Hello Stranger

Well hello there. Excuse my bloggy break, but I was losin' it big time over here. Like crying in the shower, rocking back and forth, waiting for sweet, sweet death to wash over me losin' it. I was in a lot of pain (duh) and a tad bit depressed. No shocker there really. I mentioned that I thought the pain pills were making me feel depressed at my first appointment with my spine specialist and he said he would be depressed too if was like me since March. Good news, it wasn't the pain meds, bad news, it was me. Awesome sauce.

So there we were dealing with all of my back issues when, long story short, everything seemed to just fall apart. Things went from bad to worse. Lucky for us though, we have an amazing family though and everyone really helped us out in one way or another. Seriously, every single one. It's comforting to know that we have such an amazing support system when things don't go well.

Even better, my parents were a mere 7 hours from us when ish hit the fan. So when we were really at our worse my parents were here to do everything for us. They drove down to our house immediately and we couldn't have been more happy/relieved they were with us. They cleaned our messy house, did dishes, helped us struggle through the grocery store to restock our pantry and kept us sane. They may have left the grandparents but they were pretty much doing the same thing down here with us, dr. visits, pharmacy runs, and making sure we ate.

We walked around the temple, played cards, ate great food, showed them where we rock climb, rekindled a love of Swig, and spent a couple days in Vegas before they finally had to go back home.

 

Just to clarify, we are doing better, slowly but surely :) It's still not rainbows and butterflies over here, but we are working on it!

Birthday Shenanigans in the Mitten

As son as Val, Bill and the gang left we had 2 days to pack and do a little cleaning before heading home. HOME. Wonderful, beautiful, green Michigan filled with tons of family and friends that we miss so dearly. We celebrated Chad's birthday on Saturday along with Jared as well. It' become an amazing tradition that we are all determined to keep alive. In addition to celebrating together matching shirts have also snuck their way in as well. I love it. LOVE it.

I also love that we were able to celebrate not only with my parents, Taylor, Jared (duh), Chad's parents, Nikki, Matt and the gang, Tracy, Lincoln and their whole crew as well. It was so fun to be able to celebrate with so much of our family! Happy Birthday Chad!!! Especially since I was passed out for a while (ok, it was longer than a while) due to some drugas for my whole SI joint issue. Glad to have some birthday support otherwise it wouldn't have been quite so fun with just me!

It was so nice to see everyone, everyone! I slept on the couch (are you sensing a theme) while my mom and the boys made the birthday cake, everyone brought yummy salads and sides while we ate fried chicken. We hung out all afternoon and it was awesome. I couldn't be more thankful for my wonderful family, immediate and extended, they are the absolute best around. And while it is technically "Chared's" birthday, I can't wait to see how we celebrate it all next year :)

In addition to the birthday festivities there was a ridiculous amount of Mexican food consumed, just enough sugar cookies eaten and not enough frozen custard, lol. We were able to stop in at our old ward briefly to basically just say "hi" and harass our old primary class, I stopped by my old work, Chad fit in a little climbing, we managed a double date with Jared and helped pick out a new tv for the parents, and just generally did a lot of hanging out with a lot of the people that we dearly love and miss.  Somehow we were out there for so long but it all went by in a flash.

 

 

(Chad took an actual group photo, and I think some overall better ones in general, imagine that. So as soon as I'm not feeling lazy I'll get some real photos up here to add the amazing amount of selfies that I took all week :) )

Happy and Tired

We wrapped up our last weekend with Debi and Barry with a bang! We ran around doing and seeing everything we could fit in to our last weekend together! On Friday Chad started by climbing his hardest, most impressive climb yet. We've seen so many people fail on this beast, it was awesome to watch him conquer it! To celebrate we burned our old dining room table in the gorge, first flinging it off the edge down to the bottom. It's always more fun to start off a bonfire by tossing the wood off a cliff. We roasted hotdogs, made smores and just plain ate ourselves silly after playing with all the fire.

Saturday we soaked up all the sunshine on a new to us trail that follows part of the Virgin River. We only went around 4 miles, but that just about killed poor Rukia. After biking we caught up with one of our favorite Elders, Elder Mulvaney! Between climbing,  biking and all the sunshine we were pooped so we relaxed in the best way possible: pizza and breadsticks, a giant chocolate cake and ice cream, and cards. Mmmmmm, so fun.

Sunday started off with an even better Mmmmm. Debi made us cinnamon rolls for breakfast. No better way to wake up than to the smell of homemade cinnamon rolls. The four of us devoured them in a flash. After a few noon naps we were out the door again to Red Cliffs. I always forget how awesome this place is. Red Rocks for days and mini waterfalls from all the snow melt. Chad jumped in more than a few times and Rukia was overwhelmed with happiness. Home girl loved the water. Really, we all did. It was a gorgeous hike and a fun way to spend our last day together.

Busy Bees

We haven't had vacationers to our house in a long time. Also the weather has been perfect lately. Perfect! So naturally we've been running around everywhere showing Debi and Barry all of our favorite places. First things first though, Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day was a Friday so naturally.... we climbed. And hiked. We hiked out to Turtle Wall and spent the afternoon climbing, taking pictures and videos and just enjoying nature. It was perfect. We thought maybe we would go out to dinner once we got home but we were all pooped from the afternoon/evening. It was late so we ordered pizza and breadsticks and stayed inside :) Chocolate covered strawberries and Swig sugar cookies rounded out our meal! We had a blast being outdoors and sharing what we love with Debi and Barry.

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Debi and her new hubby Barry got here Sunday night! We are super excited to spend a couple weeks with them, showing off our favorite outdoor spots and eating an ridiculous amount of dessert. They've only been here 3 full days and we've already made brownie sundaes, giant chocolate chip cookies, bought krispy kremes, and restocked the snickers stash. Side Note: We may have a candy drawer that has turned into a snicker's/Chocolate Chip drawer. Livin' large at the Lewis House. I've got plans to test out a new sugar cookie recipe and am pretty sure I can trick everyone into going to my favorite Chinese Buffet on the way back from Zion's. Clearly my most important plans involve eating massive amounts food.

Awkward:

• An old man doing a ring check on me at the Nursing Home. Why yes sir, I am married. Good thing I remembered to put it on after rock climbing, who knows how that could have played out.
• Getting back from a nursing home and finding a weird brown stain the size of my fist on my thigh. Hmmmm.... Poop or Chocolate?
• Speaking of poop, finding poop on our bed Tuesday night after staying up until 2am with Debi and Barry. Poop on the bed is never good, at 2am, it's down right horrific.
• Trying to tell older patients my name. Danielle is absolutely exotic to most people over a certain age. And after yelling it 10 times in a row, directly into someone's ear, it starts to sound strange to me too. I'm thinking I should just tell anyone over 80 or hard of hearing that my name is Kate.
• Shoving all of our clean clothes (we hadn't done laundry for weeks) into a random closet when Debi and Barry got here. Folding? Ain't nobody got time for that!
• Mountain Biking in broad daylight and tipping over into a bush, that's right, tipped over. Granted I was wearing a giant backpack so I do have a bit of an excuse.

Awesome:

• Trying to replicate Panera's Chocolate Chip Cookies. I haven't found the right recipe yet but we are sure enjoying the process!
• Getting to the top of my harder climb without having to rest on the rope once! A clean climb is the best feeling!
• Mountain Biking in the dark and not totally wiping out.
• Attempting crazy yoga moves and realizing I have the strength to attempt them. Attempt being the key word. I may not be at all flexible, not at all, but I am getting stronger! 
• Garlic Bread.
• Our back Patio! Barry cleaned it up and rigged up our tarp for our bikes!

Happy Early Valentines Day! Hopefully it's full of love from friends and family, and lots (and lots) of chocolate!

Hail to the Victors

After failing to get a good family picture at Temple Square we tried again the next morning. Again, we were ridiculous and decided that it would be a good idea to do this outside, in the cold, without our coats on. Chad was determined and we all decided to buck up and do this thing. And do it we did. Pretty adorable if I do say so myself.

Christmas 2013

Oh Christmas, you were wonderful. We headed up to Provo on Tuesday afternoon just in time to go out to our favorite sushi place. The parents were good sports and treated us all to one of our favorite dinners even though it wasn't necessarily their favorite.

Ashley had to work Christmas and the day after, sad day. So we hung out and chatted, slacklined, watched a horrible movie (R.I.P.D. anyone?), ate cookies, grocery shopped and counted down the minutes to when she would return :)



We opened presents and stockings and all of us kids were absolutely spoiled. It was fabulous. Not to mention the grocery shopping trips mom took us each on to restock our pantries. Merry Christmas to us! I was dancing around WalMart like a little kid the entire time! In addition to Christmas spoiling I have a birthday in January so I also got a few extras at Target, hello polka dot jeans!

Speaking of birthdays, my dad's is the 27th. So there was even more celebrating! Dad took us all to Salt Lake where we shopped our hearts out at the new mall. After he reigned us all in we went up to the Joseph Smith Building and ate dinner at the very top, overlooking the Salt Lake Temple. SO FUN. Afterwards there were multiple attempts at pictures at Temple Square but it was cold and Tay and I may have had a hard time holding still. We managed to pull our ish together for some pretty awesome pictures on Saturday though.

We saw Enders Game (loved), ate our hearts out at Chuck-a-Rama, and played Pictionary until Dad couldn't take it anymore. The boys escaped at one point to go climbing at a gym and do some shopping of their own at REI. While the boys slacklined the girls got crafty and did some easy sewing projects. I can now crochet a square... and a rectangle. Bam! We all got our craft on and decorated our own ornaments this year, it was a good time.

Hopefully you guys had a wonderful Christmas and could spend it with those you love doing and eating all the other things you love. In other words, hopefully you had a great Christmas love fest like we did :)