Saturday

Saturday was an interesting day. I started the day at my computer, needing to print some material for my Young Women lesson. I turned on and booted up and what did I find? Ugh! My profile settings were erased. I opened up email and it wanted me to format for a new account. (All the old stuff was gone!) I checked for my program with all my pictures and all my family pictures were gone! I also checked the program I keep all my business transactions for Creative Memories and I couldn't even find it. Do you know what kind of sick feeling I had? I wanted to cry. Before fretting too much I decided I needed to see if Eric could help me. I explained everything and he said he would look at it.

We had a Blake Family Christmas Party in Provo at 1 pm, so we jumped in the car. I drove while Eric worked on my computer. The drive was eventful with snow flying. It was a little intense in some parts but cleared up when we got past North Salt Lake. Phew! The good part is Eric was able to find all my important things and reinstate them into my settings. The only thing I did lose was my old emails and address book. In the next few months I'll be collecting addresses from the people who send me stuff and I will be back where I started. (Hopefully!) I'm so happy we were able to find my pictures and the data for my business. Of course, pictures are priceless and no business data would have been hard to do taxes with. As soon as we got it all up and going I promptly backed everything up to my external hard drive. I now feel at peace that if it happens again at least I have a back-up. (I had my external hard drive replaced a couple months ago and had it on my to-do list to back everything up but never got to it. I won't be so careless now. I think I've learned my lesson!)

We arrived in Provo for the Christmas Party and enjoyed seeing the Blake and Christensen clans. We didn't have a summer get-together this year so we haven't seen most of them for a year, since last Christmas. Grandpa Blake is hanging in there but is battling bladder cancer. He didn't look as perky as he has been. He's not too excited to endure a lot of pain. We hope he can be taken care of quickly or that he can pass on quickly so he doesn't have to suffer. It hit Eric hard that things could change very quickly. Was that our last Blake Christmas Party with Grandpa? Will we have our big Christmas parties still? Will we see the Christensens anymore? Will we get together in the summer? We'll see what happens....

Parker was so cute during the party. We usually eat, clean up tables and have a program. In years past we've also had a visit from Santa. When we sat down for the program (we sang Christmas Carols), Parker got really sad and grumpy and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I guess he figured that if we were singing songs that Santa was not going to come. Well, he was right. Santa didn't visit this year. Eric had a conversation with him later, where Parker said he was sad Santa didn't come. Eric told him, "Well, Santa doesn't always come." Parker then replied, "Well, he's come every year of my lifetime!!!" As we thought about it, yes, in the lifetime of his remembrance (about 3 or 4 years) Santa has come. What a bummer for him!

We had an uneventful trip back. The snow had stopped and the roads were clear. Yeah! We got home just in time to get the kids settled and Eric and I went out. We went to Jon Schmidt's Christmas Concert at Kingsbury Hall at the University of Utah in Salt Lake. Jon Schmidt is an awesome piano player who is very entertaining. He included 3 of his kids, his Mom, Dad and many other talented musicians. He cracked jokes, played the piano upside down, backwards and every which way. It was a great concert that was much more than we expected. It would be fun to see him again.

We got home late. After all that, I didn't print the stuff I needed for my lesson, the thing I started to do at the beginning of the day. That's the story of my life! We woke up this morning to about 6 inches of snow on the ground. I was able to prepare my lesson this morning and felt very good about the outcome.

Life has been very busy this past week. Here's a bit of what I did: I worked 4 out of 5 days. The one day I didn't work I was at the school volunteering for Fun Friday. We had Tyler's Christmas Choir concert, Tyler's SEP's, Young Women Christmas Party, Relief Society Christmas Party, Tyler's photo appointment, an ortho appointment and I can't remember what else. This week I will work 2 1/2 days (so far), go to Jared's Choir Concert tomorrow night, go visiting teaching and have visiting teachers come, watch Mikaela's class keyboard recital, go on a hayride and food drive with the YM/YW, go to an assembly Tyler's choir will perform at and take them to an Elementary School for a performance, go to a choir practice for Sunday's program, have dinner with Jason & Kristi and have a neighborhood (our street) Christmas dinner for the adults. I'm still not recovered from last week so I guess I better gear up for what is to come.