FAIL!

One of the things I struggle with about blogging

is that life can seem kinda perfect on a blog.

How do you keep it real,

and not hurt the people in your life?

Which is why I've decided to post this failure.

I don't think I can hurt an ipod's feelings!!!!

McKay purchased a new latest and greatest ipod.

He gave me his old, cracked one as a goodwill gesture to me :)

It worked great, cracked and all.

I had some games loaded on it that I liked.

I had even loaded my entire library of Christmas music on it

and had logged several hours of listening enjoyment.

It worked like a charm,

UNTIL,

I decided to fix it and replace the screen!

Actually, my son Justin offered to replace the screen.

All I needed to do was order one and take it to him at Christmas time.

WELL,

I LOVE to do stuff like this,

so when the ordered screen appeared on my doorstep,

it wasn't even hours later that I given in to the desire to

 DO IT MYSELF.

(Lincoln did help me quite a bit in the process)

After watching a youtube video several times,

we cracked open, the even more cracked screen.

Cleaned up the glass and began our surgery.

Little itty, bitty screws needed to be removed.

Little ribbon connections needed to be carefully protected.

Those are Lincoln's hands, by the way.

After a long process of connecting/reconnecting,

Figuring out which screws went where,

(still couldn't get one of them to fit right)

We got the new screen on . . . . . . 

Only to FAIL!

It powered on, 

but has a stripe,

and no Apple icons at all.

(don't you LOVE the color of the new screen?!!!!)

I took it apart several more times,

watched the video several more times,

Googled to see if others had the same problem,

tried to reset it,

tried to reload the apple software,

took it apart some more,

AND took it to Justin to see if he could rescue me.

All to no avail.

I left the screen with Justin,

and he'll try to get it to work on his cracked ipod :)

In an odd way, I still enjoyed the process.

It is fun to have a puzzle to solve occasionally

Even though I didn't solve it

and have no ipod to boot . . . . .  

LOL!

Christmas in Utah

Christmas for me is just like any other time of the year.

Except with added stress,

of all the commercialism,

and ideas of what Christmas SHOULD be.

and it never really is as it really should be, somehow.

We haven't spent many Christmases in Utah since moving out east.

It is just a LONG trip, even when you fly.

I felt a HUGE pull to get together with our children this year.

HUGE pull.

So Huge, that when we couldn't find decent priced flights,

we decided we would take on the 35-hour (one way)

drive out to spend it with the family.

We decided to drive it without break.

Straight through.

The trip out there didn't seem bad.

We only stopped for gas,

bathroom breaks,

and mostly used drive-through windows to eat.

The way home, however was different.

We had a sick teenager, 

who didn't take his sickness in silence,

as we would have wished him to do :)

We also had more miles of snow to make the trip more stressful.

All-in-all, I'm glad we went.

We really needed to touch base

and see each other eyeball to eyeball.

So many prayers have been answered.

So many more need to be answered.

We are thankful for all our monumental answered prayers.

Now, on to the pictures!

Here is the Christmas tree we left behind.

A newer, slimmer version this year.

Our old tree is in the landfill!

We stayed at Lincoln's brother's home they purchased recently.

It is quite large and was an excellent place to stay.

Thanks to them for their hospitality during

The Lincoln Steven's family invasion!

Here is Lincoln, all the kids, plus a girlfriend!

So good to see them having fun together.

On Christmas Eve, the boys all went skiing

thanks to complimentary ski passes to Deer Valley Ski Resort.

Halley and I stayed at home and cooked Christmas Eve dinner.

She was feeling under-the-weather and probably would have loved to go skiing.

I, however, was glad for the mother/daughter time.

(as I'm sure she was too :)

We were able to get our traditional Christmas Eve Jammy picture!

Lincoln's brother's house has a rather large game room area.

We played pool,

ping-pong (round robin)

and generally had a fun time together.

One of our nephews manages the Trafalga in Lehi.

He gave all 7 of us complimentary tickets to do everything there.

AND gave us each a card with 50 tokens on them to play the arcade games.

I can safely say that I have never played as many arcade games in my life!

I'm too frugal.

We also played mini-golf and laser tag.

Lincoln and McKay on the climbing wall.

Made it to the top!

I can't believe Lincoln's mom actually got on this one!

Fun!

Chancy was able to come from California,

but ended up leaving earlier than we did.

This is just before taking him to the airport.

By the way, it snowed and snowed and snowed while we were there.

Going out to eat with Halley and Ryan.

This place was so full of wood smoke that we smelled like we'd been camping when we got home.

Justin and his new friend we got to meet.

Halley and me.

Justin and Me.

Celebrating Ryan's Birthday.

Halley and Ryan.

We got to spend a lot of time visiting Lincoln's family.

It is nice to visit from out-of-town.

Everyone makes every effort to make time for you.

Nice.

The only thing I didn't like

was that the time flew by so quickly

and we are already home

and back to normal.

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas also.