Wowzers!

I don't know about you, but when I'm sleep deprived, every small anthill looks like a monstrous mountain.  I've been exceedingly sleep deprived this week.

We've been coaxing our silver 15 passenger van along for some time.  Garrett kicked in the side door in a happy moment, and we now don't have to worry about locking it, and are forced to open it from the inside in order to load our passengers.  We've been worried about our transmission for awhile, and our brakes are definitely in need of some attention.  It's nine years old, and we've run it into the ground.

On Monday, I got a call from Ladd that I've been dreading.  "Sharla, my car is dead.  You'll have to come get me."  The problem with this phone call was he was driving our small car, not the van.  I was still suffering from my stiff neck that pervaded my back as well.  My brain wasn't functioning well because of a lack of sleep.  I had a huge headache (can I just say stress?).  And, it started to rain just as I finally figured out where Ladd was during rush hour traffic.  We towed his car to the nearest Tunex, and took off for home wondering what the next couple of days would be like with only one car.  The next day we learned that the motor had burned out.  That brought on talks of ditching the car, buying a new one, or simply putting a new motor into our old car.  We finally settled on the last option, but it will take a whole week.  Ladd talked about renting a car for a week, and instead, his brother offered his third vehicle for our convenience.  Whew!  Thanks to them, Ladd has actually been making it to work on time, and I've been able to shuttle the kids around as needed.  The bank, for some reason, seemed willing to take on more debt for this endeavor which has saved us in the here and now.

As for the rollercoaster that is our life, we've had plenty to deal with this week besides that setback.  Cecilia had to be to an early morning dance practice on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  She had to be at the school before 6 in the morning.  Garrett had to be to early morning Seminary Monday through Thursday by 6:30 a.m..  Then, on Wednesday, Garrett and Cali had to be to the high school at 5:15 am. for a segment Big Budha was doing on Westlake High School to be aired on Fox 13 news.  Garrett and Cali had either a marching band practice, sectionals, or a football game to play in the pep band everyday this week.  On Saturday, they had a final practice from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for Marching Band.  We had scouts for Jarom (Garrett and James both missed theirs due to scheduling or mom problems) and Young Women's for Cali and Cecilia.  Mckenzie also had activity days this week.  Mckenzie and Ruby went to dance on Thursday as normal.  I took Garrett to the doctor to assess where he's at with his shoulder (he's been doing physical therapy for a month and a half now).  The doctor feels like we need to do a MRI that requires injections into his shoulder for clarification purposes.  And, Alyssa has been feeling miserable this week, so I finally broke down and took her to the doctor.  She has two very infected ears.  Trying to get her medicine down her is like wrestling a greased pig.  On Friday, the last possible day to get this accomplished, I rushed Garrett to LDS Employment Services so he could finish off his Teacher Duty to God goals.  It's done!  And, while Ladd was at work and Garrett and Cali were at their football game, the rest of us attended Damon's baptism!  Piggy backed onto that wonderful night was a birding opportunity for the kids Jarom down to Lena to go with Grandpa and Grandma Hinton and Adam and Kelsy's family Saturday morning.  I was a facilitator and a chauffer that morning.  We spent the rest of the day trying to get our house out of the gutter before Ladd and I attended our adult session of our stake conference, and the BYU game started.  I was working on cleaning the house some more (never ending -- even when I do it right) during the BYU game and my equilbrium suddenly departed.  So, I struggled onward trying to get my house to a point where it could wait out the Sunday break with grace -- without falling over.  What a challenge!  I was grateful when my head finally hit the pillow even if the world continued to spin.  This morning we got to the church early enough with the older children to get the third row back.  I went back to retrieve the others when it was almost time for the meeting to start.  It was particularly cold in the front of the chapel, and all of our children were struggling to stay awake.  Both Lena and Alyssa both finally succumbed as I would guess Ladd and Garrett.  It was a wonderful meeting, and the best part about it was most of the kids bothered Ladd and allowed my attention to be focused just on the talks.  I loved it!

One of the bonuses of having Ladd's car break down was Ladd finally took the van in to be worked on.  Ironically, he didn't tell them to work on the brakes (decided to wait a bit on those), but now, the van runs much better!  It turns out it was a burned out coil instead of the transmission!  Hopefully, this will allow the van to work a bit longer since it will take us even longer for us to be able to afford a newer van.

Now, onto our next challenging week. . . .  I have a sore throat coming on, Garrett's 16th birthday that is full of school and marching band, two band competitions, two early morning practices for Cecilia, four doctors appointments, five things that are landing on Saturday, and possibly an MRI.  What's the next step beyond Wowzers?!