DC Disasters

Our DC trip was awesome. It really was.  But there were quite a few things that went wrong.  You could call it "the lost trip" as that seemed to be a theme for what went wrong most of the time.  Not all of the time, but most.
The chaos didn't just happen on the trip, it started a few days before.
I dye my hair every now and again (really not often) and wanted to give my hair a refresher before we left. There is a certain auburn dye that is a non-permanent, washes out in 28 washes kinda dye that is my go to. Unfortunately, our closest Target did not have it for some reason.  So I thought hey, no big deal, I"ll try this one instead.  That was a bad idea.  My hair turned ORANGE.  Oh wait, not all my hair, just the roots.  It looked horrible.  This hair coloring episode was 2 nights away from the great escape.

Orange roots

I knew I wanted to chop my hair off when we got back so I didn't want to pay a ton of money to professionally color my hair just to have it gone soon, but we checked out a few salons while we were at the mall the next morning and they all wanted to take 3 HOURS and cost over $100, just to color.  That was a huge HECK NO so we went to another Target and found my regular dye.  Re-dyed the hair that night and.... slightly less orange, now more red.  But not auburn red, bright red.  As in my hair could be the red in a "red, white and blue" Patriotic outfit.  Ok for Portland, not for vacation, but I had to live with it cuz now we were at the day of departure.

Red roots

Which is when the first lost item happened.
The lost temple recommend: Sunday night just hours before we left, we were on the phone with my mom, just chatting and going over last minute stuff.  She asked if we had our temple recommends for our planned temple trip, which we assumed we did.  Checked my wallet... no temple recommend.  Scoured my purse... no temple recommend.  It was lost! Sunday night at 9 PM and no temple recommend to be found anywhere! Luckily we have an awesome Bishopric and an awesome member of the Stake Presidency in our ward.  After a few phone calls we were able to set up interviews and I secured a new temple recommend with an hour to spare before departure.  Side note: After coming back from the trip, a week or so after, I found my temple recommend that was lost- it was hiding in my car insurance card in my wallet.  Sneaky recommend.

The lost baby shoe: First day alone with the kids and what do we do? Lose one of Audrey's shoes. Sorry Adrienne!

The lost binky: After lunch at the Capitol on Day 3, we were hurrying to get to our reservation at the Archives.  On the way there were some police sirens, a favorite sound of Elliott's, to which he yells "get outta the way!" We had given Elliott his binky so that he could take a nap, but in the siren commotion (at least that's when we think it happened), Elliott took his binky out and dropped it on the dirty ground.  Halfway to the Archives we realized the bink was missing.  Super Uncle Dustin ran back to the Capitol, found the binky, and ran back to us just in time.  10 minute rule, right?

Elliott reunited with his bink at the Archives

The lost SmarTrip cards: Good idea: Buying a SmarTrip Metro pass while visiting for a week in DC.  Bad idea, losing said SmarTrip card at a Nationals Baseball game.  First it was my mom who lost hers right when we got off the metro going to the game.  Then Dustin couldn't find his when we went to get back on the metro after the game.  So we bought him a new one and luckily I had registered our cards so we could easily transfer the funds to a new card.  I called SmarTrip after the Holocaust Museum and canceled the lost card, switched funds to my card, easy as pie.  Then I looked at the SmarTrip card in my wallet... and it was the number I had just canceled, transferring funds to the lost card. Ay-yi-yi!  Got super mad, called them back and asked to undo what we had just done and switch the funds to the card we had in our possession, etc.  They said it might not work cuz once a card is canceled, it's over, but luckily it worked.  Though we bought another SmarTrip card in case it didn't.  We rock.

I thought this was a funny sign at one of the metro stations.  The joys of riding the metro!

The lost husband: Walking to the Lincoln Memorial was a feat and I was pooped. My feet were done.  So Dustin and I waited for the fireworks there, right? Dustin left to get water/food and my parents and brothers had gone back to the Washington Monument for the firework show.  Lots of time passed and no Dustin. Cell phone reception at Lincoln was horrible nonexistent.  We had a hard time getting a hold of my parents and I couldn't get a hold of Dustin at all, no texts, no calls.  Pretty sure it I had a huge panic attack. I left our spot to go find him at the nearest concession stand and he wasn't there.  I found a place with reception and tried to call him.  No dice.  Just voice mail.  More panicking. I went back to our spot (which it was getting even MORE crowded now as firework time was getting close).  After being gone for almost 2 HOURS, Dustin returned with drinks.  I cried.  He said he had to go back to pick up the food and I said, "No way! I'm coming with you!"  I guess he had gone to the OTHER concession stand farther away (he didn't know about the closer one) and with a much longer line.  We picked up our food waiting at the grill and sat and ate and cried.  I wasn't going to let him leave me ever again!

Happy to be together before losing my man

The lost ipad: Finally, we lost our ipad on our flight home.  We had it from DC to Minnesota but on the next flight from Minnesota to PDX, it was gone.  We realized it was missing just after we boarded and went to turn it off.  Pretty heartbreaking.  In the end, it's just stuff, but it took me a while to get over it.  Curse you Delta for having the crappiest lost and found system imaginable! I'm pretty sure we left it in the seat pocket on our first flight.  Note to you all, never put ANYTHING in the airplane seat pockets.  Ever.  I guess losing an ipad is one way to stop a Candy Crush addiction.

December

December is quite the month! It is flying by and filled to the brim as we get ready to head home for the holidays for a little break.  We don't fly out until Christmas Eve morning and I'm hoping and praying that everything goes ok with the flights (we fly to Reno for a small layover before landing in SLC) so we make it time for family Christmas Eve fun!

This Monday was Dustin's birthday which we celebrated by going to a Portland Trailblazers basketball game vs the Toronto Raptors.  It was a fun game and the Blazers won which is always nice.  We also celebrated D-man's birthday by seeing The Hobbit in Real 3D with Dolby Atmos sound at the Cinetopia in Vancouver.  It was so unreal!  The video and picture quality was just... crazy awesome.  The movie was pretty good too, but I was mostly amazed by the imaging. 

In case I didn't mention it before, in October our ward got a new primary presidency and I was called to be 2nd counselor.  It has been fun but also made me SUPER busy!  Between learning what the heck we're supposed to be doing, cub scouts, sharing time, and planning a meet and greet breakfast for the beginning of the year, every night is booked!  But I work in an awesome presidency and we are learning quickly. 

It's crazy how sick this world is getting.  And not the good kind of sick.  On Tuesday here in Clackamas, just a 10 minute drive from our house, there was a shooting at the Clackamas Town Center mall.  This is the mall that we usually go to! We love Clackamas! We love how the sidewalks sparkle! It's crazy to think that someone would come and start randomly shooting at our mall!  It's lucky that this happened on a Tuesday afternoon instead of a Friday night or Saturday because the mall is always extremely busy.  Our hearts go out to those families that were affected by this sad incident.

And then Newton, CT on Friday.  Oh my.  I can't even begin to imagine why anyone would go to an Elementary School to kill innocent children and teachers.  That is a sick sick crime and I was so heartbroken to hear about the massive amount of damage that was done.  I send my prayers to those families in that town, both to those that had losses and those that survived.  That is such a tragedy.

What is this world coming to?!

As far as us, we're doing ok.  The news of our negative results reached a breakdown last week.  We were fine until some LDS students in a club meeting at school with Dustin started complaining about how they were pregnant again and how they can't believe they have so many kids.  UGH.  Makes me so mad.  And then I started my period which is always that awful reminder that it really didn't work.  That we are still waiting and must continue to exercise patience and faith. 

I did meet with a family doctor this week to get testing done on my TSH again and see how that is doing and whether we need to change my dosage for my thyroid.  I'm still waiting on those test results, but hopefully we can start making progress. My insurance is changing next year, which I am SUPER happy about because I've hated my insurance.  We did get a ray of hope when I saw an EOB show up online from my insurance that looks like it will cover most of the first ginormous bill we received for bloodwork.  I'm talking about an $818 bill going down to $24.... HUGE DIFFERENCE!  I'm still waiting for an updated invoice to really feel in the clear, but it was a tender mercy and a little sunshine that we will make it through this and not become absolutely broke at the same time.

I probably won't have time to post again this next week so we wish you all a very Merry Christmas!  We look forward to 2013 and hope it brings happiness, peace and miracles!