This past week...

...has been a little full. :) 

So, my last post was from Sunday, December 8. Since then, I've been to Washington state, gone to Micah's regional bouldering competition in Longmont, and gotten almost all of my Christmas cards and packages packed, addressed and mailed. I'm a little tired but mostly happy and ready to actually get into the holiday spirit.

I went to Washington last Tuesday to help out after my mom's knee replacement surgery. She's staying a few weeks with my baby brother and his family; he's a physical therapist. He was able to take the day off when she had the surgery and picked me up at the airport. We got back to the hospital in time to see her before she went in then spent the afternoon visiting and waiting until we were able to see her settled into her hospital room. (She doesn't do well with drugs and needed to stay the night for observation.) The surgery went well according to her doctor, and she was pretty good when we left for the night.

The next day, my sister, niece and nephew drove up from Prosser to go with me to pick mom up from the hospital. Once she was successfully discharged, we brought her back to Joe's house to get her settled in. We filled her prescriptions and let her get some rest and did some visiting before they had to head back to Prosser. When Joe got home, he checked mom's condition and started on some physical therapy exercises.

The next couple days, I helped keep her on track with doing the prescribed exercise and icing and medication routine. I was also able to visit with my awesome nieces and nephews. By the time I headed back to the airport (Friday night), my mom was moving around fairly well and on track for a great recovery. Here's my brother, mom, four of the five little ones, and me...

And here are my sweet nieces and nephews in order (the youngest is 4 months and the oldest is 5)...

I hadn't been able to meet the youngest before now, so that was a lovely little bonus to the trip. And look at how adorable they all are! 

Anyhow, I flew home Friday night...landed about 11:30pm and made it home an hour later...had to get a few things for the next day in order and finally got to bed about 1:30am. The next morning, Nathan, Micah and I left the house before 7am to head to Longmont for the Indoor Bouldering Regional Competition that Micah qualified himself for a few weeks ago. The climbers were in isolation to warm up for the first bit and then had assigned times to come out and go through the competition routes. There were six routes. Each climber rested for four minutes then had four minutes to climb as high on each route (specific point targets were labeled on each route) as he/she could. More attempts meant slightly lower scores...everything was totalled at the end. Here's Micah on one of the routes... 

He was feeling a bit under the weather and didn't do as well as he felt he could have but was overall happy with this first regionals experience. Plus, unlike at the local competition he went to to qualify for regionals, many of his teammates were also there. They had a blast cheering each other on and were easily the loudest team there...

These are the Team Ascent members in Micah's age group who went to regionals. (One was missing when this picture was taken.) Most of them stuck around for the next group who climbed after them...continuing to cheer on teammates. We stayed also since Nathan had volunteered to help judge during the next group. During that, I also managed to deliver a couple of holiday packages to friends and family in Longmont and watch some of the climbing...and then we finally made it home, where we grabbed Asher, picked up our holiday cards and a few gifts for boys' friends and then got dinner. 

So. That's mostly what happened last week. I'm catching up now and have gotten almost all gifts and cards in the mail. We might actually get around to putting up some decorations tonight... ;)