful here with lots of trees. I like the forest floor because hardly anything grows down there. It's a lot cooler in the trees than out in the sun. I saw a really pretty glade with bright green grass dappled by the sun. Soot and I ran around in it for awhile and went back to see Juice.

He was done with the tire, and mostly packed up. We said goodbye to our ward and went home. I took a nice long nap with Soot on the couch. I'm not sure what Juice did but I think he played GameCube for a bit. We had dinner and watched a movie that evening, the puppy still sleeping. We wore her out! We need to remember this when we travel so we can wear her out on Christmas day. Hopefully then she'll sleep the whole way over on the plane.

Sunday I wasn't feeling very well and stayed home to sleep. Juice taught my sunbeam class.

On Monday, we decided to try and clean the house and get some things done. You know, all those little things that houses need. We're slowly getting everything the way we want in the house. Juice was cleaning our guest bedroom windows and I was scrubbing the kitchen sink down. Still trying to get paint off that thing. Anyway, I heard Juice hammering away at the window sill because the window had warped a bit, and he couldn't get the pane out to clean it. I didn't think anything of it until the hammering became the sound of glass shattering. Oops!! He had tried to force it out of the window and the stress was too great for the window to stay intact. I ran upstairs to see what happened and he's standing there, holding the broken window looking a little dazed. We had to shut the puppy up so she wouldn't get cut with all the glass and I helped him pick up the pieces. Good news is that he got the window out of the sill. And we have double paned windows so we're not open to the elements. So now that window is nice and clean, if missing a piece of glass.

We bought a new car! Yes, we are now a two car family. It's a fairly old Ford Taurus (91) but with 53,000 miles on it. Can you believe that? We got it for a really good price. Basically all we wanted it for was so that I could have a car when I go to work. I normally ride the metro and the bus but I was tired of waiting for the bus (last 4th of July weekend I spent an hour and a half waiting for the stupid thing. I finally had to call Tammy to take me to the metro station.) The bus stop is about a mile away and I just couldn't see me walking that every day in the winter. They don't shovel the walks here when it snows. So, we bought a car. I leave it at the metro during the week and I drive it home on the weekends. We picked it up on Monday and I love having it. :)

Love you all,
Safire and Juice