Family

I am leaving this weekend to go to Minnesota for a week. My visit isn't under the best circumstances but I need to go. My Uncle has cancer and it is aggressive. I want to go and give him a hug and tell him I love him.

My parents, sisters and then my Mom's sister and brother and their families live in the same area. And I have always lived far away. It has been my own choice. But of course at times I really have been envious and felt left out.

And now this is one time I am really wishing I was closer but for different reasons. I wish I was closer so that I could be there for my Uncle, Aunt and cousin - to help them. But I am sending love, thoughts and prayers to them.

Health Reform

"This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system, but it moves us decisively in the right direction," Obama said shortly after the historic vote.

I agree with him that it won't fix everything but I guess only time will tell if it moves us in the right direction. I am not very happy with how things turned out.

I think the democrats - as always - have problems executing what their voters want. They were put in with the majority - you would think that they would get the clue. But of course not. So the health reform bill - I think really won't help Michael and I very much. And again as things are right now it is better for Michael and I not to get married and the same will most likely go with the healthy reform bill that was passed. But as I said above only time will tell.


Edit to add: I think this link does a pretty good job of describing the bill - Health care reform bill 101: what the bill means to you

Gratitude Friday

I'm thankful for...
1. my love for being so supportive when there is so much going
2. that I am going to see my family soon
3. excited for the release of New Moon tomorrow - Michael is taking me to Target in the morning. They have a 3-disc special. I have the 3-disc special of Twilight so wanted the 3-disc special of New Moon too. With so much going on - little things give me some fun.
4. beautiful images that give me so much inspiration
5. the weekend being here

Everyone Needs an Alice

Our Alice.com order arrived on Friday. It came UPS and it was in a good box but some things I enjoyed about the packaging....

They had the Earth Aware packing pillows so more friendly for the environment. There was no wasted space. You know how you will get a huge box from Amazon with one little thing in it. Well that is not the case with Alice.com they packed it very well.



The liquids were packed in a ziplock together. And then the powdered items were in another ziplock. And they even taped down the cap on the one bottle. But nothing was spilled. The powdered stuff was sprinkled in the bag but not that bad. And that happens even when you pick them up in the grocery store so not a big problem to me. I just really liked that it was packed with such care.



They included a little sack of free samples. It had granola bars and 2 other things I am not remembering at the moment. .



The cost on all the items we bought in this order were lower than what we would have got at the store. Alice.com applies coupons so 3 of the items had coupons taken off the original price. I also was able to order something I can't get locally - washing soda. Our box weighed 14lbs and that would have cost a pretty penny to get it shipped but with Alice.com you get FREE SHIPPING so there was nothing about my experience with Alice.com that I didn't like.

The other side of the box says Everyone needs an Alice and I think they are right. I know we will be ordering from them again.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful for...
1. our order from Alice.com - it arrived today and is great. I will do a review about it in another post.
2. vegetable juice
3. Buffy the Vampire - I hadn't watched the series in a long time and it has given me many hours of entertainment while I work on a website
4. grilled cheese and soup when we are sick with colds
5. making plans to go visit my friend in April - I am very excited

Zamboni

When we were in Keystone, the zamboni would go out and clean the ice. And there was one spot that from our window I could tell was thinner. It just looked different.

Well I guess I was right...


story here

Do you think they put that caution thin ice sign up before or after the zamboni went in?

Rockslide

On our way home in our bad snow storm Michael commented that he didn't like driving in these conditions because it causes rockslides. And sure enough they had one - luckily after we went through - and luckily no one got hurt as it is a major disaster for I-70.

Photos here and here.

Hope they get the highway up and working again soon otherwise it is a 200 mile detour.

Bad Bad

One the way home at night - we hit a VERY bad snow storm. Now living in every other state this storm would have bad to drive in and upset me but not to the degree it does in Colorado with all the curves through mountain passes. And in normal weather during day light hours - the curves upset me. I get very anxious. I know my blood pressure rises and I just feel panic. Okay so now add in a bad snow storm during the night - I was freaked. I was extremely freaked.

When we got out of it the snow storm, I lost it. The weather was fine. But I lost it big time. It was like I had been holding in all that panic and we came out of it and I could let it out so I started crying very hard.

So on top of that horrible night last night - I found out bad news about a family member having cancer. I am extremely shocked and upset about it too. My thoughts and prayers are with my Uncle, Aunt and my cousin.

Gratitude Friday

I am thankful for...
1. Michael being able to see the doctors before we left for Keystone. He is doing much better. We do think we have a Keystone curse though.
2. the amazing pizza we had Wednesday night. It was very expensive but it was very good.
3. having kitchen here so that we can make our own breakfast and have lots of oj
4. being able to go home today and out of this high altitude as it tires me out
5. no migraines this week

Keystone

We are in Keystone for work. This is the view from our room....



It is so pretty at night. There are a lot of sparkly lights and people are skating. Oddly enough this was the best thing about our room. It has some strange things to it. It was good but not like last years.

*photo is from mobile phone as that is all we had with us (besides many video cameras)

Alice.com

Last week I had been trying to find the price for washing soda as I was going to try to do a price break down of making homemade cleaning products with it. And I knew it was way overpriced on Amazon. But I knew someplace must have a more reasonable price that I could work from and that is when I found Alice.com.

Alice's best feature - FREE SHIPPING. I am not even sure I can explain it enough to do it justice. It has a lot products we use daily. Alice has coupons that it automatically clips and uses on the products. But normally many products we use were lower or the same price. And best of all I can have them delivered to our door.

Michael and I are making our first order when we get back from Keystone and I will do a post about it when we get our first order. But I can't wait to make our first order to Alice.com.