Broken Bones Are No Joke.

Reese slipped off the bars at school and fell hard on her arm. It's buckled and crazy looking under that splint. She's on her way with Aaron to get X-rays now. They stopped by the house to drop off Quincy and Corbin first and I got to see her for a minute.  She's nervous and in pain and I ache that I can't kiss this one better and magically take her pain away. She's in good hands with Aaron, but I still wish I could just scoop her up and hold her in my lap at the hospital.

Results are in: broken. 

There is a buckle fracture in her (left arm) radius near her wrist. 

Reese was very brave while the nurse wrapped her in a soft cast. 

She's not super excited about needing a hard cast, or taking a little break from piano, though. And we just started swimming lessons yesterday. Bummertown. 

Here is the card from her classmates.

I thmell thumpting...

You're about to turn the corner and find a big mess in your bathroom:

The red flag:
Me: Corbin, why do you smell like shaving cream? And hey...is that lotion on your shirt? What are you eating?

Busted

The garage door made a loud POP! last night when I pushed the button to close the door.
The chain to the opener was hanging in pieces from the mechanism and the result was a loud clanking from the motor and the garage door stuck open, leaving our belongings exposed to the night.

What an unfortunate series of events...or is it? (cue evil eyes and sinister laugh: muahahaha...)

You see, we store the boat in the garage.
Yes. Instead of our 2nd car.
Yes. This arrangement makes me crazy.

Should a prime opportunity such as this ever occur, I knew I would take action.

Much to my chagrin, the husband grew wise to my pre-meditated plan to put a giant "Steal me! I'm FREE!" sign on the boat, with hope that it would mysteriously disappear in the night.

Aaron got up on a ladder and managed to get the door closed manually and my evil scheme was thwarted. Shame.

Any of my local friends have a recommendation for a good fix-it guy? Or a not-so-good fix-it guy? I mean, it wouldn't be the worst thing to have another opportunity to execute my plan.

Knowing my luck, Hoarder Henry would pick it up and I'd still have to stare at it every day, parked in the pile of crap across the street.

General Conference Weekend

Lest any of you believe I am a perfect parent (wait...does anyone actually think this? Have I fooled someone? Can we be BFFs?), I thought I'd post the only picture I took from our Backyard Campout, this weekend.



And why didn't I take more pictures?
Because it was a semi-disaster, that's why.


Despite (or we like to believe it was to spite) our best efforts we discovered:
1) that I am officially not a camper.
2) that my children definitely are not campers.


Friday night was an epic fail. (notice the default dinner--- GV mac n cheese with cut up hot dogs.).

Oh and then there was the campfire. Oh the fire! I won't go into detail, but all I can say is that there is now an 18 inch circle of completely charred grass in the back lawn. It's like a horrifible (yes, I know HORRIFIBLE is not a word. I made it up. Horrific+Horrible = horrifible) tattoo to remind Aaron and I of our night of stupidity.

Stupidity meaning we thought we could spontaneously set up a tent and campfire in the backyard, and have a practice run "camping trip" with the kids and all would go well, the children would be delighted, and we would all get a good comfortable night's sleep and awake chipper and full of love and affection for one another in the morning.
Family togetherness...isn't this what all of you camper people swear will happen?

You folks are liars, I will tell you that right now.

For the non-campers out there, let's be real for a minute. You can count on me to tell you the truth.


Camping sucks, y'all.


Corbin crapped out on this idea about 8:30 pm and Aaron took him inside and put him in his crib where he promptly fell asleep before the door to his bedroom had even been closed....and then Aaron promptly fell asleep on the living room sofa and never actually made it back outside.

The girls were determined to remain strong and stick it out in the tent.


It was freaking freezing.


Camping is COLD! We huddled together under the covers and Quincy put her ice dagger feet under my shirt like 100 times and I am proud to say I refrained from cursing.

To silence---er "distract" the girls from their whining, I decided to cheat and got out the portable dvd player (you know, to completely contradict the purpose of camping by drowning out the elements of nature with the all natural sounds Harry Potter. Let me assure you that I felt like a "Prisoner of Azkaban" on Friday night).


This worked for about 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, it was Bikes, Blues and BBQ weekend, and every two minutes, a Harley Davidson chopper would chug past our house, deafen my children, startle the crap out of us, drown out the movie, cause at least one child to cry, aaaaand remind us that we were outside, spooned uncomfortably into an air mattress and blanket taco, and freezing our cans off when our warm, non plasticy non backyard-smelly non bugg-buzzy non firepit-smokey non motorcycle choppy and quite cozy beds were 30 feet away.
Unable to cast a patronus charm to keep away the icy breathed, joy sucking dementors that encircled us, we gave up at 10:30pm and came inside to thaw out and sleep in our own beds.


I know.
We are weak.
All of you real campers, (read: liars who say camping is fun to trick us into doing something stupid when we could be warm, comfortable, and still like each other) are saying, "Nice try, Willys, nice try."


What I think you are saying is, "bwhahaha! Suckas!"

It wasn't all terrible. A few good things came out of this:

-We learned not to go camping again, this year.

-We were able to teach the children about King Benjamin and how multitudes traveled far distances and camped in tents to be able to hear his counsel. This lesson helped get the kids excited to watch General Conference give modern day counsel AND

-We realized how blessed we are to be able to have the words of our leaders available to us through television, Internet, and magazines and how lucky we are to NOT have to travel and camp out to hear them. I. do. not. know. if we would survive!

General Conference will happen again the first weekend in April and we are looking forward to it. Conference was amazing and inspiring, so for the most part, the weekend was a win....except for that whole camping thing.

Clue.

Well it worked fine yesterday and early this morning.
I guess he was going for a slow and painful death.

Fancy new phone, I am taking this as a hint that I didn't deserve you. Because you do. not. work. this morning. Like, at all.

I will miss you, but will probably replace you with a $20 POS.

This agonizing morning has been brought to you by Corbin.
In the kitchen.
With the dishwasher.

"An' you can break meeee..."

They were awake at 5:15 this morning. And by they, I mean EVERYone.
At 7, I put Corbin back to bed for a nap, put a movie in for the girls, and attempted to take a shower.

Mistake.

"MoooooooooM! Reese blah blah blah magnets!"

Tell Reese to clean them up.

"MoooooooooM! Quincy blah blah blah SHARE blah blah!"

Go tell Quincy to share.

"MoooooMMmmmmmEEEEEEEEEEEE! blah blah blah..."

hey! why are you naked? Go put your swimming suit on, you have swimming class this morning.

"MMMO-OOM! blah blah blah can't FIND blah blah blah!"

It's hanging on your bedroom door.

"MoM. MOM. HEY MO-OMMMMM!"

Girls. Can I PLEASE have some privacy? I'll be out in 2 minutes. Quincy, why are YOU naked now?!

"Because I Blah blah blah go swimming blah blah not fair blah blah too!"

I don't know where your swimming suit is, but we are just going to watch Reese swim. You get to take your own class in January, when you are 3.

"MOM. Quincy won't stay out of Corbin's room!"

Ok! I'm coming! (a 5 minute shower...can't a girl get some time to shave?)

"I blah blah blah get her out. She Blah Blah Blah wake him up!"

NO. Reese, don't touch her. Quincy is fine, I'm coming out and I will take care of it.

"But I'll get her down!---"
--Reese, I said I'll take care of it. Do. Not. Touch. Your Sister. Don't worry about it.

"BUT SHE IS ON HIS CRIB.. and he doesn't like it. I'll go get her out of there, Mom."

huh? what? no!

too late. Reese ran out of the room. I turned off the shower and hurried out.

Reese apologizing.
Quincy crying.

Arm broken for sure.

It looked like a giant shoe had stepped in the middle of Quincy's forearm and there was a huge lump sticking out one side.

It did NOT look normal.

It wouldn't straighten or rotate and she screamed when I attempted to touch her fingers. She protectively held her arm close to her body and cried while I tried to calm her down and find out WHAT exactly happened.

Aaron came home to take poor Quincy to the hospital. I fed Corbin, got Reese dressed (so much for swimming class) and we met them in the ER. We took a quick detour because Reese wanted to take something to Quincy to make her feel better. I was happy she was showing SOME signs of remorse that had previously been absent.

Krispy Kreme: Making crappy days better 1,o00 calories at a time.

When we got back to the ER, Quincy was smiling and happy.
Her arm looked NORMAL.

huh?

Aaron said that while transferring from one doctor to another, it must have popped back in. (into where? it was the MIDDLE of her arm).
A miracle. I know kids are resilient and all...and their bones have a lot of cartilage...but this is amazing. Crazy buckled and misshapen before. Fine now.

The doctor told Aaron that this happens all the time with little kids, and it was probably us holding Quincy still that helped work her radial tuber-whatever back where it belongs.
Sweet little sister who was so willing to forgive, forget, and share her donut with Reese.
Being able to totally forgive the person who hurt you is a lesson we will all learn from Quincy. If only we all could be this forgiving!

Mom getting a peaceful, uninterrupted shower?
THAT too, would be a miracle.