A Very Literal End to Fall Break

We did go out and do something fun yesterday.
We went to the Children's Discovery Garden at Thanksgiving Point and played for a couple of hours.  It was a beautiful day, the kids were great to each other (mostly), and we had a fabulous time.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed the maze

Sam couldn't get enough of the fish

Even Emily was happy to be there

 After starting the day fabulously-sleeping in a little, spending the later part of the morning and early afternoon at the gardens,  the kids still weren't quite done enjoying their day off.

Malia, Alaina and Jacob wanted to go get ice cream.  We are blessed to live in an amazing town where there are plenty of paved trails to carry them safely from our house to the cute little ice cream shop, so off they went.
We have an extra cell phone line for the time being, so I sent them with the phone, just in case, and expected them home in a couple of hours, just in time for dinner and family night.

All was well, they texted me to let me know when they had arrived, and included this fabulous picture.

Melts a mama's heart to see them sharing.
(and loving that they shared to conserve funds for another trip on another day!)

Then came the "we're on our way home" text so I knew when to expect them.

As I glanced up at the clock some time later I figured they should be home within a few minutes.

Which is about when the phone began to ring.

Alaina was in a panic that Malia had crashed and was bleeding "a ton from her mouth and nose!", and toward the end of her panicked reply to my "hello?" she threw in "and I think her arm is broken!".
Awesome.
As I tried to nail down just where they were, I couldn't get anything more out of her than "a few minutes from home" and the fact that they weren't in the neighborhood yet but still out on the path.

Thankfully Aaron had just returned home from work, I could hear an adult there in the background and Malia was calm enough to talk to me.  After sending Aaron off to retrieve her and confirming that she had crashed on her own and not been hit by a car or something (and offering up thanks that she was wearing her helmet), I hung up and waited for details from Aaron.

The other two returned home just a few minutes later and I got the call from Aaron that they were headed off to urgent care with a possible wrist fracture and maybe a broken nose.   Whether her tire hit something or the front of her bike turned or what, we have no idea.  She's not quite sure.  All she knows is that she looked back to make sure that Alaina and Jacob weren't far behind her and next thing she knew she was on the ground bleeding.

The good news is that the wrist is just a sprain, nothing broken.  Not so great news is that the nose is broken.  She's got some pretty good swelling between her nose and her eye, and the color is coming in nicely there.

I am so glad that they have paths to ride on instead of the street, and that we live in such a wonderful place that two different people stopped to see what they can do to help before Aaron got there.

I am also glad that we got some great laughs out of this thing...
Apparently right after it happened Alaina caught up to her and realized that she was pretty hurt.  From what Malia told us, Alaina jumped off her bike, told Jacob to ride home and get us (before she remembered they had a phone) and ran around Malia a couple of times yelling "what do we remember about first aid?  What do we remember about first aid?!"  Upon seeing how much Malia was bleeding from her face she resorted to "You're losing too much blood!  You need to swallow it so you keep enough blood in your body!"
Ah, good intentions.  Maybe we need to review some basic first aid with a couple of our kids.  

stuff

Wow, I really didn't mean to leave that post sitting here for nearly a month!  Whoops.
Good intentions, road to hell, you know how it goes.
Except I'm not and haven't been on the road to hell.  I hope.

I blog constantly, but it's all in my head.  I never seem to make the time to sit down for 30 seconds and spit it out.  I suppose I could use my phone, but even with-and in some cases, because of-autocorrect, I sound like I'm completely illiterate and never passed the second grade.

Thus the random brain dump of weeks worth of thoughts.  The first installment anyway.

Today is the last day of fall break.  I have loved it.  Only 6ish weeks till Thanksgiving break.  Yes, I am counting.
We did not go to Southern California like 90% of Utah did.

Bummer because we always love it there and I would not argue with a couple of days at the beach right now, but we would have missed one of the most amazingly beautiful weeks of Fall that I have ever seen.  It has been so beautiful here!

A phone picture doesn't even come close to doing this justice.  Maybe clicking on it to see it full size will help, but still can't even touch how awesome it looked in person. The color has been breathtaking, the temperature perfect, and the snow is sprinkled across the tops of the mountains now.  I'm not thrilled for snow, but it sure looks pretty.

Aaron has started a new position at work and is doing some traveling now.  It's not as hard as it would have been a couple of years ago before I was used to him being gone all the time for school, but I am grateful that he doesn't travel constantly.  Two weeks in the past month he's been gone, and it looks like there will be one or two more trips in the next month, but then we are clear till January.  It's been interesting timing; I'm watching a couple of friends' marriages fall apart right now.  They've known it was coming for some time, but it still stinks for them obviously.  I am so glad that when my husband is gone I miss him dearly instead of being relieved that I don't have him home.  So glad that he wants to call and text a number of times a day and he misses me too.  I am so very grateful for our relationship.  Life could be so different.

Next up, the 4's.
I never blogged about Charlotte's 4th birthday a couple of months ago.  I should do that.
She is the cutest 4yr old.

So much fun!
But wow, that 4yrs flew.
Not as much as the past 14 though.

Malia turned 14 last week.  Thankfully that hasn't made me feel old, just a little floored at how quickly it's gone.  I am still taller than she is.  By like a quarter of an inch.  I may get away with that for about two more weeks.  My child is about to pass me up.  Wow.  But hey, we can share some clothes which is a little scary and yet awesome.
Emily hit 4 months already too.

Now THAT flew.  Mostly.
I would be lying if I said it *all* flew because she totally had a personality flip just after she hit 3 months and decided to quit sleeping too.  Why?  Why Emily, Why??  I discussed it with our pediatrician at her 4 month check up.  He speculated personality change as well, until we got a little more in detail and I mentioned the back arching.  He mentioned that it could be silent reflux.  Huh.  Hadn't thought of that because there wasn't any spitting up.  We discussed meds, which I'm not a fan of unless they really are necessary, so we thought we'd try a couple of other things first to see if it made a difference.
She got her first chiropractic adjustment

(which she loved)
I have to admit it scared me a little to take her in for that, I wasn't sure how it was going to work on a tiny body, but it was awesome.  Everything was done on my dr's lap and with an adjustor, and she was all smiles the whole time.  We've seen improvement since then.
I have my happy baby back most of the time.

And no more random screaming in pain.
We also decided to tweak my diet even though the fact that she was fine for the first two months of life indicated that it wasn't likely to be a diet related issue.  No dairy, tomatoes or chocolate (trigger foods for other kids of mine) for a week.  Between that and the chiro visit I had my happy baby back.  Then I went off the deep end and added all three foods back in at the same time.  I know.  Not wise.  We started seeing some changes again and this week I noticed that she was pretty unhappy and was spitting up.  I'm going to cut dairy again and see how that goes.  I have a feeling that may be the issue.  Of course now that I think that I can only come up with meal ideas that involve dairy.  I've done it before, I can do it again, right?  "It's all a matter of willpower!"

And as for the 4th daughter, she turns 11 in two weeks.  (no I have no idea what is up with her hair in that picture above)  She has talked about running some longer races with me next year.  You'd better believe I'm excited about that possibility!  Now to walk the fine line of being supportive and encouraging without pushing her too far.

I actually had the following conversation with one of my boys the other morning:
"I want you to be positive today.  I want everything that comes out of your mouth to be positive and happy."
"Well, that's probably not going to happen!  See look, it's already not happening!"

Nice.
Way too much negativity in the world!  Especially with politics right now.  I've started avoiding fb because of it.  Even the people who fall on the same side as I do have become annoying.  In some cases I'm a little embarrassed that we are supporting some of the same candidates because of their in your face behavior.   It brings this to mind:

Yep.  The best part of the politics on facebook have been these little gems.

On the flip side I have been able to have some in depth discussions with friends who sit on the opposite side of the political spectrum from me.  How nice to be able to do that and have it all stay respectful and civil!  I have some great friends.  Even if they are a little politically confused.

My 12yr old son just came to me concerned that one of his toes does not sit straight.  Good thing he noticed that after 12 years.  It cracks me up to see when kids notice things and what things they notice and are concerned about.

And I hear Emily calling me so it is time for me to get up and go.  On to enjoy this last day of Fall break despite the head cold from H-E-double hockey sticks that hit me like a ton of bricks last night.  Hopefully it's just a cold.  No matter what it is I'm going to pretend it's not happening and take the kids out to do something fun today.

Enjoy your Monday!