On the road again.....and again....and again.....

*WARNING* After rereading this, it comes across as being a little longer than expected. Proceed with caution! :)

Sooooo......it's been forever since I blogged and life has been crazy to say the least. Drama, sickness, more drama, more sickness, etc. etc! Shortly after posting my last blog, the kiddos and I headed out to my Grandpa's funeral. It was a last minute decision that proved to be very expensive! We headed up to Ames, Iowa to pick up my dad and the kids were very well behaved, thank goodness! With 12 hours of driving by myself I was a little worried. We picked up my Dad about 9:30 pm and got back into the car to drive another 5 hours to Marshall, MN to pick up my Mom. She had been working on getting the house (which finally sold! Hooray!) packed up and emptied out with the movers. We arrived there at about 3 am (thank goodness for my Dad driving! There is no way I would have been able to stay awake!) and got a couple of hours of sleep before we woke up, helped finish up some of the last minute stuff with the house and headed out again! We made it to Gillette, Wyoming and spent the night there, again getting only a few hours of sleep. We woke up to find that one of the tires was flat, so my Dad left to get it patched, which we assumed would work. Obviously we assumed wrong, because only 2 hours into our days drive, in Casper, WY, we discovered the tire was flat again. Well, we replaced two of the tires, and added some much not desired time onto our journey. We loaded back into the car AGAIN, and headed out, thinking we could make it to my grandpa's viewing by the skin of our nose! Wrong again. In Rawlins, again just another two hours later, a woman pulled up along side us to inform us that our car was smoking pretty badly. We stopped at a gas station and a nice gentlemen took a look at the car for us and informed us it looked like our oil pan had exploded. Great. I also got a phone call within minutes of this happening, from my dear husband, to inform me that my father in law had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. So pretty much I was an emotional wreck at this point and we hadn't even reached our destination. So we took the car to the only place that could get us in quickly, a local dealership. They couldn't figure out what the problem was with car. They knew it wasn't the oil pan but couldn't immediately determine what the problem was. Well, a while later (not nearly as quickly as hoped) we learned that our car needed a new transfer case (which has to do with the transmission). Obviously not cheap. Not even close to cheap. About an arm and a leg past being pricey, if you ask me! So we were stranded in Rawlins and we were obviously not going to make it to the viewing. Our only condolence was that Patty and Eric were also making this trek from MN and were able to meet up with us. Obviously there were way too many of us to fit into their car, but they stayed and helped watch the kids, while us three adults cried like little babies. We decided we had to make a plan and figure out what we needed to do versus just stand there in the car dealership parking lot and fortunately we were able to get THE ONLY rental vehicle in town. The only one. It was run down, beat up and not very clean, but it did get us to our destination of Ogden, UT. We stayed at Katchie and Jeff's and were able to get a couple of hours of sleep in before getting up to attend to funeral stuff. I went and met with a lovely women my cousins arranged to have me play the flute with, seeing as my regular piano accompanist and love of my life, couldn't attend the funeral with us. Lucky for me, one of my best friends from high school moved to Utah last year and I was able to borrow her flute. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I also forgot my flute. Yeah. Anyways. I was able to practice the music (which I had never seen before that day!) with her a couple of times before heading back to Katchie's to get ready for the funeral. We arrived at the funeral home to attend the short viewing before the funeral and luckily were some of the first ones there. I was able to see my Grandpa for the last time and truly say goodbye to an amazing man. It was difficult doing so, but I am so grateful to know that he is happy and pain free now. The family prayer was given by my Dad, and it was beautiful. The funeral itself was very nice and I was able to play the piece "Joseph Smith's First Prayer" (requested by my Grandpa) without any tears(at least while I was playing). Grandpa was always one of my biggest fans and I was grateful to be able to give him one final tribute. My mom gave a lovely closing prayer and the graveside services were very peaceful. The military gave him a 21 gun salute (proper military burial) and they had an incredible trumpet player play a few pieces that I know we could all hear Grandpa singing along to in our heads! We placed flowers on his casket, which was beautiful, and then attended a luncheon in Grandpa's honor. We were able to celebrate his life and the wonderful man that he was. It was nice to be able to reminisce with family and to be there together, even if only for a short time.
Later that evening our immediate family got together to celebrate my brother in law, Eric's, birthday. We ate pizza, visited and had a fun time just hanging out. On Sunday we got back in the car to make our long return journey home. We first drove to Salt Lake City to pick up another rental van, because we were returning the one to Rawlins, and the car was not done yet because it was Labor Day weekend. In Rawlins, we dropped off the one rental car, dropped my car keys off at the hospital for a local bishop who was kind enough to take our car to another car repair shop, and decided we were way past exhausted and we weren't going to be able to drive any further. We stayed in a hotel there and had a nice breakfast at the adjoining diner the next morning before hitting the road again. We were able to make it all the way to Ames, IA and checked into a hotel there to get a few hours of shuteye. Tuesday morning, my parents headed back up to Marshall to sign some papers for the house, and the kids and I headed home in my parents Durango, which they have been kind enough to let us borrow. It took us another 12 hours to get home and we were exhausted by the time we walked through the door. It was nice to be able to sleep in our own beds after the drama of the week prior and we were anxious to get the chance to recuperate. Like that was going to happen!
Is anyone still reading this?!?!?
I managed to catch a cold amongst all of our travels and was pretty sick by the time we got home. The kids had had coughs before we left, but had miraculously recovered by the time we got back. Or so I thought. Really their coughs were just in hiding. This past weekend they came out of hiding in full force and ran rampant through our household, bringing along fevers and more yucky germs! We have had a good 5 days of lounging around, taking medicine, taking temperatures, and trying to get better. As of tonight we are officially fever free and I am thrilled! I'm not sure how much more of all this I could take! Aleece had to miss three days of school, but she is all set to return tomorrow and is very excited. We are still battling some runny noses, but we know we are going to win this battle in the end and are anxious to see it come to a close!
Sorry for this being more of a novel than a blog post! I will post pictures in a different post, so stay tuned!