In a Nutshell

Well, it's been a loooong time since we wrote. The funny part about it is that we've actually had quite a bit going on. Here's our last few months in a nutshell.

Christmas was great. It was our 3rd Christmas together, so that's fun to have a "history."

I have a student teacher this semester, so that has brought a welcome ease of schedule for me.

We went on our first cruise! My parents got us a cruise for Christmas, which took place over Spring Break. I'm not a very good traveller; I get very stressed out when going to new places, so a cruise was perfect because it was very contained and organized by the cruiseline. We will definitely be going on more in the future! Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Right before we left on the cruise, I mean the day before, we found out that I'm pregnant. No exclamation point. I called the doctor that day and she put me on some medicine that is supposed to help keep me from miscarrying. Everyone gets all excited and giddy when we tell them we're expecting, but Bryan and I were talking about it today, and we're both just "meh" about the whole thing. We'll see if this one lasts. I think I'll be more excited when I make it far enough along to start to have my belly showing. Maybe.

But the real reason I felt compelled to finally blog again was our trip to Utah for conference. My sister works in the Church Administration building, so she was able to get us great seats for Conference, and she just bought a condo there, so we had a place to stay, too. Having recently found out that we might be having a baby this fall, we figured this was our last chance for a long time. I don't want to drive to Utah when I'm 8 months pregnant, and you can't take kids younger than 8 years old in the conference center, so it was now or almost never.

We took Friday off of work to make the drive without messing up our sleeping schedules too much. We knew it was going to be windy and chilly, but by the time we hit Kanab, it was snowing! Several inches! We knew we needed new tires on the Durango; we were just waiting for our tax refund to purchase them. But the roads had not been plowed, and our tires were too bald for this type of drive.

At one point, we slid over the other lane of traffic (going like 10 miles an hour, but still scary) and went head-first into the side of the mountain. Luckily no traffic was coming, but everyone was going 10 miles an hour, so it might've been ok. Bryan just put it in reverse, backed over to our side of the road, and we continued on our way. Less than a mile later, we started spinning out- we had no traction whatsoever. We slid over to the shoulder of the road and tried, but we could not get moving.

We tried calling 911 and I spoke to them for a couple of minutes before we lost signal, but I didn't get to tell them where we were. We were totally stuck. Bryan said a prayer for us, and then a big semi- truck drove by, squashing some big, clear tracks in the snow. Bryan put it in reverse again, backed up into the semi's tracks, put it in drive, and we were on our way.

Little did we realize in all of the snow-stuck crazy-ness, we somehow missed a turn and took a slightly longer route, not through the mountains. We didn't realize this until we were on our way home on Sunday. We had bought brand new tires for a killer deal, and the snow had cleared, so we were a little less stressed on our way home and could follow the directions more closely. We realized that the road the directions told us was NOT the way we had come up. We also realized that the road the directions told us was much more steep and much sharper turns. We never would have made it on our old tires in the snow!

While it was great to be at conference, and so fun to see the apostles and prophets up close, I felt like our real spiritual experience came from the travelling. It was very clear to us that we were led and guided and watched-out-for along the way. I am very grateful for prayer, that when we could not contact anyone else for help, we could ask our Heavenly Father for help, and He answered. I know he hears and answers our prayers, maybe sometimes just in His own way.