the good. the bad. the ugly.

I don't even know where to start really. The past two weeks have been a crazy, emotional roller coaster. I think giving you a day by day account would be best. Here I go.

Saturday May 8

Won't go into detail, but the day did not start off with a bang. With that in mind, we were scheduled to meet with our real estate agent at 1 p.m. to go look at houses. We had four houses to look at. The first three were uninteresting to us, so we headed to the fourth--in Salem. As we pulled up the this particular house, a friendly black lab greeted us with his toy and wagging tail. We set Grayson down to play with him--the kid LOVES animals. After a few minutes of petting the dog, we went inside to look at the house. LOVED it. We went back outside to look at the yard. We were on the porch for a minute playing with the dog, and Garrett and I stepped off of the porch to take a look at the pond that is close by--leaving Grayson to pet the dog. I noticed the dog going into its kennel and Grayson following and looking into the kennel. I looked away for a moment. Heard an attack. Rushed to Grayson. Lifted him into my arms. Noticed a big bite from the dog on his cheek. Ran to the car yelling to Garrett (Garrett was giving the dog a well deserved punishment). In the car. Blood everywhere. To the emergency room. I ran into the emergency room with Grayson making quite a scene. I hadn't taken time to examine how bad everything was--I was too busy holding pressure on what I knew was a really bad bite in his cheek. I just knew that there was a lot of blood, and I was freaking out. We got pulled back immediately--only to sit there for four hours before they started stitching Grayson up. The bite on the cheek that I saw went all the way through his cheek into the mouth. It was bad. Bad. BAD. He also had a pretty good cut around his ear, above his lip and other smaller cuts on his face that had to be stitched. He had bruising around his eye from being pushed into the cage. Plus a little puncture on his chest. I was grateful that they offered sedating him from the start. I was fully prepared to be a beast and demand sedation. The doctor did a pretty good job. I have been pretty satisfied with his stitch work. He offered to have a pediatric surgeon come and sew him up in the OR, but there are only two in Utah County and I didn't know how much longer it would take for one of them to get down to Payson, and by that time I couldn't handle to look at the gaping wounds any longer. So stitching done, antibiotics in, we got to go home. I'm pretty sure I cried for 9 1/2 hours straight that day. STRAIGHT. I couldn't help myself. I was so traumatized and so shaken up--without a doubt the worst day of my life thus far.

Sunday

Grayson looking slightly better, but not great. We also get news that Garrett's grandpa is not doing well and will probably not survive the night. Garrett left to go be with his family, while I stayed home with Grayson.

Monday

Garrett's grandpa passed away.

Tuesday, Wednesday, THURSDAY

Grandpa's funeral. It was a nice service, but sad all the same. He will be very missed!

Friday

Best friend Katie's wedding. This is the good. I love attending sealings. It reminds me of everything good in my marriage and fills my cup up. Not that my cup is empty or all that close to empty, but it always gives me a renewed desire to love Garrett with all of my heart. I love it. We spent the morning at the temple and had the day to hang out in Salt Lake. They had a ring ceremony at six that we wanted to attend, and I got directions to the place where the ceremony/reception would be. I decided (for some reason) that we had to get on I-80 to get to this place. Right by the freeway entrance there had been a pretty hefty car crash. It slowed traffic down TREMENDOUSLY! It took us forever to get through the traffic. We finally got onto the freeway, and I decided not to follow directions and go with my own intuition. That was not smart. We had to turn around and go back to where we started and through the crash traffic all over again. I was ticked. I had figured out where we were going by then, but we were already late and stuck in the same stupid traffic that we were stuck in before. We finally got out of the traffic and got pulled over for speeding. Lovely. We finally arrived for the ring ceremony 40 minutes late. The best part is--it was only about 5 minutes away from our initial starting point.

Katie had a lovely reception. I laughed and I cried. I love this girl. She has brought so much LIFE into my life. She's been there for me always, and I just love her. When we left the reception, I sent her a text telling her how great everything was, how beautiful she looked and how I hoped she had a great time on her honeymoon and that I couldn't wait to hear from her when she got home. She text back quickly and said: "Thank you so much for coming and staying so long! I love you! And I love seeing you! I'll keep in touch, I love you!" Made me want to cry all over again. Congratulations to Katie and Tally for tying the knot. Love you both!


This past week has just been a week of laying back and trying to recover. I don't feel like I'm all the way there, but I'm definitely improving, and so is Grayson. This will show you his progress!