Welcome Home, Elder Hammond, Welcome Home

After our girls trip to Utah, it was back to the reality

that Trent was coming home in JUST 10 days.
 
Every missionary mom will tell you that this is the day you dream
about and count down to, for two whole years.
That is 730 days for any of you wanting to make a chain.

I have to admit, that I was not terribly sad when Trent went to the MTC.
Somehow I feel a bit ashamed of this fact.
Because all those around me were falling apart,
and continued to do so for several months.

But, there were so many days during his teenage life, that I
seriously wondered if  he would ever go on a mission.
Truthfully, I had resigned myself to possibility, in order to brace myself
for the disappointment.   So much so,
that I am embarrassed to say that when he did go,
I was more surprised and relieved, than sad and depressed.

And so for the majority of the time he was gone,
I really didn't miss him that much.
It felt like the Lord was babysitting him.
And who could ask for a better baby sitter.
Is that horrible to say?  That it felt like a vacation to not be
constantly worried about his welfare?

Even when he served in the ghetto for 7 months,
I never doubted that he was being divinely protected.
And here's the thing, I got these amazing emails every week,
from this kid I had never met before.  Who knew?
Yes, the Lord took my son and turned him into
an amazing missionary.

And so it wasn't until the very end that I finally began to miss him a little bit.
It was getting that video of him back in February that kind of did me in.
Actually seeing him talk was so fun.
But, it made me trunky.

And finally we were down to the end of the countdown.
I seem to be the kind of person who adds stress to things
by making my to do list longer than it needs to be.
If anyone knows how to cure this problem/mental illness,
I am open to suggestions/12 step programs.

I was rather stressed because how was I going to paint the whole house,
re landscape the front and back yard, fix the pool, and well you get the picture.
At least I had already lost the 50 pounds, so that couldn't be on the list.  :) 

And did I mention that this was also one of the times were my
second job demands a lot of time.
So as long as I didn't need to eat or sleep, I seemed to keep on top of everything.

I couldn't seem to find a to do list anywhere that lets you know
every little detail that you are supposed to do to be prepared for a son's return.
Finally, the voice of reason pared the list down to providing him with a place to sleep,
Seemed like a great place to start.

I managed to find some great deals on a bed, desk and chair for his bedroom.
Luckily the top half of his room was painted blue, but the bottom
was purple from when Diana used to be in there.
So Monday night about 10:00 pm,
I painted the bottom half to match the top.

We got the furniture home from work and into the room.

Oh, and just for fun it was girls camp that week.
We went up on the Saturday before to help set up.
And then Tuesday morning,
I got Diana all packed and to the church by 7:00 am.
Then, I worked most of that day.

Wednesday morning I finished up some things at home,
and then went into work.
We got a really big shipment and I was there unpacking things
from noon until 10:00 pm that night.

Thursday morning was the Big Day.
I woke up at 5:30 and was so excited I could not go back to sleep.
Just like Christmas morning.
I had too much to do to just lay in bed.
Making a ginormous sign for the house was my first priority.

It was so big, that I needed to just lay it out
on the driveway in order to draw the letters.
Then next, I got it up onto the house.
No one else was awake, and I don't even know how, but
I managed to get upthere by myself.

I was really happy with the way it turned out and just how big it was.

Giant sign on the house - check.

I finished up some last minute cleaning inside, and then Jared mentioned

some things he  needed from Wal Mart for his job that was starting at 6:00 pm that night.

Oh, and did I mention it was Diana's birthday that day?

Because why wouldn't it be.  Just bring it on, people.  Make my day.

So I dashed into Wal Mart, and stopped at the dollar store for balloons saying

Happy Birthday and Welcome Home.

Next it was time to head up to Mt Charleston to pick up Diana from camp.

On the way, I stopped at the mall to do some birthday shopping.

Because go figure I hadn't managed to get anything sooner.

Birthday presents - check.

It takes about an hour to drive up to Girls camp.

I got there about 11:30 just as planned.

It took her a few minutes to get everything together.
She was getting the royal birthday treatment at camp.
Some of her tent mates got up at 5:00 and decorated her tent with balloons.

On the way back home, Jared called to say that the
wind had blown down the sign from the house.

Curse that Las Vegas wind!
Giant sign on the house - uncheck.

I had broken my stapler getting the sign up in the first place, so 

we stopped at Wal Mart for the second time that day and bought a new stapler.

Carside Applebees to go for a birthday lunch - check.

We made it home and Diana showered while I got the sign back up.

I also made a sign for the airport with candy that Diana had picked out.

Trent was due to land at 2:50, but when I checked the airline
 it said that the plane was due to be about 15 minutes early. 
This sent me into a bit of a panic because we had things timed down to the last minute.

I called out/ shrieked to everyone to get a move on
and we made it into the car in two shakes of a lambs tail.

We got to the airport at just the right time.

After parking, we walked across the bridge and through the baggage claim.

I have to admit that the emotion of the moment and the whole day hit me like a brick wall.

It was all I could to do to keep from just laying on the floor and bawling like a baby.

Instead I settled for just tearing up as we walked through the baggage claim.

Finally, we were at the point where he would come out of the secured area.

At the Las Vegas airport, there are two different escalators that people come down.

The tram lets people off on one side, and then the other on the next trip.

This means that a ton of people come down one escalator,

and then you have to walk about twenty feet over
to the other escalator for the next group.

There are a ton of Limo drivers that are holding signs and
doing this walking back and forth process with you. 
I bet in a different circumstance it would be kind of humorous.

Here is a blurry picture of Diana standing with some of the Limo people.

I had managed to pull it back together as far as the crying goes.

But here again, as I would stand at the bottom of the escalator thinking that at any minute

Trent would come down, I would tear up again and get all emotionally overwhelmed.

It was like I would flash back to the day we picked him up,
and they placed him in my arms for the first time,
or the day we had him sealed to us in the Logan Temple,
or his first smile or step,
or first day of kindergarten,
or first soccer, baseball, or football game,
or first orchestra concert,
or first day of high school,
or day he got his driver's license,
or day he graduated from High School.

It was as if the emotions of all these wonderful days were
somehow compressed into this very moment.

And to say it was overwhelming does not even come close to describing the feeling.

Then all the people would come down the escalator and he wouldn't be there, and we would walk

over to the other escalator, and I would stop crying, only to repeat the process all over again.

It was a bit ridiculous.  And I began to wonder if it was really going to happen after all.

Finally, when he really did come, I had kind of convinced myself not to get my hopes up,

and I don't think we even really recognized him.

So it is kind of a blur and not quite like I anticipated.

Still, it was so good to finally see him and hug him and know that he was really home.

He lost about 50 pounds on his mission and I think that is why we didn't recognized him.

Here he is with the parents.

Of course, the batteries in my camera were dead, and so all we had for
documentation purposes was my phone.
So the pictures are a little less than ideal. 
But that is not really the important part, now is it?

We got him home, made some dinner, and got him to the stake center to be 

released.  All of that happened before 5:30 so that Jared could get to work by six.

And I had to get  Diana back up to camp so that she could perform in the skit

that night.  We were back on the road and made it just barely after 7.

Whew!  The Hamster Wheel was on warp speed that day.

It is hard to believe that I managed to get it all done. 
And without any caffeine people,can I get some kudos for that?

Next, it was time to get ready for the company who were coming
for the weekend and the open house.  So as much as I wanted to sit in a corner,
rock back and forth in the fetal position, sucking my thumb, there was none of that.
I kept telling myself if I could just  hold on until August 15th,
my nervous break down was penciled in.
 

I found these super cute cupcake toppers on pinterest and my most wonderfulest 

visiting teacher cut them all out for me.  As well as cutting up fruit for the open house.

I don't know how I would have made it with out her.

Family arrived and we had a nice time catching up.

After church we took some pictures with the missionary.

Here are my kids all grown up.

And here is one showing brotherly/sisterly love.

Here is one of the kids with me.  Sadly my husband was still at church.

Here is one with my sister's family.

Here is one with my parents.

And one with just mom.

After pictures we had the traditional dinner of haystacks.

Everybody eating.   Sorry about the glare from the light.

Jared and Victor had their own table.

Next it was time to celebrate Diana's birthday with the extended family.
I really meant to buy a cake from Sam's Club to save some work,
but it didn't happen.
It is the strangest thing, but I have lost my 9 x 13 airbake pan.
If anyone reading this, has borrowed it from me, let me know.
Luckily, I found this foil pan and it worked.

The little kids were willing to help her blow out the candles.

There was a little bit of time for visiting.

My brother David, my Mom, and Trent.

My sister Jen and David.

A blurry shot, with me thrown in for good measure.

We hurried and cleaned up lunch and put the food out 

for the open house.

We had chips and salsa.

Zucchini bread, brownies, and red velvet cupcakes.

A good friend made her famous mint brownies, 

and my other  VT brought some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

Here is the fruit my VT cut up for me.  It was both gorgeous and delicious.

The drink station.

We had a lot of people come by.

It was so much fun to visit with everyone and it 

seemed like a big success, thanks to the help of many.

I was kind of having a melt down over worrying about the open house.

My sister talked me off the ledge by reminding me of the 

miracle of asking for help.

Letting others help truly saved what little sanity I have left.

And thus we see that one should never give up hoping on a child, 

and that when we let others bear our burdens, they

really are lighter, and perhaps what doesn't

kill you does make you stronger.

One son returned home from a mission with a 

strong testimony of the Gospel and Jesus Christ - check

Not the way I wanted it to happen

Holy Cow! I have managed to set a new posting record for a month. Sixty posts, good grief, that is a lot. Of course this is not the way I wanted to have 60 posts, by having such a distressing thing to write about.

I just took my mom to the airport. She is going on a way fun trip to Navuoo tomorrow. A big thanks to her and all her help. I wouldn't have survived the week without her.

We are still waiting to see if today is the day of our parole. I swear I slept last night, but I feel more tired than ever.

So I feel to tired to be witty and wax poetic right, now. But I didn't want this milestone in blogging pass by with out comment.

A Day of Miracles

Yesterday something miraculous happened. I cleaned out my fridge. I know for most of you this is nothing out of the ordinary. But sadly for me it is a stupendous chore requiring superhuman powers . Slowly since I stopped working outside of the home, I am trying to get on top of things around here. Once I had managed to clear a path through the house, I thought I would move on to the daunting task of the fridge. I can not say when I last did this task, which is scary enough to admit to the public. It might explain why I found an unopened quart of whipping cream with an expiration date from June last year. Part of the reason for this would be that time seems to moving at warp speed. I seem to be running behind yelling "wait for me". Well so now for at least a day, there is nothing sticky spilled on any of the shelves of my fridge. I would say that deems labeling this day as extraordinary, amazing, fabulous, and wonderous. The thesaurus even gives the word thaumatiguric as an synonym for miraculous, so I guess that would apply as well. Anyone every heard of that word? Or in other words having a clean fridge is a good thing.

Bigfoot Sighting

The past couple of days Jared has been complaining that his shoes were hurting him because his feet have grown, AGAIN. So I took him to get new shoes. This 13 year old child is now wearing a size 13 in men's sizes. I am tempted to stop feeding him, so he will stop growing. Someone told me that 13 is that last size you can just run to Wal Mart and buy off the shelf. We did just that yesterday and yay for $15 shoes at Wal Mart. I will revel in the joy of that simple, cheap purchase, since it may be my last. Here is a picture of my smallish looking size 8 foot next to Jared's new shoe. Also here is a picture of Jared and I, back to back. He really is taller than me now. So I will have to look up to him literally and not just for his ability to be a great student, good friend, and all around good kid. Everyone sing together "Is this the little boy I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don't remember getting older, when did they? Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset. Swiftly fly the years." The breif break in this post has been brought to you courtesy of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof".

Drama at the DMV

For those of you who did not know, Trent turned 16 on May 7th. This has been a much anticipated event because of the fact that you are eligible for a driver's license at this milestone in life. Of course we had gone through the trauma of visiting the DMV six months ago when he obtained the wonderful permit. This allowed him to drive a car with a licensed driver accompanying him. In fact not only did it allow this, it was required that he drive for 50 hours before he would be allowed to apply for an actual drivers license. I don't know about the rest of you but I try anything to avoid spending time in my car driving. And now we needed to log in what seemed like an insurmountable amount of time. Because of my wonderful 2 mile radius in which most things I regularly frequent exist, Trent was not able to get much driving time in by just going where we usually go. Hence most Saturday afternoons would find us out on the open road for at least an hour at a time. And if just the actual driving was not enough, we had to write a 500 volume narrative about our travels. The DMV required that each time we drive, we fill in a log sheet about the trip. We needed to include the starting and stopping time, was it day or night, was the weather dry or wet, did we drive on residential, arterial, or freeway type roads, was the traffic heavy, moderate or light. Sheesh this log had more details than my journal for the past six months. I tried to make myself useful during our time in the car. For instance sometimes I would read, another time I took my cleaning supplies including a toothbrush and did some deep cleaning. The only problem was that I could not really clean the driver's side as Trent was in the way. I was overjoyed when we finished up the 50 hours during spring break in April. Then we had only to wait for our appointment for the driving test.



Finally the scheduled day arrived, May 18th. Our appointment was at 8:00 am and we were early. There was a large group of people standing outside the door waiting for it to open. I was very happy when they opened the door and said that anyone with an appointment could come right in. We went in and showed our lovely 3 page log of driving time along with proof of drivers ed class, registration and insurance. We sat down and waited for a few moments and then they called his name and off he went. I tried to sit but was too anxious and so I strolled over to the very small window to see how it was going. I could see Trent in the car with the examiner behind the car checking to see that all the lights were working. Imagine my dismay when the guy walked back into the DMV. I ran to meet him and was told that one of the rear tail lights was out. He then told me that if we could get it fixed and be back in 20 mins, Trent could still take the test. I sprinted to the car and off we went in search of a car parts store. We decided to go west and sure enough a few blocks away we found an Auto Zone. We pulled into the parking lot and I ran inside to find the required light bulb. The store attendant seemed to take forever as he looked up the part number. I quickly explained that we had a limited amount of time to get this fixed. Once the part was purchased we had to borrow a tool to remove the cover plate to the tail light. Of course at first we had the wrong size and I had to go back in the store to get a different one. Then we struggled to remove the bolts or whatever you would call the things keeping the cover plate in place. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, the bulb was replaced and we were on our way back down the street to the DMV. We went in and miraculously we had made it in time.

So off Trent went again, this time with a different examiner. Now I paced up and down as my adrenaline levels were off the chart making it impossible for me to wait calmly. When they returned we were ushered into a small room. The examiner informed us that Trent had some very bad habits in his driving. The first problem was that he would put his hands in his lap at stop lights. I think the fact that my car is a manual makes it more likely that you would take your hands off the wheel. The next thing she talked about was the fact that when he turned, he did not always stay in the same lane. I feel badly about this, because that is the way I drive. The final nail in the coffin, was the fact that at a school crossing guard, he did not come to a complete stop, because the guard was about to step back onto the curb. This was an automatic fail situation. We were both pretty upset because Trent really is a good driver and I was sure he would pass. The examiner told us we could call to get an appointment but it would most likely be for July. I didn't doubt this, as I had called six weeks earlier to make this appointment. The next option was to do something called standby. This is where you show up without an appointment and wait for an undetermined time hoping that someone else with an appointment will not show up. We were told to wait at least a week before coming back and to practice the things that he did wrong.

So a week later found once again at the DMV. The doors opened at 8:00 and so I figured that if we got there at 7:00 we would be close to the front of the line. We were shocked to find out that when we got there we were number 9 in line. The person who was number 1 had been there since 3:30 in the morning. The number 2 person had gotten there at 5:00. She had been there the day before and they had only gotten to number 4. She had number 5 and she had literally sat there from 8 til 4 and never got a chance to take her test. I began to wonder about what we were in for. I did come prepared to wait with a good book to read. While were outside waiting for the doors to open, it was pretty hot. Finally at 7:40 they came out and passed out the numbers. And then they finally let us in at 8:00. We sat down and began to wait. As I sat there I pondered the nature of the DMV. Is it not a modern day torture chamber? I bet Hitler would be disappointed to know of the ways he missed out on torturing people because of the lack of cars people owned back then. And truly a job at the DMV seems to require a certain meanness and joy in being cruel to others not to mention doing your job at the speed of grass growing. I believe that the DMV has the ability to turn one to the dark side of disbelief. It is a drainer of hope and life source. But that is just the musings of a deranged mother. Now back to our tale: Things looked hopeful when the first two standby people were called up by 8:20. Then numbers 3 & 4 were called up at 9:00. Something happened to number 8 and so we moved up a spot. Then people with appointments started showing up. This put the standby line to a stop. It began to look like we could be there for the entire day. Those of us waiting together became friends, bonded together by the horrific experience of being so much at some else's mercy. We discussed how someone should start a business where people could pay someone else to wait for them at the DMV. One guy said he would gladly have paid someone $100 to have waited for him. I don't think anyone could pay me enough to be there when I didn't have to for my own needs. Finally at 11:20 after more than 4 hours of waiting, Trent's name was called.

This time he had yet another examiner. Off they went. I felt nauseous. I wanted to watch and yet I didn't want to see what would happened. Somehow the 20 minutes of the test went by, and we went again into the little room. This time the examiner wanted to know who had taught Trent to drive. Yikes, I resembled that remark! He proceeded to say that you can not drive with one hand on the stick shift and that you can not coast into a stop sign or light and leave the car in neutral. He also lost points for going to fast in a school zone. And so bottom line, he had failed again. I could not believe it. I asked the guy why the first examiner had not mentioned anything about being in neutral or the fact that you needed to keep both hands on the wheel as much as possible. He couldn't say. He finally went and got the first test and told Trent that he had fixed all the original problems, but that there had been different ones the second time. I asked the guy if he thought that it was possible to pass the test with a manual car. He said it might be better if we could use an automatic, but I didn't think Trent would do well in our van since he hardly ever drives it. The examiner stated that he didn't think it was a good idea to do the standby thing, because all that waiting is hard on ones nerves. I could whole heartedly agree with that statement. He told us we needed to get an appointment. We said we didn't want to wait all the way until July. He then took pity on us and looked in the appointment book and found a cancellation that was for the next Tuesday, just 4 days away. We went home glad to have an appointment for the next time we came back.

Once again we practiced. I personally had lost all hope of ever getting a license for Trent. I figured that sitting at the DMV would just become a regular part of my weekly routine. Finally Tuesday came. The appointment was for 1:00 so Trent went to school. I picked him up at 12:45 and off we went for the third try. We parked and went in. I felt the familiar feeling of nausea. We showed our paper work and after just 5 minutes of waiting they called Trent's name. Off he went with yet, the fourth examiner. There are only 6 people who do the driving test so we had met almost all of them. Luckily for me, a friend called me just as he was leaving. I think this kept me from having to go and throw up my lunch. Honestly I don't know when the last time was that I had felt such anxiety. And before I knew it, he was back and we went to the small room again. Trent sat down, and the guy said not to look so worried because he had passed. I don't think either of us believed him at first. I asked if there was anything he needed to work on, and the guy said "No, he got 100%". I was shocked. How did he go from failing twice to getting 100%. We were both so happy. Next we were off to get the picture taken and few minutes later Trent was the proud owner of a bad picture on his driver's license. It was a very happy day! Later that night he had his spring Orchestra concert and instead of me having to drive him to the school, he just took himself early and then we came later when the concert started. YEAH! I am very excited for him to be able to be in charge of taking himself where he needs to be. He will start a job in a week when school is out. Good job, Trent for hanging in there and not giving up!
We bought a third car from our next door neighbor for $100. Since then we have spent $1500 getting it to run. It is running but did not pass the smog. Once we get that cleared up it will be time to get it registered. I wonder how long I will sit at the DMV for that?