Back home again!

I was waiting to write about our trip until I had time to add pictures. But, in the interest of preserving family history, I'm going to make a quick post, just so I don't forget everything that has happened.
Jamaica was an incredible experience! It really needs pictues, so I'm going to forego telling about it until after I get them. What I really want to talk about is what's been going on since we got back home. We arrived in Salt Lake last Tuesday night, around 11:30, and waited nealy an hour for our motel shuttle to pick us up. We were so tired and so COLD! We would like to have slept in the next morning, but we needed to pick up Mike's mom at Shara Dawn's house. She had been there for seven days and I'm not sure who was more anxious for us to arrive; mother or Shara Dawn. As soon as we got back to Vernal, Mike checked the phone messages. We learned that a dear friend of ours, Merrill Mecham had unexpectedly passed away the day before. President Mecham had been like a dad to Mike when he was growing up; he was a witness at our temple marriage. When we moved to St.George, he predicted that we would be back, and that Mike would one day be a bishop; right on both accounts. After moving to Maeser, he would always call us and have us come pick up home grown corn on the cob (for me) and squash (for Mike). Their daughter,Caye and I are such good friends. We served together in the Relief Society Presidency in 7th Ward and Caye's daughter, Hilary and Annie have been dear friends for years. So, before we got the bags completely unpacked, we were off to visit with Helen and Caye. It was a tough time for them. Thursday was spent doing laundry,getting grocieries, preparing for the ward Valentine's dinner, having Carrs up for dinner and checking e-mails and blogs. While at the church,I checked the list of sisters who had signed up for the Family Home Evening Binders Enrichment Activity which would be the following Wednesday. (tomorrow) To my surprise, 24 books were ordered. When I passed around the sign-up for sisters interested in working on FHE lessons, not a single sister signed-up. So, while I was thrilled to see such good response, I was a little nervous about getting everything ready. Friday morning, we had to set up for the Valentine's dinner party. From there, we went to the funeral and after that, we dashed home so I could get the dessert ready for the dinner. Mike volunteered to take the brownies out of the oven so I could dash to town for something I needed that night. When I returned, Mike was flat in bed, sick with the flu. It hit him like a ton of bricks. So, I went to the dinner without him and was so gratful that Sasha and Jason came. It was a long night. I stayed up to work on the FHE binders and spent a lot of time on Saturday as well. (By a lot of time, we are talking the equivalent of several Young Women Value projects!) Mike was still sick on Sunday, so I had Mickala take dinner up to Grandma instead of having her come down. I continued to work on FHE binders and began to be a little panicked about getting them done if I should also get the flu. Mike and I are also in charge of one of the classed at our STake Relief Society conference this coming Saturday and we still have to get the posters ready. After spending most of the day getting the FHE binders ready, I came to the sinking realization that I had undercharged the sisters $2-$3 dollars on each binder, depending on which one they chose. (No wonder they wanted so many!) And, one of the books has pages that got chopped off, so I have to replace those pages. Today, at the copy shop, I was running off all these pages when they suddenly got busy, so I hurry to finish and the lady that went to the copy machine after me suddenly starts to scream, "What is going on?" I hadn't cleared the machine, so all of her copies were printing seven times. We had been talking and she didn't realize it until she had dozens of copies she didn't want. I told her I would pay for the extra pages. Tonight,as I was getting the books assembled, one of the 3-ring binders broke. (when has that even happened?!) This little project is costing me a fortune! Now,here's the lesson I learned. I could have purshased the family home evening resource manual from the church distribution center for $5.00. It has far more material in it than the binders I have spend hours working on. Even if I would have gotten fancy and had the print shop put a spiral binding on it, it would have been less money than what these books are costing. And the amount of time I am spending that I don't have is ridiculous! And, I think I am getting Dad's flu. So, I better get in bed. (But the binders are finally done; now I can work on the RS conference, and Mike's temple pants that have to be ready for him by Friday...As they say in Jamaica "No Problem!"