ITS ALIVE

I dedicate this blog post to Mallory, who has emailed me twice to make sure I'm okay due to the fact I haven't written in a couple of months. Mallory, rest assured all is well, and thank you for your avid reading and concern, you da best!

Where to start, where to start...

Christmas Family Reunion:
Christmas this year was extra awesome. I have TEN siblings, ya'll. So its fairly easy to get everyone together with their different job and school schedules and their children. The previous sentence is the biggest lie I've ever written in my blog.

We haven't had a reunion with everyone present in a decade, and we were still an in-law and two nieces and one nephew short, but we got close, and all of my immediate siblings were all under the same roof again, and it felt like old times.

There come to be some problems when you have ten kids, their spouses and their children under one roof. First of all, space. So apparently its my mom's motto that if you're not married you're bottom of the chain, so my younger sister and brothers and I had to sleep in the van in the garage for a couple of weeks.

Totally kidding.

But that is true about being lowest rank, which makes sense, I don't need much privacy and I don't have a husband or kids to sleep next to me, so its fine. I rotated from air mattress to couch to recliner chair every couple of nights, kept me on my toes.

Side note: I hate living out of a duffel bag, it never fails that when I get home and open my bag all the clothes I'm in the mood to wear are nowhere close to me, and all the clothes I packed are not appealing. Cut to me wearing my pajamas for half of vacation. Don't worry, we're in Minnesota, its 100% acceptable, I kid you not. My older brother Marcus has lived overseas and just recently moved to California with his family. He jumped up to go to Best Buy one night wearing sweatpants, mentioned he should go change before he left and then looked at me and said, "wait, this is Minnesota, i'm fine in this." I wasn't even fazed, and must have had a confused look on my face when he mentioned needing to change, I didn't think twice about his outfit. I once overheard girls saying people from Minnesota are "plain Jane, granola, homely" I was deeply insulted and thought it to be untrue, moved away from a  year and came back to visit and said, "whoa...we are" If I saw one more camo hoodie and sweatpants combo I would have lost it. God bless you, Minnesota, and God bless your sweatpants. In our defense, when you walk outside and instantly feel your hair and snot freeze, wearing anything besides a sweatsuit almost just kind of makes you look like an idiot.

Back to our giant reunion...it was awesome. I spent much time in the basement watching "Grey's Anatomy" I own the series on DVD and decided I wanted to watch the pilot episode because re-watching the first episode of series is always fun to me, ended up being a mistake, because I pretty much hibernated down there.

I got to snuggle and play with many nieces and nephews, get to know some sisters-in-law a lot better, laugh a bunch, wax my brothers back, you know, the usual ;) I also went back and worked a few shifts at Starbucks. Being home isn't the same if I don't work at least a couple times, I love our regulars and my co-workers like family, but being in a Starbucks in Target is dangerous. I along with half the American population have a Target addiction, where you walk up and down aisles finding stuff I think I "need" get to the check-out, walk back to my car, sit down and buckle my seat belt and say, "Whoa, I just spent 75 dollars, what did I even buy?" I definitely have about five of the same v-neck shirts, all in different colors, not to mention a disgusting amount of Burt's Bees Chapsticks which aren't sold on this island, and more nail polish colors than any girl will ever need. I need help.

Petri Dish
So you know when a kid goes to Daycare and ends up getting sick all of the time because of all the fellow children with germs? Okay, my house turned into a cesspool, not literally, as far as I know there was no underground disposal of human waste, but EVERYONE GOT SO SICK. Coming from all parts of the country with so many people and so many germs, it was just madness. I don't know who started this fiasco, but slowly each person came down with the same flu-like illness like a domino effect. Christmas Day half of my family were in the dark basement dying and throwing up simultaneously, yeah, that can happen. Cari and Piper got it the worst I think, they were both feeling pretty crappy most of the break which was really sad, Cari finally got her energy back once everyone had already gone home and break was almost over, isn't life funny...

All in all, break was awesome, enjoy these pictures, especially you, Mallory.

Some friends I met while I was in school at the Aveda Institute met me for dinner

The negative effects of a bright flash, also probably the cutest picture of me. Ever. 

A couple of my brothers, Amy, Andi and I went to the Mall of America to see Jared Allen (my favorite NFL player/dream husband) who was supposed to be on this radio interview that they were recording live from a restaurant, when we got there we learned Jared was a no show and had been replaced with our teams kicker, thats my face upon learning this, disgust and misery.

Cari and Grandma while we were at her house baking cookies, an annual tradition. This was our first Christmas without Grandpa and it was really weird to be in his house without him there. We miss him :(

The fruits of our labors

My nephews Quentin and Jackson, my niece Paige and my nephew Vince 

Getting Dairy Queen after dinner at Big Bowl in the mall. From left to right: My brother Dillon, his wife Amy, my sister Carina, my brother Tyler and myself. 

At the Mall of America waiting for people to get off of their rides

My sisters in law Katie and Amy, baby Vince and my little brother Tommy

Dippin' dots are THE best

Statues made entirely out of Legos, they're at least two stories high

My sister in law Katie, my brother Ben and myself

Me & Mum :)

Dillon, Hannah and me

My younger sister Hannah and me

Piper after being put under to get her cavities filled, she's crazy

I went on a date with my dad to a couple of my favorite places in Minnesota, both of which were in the city of course. I hope I can live right in the city someday, pretty spendy, though, I may have to live under a bridge like some sort of troll. This is one of my favorite views, taken from the Guthrie Theatre. 

My dad sippin' on his banana chocolate malt from Annie's Parlour

Fun date night with my Pops, one of my favorite nights from the break

Taking mom to get her first ever pedicure, can't believe that.

Helping my nephew sled, matching orange jackets and Vikings hats, what's up.

Vikings snuggie, best Christmas present ever. I guess I really like our team...

My parents, younger siblings Hannah and Tommy and Baby Vince all sporting their new St. Martin threads, and in Tommy's case, dreads. I love that even while we were taking a picture his eyes are kept on his Minecraft computer game.

One of my best Christmas presents ever, my best friend Christine flew to Minnesota from Florida, I hadn't seen her in over a year. 

The family showing off their white elephant gifts

I put in this nasty cheetah swimsuit cover up thing and my mom ended up with it and actually really loved it, so we
find that hilarious.

Back to the Island:

Our travel back to the island was fairly uneventful which is always good news when you're traveling with an unpredictable toddler. Our flight was a redeye so Piper was pretty stinkin' exhausted but she did really well, she loves airplanes and traveling. She begs us to pack our suitcases months before we're flying next, and every time she sees an airplane she makes sure I acknowledge it, whether its on TV or in real life. Funny girl. 

She started to get a little restless on the second flight, boredom was getting to her, I feel bad for those sitting on the row in front of her, because she was all over the place.

The first week back felt like a million years, getting back into our routines and dealing with a jet-lagged and messed up sleep schedule toddler was tiring, but things are picking up now thankfully and we're getting the hang of our busy lives again!

It's high season on the island now which means tourism here has picked up a lot during the winter months. The weather is also MUCH more bearable now than it was when we left. The summers here get TOO hot and when we got off the plane last weekend it was like a breath of fresh air with the breezes and cooler temperatures and less humidity. Hallelujah! Although I am still used to there not being many people on the island, so now that so many tourists are here the roads are jam packed, parking is even crazier, and tourist attractions look like this instead of the normal one or two people stopped at a tourist site.

Karma:
My boyfriend Pierre is a security guard at my apartment, he works overnights mostly every shift, so he's downstairs from 11pm to 7am. A couple of nights ago I was laying in bed restless, still trying to get back on a sleep schedule and I hear this super annoying sound. I was trying to brainstorm what it could possibly be, our neighbors wash machine is uneven and its shaking like crazy? Someone's doing construction at two in the morning? What. The. Deuce! Finally I message Pierre and tell him there's some super obnoxious noise and its driving me bananas and completely keeping me from sleep. Not to mention it was one of those noises that makes you feel like you're literally losing your mind because it would go for about 30 seconds and then the noise stops and you swear it won't come back again, but then it does. I could just visualize myself bald while someone drips water on my head until I lose my mind. Was the noise at all the equivalent to Chinese water torture? No. But I was really annoyed!

Pierre says he'll come check it out and doesn't hear anything from outside of the apartment and I told him that's because its happening in the wall that I share with our neighbors so he knocks on their door and they answer and they're very clearly cranky from being woken up, and he apologizes and says there's a noise complaint. He can't find any source of noise from their apartment so he comes into our apartment to listen, walks over to my box fan and unplugs it. No noise. I could have died. I felt like SUCH an idiot. He says "goodnight" and walks out. Hahaha. Apparently the remote for the fan was loose and rattling on the back of it so each time it rotated it would rattle. Whoopsie Daisies.

I love to play pranks on Pierre, because I think its so much fun, and also because he's such a good sport about it, he'll usually laugh and then doesn't get mad at all. So we were hanging out on Saturday night and grabbed some McChickens from McDonalds which is the equivalent of Pierre's life support, he LOVES McChickens. I feel like if you talk to him while he's eating one, he could hit you.

He goes to the bathroom and I unwrap his sandwich and take a bite of it, wrap it back up and put it in the bag. He comes back out and opens his sandwich, "Michelle, we have to take this back! Someone ate a bite of it! I think they gave me the wrong burger!" I totally go along with it and say wow that's so gross, I can't believe that. So as he's putting on his shoes to go I tell him I did it and he doesn't believe me, he just thinks I'm not interested in going back to McDonalds and makes me switch sandwiches with him. Germ freak.

Then we go to a beach and look at stars, they're so much prettier here than they are at home because there's far less light disruption and you can see them so much more clearly. When we get back to his house we discover there's a cockroach IN MY HAIR and I really thought I was going to die. Cockroaches are like the logo of the island, because they're everywhere and its so gross.

After I calm down and am getting ready to go home I grab my keys and am running down the stairs of his house to my car and completely biff it going down the stairs, I tumble down like fifteen stairs. The next morning I had these awful shooting pains on the front of my body and Cari was freaking me out with her med school knowledge thinking it was Appendicitis or something. I was almost certain that its just from falling and I was bruised and sore, thankfully after a couple days its feeling better and just more stiff than shooting pains and I'm glad I don't have appendicitis ha. Basically while I was laying at the base of the stairs I decided to stop playing tricks on my poor boyfriend because bugs and falling down stairs aren't worth it in the end. Booooooo.

I made a New Years Resolution to update the blog every two weeks. So I will keep striving for that, and also to take more pictures, so I put one of my cameras in my purse and am going to bring it with me everywhere now, get excited.

Come visit me if you start to develop seasonal depression from all the cold winter weather! I'd love to host and show friends and family around this little island thats becomes a second home.

Until next time!

Enjoy this sunset

Enjoy this extremely awkwardly posed photo

Piper says "hi, blog readers!"

Donald Bernard May

This week I am...sad.

On Monday afternoon I was snap chatting with my brother, Dillon. If you're not sure what that means, snap chat is an app you can use to send pictures back and forth with someone, I like it because the texting app I have on the island doesn't allow for picture messaging, so now I can still get daily doses of my little baby nephew and such.

So Dillon sends me a snap picture of him with a serious face asking if I had gotten any of their messages/voicemails today about Grandpa, which I hadn't gotten...we had been out of the house all day. Let me explain to you how poorly I can communicate from the island...

My iPhone does not work here. Islanders don't even know what AT&T is since its obviously not their phone providers, which is fine. So my phone stays on airplane mode all of the time. I have an app I can use when I get WIFI connection that allows to me to text message. I use sykpe and Facebook to talk to people primarily. We have an island cell phone but its long distance for my family, they don't even have the number for it, and I only use it to make calls mostly within the island. We have a home phone that's a voice over IP, but the internet connection is so slow that if anybody is using the phone (which you can only use during prime internet hours or the connection is too bad and nobody can understand you) nobody else is able to use their internet because the phone hogs all the bandwidth, its just a huge inconvenience. So long story short, if I'm not in the apartment, which I'm not a lot of the time, my family can't get a hold of me, and that has always made me nervous. Now even more so.

So I tell my brother I  have not gotten any messages and ask what's up. My Grandpa May has been in and out of the hospitals for prostate cancer, his last series of tests came back negative and they sent him home to rest from all the tests and prodding and such, I believed him to be getting better. I asked my mom about it all the time and always got positive feedback from her. I felt reassured.

My brother sends me a snap and says "Grandpa had a heart attack this morning and died." I thought Dillon was  kidding. I didn't believe him. I believe I literally responded saying, "That's not funny, go burn in Santa's lair" I remember this because autocorrect changed "Satan" to "Santa" and I was really annoyed, and really mad at Dillon for even joking about it. His next message said "Not joking, call me right now."

.....

I started to have a panic attack...I was immediately brought back to that moment months ago when I thought Piper was being kidnapped. My hands and legs went numb, I felt like I couldn't breathe, I felt like I wasn't moving my own legs...but thought I was like floating into the living room where Cari was on the phone with Casey and I yelled at her to hang up and give me the phone. She was confused but did as I asked and handed me the phone. I called Dillon right away and he told me what had happened. That it was all true. I couldn't contain any sort of emotion and just started to wail. I told him I had to call mom right away and I hung up. Cari stared at me with an extremely concerned and confused face as I dropped the phone onto the ground and collapsed into a ball.

"Cari, Grandpa had a heart attack this morning. He's dead."

We were both hysterical. It didn't feel real. A heart attack? But he just had cancer, and he was getting better...why would he have a heart attack?

I called my mom who was so sad and exhausted after a full day of informing people. But my mom is invincible, we've watched her suffer through the death of her daughter, and now her dad with such grace. She knows we'll see them again. Talking to her gave me enough strength to call my Grandma, that was by far the hardest phone call of the day.

The part that freaked me out the most about this was the entire previous week I'd been having dreams about him dying, and kept waking up in tears, and now I feel like it was foreshadowing and wish I'd have taken them more seriously and called my Grandpa to tell him I think about him a lot and I love him...I'll miss my Grandpa so much. He was such a quiet spoken and simple man. Every time I came to his house and left his house I got the tightest hug in the world, you could feel bones breaking inside your body, but you knew his hugs were genuine and I could feel how much he loved us grandkids.

He used to come down to the cities to stay with us for a week every other month or so and after dinner we would go into the family room and watch sports games while people cleaned up the kitchen. We figured out that if we looked engaged in the game, they wouldn't bug us to help clean. I remember once there were no games on we were familiar with, or any teams we liked, but we found an intense looking tennis match on  ESPN.

Grandpa: "Do you like tennis? Do you even know who these damn girls are?"
Me: "I have absolutely no idea what's going on, or who they are."
Grandpa: "Oh well, act interested, they're almost done with the dishes anyhow."

I'm so grateful to my Grandpa for bringing my mom into the world, and raising her as he did, with such an extreme work ethic and "you'll survive this" attitude.

I'll miss his winks, his hard candy, his love of liquor and funny jokes he'd tell me when he had one too many, his cheek pinches, how much he loved my Grandma after 50+ years of marriage.

I'm happy for him that he gets to be with his brother, son, and two granddaughters in Heaven.

We'll all miss Donnie May, and laugh reminiscing of his fun spirit and wisecracks.

Here's his obituary to any interested, depicting his simplistic and beautiful life in Holdingford, Minnesota.

This picture was taken this summer while were home visiting, this is the last time I saw Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa gave me a hug and said he'd see me at Christmas time and that I should bring him home some Jamaican Rum, he'd heard it was good :) 

My mom with her mom and dad, I love this picture of them. 

I'm on a boat

Every single time I attempt to go to bed early I end up laying there for at least three hours with my eyes wide open, by the time I'm tired enough to actually fall asleep its no longer "early" and I feel like I just wasted my entire evening laying in bed when I could have been awake sending people snapchat pics on my phone. DANGET.

Its been another crazy few weeks on the island. Casey and Tanner are here for a couple weeks to spend Thanksgiving and escape the cold Minnesota winter for a little while. 

Welcome Home sign Andi made for her dad. We sure get our moneys worth out of that white board.

I made the "Casey Crookston" sign for Cari to hold up at the airport to be funny, but then an airport attendant notified us that you have to pay the airport fine in order to hold up a name sign. HUH?

Awwww. Casey reunited with all his girls.

Piper's happy to be back in Dad's arms

:)

Making our way to the car. Poor Casey was sweating bullets in his long sleeve turtleneck. What the heck do you wear when traveling from MN to the Caribbean in the winter? 

Tanner came a few days after Casey did. His embrace with mom and Piper.

Andi and Tanner.

Upon returning to the island Tanner and Casey were quickly reminded of the humidity and the slow internet. Its pretty amusing to see someone reacquaint themselves with the island life. The estrogen tank is happy to have some testosterone around...after all, we do have some burned out lightbulbs that need replacing and things around the apartment that need fixing. Surely us girls can't do that. 

Piper and I took another trip to Kid's World last week. This time I dressed much more appropriately for the hot hot indoor play area, I learned from last time and remembered their lack of A/C. Piper and I played up in the jungle gyms and went down this giant long slide half a dozen times. The other disadvantage of a humid play area is that your butt sticks to the slide like crazy. At the end of the slide Piper was screaming, "SHELL! I HAVE A BAD BAD WEDGIE!" We ended up just starting to run down the slide on our feet, it seemed less painful. Piper LOVES trampolines and they have a big trampoline outside which is brand new and bounicer than Grandma's trampoline in Minnesota. Piper and her friends Yevva and Adi were loving it. 

Andi had school off last Monday for St. Maarten Day so Piper, Andi, Pierre, and Britney (Pierre's niece) decided to go check out the zoo on the island. Of course the second I turned on my camera it flashed the notice "change batteries now" so I didn't get any pics. The zoo was really small but super interactive and fun. They offer you a bag of animal crackers when you get in and tell you to feed the animals along the way. We saw a lot of birds, including a peacock that followed us around the entire zoo because it was so pretty and I kept feeding it. Andi singlehanedly hand fed every single cotton headed Tamarin monkey that the zoo had. Their tiny tiny hands and faces were so pitiful and sad looking that she wanted to give them each a cracker. They were so cute. My favorite animal were the "Love Birds" I had no idea that there were literal Love Birds. They were so cute. I could put a google image of the bird up here, but I'm feeling lazy. Andi sought much entertainment from taking advantage of Pierre's jumpiness around animals. I had no idea he was so squirmy around animals, but she took a leaf and brushed it against his neck from behind him to make him think it was some animal and he jumped so high, she and I were laughing for a good five minutes. Take Pierre to the zoo if you're having a bad day and need a good laugh.

That night Piper was still pretty interested in animals and was asking me to look up videos of animals on youtube for her to watch. She ended up finding videos of a chick hatching out of an egg, which led to a link for a live birth of a giraffe, and a kangaroo...it was getting pretty disturbing so I took the iPad away. She freaked out so I tried to find a less appalling animal video and we stumbled upon a video about orphan orangutans (orangutans are my favorite animal ever) and it showed them being bottle fed and bathed and even having their diapers changed. Piper was so in shock that these babies were so much like her. She watched that video SEVEN times in a row and kept asking me to get her a monkey baby. I WISH!

This weekend Cari, Piper and I got a 48 hour cold virus which just basically involved headaches and body aches and a total energy zap. I really really wanted to go to a karaoke bar. I do not sing karaoke, BUT I think almost nothing is funnier than watching drunk people sing horribly in front of a large crowd. I almost get annoyed when someone is actually really good at karaoke. Its like, go to American Idol, and let some drunk hot mess sing instead. So before we head out to Karaoke I decided to take some Nyquil (there was no Dayquil) to help soothe my symptoms and make for a more fun night. Okay, so earlier this summer when I had to fly home with Piper by myself I was nervous about how she'd do with such a long traveling day, and had considered the option of giving her some cold medicine to help her sleep (don't judge me) I wanted to test the medicine and make sure it actually did make her sleepy and that she wasn't one of those kids who take nyquil and experience "extreme excitability" Sure enough, she was excited. She was so hyper she couldn't even be contained in this apartment so I took her outside. She was running up and down the parking lot, asking EVERY SINGLE PERSON that walked by us on the way to the elevator if they "wanted to race her" two people took her up on this and stood next to her as she said "Ready, Set..." and then she'd jet off and run down the parking garage screaming and laughing hysterically the entire time. This proceeded for another 45 minutes.

When I took nyquil I was the exact same way. If you know me you already know i'm a hyper person, so if you can even imagine. I've never been drunk, but I can only think this experience was similar to how I'd be if I was drunk, which just reaffirms its a good thing I don't drink.

Pierre and I went down to the boardwalk and I could not stop laughing for the life of me, I had no control over myself. We passed a guy going pee on the side of a building and I yelled "COPS ARE COMING" and the guy got super freaked out and I started laughing because they totally weren't coming, he was super mad and told me he pee'd all over his hand, which made me laugh even harder.

Then after we were finished listening to some music we cut through an alley way to get from the boardwalk to back street where our car was parked. These two guys were yelling at each other and within a few seconds ended up getting physical, which, once again, I thought was hilarious. I just stood there and laughed. Pierre grabbed my hand and asked me if I was trying to get beat up. So long story short, cold medicine makes me laugh at inappropriate times. I felt bad for my boyfriend. I should have slipped him a 20 dollar bill when he dropped me off and thanked him for babysitting me. He didn't totally hate drunk Michelle, I caught him laughing a few times. Busted.  

Probably one of the fifty times that Pierre leaned over to tell me to stop acting like a psycho person

The next morning was our Random Winds boat trip. My friend Matt set it all up for 15 of our friends to go a few months ago and I'd been anxiously awaiting the day to come. This was my first time being on a boat, excluding a canoe and a paddleboat so I woke up with butterflies and was pretty nervous! My friend Ashley gave me a motion sickness pill to take so I didn't get sea sick. 

We left around 9:45am and drove to Simpson Bay where we got on the scuttle boat which took us to the sailboat. We sailed to the Baie Long (There's no way I spelled that French title correctly) and anchored and looked down to see a bunch of Jacks fish and a Barracuda. They had snorkeling gear we all put on and then we jumped in and checked out the fish. They swarmed us completely, it was crazy. Their fins had spikes on them and some of us got a few scratches. Ashley was absolutely hysterical about the fish being close to her and kept trying to swim on top of us. Tanner and Andi kept throwing food for the fish right towards Ashley so they'd encircle her, but when she got to the point of tears they decided they should stop ;) 

I saw a sea turtle! It was so cool and so big! I immediately thought of Crush from Finding Nemo. The ocean is SO fun. After we snorkeled for an hour or so they fed us lunch and we sailed to Mullet beach which is where they pulled out their Tarzan swing. After that it was almost 4 and time to head back home. The six hours on the boat went by SO fast, and I didn't even get sunburned. I think that day was like one of the handful of times I actually used sunscreen, I normally hate sunscreen but there's no way I was going to make it six hours in the Caribbean sun without frying crispy. The boat was big and beautiful, the captain and first mate were so insanely nice, the view of the island from on the boat was really cool to see and I would totally go again. Thanks, Random Wind! Here's a bunch of pics from the boating day (most of them taken by Casey)...

Baby boat!

Piper mesmerized by all the fish

Gary's facial expression while he applies sunscreen kills me

Hahahaha Piper pretty much nailed Gary's facial expression

Matt and Cecily

Matt's modeling the back side for us

Hahahaha

Me & Ceciky

SO SERIOUS

Tanner on the Tarzan Swing

Andi and I just pondering the meaning of life


So I have a theory. I'm pretty sure I have the worst luck in the world? More like I think I'm God's very entertainment sometimes. I'm pretty sure that daily he calls over Chris Farley and Heath Ledger (those are two dead people I really really loved, so I can only pretend they love me too) and they sit down to watch TV and the show is called "Mess with Michelle" and they're basically watching my life. I say this because the past week seemed more unlucky than most.

For starters, last week I got pulled over. I've been pulled over many many times, I'm a speeder...and sometimes oblivious to the world around me. But this time being pulled over was ten times more scary because it was a French Gendarme. A Gendarme is a French policeman and they're huge and hot and buff and strict and intimidating. So he pulls me over and I'm FREAKING OUT. First of all, I'm not even sure my MN license is valid on this island, and I know our car is insured but the insurance papers were not in the car at the time so I'm just envisioning myself being hauled away to some Caribbean jail, which remains to this day one of my biggest fears.

He pulls me over and this is our conversation:
Gendarme: I see you drive this way every single day at this time, where are you always going?
Me: I pick up my niece from school
Gendarme: But all the French schools are released at 1pm (this is around 3pm)
Me: Well she goes to school on the Dutch side but the traffic on that side is awful, so I come around the island
Gendarme: Is that your baby? (motioning to Piper in the back seat)
Me: No...she's my niece, too
Gendarme: Oh, okay. Well I was just curious where you're always going. Have a nice day.
Me: Do you need my license or anything?
Gendarme: No, you're good.

What the deuce? Thanks for the minor heart attack...and for nothing. Pretty sure that was maybe the biggest waste of our time ever.

So then today I run downstairs to lend a DVD to my friend who's waiting by our outside gate and while I'm coming back upstairs in the elevator the power goes out and the elevator stops and I start bawling hysterically. This is another huge fear. Not only do I have major claustrophobia, but I'm really scared of elevators. I don't like riding them by myself. If the building/elevator seems the smallest bit sketchy, I will take the stairs. Just ask my best friend, whom I made walk up 16 flights of stairs with me last winter after a parade so we could get to our car in the parking garage since their elevator was way too shady looking. The power was out for maybe ten seconds before the generator kicked on. To be honest I'm just impressed that I could generate such hysteria in such a short amount of time.

Then today at the grocery store, I go to open the dairy case to grab out some frozen juice and out of NOWHERE this six foot long metal pole comes crashing down and smacks me on the forehead. HUH? Then as I'm loading my groceries into the trunk I smack my head into the trunk and the top of my head starts bleeding. We get home to unload groceries and I drop a frozen turkey on my foot...I wanted to just lay on the ground and surrender to this day.

I'm laying in bed and I hear a loud knocking on the front door from Casey and Tanner who are returning home from the movies without a house key, so I get up to unlock the door and stub my bruised frozen turkey toe on Pipers stroller, while I'm walking back to my bed after opening the door I stub my toe again. I'm pretty sure I broke her stroller when I picked it up to gently throw to the other side of the room.

Weird weird Monday. Not sure what's with the clumsiness/bad luck...but it can at least provide entertainment for others.

Considering its ninety degrees without a single trace of snow it absolutely does not feel like mid November. I can't believe Thanksgiving is in three days and that I go home for Christmas in exactly one month. I'm so excited to see all 10 of my siblings in one place for the first time in a DECADE.

Until next blog... love and miss you, my friends. Xoxo!