Europe Trip - Part 1

Our bags are packed and we're ready to go... all the way to Europe! 

Waited 6 hours in the LA International airport for our flight to Copenhagen

Can you tell that we got a little bored? Thank goodness for Netflix! :)

This was by far the longest flight I had ever been on. Ry had been to Europe twice before (lucky duck)! Our plane was actually a lot nicer than I was anticipating for the price we paid for our plane tickets (it was a killer deal, thanks Norwegian!). We had free access to a bunch of newly released movies which was awesome. We watched at least 2 considering it was at least a 10-12 hour flight. It was so bizarre to think we left at 8:30 Friday night from LA and arrived the next day in Copenhagen at almost 5 pm! 

Ryan's mission president and his wife (Annette) live in Copenhagen and were nice enough to let us stay the night with them. Ryan's mission president was out of town on business for the weekend, so his wife picked us up from the airport and didn't waste a moment in showing us the sights of Copenhagen! 

Annette introduced us to our first traditional Danish pastry (it was heavenly!) and Danish chocolate. Then she spoiled us by taking us on a boat tour around the canals of Copenhagen, it was beautiful! 

Annette was even nice enough to drive us past the Copenhagen, Denmark temple (sadly I didn't even realize there was a temple in Denmark! Next time we go to Denmark we'll definitely have to stay long enough to do a session!) 

(Sadly not the best picture of the Copenhagen, Denmark temple, it used to be 

their meeting house and then was converted into the temple - really cool!) 

Annette wanted to treat us to a traditional Danish meal at a local restaurant, but sadly Ryan and I were so jet-lagged and tired that we just wanted something simple to eat and then go to bed. So Annette was nice enough to stop by the grocery store and local bakery to pick us up some cheeses, meats, breads (my favorite) and juice (Ryan's favorite). She kind of made fun of us for wanting their traditional "breakfast" foods for dinner. I'd always heard about the delicious breads, cheeses, and meats in Europe and oh my goodness they were even better than I'd imagined! 

The next morning of course was Sunday and we had the opportunity to go to church with Annette and her kids. It was so neat attempting to sing the familiar hymns in a different language. There was a translator there translating the meeting into English for us, turns out he was a native Dane, but he sounded American - could have totally fooled me! 

It really is true what they say about being able to travel anywhere in the world and feeling the same sweet spirit you'd feel in your own home ward. 

Sadly we only had time to stay for sacrament meeting, because our flight to Italy was scheduled for early afternoon. But Annette wanted to show us the famous Church of Our Lady before our flight. 

I didn't even realize that I would see this in the Church of Our Lady.....

The Christus Statue that is so famous back home in Salt Lake was here in Copenhagen. Annette told us the amazing story of how President Spencer W. Kimball traveled to Denmark to see the Christus statue and the 12 apostles (which line the sides of the aisles of the church). He said that the artist was truly inspired by the Lord and that is why we now have a replica of this statue on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. How neat is that? 

We also happened to come on the perfect weekend because they had the stairs up to the roof open. Annette told us that she had lived in Denmark her entire life and had been to this church many times before but never had to privilege of coming on a day when the stairs were open to go up to the roof. We climbed the many, many stairs to the top to this lovely view....

It was amazing to see the ocean all the way from the church! This was my first amazing view of traditional European architecture and it was breath taking - these pictures don't even do this beautiful view justice! 

As we were taking this beautiful view in, we looked at the time and realized we had about 40 minutes before our flight was scheduled to take off. Yes I said TAKE OFF. We raced down to the car and sped the entire way to the airport. Annette dropped us off and we took off running with our luggage as she parked the car. We ran to the airline check-in desk where we found out that we had forgotten to check in for our flight to Italy the evening before when we were so jet lagged. They informed us that because we were so close to the departure of our flight we would have to pay an additional fee to check in with the airport. We ran to another desk and were lucky enough to check in with minutes to spare. The lady looked at us and said, "That will be $700." Ryan and I looked at each other with giant eyes, the lady could tell we were American and had obviously forgotten about the currency difference. "700 in krones," she said and we sighed with relief. Luckily at the time the exchange rate for the krone to the US dollar was 7:1. But still, we were not very happy about having to pay an additional $100 because we had forgotten to check in to our flight on time (we definitely weren't going to make this same mistake twice!). We paid and went back to the desk of the airline where we were able to check our bag just in time. The lady informed us that we would need to run, yes RUN to our gate if we intended to make our flight. We said a hasty goodbye to Annette and ran to security where of course there was a sea of bodies waiting in line. I looked for the nearest person in an airport uniform and explained that our plane was scheduled to leave in 20 minutes. He looked at me incredulously and jumped us to the front of the line. 

Luckily we breezed through security and then looked at the signs to find our gate. Our gate was F24 which was literally on the opposite end of the terminal so I am not exaggerating when I say that we literally ran nearly a mile to get to our gate on time. As we were running there were signs on the floor as we ran that would say "5 minutes to F" and then "2 minutes to F." I was so out of shape and was surprised to find that I was even able to run that far (especially in a skirt- seeing how we didn't have time to change after sacrament meeting that morning). I guess when you have a lot of adrenaline pumping and will power our bodies can do the unthinkable! :) 

We made it to our gate just as they started boarding passengers. Ryan and I were sweating by the time we made it. There were quite a few people still waiting to board our flight and we had a few minutes to catch our breath and even change our clothes in the conveniently located bathroom right across from our gate. Although I was exhausted from being jet-lagged and running a mile, I was so excited for our next city.... ROME!   

Articulation Therapy = Stitches

It was a perfect summer day in July for some articulation therapy. I had just finished working with one of my clients when I reached into my therapy bag (in which was a broken dollar store mirror I had forgotten to clean out), to put away a folder and when I pulled out my hand there was blood gushing everywhere, no exaggeration! The weird thing was that I didn't even feel that my finger had been cut until my client who is 5th grader said, "Holy cow, look at your finger!" I saw the blood and ran to the kitchen sink to wash off my finger and then wrapped a few paper towels around it. 

I left my client's house and started driving home. My finger would not stop bleeding! I kept the paper towel wrapped around it and applied as much pressure as I could while driving the 20+ minutes home. I wasn't sure if I needed stitches and the dollar signs of ER or Instacare came flashing across my mind. I didn't want to have to pay a lot of money to go to the ER just to have my finger sewn up if it didn't need to be. 

So I called my friend Madi who lives next door and happens to be a nurse and thankfully was home when I called her. I went over to her house and had her take a look. She wasn't super familiar with wounds that needed stitching so I ended up sending pictures to Ryan's friend who is a trauma nurse. He said that I could get stitches if I didn't want a gnarly scar, but that it should probably be ok, then again he was going off pictures sent from a phone. 

Just because I'm such a worry wart I decided to call my family clinic to see if I could get in for an appointment to any doctor in their clinic that had the next opening. The next opening was in 20 minutes down in Draper. I got back in my car and drove the 15 minute drive to Draper. 

When I finally got in to see the doc, he took one look at my finger and said, "You definitely need stitches, in fact it's deep enough I'm surprised that you don't have some nerve damage to your finger!" My heart my have skipped a few beats with that last statement, but I was just so thankful that my finger didn't appear to have any nerve damage. 

 Originally the doc said it should only take 1-2 stitches but after he cleaned off all of the blood, it ended up being a bigger flap of skin than he anticipated. So I had to sit in the surgical room of the clinic and watched as he sewed 4 stitches into my finger.

And the final result was a very numb finger with 4 stitches and lots of dried blood. The bad thing was, no getting this finger wet for 2 weeks! No pool time for the next 2 weeks, but on the bright side, I didn't have to do the dishes for 2 weeks either! 

New Edition to the Family

Ok, so let's be honest I'm attempting to get caught up a bit from last year, but I had to post about our cute little kitten we got this past year.

Meet Houdini our sweet little kitten!

Originally we were thinking about naming him Captain Jack because of his cute little goatee, but this little stinker ended up being an escape artist. The first few nights in his new home we tried to trap him in the basement by putting up some big boxes at the bottom of the stairs, but this little stinker kept finding ways around those boxes and coming upstairs, so naturally we decided Houdini was a better fit for him. (Not to mention we went to see a magic show the night before we went and picked him out)

Although he can be a little stink (like trying to sneak popcorn and getting stuck in the bowl), he really is such a cute little kitty. He plays so well with our niece and nephews and the neighborhood kids.  In fact about a month after we got him, I looked out the kitchen window to see the neighborhood kids pushing him on a skateboard down the sidewalk. 

With all of his kitten play time with the neighborhood kids, he certainly knows how to crash! 

He is a silly little guy, but he certainly is so much fun to have around, even if he happens to have some dog like tendencies... like drinking out of the toilet and chewing on newspapers to mention a couple. 

Silly kitty cat Houdini

A Visit to theER

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, Ry woke up early in the morning with what seemed like flu symptoms. After about 2-3 hours of him visiting the bathroom and then coming back to bed. He finally looked at me and said, "I think you need to take me to the ER." I tried my best keep calm and not panic as I hurried and changed, grabbed the keys, helped Ry into the car, and then drove to the hospital. I dropped him off, luckily at 5 in the morning they weren't busy and we were able to get right in. The day before at Ry's parent's house we'd been talking about appendicitis and that was my first thought, when I saw Ry keep grabbing his side and telling me he had sharp stabbing pains. Ryan couldn't seem to find a comfortable position at all kept constantly moving around his hospital room. The doctor walked in and said, "Well sir, you seem to be doing the kidney stone dance." It was amazing to see how much Ry changed after the nurse gave him a dose of morphine. They took him to do a CT scan and sure enough found a kidney stone. I've heard that kidney stones are extremely painful, but I was just very grateful that Ry didn't need emergency surgery for appendicitis like I originially had thought. Luckily we were discharged from the ER a few hours later with some pain meds.

 Ry stayed home from work the next few days to rest and hopefully pass his kidney stone on his own so that we wouldn't have to have to doctor blast it. We went to the doctor's office a week later to follow up to see if he had passed the stone and luckily he did, which meant we wouldn't have to do any procedure to get rid of it and if he gets another kidney stone in the future he should be able to pass it. 

I'm so grateful that we have the miracle of modern medicine. I couldn't imagine what we would have done if we would't have been close to a hospital or had medicine to treat Ryan's pain. 

Ry's Birthday

So back in November, we celebrated Ry's birthday. I have to admit I'm awful when it comes to planning birthday activities. What I had originally planned was to take Ry to Boondocks to play some mini-golf and do ride in some go-carts. Instead Ry suggested that we go do the "legit" go carts and so that's what we did. I have to admit that I was a little scared to get behind the wheel of one of those because I'm a very good driver to begin with, but I survived. I definitely had to take it a little slower than the others my first couple of laps, but then I started to get the hang out it. Ry lapped me about 5 times before the end of the race. We had a lot of fun needless to say! 

Halloween Festivities

So once upon a time back in October on Halloween, we had some fun at our house with our trick-or-treaters. Ry's favorite holiday is Halloween and this year he went a little crazy when it came to decorating our house for it. He bought 2 different scary animatronic guys to put out in front of our house. We had 2 different doors for kids to choose from to get their candy. The little kids came up the sidewalk to our front door to get candy from me, while the "big kids" went to our downstairs entrance where Ryan would pop up and scare them in a window which was right next to the door. As awful as this may sound, I think the best part of the entire evening, was when Ryan scared this little girl and she started running down the street. We had a pretty entertaining night to say the least.

Murder Mystery & Yummy Food

So way back in October, Ry and I hosted a murder mystery dinner. We did one last year and it was so much fun we decided to try to make it an annual thing. This year's theme was Chicago Caper, roaring 1920s. It was definitely a lot of fun. We borrowed the set from Ry's sister and it was surprising how smoothly the set had everything laid out for each character in order for the game and dinner to progress at a reasonable pace.

It was so much fun getting all of these fun couples together. I can't wait to see which mystery dinner theme we decide to host next year. :)