It's Terribly Simple. The Good Guys are Always Stalwart and True. The Bad Guys are Easily Distinguished by their Pointy Horns or Black Hats, and, uh, We Always Defeat Them and Save the Day. No One Ever Dies and... Everybody Lives Happily Ever After.

We are back from our three week trip to hometown. We had a lovely visit with everyone in hometown but my goodness I am so glad that trip is over. It was terrible.

The first day of our trip Drek's cousin died. He was only nineteen, so it was very tragic. The only upside was that Drek came out to the funeral, giving us a few days together were otherwise we wouldn't have seen him for several weeks.

After Drek left my dad went in for his scheduled surgery and stayed overnight in the ICU. He made a miraculous recovery, and it was great that I could be there to visit him and my mom and the hospital, but the results from the surgery were devastating: my dad has lung cancer.

A few days later came the diagnosis I was expecting but dreading for a dear friend of mine: Also lung cancer.

The day we left my grandpa died.  So, really, I wanted to leave as soon as possible before something else catastrophic happened.

The people and the events we did while we were there were wonderful. It was simply bad timing.  On the bright side, I got to hang out with my wonderful family, family in-law and friends. My sister came home from her mission and I did get to see my mountains that I miss so much while I am away. Although it did snow. SNOW. I despise snow. I'm so glad we are home.