Dorrel and Stephanie: Blenders, Conference, and an injury

A New Blender
I’ve been on the green smoothie habit for almost a year now. That means I use my blender on a daily basis, and sometimes more than once. My mom and Greg had bought me a powerful blender a few years ago for Christmas that made a smooth tasty drink. It had just one small problem. In order to allow for easy cleaning, the bottom of the blender was removable. How convenient! What’s not convenient is when the bottom comes off when you’ve got a quart of green goo in the blender. For unknown reasons, sometimes even though the bottom was screwed on as tight as could be, when I set it on the blender and turned it on, it would come unscrewed. It usually waited until I walked away from it, insuring that maximum green goo could leak out all over the counter and spray everything in the vicinity.

this is a minor mess that I caught quickly

It happened the day before I received my new Vitamix and I told my old blender, "Your days are numbered!"

The blender was very well made. It had a little plastic gutter inside so that if you ever dripped anything down around the top part of it, it would still stay dry where the motor was. Each time the blender unscrewed (sometimes up to 50% of uses), green goo would get inside the blender on this gutter and I had no way to clean it out. (Dode took it apart for me one time when I shorted it out by tipping it upside down while cleaning it after an accidental green goo release, revealing the very stinky fermenting green goo gutter.) When I’d move the motor base on the counter, a cloud of fruit flies would erupt from within. Sound like fun? All this story about the blender to lead you to my new purchase, a Vitamix. We had some money in our vacation fund left over after Wyoming and I selfishly used it to upgrade my blender. I was so excited to not have to worry about my smoothies making a mess on the counter! It came on a Friday.

I made a smoothie. Boy that thing is loud! After I was done, it sat on counter. Jacob decided to make a smoothie. On my old blender, first you pushed the “on” button, then you told it how fast to go. On the Vitamix, “on” means “Go now!” Things were not set up correctly and the plunger that was resting in the blender jar came flying out of the blender and nailed him in the head. Both Jacob and the plunger were injured in the event. Now my plunger has a gash on it, letting green goo inside. The fruit flies have happily relocated to the plunger. Not even one day of use and it’s damaged! One of the joys of parenting.

General Conference
Over the weekend, Dode took Isaac down to Salt Lake City to attend General Conference. (What is General Conference?) Dode's dad, Lynn, was willing to make the trip with them. The tickets to conference are free but it can be difficult to get them. Lynn was able to get four tickets so they were able to add Isaac Colson to the trip. Due to a conference, Dode had gone in early at work and stayed late a few times in the week leading up to the trip and was able to get off early. They pulled out of the driveway at 3:30 pm Friday, stopped to pick up Isaac Colson, and headed off. They made it to Utah at 7:00 am the next day. After leaving their things at Dode’s cousin Lee Wright’s house, they set off to do some sight seeing in Utah. Isn't that what every one would feel like doing after driving all night?

on the shores of the Great Salt Lake

They visited a Kennecott Copper Mine. That little thing behind the Dump Truck? A semi truck!

Isaac Colson could not stop talking about the size of the trucks.

"This is the Place" monument

The boys had no interest in passing the McDonalds you see in the background, but after eating at In-n-Out, they decided we made the right choice

General Conference happens every six moths and is broadcast over the Internet, but we wanted Isaac to be able to experience attending one of them in person. We believe there is a strength to be gained by sitting in a building with the Prophet of God, 12 Apostles, and many other church leaders, as well as a large gathering of saints. Living in Washington, I don’t know that he can appreciate the size of the church (over 14 million members). Can anyone appreciate belonging to an organization with 14 million members? He must have had a bit of feeling for how many people were at the Priesthood (Men's) Session when it took them almost an hour just to get out of the parking garage!

They were also able to attend the Sunday morning session and have lunch before heading towards home.

I'll be happy when the boys can start smiling again in photos!

reflecting pool on Temple Square (where General Conference is held)

They had great seats. Look how close to the front they are!

(This is a building that holds 25,000 people)

Lynn, our Isaac, Isaac Colson, Dode

They ate in the cafeteria in the Church Office Building with Dode's cousins and Uncle Jack.

Isaac Colson, Isaac, Dode, Jack Dickson, Lynn Dickson

(They were able to get the tickets from Jack who is a General Authority in the church.)

There is a lunch counter behind them. The employees at the cafeteria line up the day's newspapers on the wall behind the counter. People getting a quick lunch stand there and read the paper while eating. I wonder if they all shift down as they go?!

They stopped for the night at Dode’s cousin Andrea’s home in Boise. They made it home around 4:00 pm on Monday. It was a lot of driving for them! The trip would have worked out better if we had functioning air conditioning in the car. It’s hard to hold a conversation when you’re driving down the freeway almost 80 mph with the windows open!

very enthused boys (30 minutes from home)

Typical traveling van, the floor is a mess!

Visiting with Grandma D

One of the reasons Dode had to hurry home from General Conference was because his Grandma Dearinger was in town for the weekend. We were able to have a nice visit with her and Uncle Jerry here at the house.

Who is that extra kid who keeps showing up in the family photos?

None other than Big Isaac (Colson)

Jacob's cut
(All the photos for this story are at the bottom. If your squeamish, don't scroll down past the text!)

Thursday evening Jacob made himself a tasty chocolate peanut butter milk shake (vegan). When he finished drinking it, he set it beside the computer. Later, he got up from the computer and knocked the glass down. On the way down it hit the fireplace ledge and shattered. One of those pieces dug into the top of his foot. Blood was instantly everywhere. Isaac worked on the blood, I worked on the glass, and Jacob worked on the direct pressure. He’d managed to get a pretty significant gash, we could see the vein exposed. We bandaged it up but within an hour, the bandage fell off due to too much blood. Dode and I went over to Haggen and bought some butterfly strips. I used them to pull the skin together and close it up. It looked pretty good and I went to bed. Jacob decided to put his shoe on and he re-opened it. I woke up in the morning to find him on the couch, his foot in the air and sock bloody. Then I learned he’s gone into his room to get something with that bloody sock, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints on the light tan carpet.

He spent the day laying on the couch with his foot elevated and it looked like he was on the road to recovery. I got after him for laying around all day so he relocated to his room. Just walking up the stairs opened up the cut and he left another trail of blood across his carpet. I decided we'd have to go to the doctor. Zaycon was delivering a bulk buy of bacon that I had to help with but once we were done, we headed to the doctor. It looked much better than it had the night before when I'd pulled the skin back together and the doctor said he didn't think it was a full thickness cut. Doesn't seeing yellow fat and the walls of the vein count as full thickness? He put some steri strips on it, wrapped it in sticky gauze and told him to not bend his foot for a while. Jacob has two toes that have gone numb. He told us the nerves will grow back at the rate of 1 cm/month so in three months, his toes should feel normal again.

So, in three days Jacob has managed to damage the blender, break two glasses, and stain the carpet in blood. We reacted to each of these events in a reasonable manner, realizing that things happen. Yet, he told us last week that we haven't taught him properly to take care of things. So, we tried asking him to please not bang the vacuum around and it turned into a big fight. Sometimes you just can't win!

Photos: (contain blood)