All Things Christmas

Trimming the tree, decorating ginger bread houses, baking goodies, wrapping gifts......We have been busy enjoying the season of Christmas. Decorating the tree is one of the highlights of my year. In years past we have had different themes and color schemes for our Christmas tree, and this year I wanted red poinsettias. The boys are pretty good about letting me get my way with the tree decorations. It's about the only thing I get my way with in a houseful of boys. I did give in one year and let them decorate it their way, with every ornament we ever purchased and all those handcrafted goodies such as macaroni and construction paper ornaments from many years of school projects. But after that year, I decided to buy the boys their own tree and let them decorate it so I could have my "pretty" tree back. Don't get me wrong, handcrafted Kindergarten ornaments are precious memories to me, but I just don't want them on my tree. Tis the season.......

Gratitude

Thanksgiving is another one of my favorite holidays. I love this time of year because it gives me the opportunity to take time out and reflect upon all of my blessings, and to acknowledge and express gratitude for everything I have been given. Often times I get so caught up in day to day life that I forget how truly blessed I am. My blessing list is quite lengthy so this year I am focusing on my children. I am so thankful for my boys and I love each of them with all my heart. I could not have imagined 15 years ago that I would be the mother of 4 amazing, awesome, incredible, enjoyable, extraordinary, magnificent boys. They keep me sane and insane all at the same time. They teach me about unconditional love and they inspire me to celebrate every moment no matter how insignificant it may seem. They help me remember how to truly laugh and are my source of eternal joy. For this, I am grateful.

The Surgery

This is the final post in a 3 part series. So if you are reading this first, I suggest going back and reading "the campout" and then, "the injury" and then this one. Otherwise, you won't really know what I am talking about. Hey, I don't know what I'm talking about either so just go with it.

So after the campout, we get home and Kieth continues to go to work everyday for two weeks. He is in a tremendous amount of pain, but he has to wait until he gets home after work to take any medication because it makes him kinda loopy. In the mean time, the lump on his shoulder is getting bigger and we don't really know what else to do. Finally his appointment with the family doctor arrives and it's time to see whats going on with his shoulder. Me, always the optomistic one, goes in thinking he will have to wear the sling for another few weeks while his shoulder continues to heal. The family doctor immediately refers us to an orthopedist because the x-ray's do not look good. Fortunately, the doctor that fixed Riley's knuckle about a year ago was available and ready to see us. We went right over and he took one look at Kieth's shoulder and the x-ray's and started scheduling him for surgery. He confirmed that Kieth did in fact have a shoulder separation, but that it was much worse than the ER doctor had identified. Thanks to a rookie ER doctor, Kieth walked around for 2 weeks with the top of his shoulder blade not only separated from the joint and the collar bone, but basically just being kept in place by a small amount of tissue and his outer skin. That explains why the bump kept getting bigger. Oh Holy Cow!


Anyway, he had surgery Monday November 10. The doctor took out all of the joint tissue and drilled 3 holes into his shoulder bone. He then sutured his bones back together with 3 fiber wire sutures. He said he should be able to play ball again and regain full use of his shoulder within 6-8 weeks. He had to stay in the hospital for the day and night so the kids had fun in his room after school.


Hunter was curious about all that stuff on his dad's hand.


Hunter had breakfast with his dad the next morning. Kieth was so ready to get home because the beds are not made for tall people. His ankles hung over the end and kept falling asleep.


And here I am taking advantage of the morphine drip. He hates pictures and never smiles without alot of grumbling, so I snapped as many photos as I could while he was doped up. Speaking of doped up..... Now he is at home convalescing and boy is this another adventure. Kieth has never taken many medications so he just gets nutty on these pain meds. He is letting me read him the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, and for the last day and a half, he has been hollering from the bedroom for a credit card and the phone. I finally had to ban him from watching any more QVC, HSN, or any type of infomercial selling the next greatest invention or products you can't live without. Oh well, at least he is healing now and able to take off work. Things could always be worse. Three cheers to a day in the life.......

The Injury

After we got our tent set up and the fire started, Kieth decides to organize a football game with the kids, because after all, he is the biggest kid of them all. Everything is going great until Kieth tries to intercept a pass and inadvertently introduces his shoulder to the rock hard ground at full force.


He knew right away that he was hurt. He started getting nauseous and turning pale and green all at the same time. I was so upset that I couldn't even remember where we were. (Mostly I was upset that he was ruining my campout, but I've since apologized) Then I realized that we were a long way away from any kind of civilization. A couple of people offered to take him to the E.R., but he really wanted me to take him. So we left the kids with Wendy and Chad and headed off to the hospital.


Our E.R. experience was like most, I'm sure. There was no one in the waiting room but us at 7:00 on a Friday night and it still took 4 hours. The doctor came in and took one look at his shoulder and immediately said he had an Acromio-Clavicular Separation. She gave him a sling and told him that these injuries heal over time and to go see his family doctor in two weeks.
He is laughing here and I think the pain meds had already kicked in because there was an anatomically correct picture on the wall that he found hilarious. So after we went to Walgreen's and filled a pain med prescription, we went back to the campout. I was determined to have my hot cocoa by the fire, so at 11:00 at night I heated up water and made cocoa for everyone that had waited up for us. We finally went to bed in the tent around midnight. I did not have a sleeping bag, so Kieth and I tried to sleep in the same one. It would have been fine had he not gotten injured, but he had to sleep on his back and couldn't move or snuggle. So needless to say, by 3 am we had enough. It was uncomfortable and we were freezing. So we got Hunter and went to the van to sleep for the rest of the night. We woke up the next morning and had breakfast and took the kids on a nature trail. Then we broke camp and headed home. In my next post titled "The Surgery" I will tell you the rest of the story.

The Campout

Camping in October sounded fun, so we decided to pack up the kids and go camping with our church group to the Fred Berry Conservation in Yellville. I really wanted to go and so while Kieth and the boys were at work and school, I worked hard to get everything together that we might need. By the time I finished packing up the van, the muffler was dragging out of the driveway. (Not really, but we absolutely did not have room for one more item)
The temperature was supposed to get down into the 30's overnight and I wanted to be extra prepared. In fact, it got so cold that night that we had ice on the inside of our tent the next morning.


Kieth and Hunter worked on getting a fire started in the fire pit when we got there. Hunter wants to do everything his dad does.


Here we are very happy because I was having visions of hot cocoa, smores, and scary stories by the fire. Little did I know that the fun was about to come to an abrupt end. In my post titled "The Injury", I will tell you all about it.

Halloween 2008

Halloween this year was a ton of fun. We went to the ward trunk or treat and chili supper. It is always a great event because the kids get to safely trick or treat up and down the entire parking lot either until the candy runs out or the bags bust at the seams. I'm sure my kids collected at least 10 pounds of candy between them. It's a good thing we have dental insurance. This year I went as Cleopatra, Jordan was Dash Incredible, Riley was an outrageous Cowboy, and Hunter was Elmo. Dakota was all dressed and ready to go as Dewayne Wade (NBA Player) but decided to change at the last minute and go as himself when he saw that his dad did not dress up. When I got home, I realized that I did not take very many pictures. I guess I was sidetracked watching the boys have fun. Hunter was so precious tonight. Halfway through the trick or treating he looked up at his dad and said, "dad, this is so much fun, thanks". But his thanks is more like phanks. He can't quite get the th sound. His lingo is pretty funny, but I'll save that for another post.


This is my favorite of Elmo and Cleopatra. Isn't he adorable!


This one is too cute. His face says it all.


Riley loves being a Cowboy.


Elmo is ready for candy.

Halloween Fun

I love Halloween, and I guess I passed this love down to the boys because they love it too. I have been sorting through old pictures lately and found some of past Halloween's. I know I have more, but they will have to wait til next year. This first one is last year at our Halloween Party/ Baby Shower for Gina. She also loves Halloween so much that she wanted to have it as her baby shower theme. (I know, I know, we're all a bit loco).



The top two pictures are 2003 at the trunk or treat. I think this was one of the last years I could get the boys to participate in a family type theme. As you can see, Jordan and Dakota were Dorothy's tin man and lion, while Riley, forever the defiant one, insisted on being the Hulk. The next picture is Halloween 2006.



This was Halloween of 2001 at Lesli's garage party. This was one of my favorite years. The boys made adorable dwarfs for Snow White. I love Jordan in the first picture. Although he was only 2, his personality was captured quite accurately.