Updates!

Well, it's been a busy week in our little corner of the world. I'll give you the cliff notes version, because the detailed version would take you hours to read. ;)
So, starting with Mother's day, which I know wasn't this week, but I didn't blog about it when it happened. I had a rockin' Mother's day. I managed to get up and go to church for the first time since I was in the hospital last year! We were late, but hey, we made it! I got some cool presents, and we got to go see my mom, and hang out with my side of the family. Jonni had a surprise for me, in that there was an essay contest at her school, and she won! First, she won her grade and went on to the regionals or whatever, and then won that too! It was a cool essay, I'll type it out for you:

"I Love My Mom Because....."

She's nice to me. Let me count the ways. 1. She helped me when I fell off the bus and onto the road. 2. She makes the best smoothies in the world. 3. She boght doghnuts twice for being good. 4. She is nice and coumfy. Some mom. I don't know what all she's done to me that's nice!

So that was super cool

Fast forward through that week to last weekend. My sister took the kids for the weekend so John and I could celebrate our anniversary! It was a great weekend, and totally not long enough, lol! Then, that Sunday, we got to call Trent! That was....a mixed thing. Everyone had checked their international phone rates earlier that week to see who had the best. We did, but no one believed me, so I called them again to make sure I had it right. Not just the rates, but that I had everything I needed as far as codes and whatnot. I was assured that everything was green, and we could make the call to Germany on Sunday with no problems. So, with everyone coming over, we decided to have a big dinner for Mother's day for John's mom, and have a fun day. We all gathered in anticipation of The Call, and dialed the numbers. Or we tried to. We were quickly interrupted by a recording telling us that we did not have the proper "carrier codes". Long story short, I called Charter and was told they put a INTERNATIONAL BLOCK on my phone!! While they were assuring me that everything was good to call Germany, someone misinterpreted that I WANTED to call to I DIDN'T want to call, and put a block on my phone. The lady told me she could take the block off, but it would take 5-10 minutes to activate. Fine. We waited 10 minutes. Then 15, and twenty, and I decided to call Charter again. I sent John to the store after pre-paid phone cards in case this call didn't work. I had been polite up to this point but I had HAD IT. So I started out screaming, and went downhill from there. I was shuffled around to several people, and finally got a manager, who informed me that the people who take the blocks off phones weren't in on Sundays, and it would be 24 hours at minimum before we could call Trent. I screamed, I yelled, I called them names, and then informed them that was unacceptable since this was 100% their screw up, and they had lost themselves a customer. We did call Trent with the phone cards, and it all worked out fine, but we lost a good 45-60 minutes because of Charter's incompetence, and I called AT&T first thing Monday morning to make the switch. They should be out here this afternoon to get me all set up.

Anyhow, we all got to talk to Trent, and he sounded awesome! Very happy, and very upbeat about things in his mission. He said that they are talking about combining missions again, so he might have an even bigger mission soon! It was cool talking with him.

Other things this week included finishing leveling the ground and laying the pavers to our walkway, so now all we need to do is fill in the gaps at the corners with quick crete, and fill in the cracks between pavers with sand, and we will be done!

Also, I bought a new dishwasher! Ours was finally pronounced dead, and I hit the streets on Tuesday to find a new one. It was looking grim after two or three stores. It was all the same deal: cheap dishwasher+fees, installation, taxes, ect and I would end up paying around $450 all told for a cheapo thing. BUT! Then I went to Lowe's! It was the same deal, except that if you bought a dishwasher at $497 or more, they waved all taxes, fees and installation!! So I could get a $500 dishwasher for only $50 more than I would have paid for the cheap crappy ones! This is what I did, and it should be in sometime next week! It has all kinds of bells and whistles like "hard food disposer", and "sanitary rinse", and the buttons are on top of the door! That means when you close it, the buttons disappear! No more kids punching in random settings! I cannot wait!

So, today I was going to go get the supplies to finish off my walkway, so I could take pics and brag-I mean blog about it, but a wrench was thrown into my plans. Erik has strep!! This is justifiably alarming for our little family as this is my cryptonite, let alone the fact that my little man is totally miserable! But he's on antibiotics now, and definitely feeling better, and my doc is optimistic that I'll be fine since I've been on my antibiotics for a solid six months or so, and, not counting injuries, I've been well for a few months in a row, meaning that my immune system is finally starting to gear back up. Prayers would be much appreciated, though!

So, that's everything going on in my world! Mainly good, some slightly panic inducing, but nothing we can't handle, lol!

The Almighty Liz