Wahoo!

I have a new nephew! This picture (stolen lovingly from my sister's blog... hope you don't mind, Linds) is of my sister Lindsay and her new baby, Miles. I'm way excited! Only... they live in North Carolina, so I don't even get to see him super soon. Dang. They are coming to Utah in a few weeks, though, and I might even get to go out there before that. We'll see. Anyway. If you want more info or more pictures- check out my sister's blog. Love ya, Linds, and congrats again!!

Thanks for everything.

For the past few years my family has lived all over the world. Lindsay and her family have lived in North Carolina for... I don't even know how long. 5 years, maybe? My parents and Amber have lived in Thailand for three years. Brian lived in Illinois/Germany/Austria/Thailand for three years. Me? I've been in Utah. (Yes, I did go to Thailand for a bit, but I'm just talking majority here.) Sometimes being far apart has been no big deal, and sometimes it has been really tough. Last week was one of those weeks. Thank heavens Brian lives in Utah again. It would have been impossible without him. My amazing Grandma, Clara Dodge, passed away last week. She was 93 years old, and was one of the most remarkable people I've had the privilege of knowing.

I really wasn't planning on posting about it because I'm not a good writer, and could never do justice to what I want to say... but I keep thinking about her and how lucky I am to have had her in my life. I can only hope that someday I can be a bit more like her. The funeral on Monday went very well. It was very bitter-sweet to discuss and relive memories. My Grandparents have 8 kids (my dad being the youngest) so my extended family is quite large. There are something like 40 grand kids, and so far there are 59 great-grand kids (with 6 more coming in the near future). Although it was sad and hard to say good-bye to her, at least we have the knowledge that it isn't final. At least we know we can see her again.

She lived an amazing life. The gospel was always her number one priority and temple work was one of her passions. She has done more than 200 sessions in the temple each year for something like the last 20 years, and I'm sure right now she is simply carrying on the work she was doing in life... only in different ways.

Somehow the timing of this made the distance between my family feel a bit bigger. I'm grateful that the funeral was able to be broadcast on the internet so that my parents and sisters were able to see it. I wish I had the words to communicate how amazing my grandma was, but since I know that I don't... I'll just leave it at this-

I love you, Grandma, and thanks. Thanks for being such an amazing person and example. I'll miss you.

Baby steps... baby steps.

Alright, so a lot of you know that my parents come home in a month... and the rest of you? do now. The project at hand, therefore, is getting their home livable!

When my parents left they rented out their house, and we shoved EVERYTHING THEY OWN into three of the bedrooms in our house. Let me just tell you... dang. Those rooms... S.T.U.F.F.E.D. Our favorite way to explain it is this: ever played Tetris? Getting the furniture in those rooms was like the biggest real-life game of Tetris ever. Things were stacked to the ceiling. So. After the renters moved out... the next step was to get those rooms unpacked! Brian and I had a group of our guy friends (and Whit. :) ) come and help us get everything out. It was INSANE. It took us something like 7 hours to get everything out of the three rooms. That, however, was only the start!





One of the bedrooms (Lindsay's) had a little surprise for us. Ever heard of a little thing called "water damage"?? I have. Heard of it, I mean. And now- I get to DEAL with it! Wahoo!! Everything was going pretty well until I lifted a box on the floor, which resulted in both of my arms being COVERED in black mold. Yeah... that's probably gross. A year and a half ago the ceiling in my dad's office upstairs colapsed under the weight of the snow, and... NOW I'm thinking it MAY have affected the room beneath it, too. None of the walls or the ceiling show any damage, but the carpet through the ENTIRE room is full of mold. Unfortunately... there was furniture sitting on the carpet. Lots of furniture. There is mold growing up the legs/sides of several pieces of it. Tables, tvs, mattresses. Cool. That box I mentioned? It was a box of my high school things... and the stuff inside it was so gross! I had a few plaques in there, and they DOUBLED in thickness because there is so much mold inside the wood. Ugh. Good thing I've been graduated for a long time and just don't care about that stuff as much anymore.

Everyone left at about 8:30 pm, and then Brian and I realized that the moldy furniture had been taken around the house. Greaaaaaaat. So Brian and I went around and took all the moldy furniture that we could lift and put it BACK into the moldy room. The really big furniture got blankets put underneath them.

Here are some pics. I won't put them all up... I'll spare you that. :) It was hard to get good pics of it cause the mold wouldn't show up in the camera.









So now... we have to try and save the moldy stuff. (Not the mattresses. Those are gonners, man.) We've got to get someone in the house to rip the carpet out, and then check the insides of the walls.

Other than that, the house looks like a disaster zone! The furniture and boxes are no longer crammed into the three rooms, but distributed across the entire house! (It's actually progress... a TON of progress, but it sure looks like a step backwards!)


We went from this:







To THIS...






Good heavens. Still. Progress... I just have to keep telling myself that...