Family is like fudge..

Mostly sweet, with a few nuts.

Most of the time, if anyone asks me about my family - immediate or extended - I proudly tell them all about my crazy relatives. My brothers, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my cousins' children.. We're all pretty insane.

However, this week I got to see the sweet side of my family. Remember how I mentioned Greta the Jetta wasn't running in my last post? Yeah, well we finally got her running like on Wednesday. So I cruised around town for a bit on Wednesday, gotter all filled up and looking pretty so I could drive her to work - on the northside of Lethbridge - Thursday morning. I was determined to make it to work on time, so I woke up at 6am, and left my house at about 6:45am. I got to McLaren's house at like 7:15, so I had lots of time to show Val my car and talk about how much I loved it, and we installed the carseats. Yay, right?

When Val got home Thursday night (about 4:30), the girls and Val came out to watch me drive away in my car for the first time. Insert key into ignition.. Turn the key.. Nothing. The key would turn over - which is something it hadn't been doing in the first place. That's what we had to fix - and the battery was turning on, cause the air conditioning and radio were coming on.. But the starter wouldn't.. well, start! Obviously, I was incredibly embarrassed. And I was exhausted, and apparently PMSing or something.. So I was really emotional. I started crying. Which even embarrassed me more. Val took the girls in the house, and I called my dad.

Now, as I haven't already mentioned, my family is gone. They left Thursday afternoon to go to Silverwood, which is in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.. About a 9 hour drive from Raymond. What does my dad say? "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" I WANT TO GO HOME! THAT'S WHAT I WANT!! AND I WANT A CAR THAT RUNS!! But of course, what I said was.. "I don't know. Have a good weekend." Right before I hung up, mom took the phone from him, and told me to call Aunt Dianne and have her come pick me up. For those of you who don't know Aunt Dianne, she is the most generous member of my family - no offense to anyone else. She is so willing to give anything she can to anyone, family or not. So I called Dianne. She cancelled all her evening plans to come to Lethbridge and pick me up. :) Not gonna lie, I would have much rather called Carter, but he was working. Go figure.

In the meantime, I'm dying of embarrassment and bawling my eyes out, and walking to the northside Walmart. At first, I didn't really think it would take very long. 45 minutes later, I had changed my mind. That's a long effing walk!! As I'm walking, Dianne is calling around, trying to organize a rescue party for me and for my car. As far as I was concerned, my car could just go to hell. But anyways.. As it ended up, Heather, Kalia, and Annaliesse met me at Walmart, bought me a burger, and then we went to find Justin, because he couldn't seem to locate my car! As he was pulling out of the Safeway parking lot to follow us, we saw Dianne parked on the side of the road. Suddenly there was a convoy coming to my rescue.

So we pull up in front of McLaren's house, and I'm so relieved to see that all of the blinds are drawn, so they can't see what's going on out here. I'm skipping some details, out of lack of interest. Anyways, Heather and I get out of her van, Dianne and Gramma and James get out of their vehicle, Justin gets out of his truck, and Dianne gets a call from Grampa, who is also coming to the rescue. After a couple minutes of explaining the address and location of the vehicle in question, Grampa and Curtis pull up.

To make a long story shorter instead of longer, my car got loaded up in the trailer, the group of us went out for a 'celebratory dinner'? at McDonald's, then I went home with Gramma and Grampa. I was so looking forward to just getting ready for bed, but I remembered that I had to go finish my SFa course!! That was sort of a piss off. Anyways, I had a really long, emotional day. So much, in fact, that when I got home.. I went down in my room, splashed my face with cold water in an attempt to eliminate the blotchiness.. Then I noticed a piece of paper on my bed. Lo and behold, a letter from Elder Paxman. Oh, great. Waterworks. Again. I grabbed a couple dollars off my desk, drove down to Fas Gas, just so Carter could see that I really was ok - which I totally wasn't - and as soon as I left there, I had to pull off the road to cry some more.

The moral of our story?

When in doubt, call the family. Seriously. I'm so grateful to everyone that I mentioned in this post.. Haha. I'm grateful to Dianne for organizing everyone, and to Heather for picking me up, to Justin, for sacrificing his truck and trailer, and to Grampa and Curtis for joining in, just for fun. I'm grateful to my dad for buying me the P.o.S car, and to my mom for volunteering her van until I get my car fixed. I'm grateful to Carter for coming over and lifting my spirits considerably. And I'm grateful to Val for giving me this job! I absolutely adore Madi and Taylor. They're adorable. And entertaining. It's really frustrating sometimes, though.. It's definitely going to be a really interesting year! :)