Later Last Sunday night...We just got home from the performance; it turned out well. Every ward had a ward choir number and the stake choir sang several. We were the closing number - and we did the best we have ever done (which is not to say we were perfect, but it was fine.) You should be especially proud of your dad! The music was wonderful, amazing and inspiring:)!
Afterwards an Eric Rubel (not sure of the spelling) came up and introduced himself as a person from the Roseburg stake who hung out with our girls at stake dances a number of years ago. And if I got it right he was in the MTC at the same time as Sara. Amazing. He is working in Alaska, 3 weeks on, 3 weeks off, and moved his family back down here to be close to family on both sides (his wife's and his).
Monday....was a long, hard-working day at the office as I continued to work on the piles of packages and letters plus (it seems) a million other things. At home finally we just plopped down and watched “The Best Two Years” (loaned to us by the Terrys, one of the other office couples), then went to bed early.
Tuesday we went back to the Hangar place. I told him my sad story and showed him the back of my leg and the ugly wound still healing. I left the WalkAide with him and he will be making some adjustments; can’t wear it until my skin is totally healed (don’t even want to!) so, since we leave Friday for California for Christmas with Emily, Adam & Eli, wearing it again will come after the first of the year. He is going to give it a “pediatric” adjustment - which may make it more adjustable for me; we will see. Meanwhile, it is back to my walking sticks and Dad’s arm. When we got to the office there was plenty of work to do and we stayed until nearly 7 as I tried very hard to have things done and in order for tomorrow. We are to attend the Eugene Zone Conference tomorrow, which will take away about half of our workday and the mail concerns me. Even though we have asked parents to mail Christmas packages directly to their missionary sons and daughters at their physical addresses, we are still receiving a huge amount of mail each day and it is quite a chore to keep up with it. If that was ALL I had to do I could maybe succeed, but actually between phone calls, referrals, requests for supplies, trying to get the supply order done for the January delivery, thank you letters and checks to RS presidents for doing the lunches at the zone conferences, plus some medical bills (for missionaries) to take care of I find it a little difficult to get all the mail forwarded as needed. But it felt good to get done what I did this evening and I am grateful for that. After leaving the office we went to Ross’ and got Dad a new set of pajamma bottoms as he has completely worn out the ones he had:)! Now we are relaxing and puttering around trying to get little things done to help us be ready to leave on Friday.
Wednesday. Feels like it has been a week already. I know I was busy from morn until night, but feel like all I got done was the mail. We went to the Eugene Zone Conference this morning through lunch and I took some notes - which I will add later. Very tired tonight - but am trying to do laundry and a few other things to be prepared to leave on Friday. Snow is threatening to mess up our travel - we will have to wait until Friday morning to see how things are doing and make our final decision.
OK - it is Sunday, so what happened to Thursday, Friday and Saturday? Well...I’m trying hard to remember anything specific about Thursday, but can’t. Continued working on the Mail I know, and also on Referrals and on Thank You letters for the Relief Society presidents who fed our missionaries at the Zone Conferences this week. The last one was Thursday and I suggested to the mission presidentand his wife that they might want to reconsider that one based on the weather forecasts. He looked like he might be thinking about it. Thursday night we spent packing things up so that we would be ready to leave for California and we actually did a pretty good job of it and were able to leave for the office almost on time the next morning. That was kind of amazing:).
Friday morning as we arrived at the office the other two office Elders were in the office so we knew that they had cancelled going down to Central Point for the automotive inspections at the Zone Conference...but were told that the president and his wife and the APs had all gone down together. The president’s car has 4 wheel drive so I think he wasn’t worried about the weather. However, they paid a price for going: I5 was closed down (accidents due to heavy snow) for 33 miles starting a little bit past Grants Pass - and all the motels were full with stranded motorists. Luckily the couple that just finished their time in the office live in Grants Pass and hadn’t left for California yet, so they provided lodging for them - and apparently another family whose power had gone out. A lot of snow fell on Thursday; more even than they had predicted.
We kept watching the road reports as we did our work through the day; it took me until almost 5:00 before I felt I could leave with a good conscience. We decided to head on down to Roseburg, have dinner with Linda & give her her little gift from us, then check the weather/roads and make a decision on whether to leave or to spend the night at our house. About halfway to Roseburg, Linda called us and said she was really sick - sounded very much like what Charlotte had had...probably a flu bug - so that cancelled our dinner together. We stopped at her apartment to leave the gifts and visit for just a few minutes and then decided to go ahead and head southward. We kept checking on a closure of I5 at the California/Oregon border on the computer; finally Dad stopped at a truck scale and went in to talk to the person working the scales. Found out they had just re-opened the road but that more snow was expected and it would likely close again over the next day or so. We were at Ashland, so stopped at a little cafe there and had some surprisingly good food (we were pretty hungry by then) and then continued our journey. Had to pull over and put the chains on before going up the Siskiyous - that took a while but was not too bad; it wasn’t actually snowing on us at that time. Driving about 20 mph we made it through and past the border. I don’t remember where, but we pulled over and took the chains off. A while later we had to pull over and put them on again to get over Mt. Shasta - it WAS snowing and blowing big time then and poor Dad got quite cold out there. He said the chains froze and it made them hard to work with, but finally got them on and we continued. Obvious our pace was not very speedy and it was tempting to try to find a place to pull over and stay - but having heard what the weather was expected to do we felt compelled to continue on our way. Dad wanted to get as far as Redding - which we finally did around 2 a.m. Tried to find a motel room there but trucks and cars were everywhere (from people trying to head north) and there was not a room to be had anywhere. In desperation we pulled into a parking lot, turned the engine off and put our seats back to get at least a nap. We woke up at 6 and started out again - the weather very rainy and the traffic heavy, but all in all much better than the night before. About 9:30 or so we stopped at a little restuarant for breakfast, which helped. We continued through the day, making progress but not speedy progress; the number of people/cars/trucks, etc. traveling I5 was unbelievable and we passed lots of cars/trucks off the road for a number of reasons, including accidents. I think it was about 5 and we were supposedly a couple of hours from Emily’s when she asked us to pick up some tiles from Adam’s sister Claire before coming on down to her house. Claire had picked up the tiles for them because they needed to go into the house they are working on tomorrow. Normally it probably wouldn’t have added more than a few minutes to the drive - and actually it may have saved us time in the long run. The reality was that we were driving between 14 or 15 mph for hours. When we first put her address in the GPS it said it was 1 hour and 6 minutes to get there. And hour and 30 minutes later we called her to say it was telling us it would be another 20 minutes. The blessing was that the number of cars on that road was less than I5. We finally met with her and picked up the tiles, called Em to let her know where we were and that we were headed her way - again, the GPS said something like an hour and 10 minutes. Luckily for us, the roads were mostly cleared of traffic for a great deal of the distance. I think it was about 9 when we got here, but truthfully can’t remember. It was late and we were quite tired, but so glad to have arrived safely!
Today was glorious - had a shower, washed my hair and have fresh clothes on:)! Actually I feel I was given an incredibly beautiful gift today as I sat next to one of my daughters in one of the most beautiful Relief Society lessons I have every been in. What a blessing. It was based on a talk by President Uchtdorf combined with thoughts from a new book by Elder David A. Bednar, Act in Doctrine. Now I want to go get Elder Bednar’s book. The person giving the lesson could not have done a better job and the Spirit was so very strong; I am so grateful to have been here for it.
Emily, Adam and Dad are over at their other house...I am going to take a nap...if Eli stays asleep:).
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