Home Sweet Home

I have finally returned from three weeks in Seattle for a family reunion. I would love to say that it was a great trip full of fun and interesting activities, but unless you count three trips to the ER as a "fun activity" then I'm going to go with my vacation kind of sucked.

Somehow I managed to develop a rather severe kidney infection without the most common symptoms. The first trip was to an urgent care clinic (which I count as one of the three visits) because I had terrible back pain and felt like I had a flu. The doctor attributed the back pain to the car accident we had been in the day before. Yes, some guy in Seattle decided to back into us and munch the passenger side of my brand new Audi, yet another reason my vacation was not all that brilliant. (And I do mean new, we bought it just a couple of months ago from the dealer to replace the Mazda 3 I used to drive that had been totaled by a trucker on the freeway. Figures.)

Long story short, I got worse and we ran to a full blown ER. This time they rushed me straight into a room and started hooking me up to all kinds of stuff. It's all a little blurry, but they sent me home and asked us to come back the next day.

So between slowly becoming more and more sick and then the slow process of recovery I spent the majority of my vacation in bed or on the couch not doing much of anything. My husband and I missed almost all the family reunion events (which I had planned and really wanted to do!) and ended up stressing about the car, how the medical insurance would work with the ER visits, and trying to get home. It was just one big mess!

Of course our trip was not entirely terrible! I was able to see my family and his, and I came home with all kinds of goodies from my mom and mother-in-law. I spent the night with my sister at Emandal - a Farm on a River where she works. We went swimming in the river and played with kittens. It was wonderful! I absolutely love my family, and I'm growing to love my in-laws more and more every time I see them. I wish we didn't live so far away!

OK, enough of my vacation rambles. Since I'm recovering (which will take about three weeks to get back to normal) I'm going to have a staycation and get some crochet done!

My mom gave me these beautiful skeins of yarn that she bought at a garage sale.

I used the pink and white to make a hat for my grandmother for Christmas. You can't really tell but the pink is a pretty clam shell stitch. The yarn was too fuzzy for that, but oh well.

OK I can't help it. Attack of the kittens!

 (Emandal takes in litters of kittens each season and adopts them out to the guests that stay on the farm. They have an extremely high adoption rate, and those who aren't taken become well cared for farm cats. I have a severe weakness for kitties and as you can see above I'm completely at their mercy. my sister suffers from a similar problem and below you can see she is mesmerized by their cuteness.)