June was Crazy

The last day of school for Lauren was Wednesday, May 26th, although I still had to work until June 10th. The summer started off with a bang and we headed to JUCO over Memorial Day weekend to watch some college baseball. For those of you not familiar with JUCO, it stands for the Junior College World Series and it is a HUGE deal in Grand Junction. This year the weather was perfect for baseball and we even got some ESPN coverage out of it. The tournament starts on the Thursday or Friday before Memorial Day and continues until the following Saturday. It is a lot of fun and you can feel the energy in the air.

During the last week of school and the following week, we spent a great deal of time and energy preparing for the first of two garage sales. We cleaned out every room, cupboard, nook and cranny we have in the house and even went so far as to pull everything out of the attic with the exception of the holiday stuff and go through it. Our workout room was converted into a space for the things that we planned to keep but needed to reorganize, the dining room promptly became the sacred shredding space and my poor car was kicked out of the garage to prepare for the big event. Unfortunately, the first big event took place at my parent's house a few miles away and it took us 3 car/jeep loads to get everything over there. June 5th was absolutely beautiful. A little on the warm side, but we got rid of a ton of stuff and made quite a bit of money. After that garage sale, we took everything (including the stuff that my parents were selling) back to my house to get ready for the annual Wilson Ranch garage sale in my neighborhood. Luckily, everything was priced, it just had to be laid out on the tables again and organized. I even went through some of the boxes in the workout room and managed to put a few more things into the sale. As Saturday, 6/12, approached our plans for a grand garage sale turned into a plan for how we were going to host this sale literally in the garage. The forecast showed rain and it showed a lot of it. 90% of the time, the weather men are off with their forecast but something told me to pay attention. We awoke on Saturday morning to sunny skies that quickly became overcast about 8:30 am. By 9:00 the skies opened up and it rained... a lot. And it continued to rain non-stop until about 6:00 that evening. We sold some stuff, but not a bunch. I just wanted all the stuff gone so I sold our empty boxes for $3.00 a piece and told the few people who were there they could fill up and take whatever would fit into the box for the $3.00. It worked and I cleared a good portion of the stuff out. The rest went to Goodwill.

The following Monday, 6/14, we were planning on a Family Fishing Day, but unfortunately, we had to cancel that because my Grandma was in a car accident and ended up in the ER. She ultimately was okay. Pretty banged up both physically and emotionally, but nothing serious or life threatening.

That week was filled with appointments and other fun things like painting the main office at the school and the week ended with Lauren heading to the cabin with my parents and Matt and I walking in the Relay for Life as a member of the Cops Against Cancer team. Relay for Life is a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society and the event runs from 6:00 pm Friday night until 11:00 am on Saturday morning. The idea behind the event is that cancer never sleeps and it takes a team to beat it. So you, or at least one of your team members, must be on the track walking they entire time. I ended up walking 13.2 miles and Matt did about 15 miles before we came home around 1:00 in the morning. We promptly went back out the next morning and walked for another hour or so before the event wrapped up. It is a good time and very moving. I highly recommend participating in an event in your area just to experience it.

The week of the 20th was CRAZY. Again, we had appointments that filled most of the week and then we had the dreaded Country Jam for Matt, dog sitting for my parents and my neighbors, my grandpa landed himself in the hospital, my parents were out of town, my grandma refused to drive and ended up getting very sick and we had Matt's sister and her family in town over the weekend before heading up to Glenwood Springs for a nice vacation. Our quiet family of three people, three dogs and a fish turned into four adults, four kids, five dogs and a fish all while Matt worked nights and slept during the day for the weekend. Yeah!!!!

We survived and headed out to Glenwood Springs for a fun three days.