Sneezes, Hiccups and Coughs...Oh My!

So...due to it being Dr. Zhivago at my house and the airport shuttle company being fresh out of sled dogs, I had to hike down the hill in 2 feet of snow with all of my luggage to meet the shuttle van at the entrance to my apartment complex. The weight of my luggage practically pulled my down the hill once we hit the pure ice portion of it. When I spoke with the shuttle company about 14 hours before they were to pick me up, they told me that they could not pick me up due to their vans not being able to get up to where I lived. As much as I told the guy that my street wasn't "up" from anywhere and I'd be happy to meet them on the street, he wasn't going for it. Kept telling me I'd have to get to a hotel parking lot at 3 am for them to take me to the airport. So here's my question: If I had someone to take me to a random hotel parking lot at 3 am, I wouldn't very well need the shuttle company to take me to the airport, now would I?
The only way I could get them to take me to the airport was to agree to have them pick me up 7 hours before my flight took off. So I had the wonderful opportunity to sit on the floor outside airport security and go through my email for 4 1/2 hours. There were many people still stranded from the storms the days before. Lots of people taking naps on the floor, on chairs, anywhere they could.

Continued the Tara/Tausha tradition of going downtown for HoCho and a visit to the Capitol Christmas Tree. They are still doing contstruction on the Capitol building this year. Taush says it's never-ending construction. So instead of a tree on the Capitol steps we again get the large tree just across the street decorated. Same bulbs though. But no opportunity to ding-dong ditch the Liberty Bell replica.  Darn!

New Year's Eve we went tubing in Garden Valley. Six runs with turns and jumps. Two hours of great fun. Run number Six was supposedly pretty scary and dangerous, so I nixed that run and decided to go with run number Five, which I stupidly thought was less dangerous. I followed directions and drug my feet the entire way, went as slow as possible (which wasn't very slow) and went up the side of the run, my tube kept going and I fell on my right arm. I heard several cracks when I landed. Knew I was hurt pretty badly and was completely scared I had broken my back.

I thought that if I'd broken my back, I'd better stand up as quickly as possible. Why? I don't know. Perhaps I thought that if I stood up quickly enough my broken back wouldn't get the news that it was broken. I stood up so quickly that I had yet to catch my breath, what with the wind being completely knocked out of me. I had to bend over and try to breathe until my lungs filled back up. Which then hurt like the dickens. Deep breaths and movements involving my right side were extremely painful. I climbed back up the hill, went down the hill 2 more times and decided it hurt too much to keep tubing and took fotos. Over 300 of them. A lot of them of strangers. I couldn't tell if I knew the person as they came down the hill, until they got closer to me. I'm sure they were probably wondering, "Why is this strange girl taking fotos of me?" Oops.

Went to the Doctor and besides him saying "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" He told me that I didn't have cracked ribs, but they were severely bruised. I got some Vicodin and muscle relaxers that didn't help as much as I thought they would. Serious pain, especially when I tried to move in bed. Ouch! Today I'm a bit better, not us much pain, thank goodness.

I happened to get this cute moment of my nephew and his wife on Christmas Day. It was actually a foto of my other nephew, the cute couple didn't know they were in the frame, and I didn't realize it until I'd loaded the fotos onto my computer. I love it.