It's Just That Kind of a Night

My family is currently, long past bedtime, sitting around at the kitchen table consuming large amounts of whipped cream. This is something we all deserve today because frankly, it's been the day... from...HELL.

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Okay, now that the kids are tucked sweetly into bed, I can say that there were definitely good parts to the day as well, but it was certainly, shall we say, eventful.

The day began for Troy at 4:00 in the morning, when he got up to go pick up his dad and drive to Roosevelt. See, a couple of weekends ago was the elk hunt. Troy's dad goes every year, and at least a couple of the four boys go along too. This year it was the eldest (Rick) and the youngest (Troy.) Troy had found a spot he thought to be a likely place to find an elk, and woke up that Saturday morning very early. He found a good place to hide and waited for the sun to come up. As he waited, two groups of elk passed by him, and when he found he had a good shot at a young bull, just as the sun was coming up, he took it. It was with some trepidation that he shot the elk, knowing that if he did, there was a very long day ahead as far as cleaning it and getting it off the mountain to a butcher and all those things. But shoot it he did, and indeed a very long (and kinda yucky) day did follow. The meat was ready for pickup today, so Troy and his pop headed down.

I got a phone call at 7:00. Pretty much I know that a phone call at that hour is not a good thing. I'll just say this. Our poor little Eagle Summit, which has served us faithfully for many long years, breathed its last breath just outside of Roosevelt, Utah. The phone call was from Troy, asking me to help him find a tow truck in Roosevelt. You can imagine the other troubles this all led to, starting with the discovery that the car was not to be revived. I ended up sending my Dad (thank you!) to go rescue them and the meat, and poor Troy didn't get home until about 3:3o in the afternoon.

What's more, this evening was the night of a very big church activity that I was in charge of. I don't really feel like getting into all the hairy details. I'll just say that the details were very, very hairy. Lots of cooking, planning, cleaning, setting up, serving, etc. etc. etc. Big big day for Rachel.

All of this would have been pretty manageable. However, Troy stayed home during the activity to get started tiling our bathroom with our very helpful neighbor. I got another phone call almost 12 hours after the first bad phone call from my husband, and this one could have been worse. It turns out that as he and Tim started to work on the floor, Tim said, "What's that noise? Is that spraying water?" Yes, it was. Under the bathroom floor. (You may have heard a strange strangled screaming kind of sound coming from somewhere in Salt Lake. That was Troy.) Now, when they first heard it Troy just about freaked out because he imagined a huge leak with a foot of water on the insulation under the floor. Luckily, it turned out to be a manageable leak, and they only had to tear out one small bit of the floor. Not a good thing, but definitely better than tearing out the whole thing.

Thus the piles of whipped cream for everyone.

But, like I said, there were also good parts to the day. For example, we have enough meat filling our freezer to keep us fed for months to come:



I now need to research recipes. Any ideas will be appreciated. This isn't even all of it - some ended up in someone else's freezer. Maybe one of these days we'll have a "come eat elk and use our new toilet" party.

The church activity also seemed to be a success. Again, I'm not really in the mood for details here, but I didn't think it was going to go well at all. It was great. Good food, happy people, great music, and a very funky fashion show. And lots and lots of people helped me.

Also, the kids were so sweet and darling today. These kind of days can wear a kid out, you know? When I went upstairs to the nursery to collect my kids at the end of the evening Stomper was very excited to show me that one of his two loose front teeth was on the verge of falling out. Here he is demonstrating the extreme loose-ness of his tooth during the whipped cream session:



And of course, five minutes later, he yanked the thing out:



That picture makes me happy.

So now it's time for lots of sleep. I really hope tomorrow is better, but I'm not going to tempt fate by saying it can't be like this one. Because it can. I just really hope it isn't.