Recap

I want to get down just a few things that have happened the last few weeks.  The end of January, I ended up taking some engagement pictures for one of my good friends.  It was a freezing cold morning and they were really good sports about it!  I might post some of the pictures later.  I love taking pictures, but I don't love the editing.  That's part of the reason it costs so much to get your picture taken, because you are also paying for the editing time.  So I had that going on first.

Then, the beginning of February, my dad got a call that said his mother, my grandmother, was in the hospital and probably wouldn't be coming out.  My dad is from Seattle and that's where most of his family is.  He knew he had to get up there quickly so that he could be able to see her before she died.  For those of you who don't know, my grandma was one of the funniest, quirkiest people I knew, but she was not in good health.  My dad is the only member of our church in his family.  So because my grandma wasn't LDS, she smoked and drank coffee all her life.  She also had diabetes.  And a lot of other health complications that surfaces as she reached the end of her life.  But through it all, she still remained as spunky as ever.  We usually described her as a 60 pound, 5 foot tall woman who smoked like a chimney and swore like a sailor.  That's the most accurate description you will find!  Even though she wasn't a member, she still respected our family and the choices we made.  Especially when it came to getting an education and not living with our boyfriends before we got married.  Right after she became mostly unresponsive, my dad managed to find some alone time with her and give her a priesthood blessing.  I think that's one of the sweetest things he could've done for her.  I know her death was very hard on my dad because he tried to stay as close to her as possible.  He called her every week and drove up to washington any time she needed help of any kind.  It was a very sad weekend, but also stressful because of what happened next.  My grandma died on a saturday, and my new nephew was born on that next tuesday!  We all joked about how she was giving him lessons on how to be a true Mitchell.

My sister-in-law Emily had a very up and down pregnancy.  I'm not going to go into all the details, but basically she was having a lot of RH factor problems.  She has negative blood and the baby has positive.  A recipe for disaster.  I have actually always heard that that's why my dad has hearing problems, because of that same situation.  Anyways, they live in Wyoming about 2 or 3 hours away from Rexburg.  They were planning on having the baby in Jackson, but found out the night before the scheduled C-section that the hospital wasn't equipped to handle her situation and they would have to go to University of Utah or come to Idaho Falls.  They chose Idaho Falls which meant that we could all help out as much as possible.  My brother was able to be there for the procedure and to see the baby for a little, but then had to leave with one of their sons to go back to Wyoming.  He had already used up all of the sick days for work because of all the other doctor appointments.  While Emily was in the hospital and David was back in Wyoming, their (now) middle son Zach was pretty much homeless.  He was staying with my parents, but since both of my parents work, we all got a chance to help out and babysit!  He is actually a really good boy, but none of us are really prepared to deal with children of that age yet!  2 of us girls don't have kids and the other one has a 4 month old, so it was quite a change and very exhausting.  This wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't fall on the same week as the Idaho Falls Symphony concert!

On wednesday of that week, I had to leave to go to my parent's house at 8:30 so I could babysit Zach.  I left at 11:45 so I could go to work at noon.  I left work at 6 so I could be home by 6:10 so we could leave for rehearsal.  We didn't get home from rehearsal till 10:30.  So from 8:30 in the morning till 10:30 at night, I spent a total of 10 seconds actually in my apartment.  I love playing in the symphony and I wouldn't give it up for anything short of a major emergency, but that week was so tiring.  We had 2 rehearsals and a concert, I worked about 25 hours, and watched Zach for about 10ish hours.  It was a very full week.

 I was supposed to play piano in church that weekend as well, but I knew there was no way I would be able to find time to practice and I would probably play horrible because there were so many other things going on.  I told David that that was one of the weeks when we should've been on the relief society compassionate service list and had people bring us food or clean the house or something.  Because our diet consisted of Raman and crackers and we were both lucky to have any clean clothes or dishes.  David was really good throughout it all.  He knows that family is the most important thing to me, so when my family is going through a hard time, I'm going through a hard time.  And being pregnant doesn't help.  I cry a lot.  Like when I couldn't find chocolate chips at Wal-Mart.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed.  So he tries to help me calm down and see that everything is going to work out and that the house doesn't need to be clean, that this is one of those weeks when it can just be ignored. 

Things are better now.  The baby is still in the NICU, but doing well!  I have to play piano this week, so I'm not looking forward to that.  But things are returning to normal.  We had a relaxing Valentines where I worked for 10 hours, we went grocery shopping, then fell asleep at 9 while watching a movie.  But it was good.  Now we're off to do weather and get a pop!  So the weekend is starting off good!