The weekend, missing socks, and mishaps

Where to begin? I guess the weekend. We were all planning on going home to La Sal on Thursday. Since Troy has worked in Wyoming every single week since September and he hasn't had a vacation since Thanksgiving, and he usually works six days a week, and he has a very kind wife who doesn't complain (Too much:), he decided that he had probably earned the right to take off Thursday and Friday. So that was the plan, he would get home on Wednesday night late, and we would leave really early on Thursday. Well, of course that didn't happen. The kids and I ended up leaving on Wednesday, and Troy wasn't able to leave until late Thursday night, and after a nine hour drive, a a little nap he made it on Friday morning. It was a lot of fun. We enjoyed spending time with our family and friends, and we did get to see ALL of them! It was a whirl wind vacation, but it was good. Last week was the annual Jeep Safari in Moab, which is a huge deal around there. I used to think it was really cool, but now just mostly find it annoying. The added people, the jacked up jeeps, and the belief of vacationers that it is still the wild west, and there aren't any laws there, made for some very exciting (and sometimes scary) adventures. We also did a LOT of Easter celebrating. We dyed eggs three separate times, and hunted eggs three times. We ended up with so much candy that I don't know what we are going to do with it all. We loved being home and having our family around us, but now we are back home with the reality of life, and the hassle of the every day. That leads me into the mishaps part of the post. I don't know if they are really considered mishaps, or more like misunderstandings and just life that all happened to dump itself on one 24 hour period. As Troy was coming home last night his truck started making funny noises. The truck that we just spent tons of money getting fixed not even two weeks ago-yeah, that truck! We found out that there was a hole in the exhaust-something that had just been replaced while the truck was being worked on not even two weeks ago. We took it to the people who had fixed it the first time, and they said that they would replace it for free, but it would take a few days to get it done. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but last week some of Troy's workers wrecked his work truck, and so Troy's personal truck is being used for the business, and needed to be ready to go by five this morning. They were able to patch the hole temporarily, and will fix it, hopefully, this weekend. Then, I went to get a hair cut. I usually go to my sister, who pretty much knows what I like, and who I trust to make me look good no matter what. But since the fish incident at Christmas I am pretty leery of getting my hair done there if my kids are around, so I didn't get it cut this weekend when we were home. That means I had to have a complete stranger cut my hair-something that has never gone well for me. I researched it out, asked around, and found a place where I thought I would get a good haircut. The girl cutting my hair started out good enough. I had taken in a picture of what I wanted and the back seemed to be going pretty well. Then we started talking. She asked me a little about myself, and told me a little about herself. She decided that we actually had a lot in common.-here are the things we had in common. We had both moved to Brigham City in the last year, she moved from Colton California, where she had lived her entire life, and I had spent one terrifying night of my life in Colton praying that I would make it out alive. We were both natural blonds. She has two kids who are almost the same ages as my two kids. My son has Fetal-Alcohol Syndrome, and she is battling alcoholism. Her name was Shaylie, and my name was Katie and that almost rhymes. (Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up, she was getting really excited as she was pointing all of this out.) So as we were talking about how much alike we are she suddenly said "You know, this hair cut is totally like mine. Funny how we even have the same taste in hair styles."-her hair totally wasn't like the one I wanted! They were both short, and had swooping bangs, but that's where the similarities ended! I tried to point that out as she was cutting away, but the more she decided we were alike, the more my haircut started looking like hers. It's not that her hair wasn't cute, it just wasn't what I wanted. So anyway, I walked out of the salon with a new haircut (NOT the one I went in expecting) and Shaylie's phone number so we could "totally hook up and go party."
Then, we decided to change phone companies. We haven't been happy with our old company for a long time, and we have satellite and Internet through a different company, so we decided to switch our phone company to them as well. I had it all set up to finish out this billing period with the company we had been using and then they would turn the service off on the 26th and the other company would turn it on the same day. Our number will stay the same, so it was supposed to go off without a hitch right? Of course not, this morning when I tried to make a phone call I discovered that our phone didn't work. The company who we had service with had shut it off a day early. And to make matters worse when you called our house it said that our service had been temporarily interrupted, so I had my mom calling my cell phone thinking that I hadn't payed my phone bill. We got it figured out, and by noon the other company came by and set up our new service, but goodness, what a pain.
Then, you might remember that about six weeks ago I was complaining about my oven not working. I ordered a part, and It finally got here, but when I went to fix it the problem turned out to be much worse that I had originally expected it to be, so I had to call someone to come fix it. The stove is covered under our home warranty, so I called and asked them to send someone out to fix it. That was three weeks ago. Finally today they sent someone out to fix it. I had been worried about my house burning down, ( and I had a bit of a "shocking" experience when I had tried to fix it myself)so I had flipped the breaker. When the guy got here he asked me to turn it on so he could see what the problem was. (I could show him what the problem was, the bottom element was in three pieces.) He looked inside, and confirmed that I was right, the element was in fact, in three pieces, and went to work fixing it. I assumed that when he was ready he would have me flip the breaker again. NOPE! In a moment he had an arc going that filled the kitchen with smoke, and shocked him until he wet his pants. It was pretty gross, and Adia kept asking him "Did you wet your pants? Look mom, he wet his pants! Why did you wet your pants? Do you need a diaper? Sometimes my brother wets his pants, and my mom tells him that if he keeps doing that she is going to have to put him in diapers. We have extra diapers, I could go get you one. I'm a big girl, and I don't have to wear diapers. I don't wet my pants, not like you..." Anyway, I flipped the breaker, and he fixed the problem, and now we are baking like there's no tomorrow. The guy seemed pretty annoyed with us, but I don't care. I am so happy to get my oven back, I never realized how much I use it.
Anyway, with all of those inconvenient things that have happened, It has really made me realize how blessed I am. Any one of those things could have turned out much worse than they did, the oven guy could have died, my hair could have turned out terrible, I could have really not paid my phone bill, and Troy's truck could have been a huge deal to fix. Yup, I think Heavenly Father is watching out for us!
So now I have a little story to tell about Ethan's missing socks. For a few weeks now, Ethan's socks have been coming up missing. He wears socks to school, but when he comes home, he doesn't have any socks on. I ask him what happened to them, but he just kind of avoids my questions and I never got a strait answer out of him. Finally when he came home from school without socks again on Wednesday, I put my foot down. I told him that we weren't going to go to Grandma's until he told me what had happened to his socks. He told me that Shyanne (His girlfriend) had socks with holes in them, and it made her feet cold, and her mom wouldn't (I think couldn't) buy her anymore, so he was giving his socks to her because he had more at home.(not for long at the rate we were going:) So today after school (He came home with no socks again) we went to the store and bought a few packages of socks, and some underpants-because I worry she'll start asking for those next- and a couple of little spring outfits, and tonight we are going to take a package to her house and leave it on her front step- and it will be a secret between just Ethan and I. I am just touched by the kind heart Ethan has. He always takes such good care of those around him, whether hiding food for Adia, or giving socks to Shyanne, he wants to be sure that everyone has just as much as he does. What a good example he is to me. I am so lucky to have him.