What have you been up to lately? I've been up to a lot. I know my last post really had nothing to do with our lives per say, just me blabbing about what it's like to be an engineer for me. How about I tell you what we've been up to lately?
After surviving our super bowl party, I did some coverage. Made it through New Beginnings with our Young Women (I'm the personal progress advisor so I got to talk for 20 minutes about it).
For Valentine's Day Shad surprised me with a little trip. Friday after work we headed up to Maddox for dinner then drove up to Lava Hot Springs in Idaho to spend the night. I know my hubby had really good intentions for a fun, romantic trip. Apparently Lava doesn't tend to provide those though. Let me back up a bit, before I left work on Friday my coworkers asked me what we were doing for Valentine's Day to which I had to respond, I don't know my husband insists on making it a surprise. The first words out of my coworker Dave's mouth were Lava Hot Springs. To which I quickly replied, I hoped not (famous last words). I explained I didn't want to drive that far and was really hoping for a nice night up the canyon somewhere. A few more ideas were tossed out including the Cliff Lodge at Snowbird (I had been told to pack two swimsuits) where we would swim in the pool and then have a spa day the next day (thus explaining the second swim suit). The conversation then ended with Mike saying – look Lava has live web cams so we can see you if you go there. Um good?
Unfortunately our accommodations in Lava weren't quite as nice as the Cliff Lodge. I tried to hide the terror that struck me when we drove into town and Shad explained to me we had reservations at the only motel in town that provides your own bathroom. (Excuse me? Are we staying at the dorms?). It didn't get much better after that. We walked into our smelly, gross old room and I quickly went to check out our own personal bathroom (it was after all the selling feature of the room). Did it have a toilet? Yes. Bathtub? Yes – one large enough for a party of 4 and only supplied with hot spring water and with the stains to prove it. How about a shower? Oh no, course not, we weren't at a fancy place, hot spring water is perfectly good to clean yourself and 3 of your closest friends with…at the same time. Not wanting to give up on it yet, we headed down the street to the springs. Those were actually quite delightful except the freezing cold shower – honestly a simple heat exchanger to heat up the clean water must be too much to ask. It's not like they already have hot water coming out of the ground…
After our trip to the springs we were both quite thirsty. I asked Shad if he had packed water bottles (he had packed us snacks for the drive) and he hadn't so we set off to find a gas station, because every town has a gas station, right? Wrong. No gas station in the town of Lava Hot Springs. There used to be one, it's now a Thai restaurant (yikes!). So instead we found a vending machine on the side of the road that didn't take bills so then we got to scour the car looking for $1.00 in change just for one measly bottle of water. On our way back to the hotel, we found another machine that ate our $2.00 and spit out fifty cents. Thanks for nothing.
Just before we went to sleep I told Shad I know he meant well and he tried really hard to plan a fun trip but I also asked if I could plan Valentine's day next year (Hello spa day at cliff lodge!). I also pointed out that trips like this were supposed to happen when we were newly married and dirt poor and neither of those descriptions really fit us…
You know it's been a bad night when you wake up at 6:00, see the time and say to yourself why isn't this night over? Longest night ever! Between the train every 30 minutes and the stray cats screaming outside our door (I'm not exaggerating about them SCREAMING either) I think I would have rather been at work on a back shift. Not that it was an option, I was just thinking of things I don't really like but would rather do. When 9:00 finally rolled around, I woke Shad up and asked if we could please just go home.
Now that this quick update is already super long, I think I'll leave everything else we've been up to for another time. And just so you know, the terrible weekend didn't end there. When we returned home, we found a messy house and a sick/grumpy puppy thanks to Shad's younger brothers coming up to stay with Dublin for the night. I guess it's too much to ask for common sense greater than a 2x4 sometimes…
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