Tom and Emily

For any of you who don't know we are expecting our fifth child. If this is a shock to you it's more than a shock to us. I am currently 13 weeks. I have a long way to go until March 16th, and so far it's not been a fun journey. I had finally decided that our family was as big as it should be. It took a long time to come to that conclusion and feel good about it. I scheduled an appointment to talk with my doctor and set a date for surgery. I had been on birth control and was ready to go ahead with it. Instead of a surgery consult, the visit ended up being and initial pregnancy visit. This baby is supposed to come to our family. For some reason unknown to us, against all the odds and despite my past experiences with miscarriages this baby is doing well and making me very sick. So I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that I will have five children, the thought is so overwhelming to me. I guess if I don't want my prayers answered I should ask. I said I'm done, if I am not supposed to be You better do something about it. Well, He did. God's plans are not my plans. In six months I'll be excited and more than ready to have a baby, I always am.

I don’t claim to have an IQ in the range of Albert Einstein but I don’t hold myself in the realm of Mr. Gump either. Apparently, however, Forrest happened to be much more fortunate than myself. One would have to assume that at some point I would learn from the stupid things that I do and not repeat them or at least stop adding to the long list. Unfortunately, I continue to do stupid things. They say if you can’t admit to yourself that what you did was stupid and you don’t tell anyone else about it, then they can’t laugh at you. So here is my latest post on the stupid things I do.

At the beginning of June we had the awesome experience of going to Bear Lake with my parents and brothers and sisters and their families. We rented a cabin and had a great time. Emily and I decided to take the 4-wheelers down with us and they ended up being a lot of fun. We took them around the mountain side where the cabin was and then on Saturday we decided to take them to the beach.

So we drove over to the Idaho side of Bear Lake. Our family, Heather and her kids, Jon and Kara, Lisa and Jared, Mark and Mom and Dad all came with us. As soon as we got there the kids immediately started running through the water and playing in the sand. They didn’t care that it was 60 degrees outside and the lake was probably close to 40 degrees.

A critical decision was made immediately upon our arrival at the beach that has great import to this tale. When I turned off the Armada I contemplated on where I wanted to put the keys. I didn’t want them in my pocket just in case I went into the water. I also didn’t want to leave them in the car just in case one of the kids locked the doors. So I decided to put them in the cup holder of our Ogio bag on Emily’s 4-wheeler.

We all had a lot of fun and took the 4-wheelers all over the place. Jon and I especially enjoyed tearing up the beach. I let Jon ride mine and I rode Emily’s. We spun them around and took them from one side of the beach to the other.

We had been there for a couple of hours when Emily asked where the keys to the Armada were. So I went to get them out of the cup holder of the 4-wheeler and much to my horror they were not there. I decided to check five more times just in case I had missed a hiding place inside of the normal sized cup holder, or maybe they had vanished for a minute and were now back where they were supposed to be. They still weren’t there.

My next move was to look out over the vast sands of the Sahara and notice the miles of 4-wheeler tracks we had just created and had just one thought. “Did I just do what I think I just did?” The answer was, “YES!” Somewhere in that vast wasteland that is the beach at Bear Lake the keys to our vehicle fell out of the cup holder of the 4-wheeler. I suppose that this is a good time in the story to mention that when we bought this particular vehicle they only gave us one set of keys.

To try and make a long story mildly shorter, my wonderful brother and two sisters and their families helped us comb the beach for probably another two hours. We went up and down that beach over and over trying to find the keys and even with all of the pleadings that went skyward and all of the gnashing of teeth that I did the keys were not located anywhere on the beach. It was time to start thinking of exactly how we were going to get out of this predicament. We couldn’t just have someone run us home and pick up the spare because there wasn’t one. Also, to further complicate things, we needed to get our 4-wheelers home.

So I went into a small shop that was there by the beach and asked to see the local phone book. Now, being from Idaho I am used to seeing small phone books but this one took first place in the thinnest phone book contest. They didn’t have the “Yellow Pages” it was just one yellow page. That was all they needed. So needless to say my choices for locksmiths were slim to none. Secondly trying to find someone actually working at 6:30pm on a Saturday night would be a miracle somewhere between the water turning to wine and the loaves and the fishes.

Believe it or not, I did get someone to answer the phone. He was the local tow truck driver that moonlighted in making keys and on the side he would give people free rides on the hook of his tow truck. . . of course it cost 10 dollars for him to get you back down. Anyway, this very nice individual named Todd told me something I didn’t know. You can’t make a key for a Nissan Armada that will work without reprogramming the locks and apparently the only place that can do that for you is a dealership. Todd was very helpful and offered me a selection of dealerships in the area that could take care of my problem. What I quickly found was that the term “in the area” meant the entire western half of the United States. So we narrowed it down to either Logan or Pocatello. Being that Pocatello was closer to Idaho Falls I asked pleasant Todd if he wouldn’t mind scurrying on up to Park Price Motors in Pocatello with my Armada. He agreed, so one part of the predicament was solved.

Now I have a trailer with two 4-wheelers on it that needs to somehow get to Idaho Falls. Oh, and a family too I guess. And this is where you are thankful to family. Heather had her truck and was kind enough to haul the trailer back to the cabin for us. Then we crammed into Jon’s Arcadia and Mark’s Impala and got the family back to the cabin. Once there we began to make some calls and more generosity flowed as Kristin offered to take some of the kids and haul the 4-wheelers back for us if necessary, and Dad offered to bring down a car for us and Chad (Emily’s dad) was ready to head down from the cabin to get us and then Charlie stepped up big and offered to drive my truck down the next morning. So that is what we ended up doing.

Needless to say after a $400.00 tow bill and a $350.00 bill to make two sets of keys, and I must mention that we broke our $400.00 digital camera too, we were back home as if the weekend had never happened. I was pretty sure that one or two of my siblings mentioned trying to do another get together just like that one. I’m thinking another weekend like that and I’ll be taking a 2nd out on my house!