The night I thought my husband was going to die

This winter has been especially cold. It might just be that I really don't like winter, or it might be because we have had so many nights below freezing. It was the Wednesday after we got back from Christmas at Todd's house in CA. The weather had been yucky off and on all day, snowing one minute then just grey and bleh the next.

I was at the gym, training, when the weather really started to look bad. We had a couple of clients that left early to avoid getting snowed in... I really just wanted to leave too, but I was working. Anyway the sudden blizzard had let down and I was about to call Todd and tell him NOT to come to the gym because of the weather, but when I went to the lobby I saw that he was already there. After our last session finished, Todd and I decided that we would each take our own cars home since it was no longer snowing or raining like it had been. He was trying to fix his phone and had though that it would have been done, so I set off to brave the cold.

As soon as i pulled out of the parking lot and onto the semi-busy road i regretted it. It was a solid 3 inches of ICE! As I was sliding along with a death grip on my steering wheel I began to sing primary songs, and pray that I would not slide off the road and die. To make things worse it was a straight down hill shot...I had never seen anything like it before! The cars trying to come up the hill could not make it and were sliding backwards and all the cars going down the hill were riding their brakes and just trying to keep some control over their cars. I had never been so scared in my entire life!

Well I finally got to the bottom of the hill and kept at my slow pace on the flatter still ice covered road. I honestly did not go over 15 MPH the entire drive home! I was so close to getting home when disaster struck....

I had to make a U turn and due to the icy road i did not quite make it and had to pull into a snow covered parking lot and was instantly stuck. I tried a couple of times to get out, but knew it was hopeless without a push, that was when I started crying. I sat in the car for a few minutes and decided to try and move some of the snow away from the tires.

I was in a bad part of town and noticed there was a man across the street watching me. He looked kind of... scary... I am sure he was just trying to decide if he ought to come and help me ( a literal answer to my prayers) but part of me hoped that he would not. I had called Todd who did not answer his phone, so I was pretty worried about him...

Finally a really nice looking guy and his wife pulled up behind me and offered to help. This great guy pushed me out of the parking lot and sent me on my way! I called Todd (who I figured would be home by now, since I had spent about 30 min stuck) but he once again did not answer. By time I got home and did not see his car anywhere I was beginning to get worried. When I walked in the house and saw that he was not there I lost it.
I began to cry and pray and beg Heavenly Father to protect him and bless that if he had gotten into an  accident that he was ok. This went on for a few minutes. i decided to give him about 15 more minutes to get home before I started calling hospitals and the police to see if he had been in an accident. This might sound like I am overreacting, but on my drive home I had seen at least 4 accidents and I am sure there were lots more.

I tried to just stay calm and read for the next little while. It had been about 13 minutes when i heard the screen door open and Todd walked in. I was so thankful and happy to see him that I, once again, started crying! I explained the entire night to him, and we hugged and thanked our Heavenly father for getting us both home safely.

September begins (and ends...)

So my original plan to post once a week has failed miserably.  At least my heart was in the right place.  Instead of doing a post for the first week of September, i'll being trying to sum up the entire month just about.

Todd's Birthday was the Friday we left for California for our reception.  We celebrated at Mimi's Cafe the night before with Kelsi and Dayvisson.  Neither of us had been there before, but we enjoyed it.  The service was very good until Kelsi didn't get her salad or dessert, but our waiter fixed that by giving us two desserts instead.  Afterwards, we enjoyed the traditional ice cream cake that my mom used to make for me every birthday.  Alaina made it, and it turned out great!  It consisted of crushed oreo cookie crust, cookies and cream ice cream, and crushed Snickers bars.

We arrived with David in California at about 9 pm on Friday, September 3rd for our California reception.  We (dad, Todd, Alaina, and Daivd) stopped at In-n-Out in Pinole to get the trip started off right.  We brought Kevin home animal style fries and a Double-Double to reward him for all of his hard work in getting the house ready for the reception and 7 guests.

Mom, Dad, Alaina, and Todd left Saturday morning after cereal with all the guests (Justin, Emily, Braxton, Meridith, and McKell) to go up to Calistoga to be pampered with spa treatment while the house was being set up for the reception.  Justin, Emily, Braxton, Meridith, and McKell went to Muir Woods.  When we returned, we helped set up and then got ready for the party.  Alaina and I received people for a few hours as the temperature steadily dropped.  It was warm most of the day, but got cold suprisingly quickly, but that's one of the things that comes with leaving close to the coast I suppose.  There were Costco sandwiches, wonderful fruit shishkabobs, pasta, cake, frappe, a chocolate fountain, and many other treats.  Besides some cold weather, and a frozen Ipod (which Justin was eventually able to fix), we had a great night and got to see some of Todd's friends.

On Sunday we went to the old Benicia Ward for Fast sunday.  Afterwards we had a nice lunch in the backyard.  Justin's party went home early Monday morning, but our flight didn't leave until Monday night, so we helped a little with the party take down stuff, with some help from the Nelsons.  Our flight arrived in Salt Lake late Sunday night when Kelsi and Dayvisson so graciously picked us up (in addition to also dropped us off Friday night).  The had survived the wedding festivities!  Now it was back to the real world with work and school.

Speaking of school, Todd began school the week before we went to California, on the last Monday of August.  He is now starting his Masters program in Civil and Environmental Engineering at BYU.  That means he only has to take 3 classes instead of the customary 4 to be a full time student.  It also means he gets his own desk and computer (well, the power supply was bad on my computer, so they had to take it, and have not yet brought it back...but at least I have my own desk, right?).  His work also changed offices that same friday when we left for California, so now he works in north Provo just across the street from the Days Market.  The air conditioning actually works there...what luxury!

The weekend after the California rececption was Brigham City Peach Days.  We went up Friday night and stayed with Justin's parents Leyland and Lisa, who had already opened their doors to us just a few weekends before for Stephen and Maddie's wedding weekend.  Saturday morning was the parade with the Nelson Family, where I, amazingly enough, managed to not get any candy thrown in my eye.  Afterwards, Todd went back to the Nelson residence to watch the BYU football team get reduced to tiny school girls by Air Force.  I finally gave up on them about half way through the 4th quarter.

Alaina and I walked up to the carnival/market/party that is Peach Days and pick up a box of peaches for DeeAura at her request.  Once the deed was done we started heading back.  I am embarrassed to say, however, that I forgot a belt and Alaina, who had so thoughtfully packed my bag for the weekend, chose a looser pair of jeans that did not cooperate.  I also didn't feel right having Alaina carrying this huge box of peaches while I was holding my pants up, so I struggled the entire walk back, which seemed to be about 5 miles in the Sahara to me, with one hand holding on for dear life to my pants, while the other tried not to drop the box of peaches.  Kinda embarrassing, but also really funny... I just hope DeeAura really enjoyed those peaches...

After getting the traditional Navajo tacos and Peach cobbler, our Peach Days experience was complete and we were ready to return to Logan.  In the morning, we went back to Brigham City for church at the River Ward.  There was an interesting debate/heated discussion in Gospel Doctrine about the correct pronunciation of the Biblical prophet Hosea (I guess it's pronounced Ho-sha).  We then had pot roast and carrots with biscuits and honey butter at the Nelson's house for Sunday dinner.  After visiting for a bit, we returned to Provo and normal life.

Since then it's been mostly school and work.  Todd is playing on two soccer teams, one in Lindon, one through BYU intramurals, and one BYU football intramural team.  We've hiked the Y for FHE a few weeks ago, and then hiked Stewart Falls (up past Sundance) the Monday after.  Anyone know of any other good hikes that can be done for FHE around Provo while the leaves are changing colors and it's still relatively warm outside?

Today we had a block party for our new ward, which we have only been able to attend twice due to all the craziness in our lives the last month or so.  We had normal burgers, delicious turkey burgers, pineapple, watermelon, sun chips, and good new friends.  I think I managed to learn all but 3 of their names...too bad there were only about 20 people there...

Week in Review: 8/23-8/29

This week was supposed to be relaxing...

Monday night, Craig came over and we went over to Walmart at 11:30 pm to pick up some odds and ends fof our new apartment and to the new Hunger Games book (Mockingjay) at the midnight release (8/24).   We were strolling around the back of the store looking for stuff while Alaina was off on her own searching for something else at around 11:58pm when we noticed a large group congregating around the electronics desk.  Then I saw it - the box of Mockingjays... We got in line behind about 10 people.  The employee said they only had 24 copies, and started asking people how many copies they wanted.  Several people in the front wanted 3 or more, but once they realized that the line was getting longer and many Hunger Games fanatics would be enraged, they settled for one or two.  Craig and I got our copies, met up with Alaina, and left the store victorious.

On Wednesday, NuSkin, who Alaina works for, had their annual summer party, except this year it was at Seven Peaks instead of Lagoon.  They had a delicious dinner consisting of pork sandwiches, hamburgers with all the fixings, beans, fruit, potato chips, and soda. I had two pork sandwiches and two hamburgers...mmmm....  We then went on the half pipe ride and once around the lazy river, but Alaina got to cold, and I got too side tracked with all the free food stands all over the park.  We had nachos, churros, ice cream, and snow cones.  It was heaven for me...  Heaven for Alaina was when we found some hidden jaccuzis and finally got warm.  It was a delightful evening.

When Alaina went outside to go to work at 7am on Friday, she noticed that my passenger side window had been smashed to pieces.  She came back in and informed me that my car had been broken into, but I told her to go ahead to work or she'd be late.  She went back out to her car only to discover that her car had also been broken into and our GPS had been stolen.  She left for work, and I went out and discovered that my one week old fancy sunglasses and my one month old receiver for my car radio had been stolen.  I spent the next hour or so calling the police, calling my insurance company, waiting for the police for a half hour, reporting the two incidents, and discovering that at least two other people in our cul-de-sac had been robbed as well.  Not a nice welcome to the neighborhood, but at least they didn't break into our apartment while we were sleeping and kill us...

On a more pleasant note, Friday was DeeAura's birthday, so we ate at Happy Sumo with most of the old Omni gang, and then went back to our old stomping ground for dessert and mingling (which means Alaina socialized while Todd played Angry Birds on his iPod touch).  We had better than anything and funfetti cake.  It was nice to see our old friends again.

Saturday was mostly a rest day, but we did drive out to Sandy for Chris and Lydia's second wedding reception.  They had it catered by Coldstone, which was delicious.  The view from their backyard was spectacular.

Today we went to our new ward for the first time since we've been at our wedding and Alaina's little brother's wedding the last two weekends.  However, Alaina still is feeling sick since before our wedding, so we only stayed for Sacrament meeting.  (I always feel bad doing that, but I made Alaina go to bed so she could recover).

*Alaina now speaking
Todd has basically been waiting on me hand and foot all weekend. On Saturday, I literally thought I was going to die, and the only time I felt even a little bit better was if I was lying down. I spent the entire day in bed while Todd baked Lemon Poppy seed bars and went out to the store trying to find any and every cure he could for me. They all seem to be working, hope, hope, hope, I at least feel a bit better today. Todd also cooked dinner for us of Spaghetti and garlic bread (extra garlic).

After church he made me go to bed, but guess what?! We saw some cool people in our new ward, that I actually know! A small miracle considering I never went to BYU. Dani and Dave, I know them through Dee, I actually took Dani's old bedroom when she got married.
Today chef Todd made grilled cheese sandwiches on our new sandwich cooker (I have always wanted one of those things!) it works wonders.

Now I am bored, and know I will not sleep tonight if I don't get out of bed for at least a little while, so we are blogging... and Todd is heating up garlic bread for a not quiet midnight snack  :)

I have a great husband 

Tomorrow is Todd's first day of school, his backpack is all packed and we are going to have a power breakfast in the morning. "keep 'em full keep 'em focused"
He is going to do great!

Our First Family Home Evening!

Tonight we had our first Family Home Evening as married people.  For our activity, we decided to create this blog which is dedicated to the newly formed Todd and Alaina Wood family.  We've included below the agenda:

Opening Hymn : 116 - Come Follow Me
Opening Prayer : Todd
Spiritual Thought : Todd - From Proverbs 24: 3-4 as inspired by a wedding card he came across while sorting presents while Alaina was still at the gym hard at work training a new potential client.  The scripture states - "Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches."  Thank you to Alicia Murphy (we just found the card) for inspiring us and giving us some good advice to begin building our new home/apartment. 

Todd pointed out that these scriptures name three different levels of learning, starting with the most profound and ending with the most superficial.  Our homes should be built on the strong and reliable foundation of wisdom, or, as we learned in Sunday School yesterday in the Nibley 9th Ward while visiting Justin and Emily, the application of knowledge.  The construction of the rest of the home should be done with understanding.  Finally, the home should be filled with knowledge, and be a place of "learning, even by study and also by faith," especially of learning gospel.  By so doing, we learn from this Proverb that "the chambers [shall] be filled with all precious and pleasant riches."

Closing Prayer : Alaina

Our treat was some delicious peaches courtesy of Costco accompanied by bananas.  Yummy yummy...