On Wednesday morning I drove Mike to the emergency room to see if his ribs were broken. He was helping to take down the stable where the donkey and sheep are kept. He was on a ladder, and was leaning over a 2X4 reaching as far as he could to take out a screw. He was turned sort of sideways and was putting all his weight on his right side when he heard a pop and felt immediate pain. He was sure he had broken a rib because of the pain. He climbed down the ladder and moved and felt another pop. He came back up to the shop and we headed out. When we were about 15 minutes from the hospital the check engine light started flashing. The car was running pretty rough by the time we got there, but we made it safe and sound. A few hours later we learned that his rib had become dislocated and the second pop was when it went back into place. It was not broken, but this type of injury is just as painful, so they gave him some pain pills and said take it easy. Then we drove straight to the Volvo place and got our car fixed. If Mike hadn't been on pain pills, and I had not been a bit stressed also, perhaps we would have thought to see if the car care plan we purchased covered the repair. We spent nearly $250 dollars without even thinking about the policy. When we got home and called we found out that they WOULD have paid for it if we had called for pre-authorization, but since we didn't they won't. We are grateful we didn't get stranded on the side of the road.
At Sacrament Meeting today Sister Miriam Kill told about a friend of hers whose son got engaged at Christmas time. She asked Miriam to guess where he proposed. She guessed a number of places and finally gave up. Her friend then told her that they came up to see the lights and he proposed under our covered bridge. She asked, "Why there?" The friend explained, "It is a family tradition and we go there every year. We feel great being there. We always felt that it is a magical place."
It is a magical place. People love to come because of the "feeling" that is here. I thought you might like to know that we had 14,850 cars drive through to see the lights. Many of the people drove around several times, and some come back many times, so the actual number is less and impossible to figure. That is, however, an impressive number.
During the Christmas Season (beginning the day after Thanksgiving with the lighting ceremony) we had 4,500 people get out of the cars and come in. That is an amazing number.
In the month of December we had 3,615 visitors (who stopped and came in) and of those 3,063 were not members of our church. It was surprising how many people said they had never been there before. It was nice for people to get to know us a little bit.
For those of you who missed seeing the covered bridge in previous blogs, here is another picture of it.
Since January 6th is Christmas in Ukraine and Mike is half Ukrainian I thought we should just continue celebrating through January 6th. Don't you think that is a good idea? On January 6th (Friday) we were home because of Mike's very tender ribs, so we were able to talk to Alex Bocenko, Mike's Ukrainian cousin on Skype. On Sunday we called back again and talked to both Alexander and his brother Andrew. It was great.
We have talked to all of our kids (and most of the grand-kids) on Skype between Thanksgiving and January 6th except for Todd and family. We talked with him on the phone and looked at each others pictures on Facebook. Modern technology has been amazing to help us keep in touch with family.
LOVE AND GREETINGS TO EVERYONE. HOPE YOU HAVE THE VERY BEST NEW YEAR!!
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