Tuba City

Two weeks after returning from Orlando I was headed off to Tuba City to work with my Mom for a week at the hospital.  My Mom is the AFLAC insurance rep for the hospital in Tuba City.  It is on an Indian Reservation in the middle of no where.  There is not one place there that Tenley would say that "This must be the middle of Yes Where".  We left on a Sunday night, drove to St. George and stayed and Aunt Sally & Uncle Len's house.  We had to be in Tuba by mid morning so we had to get up at 5:00 AM to get ready and be on the road.  We spent the week sitting in a room talking to people about insurance.  It was pretty quiet in the mornings and some afternoons we would get bombarded.  We had one day where we went to Flagstaff to a clinic so we had some other meal options.  We discovered a delicious Mexican food restaurant for lunch and hit Olive Garden for dinner.  While in Tuba, we eat Oatmeal at the Hogan restaurant with our free breakfast vouchers from the hotel.  Lunch is often Subway.  My Mom packed a cooler with her homemade chicken noodle soup, chicken salad, crackers, cheese, salsa.  We often would just go back to the room and eat lunch and dinner.  At night we would just relax, work on paper work, watch a movie.  We were trying to do a Harry Potter-a-thon to get ramped up for the first part of movie 7 coming out.  We made it through four movies.  It was fun to watch them in such a short amount of time, back to back.  We left Friday afternoon and drove all the way  home.  I was back home by about 9:30 Friday night.  It was a great week to just be with my Mom and chat and work together.  We feel truly blessed that we had this opportunity this year as it was enough to fund all our Christmas festivities.

Norm stayed with the kids on his own until Wednesday afternoon.  He went into work a little late, did the girls hair and the kids just hung out after school until he got home.  Norms parents, aka Omie & Papa, came down Wednesday afternoon to help out with the kids.  The original plan was they were going to stay until Saturday or Sunday and the kids and I were going to ride back with them to start our Thanksgiving vacation.  The kids had the entire week off so we thought it would be fun to go up with them.  Norm was going to drive up on Wednesday night after work.  Well, I don't know how it all happened but they decided to check Cole out of school early on Friday and take the kids up with them Friday afternoon adn then Norm and I drove up Wednesday afternoon.  I had been away from my kids already the first week of November while we were in Orland, then while I was in Tuba, and then more days while they went to Idaho.  I was really missing them.  I have to admit it was nice when we went to Orlando.  I am sure they were glad to not have me there bossing them all the time (Do you jobs. Brush your teeth.  Practice your piano)  But 2 1/2 weeks in one month was just too much.  I won't do that again.

I am so grateful to Norm's parents for coming down and helping out it makes me so happy that we have two sets of Grandparents that love spending time with the kids.  That they are willing to sacrifice their time  to help us out.  The kids love spending time with both of them.  We truly appreciate them.