Friday, November 20
Over the past few weeks we've been talking to Trish about what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said that she wanted to stay home, eat good food and play games. I told her we could absolutely do that. I asked her what kind of food she wanted, so we broke down the weekend and planned out our meals. I told her we also would bring some games with us since we were tired of playing the same games over and over again. She said that would be fine too.
We got most of our stuff ready the night before and packed up for the most part. While I was working, I did a few loads of laundry and when I was done with work, I did my workout and then got cleaned up. I cleaned the shower, the shower curtain and the bathroom rugs.
I packed up our drinks, frozen potatoes, sausage and cheese in the cooler and put ice packs on them. Ben worked late and didn't come home until after 6...apparently, they had to take care of something at the last minute. He got home, changed and he helped me load everything into the Edge. We made sure everything was good inside the house, the doors were locked and off we went to Bonney Lake.
There was hardly any traffic (which was nice for a Friday night) and we stopped at the Safeway in town to pick up some garlic bread, drinks and bacon. We got to the house, unloaded our stuff and got settled in. We opened birthday presents while we waited for dinner to finish cooking. She wanted pillows for her couch so we got those for her and she got me a Meme card game for my birthday. I told her we will probably going to play this over the weekend. She said that she had planned on it.
The other day when we spoke, I suggested that Amy make us all dinner on Friday night. It would be good character building for her. Of course Amy didn't want to do it because it involved work but Trish made her and supervised the entire process. When it was done, we all dished up and ate at the table.
Amy did a good job so we complimented her. I even suggested that she make more meals in the future! She frowned on that idea but we're going to work on her.
We helped clean up and then we played rummy for a few hours. Ben came from behind to win, Trish and I tied and Amy lost.
We all were tired from our long work days so we got ready for bed and eventually passed out after midnight.
Saturday, November 21
We got up around 9:45-10:00. I probably would have slept a little bit longer because I didn't sleep too well the night before. I needed another blanket because I got cold. The bed was actually somewhat comfortable but that's because Trish changed out the mattresses over the past few months. I cleaned myself up a bit and then headed upstairs.
Since it was Trish's birthday she was not allowed to wait on us, no making us meals, no cleaning up after us...none of it. I got out what I needed and starting making the potato, egg and sausage scramble because it fed a lot of people and it was good. Ben surfaced upstairs so I put him to work toasting the English muffins. Around 11ish, everyone eventually got out of bed. Ed came over around 11:30 to eat breakfast and to spend the day with us.
After breakfast, Amy did the dishes while Trish awaited her phone call. She was finally getting out of her timeshare which is literally sucking money out of her. She's been meaning to do it for years but didn't. Once, that phone call was over we asked her what she would like us to do downstairs. She had also been putting off cleaning out the room downstairs, you know...the catch-all room. She set aside stuff to go to the dump and stuff to take to the Goodwill.
We also went through the boxes in the garage. She was finally done storing them and just wanted them gone, so we crammed them into the back of the truck on top of the very old mattress that needed to go. Trish and I drove to the recycle and the dump while Ben and Ed fixed the sink and the light fixtures in the upstairs bathroom. First, we had to stop and get money from the ATM machine because the payment options weren't clear on the Pierce County waste website. We wanted to be safe than sorry when we got there.
We did the recycle first but had to break them down and take the Styrofoam out of them. That took us a little while because she had a lot of boxes to get rid of.
We then, got into the large line to get rid of the mattress and the containers of cat litter. This dump isn't as organized as the ones in Thurston County. We HAD to wear a mask here.
We finally go to our stall and tossed everything inside. I'm sure Trish thought I was a weirdo while we were here. You have to enjoy and embrace the dump. Then I told her stories about going with our Dad throughout the years. It was basically bonding time with Dad. She laughed.
We drove home and started in on the next project she wanted to get done, cleaning the downstairs where the pool table was. She said for years they just stored stuff down there and she was determined to go through it and take it to the Goodwill. She was tired of it sitting there and taking up room. Several boxes of stuff was taken and put in the back of the truck. As that was going on, I decided to vacuum since that room probably hasn't been in a while because of all the stuff sitting around. After we were done taking boxes out and vacuuming the room looked pretty good. Trish and I drove to the Goodwill and had to wait in line for a bit. They took everything except three things because they were deemed furniture, which they didn't take anymore at that specific location.
We came back to the house and then decided we were hungry. Mazatlán was one of the dinners Trish wanted this weekend and I made sure to bring cash for my dinner. We got everyone's order all situated and called it in since we couldn't go into restaurants at this point in time. Trish and Ben went to go pick it up while I worked on my blog. They came back with bags of food and we figured out which food went to whom. I got the chicken chimichanga, beans and rice and we all shared the tortilla chips and salsa that came with it. It was delicious.
We cleaned up the table and did the necessary dishes. Trish opened her gift from Ed which was a cat t-shirt and a card.
We played my What Do You Meme game, Apples to Apples, a new card game I got called Trash Pandas and a rousing game of Trains. Learning Trash Pandas was quite the experience. Ed understood the directions differently than we all did. We had to explain it several times and we all eventually agreed. It was intense. Of course we ate popcorn while we played, it's just what you do.
We did make Amy play some of the games with us even though she just wanted to sit on the couch in front of the TV playing on her phone. We told her it was her mom's birthday and to come over and play games.
We stayed up well past midnight and I really needed a quick shower since I was in that pool table room vacuuming. I was probably covered in dust and cat hair. We went to bed and this time I found an extra blanket since the night before I was cold.
Sunday, November 22
I had set my alarm for 9:45 but got up earlier around 9:30 to pee. I ended up just laying back down and looked at my phone for a bit. We heard a knock at the door and Trish came in. She told us that we should get ready to go quickly because we had to go over to Shelly's house to visit Grandma Bonnie, I guess she wasn't doing very well.
She had recently moved in with Shelly and Tony so she could be taken care of better. Before that she was in the hospital being treated for bed sores and a foot injury. Over the past year and a half she was basically in a concentration camp. The care team at that faculty were terrible. She was served cold food, had subpar individualized care, she was in a wheel chair and needed help with the bathroom and showers and such and she just felt like she was basically being ignored. We found out they weren't taking care of her very well and were hiring cheap labor so they could make money without having to spend a lot. They were reported when Shelly took her out of their care. It was too late, she needed to be taken out of there much sooner.
Trish drove Amy and Ed while Ben and I drove separate and headed up the hill to Shelly's house. The only extra person who was there besides us was Heidi and she and Shelly were working on some paperwork, genealogy stuff and going through pictures. Bonnie could only handle a couple people at a time so Trish went in there for a while, then Ben and Amy and I went in there for a while. She would open her eyes and acknowledge us and then closer her eyes because it was comfortable. Sadly, there is an appearance of someone who is on their way out soon and she had unfortunately started the process. I've seen it with Grandma Karen's husband Pat, her brother Sonny and my Grandmother Eileen. It's really hard to handle emotionally. Since Bonnie is Ben and Amy's grandma, I went back in the living room so they can spend as much time as they wanted to with her.
We were over there for at least a couple hours. Everyone knew we couldn't spend all day there because more people were on their way to come see Bonnie from Oregon. For some reason I knew this would be the last time we would see her but I didn't say anything because I didn't want to upset anyone. Ben said that he would try to leave work early so he could come see her in the next few days. We all had discussed and planned to come for Thanksgiving on Thursday at Shelly's (granted that things improved and we were able to come over) and then have Thanksgiving at my house on Friday with my family. We gave out hugs and we told everyone to keep us posted about what was going on.
We drove back to Bonney Lake and Ben and I decided to grab a few caches on the way back to the house. We stopped at Wingin' It (GC8KFRY) which was at the Buffalo Wild Wings. We parked as close as we could near the rock wall and sidewalk. I knew this would take us a few minutes because it was a rock wall cache and those were never easy. We searched for probably five minutes before I found the bugger. We signed our names, took a pic and put it back exactly how I found it for the next cacher.
The next one was further down the road towards Bonney Lake, South Hill's Historic Corridor #6 (GC7T8PZ). Those ones are pretty easy since most of them were fake bolt's on the back side of the historic sign. I got out and found it, signed it and put it back. I think we have all of these caches now in the mini series.
The last one took us off of Military down a side road. McMillin Reservoir (GC1EXP6) was just outside of the do not enter sign. The only place it could be was on the guardrail, tucked into one of the signs or the fence or on the cement pillar poked into one of the holes. It took a few minutes to find it but knew it could only be in one of these three spots. We signed it, took a pic and put it back. We headed back down the hill and up the hill into the back side of Bonney Lake.
We made it back just in time. We all had a late breakfast of pancakes and bacon. Ed wanted to make us pancakes on his griddle with his pancake flipper. I made the bacon. We had Amy set the table and get out the butter and syrup. We were hungry so we put away a lot of pancakes.
We cleaned up and Amy brought out her gift for Trish. Amy works at Fred Meyer so she was able to get her a Seahawks snowman.
We played some more games throughout the day and visited. Ben and I got our stuff ready to go and packed it in the Edge. We thanked Trish for having us over and she thanked us back helping her get all of that stuff done yesterday that she wanted to do. We gave out hugs and then hit the road. Traffic wasn't all that bad so we made it home in roughly an hour---which it usually does. We unloaded the Edge, started some laundry for the upcoming short work week and noticed our cat tree came in the mail from Chewy. We brought the giant box in from the front porch and Ben took some time putting it together. Our kitties were coming home on Tuesday.
We got ready for bed and realized this week was going to be really busy. Bring it on!
Next Adventure: Welcome Home Wade and Oliver!
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