Thankful:

Night before last we had a rough evening which began with blood curdling cries from the backyard.  The kids were out back playing with their Dad while I was making dinner.  You can tell from the cry the severity of an injury and I could tell this wasn't good.

I ran to the back door to find Jadon laying in his Dad's arms with blood EVERYWHERE and the 1st thought is OMG.... where is this coming from????  I was relieved to find it was coming from his nose, but the blow to his nose was massive.  He has been playing on the teeter totter in the back yard and it sounds like he got thrown in the air and landed on his nose.  Fortunately, the nose is not broken but only bruised and very swollen.  Jerry took him to the shower, but fear of pain he would not get in.... after much soothing and consoling he was in the shower and calming down.

In the meantime, I had one on the sofa watching TV and two in the art room and I returned to making dinner.  Enter Cody: "I need a wag, we spiwwed da' gwitter".... WHAT GLITTER!!!!!!  I am very tolerant with art and craft supplies and have an entire room of the house dedicated to art and creative projects, but put my foot down at glitter.  I mean have you ever tried to clean up glitter?  It sticks to everything, can't be vacuumed, can't be wiped.... it's impossible to rid a home of glitter... it takes months... maybe years.   I had some glitter on a high shelf put back for whenever I might need it for one of their many school projects.  Kaylee, climbed a chair and got in down and yes, they had spilled the glitter..... PLUS there was glitter all over the table from their projects.  There was glitter all over the children and a path of glitter from the art room, to the bathroom, to the kitchen.....

Once dinner was on the table...  I cleaned up the glitter to the best of my ability but I was furious and ready to get away.  Fortunately, I had plans with my Mom.

My Mom came over later and we went up to the Church... when we returned, the kids were in bed and I expected them to be asleep, but Jerry greeted us at the door....  "HURRY, HURRY come here"!!!!!   We ran upstairs to the boys room and there was Jadon with his swollen, runny, bruised nose... and......

a missing tooth (his 1st one).  He was overwhelmed with excitement and waited up for me to come home so he could show me.

He lost his 1st tooth and had it under his pillow ready for the tooth fairy.  All the drama and frustration was wiped away and I went to bed counting my blessings and thankful that God has blessed me with the opportunity to wipe away tears and clean up glitter.

GREEN and MISERABLE

This past weekend we took the kids to the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade and met up with friends. We had gone a couple years ago and had a great time, but this year was not all we had hoped...

Jadon had been suffering from terrible allergies with swollen eyes that he rubbed raw, so when we applied sunscreen, it burned and he was crying and emotional the whole day.  Then, they changed the road adding a median, so 1/2 of the parade was on one side of the street and 1/2 was on the other side and they were staggered.  So you'd see 2 or 3 "floats" then you'd have to wait for the other side of the street to see 2 or 3.  As a result, the goodies thrown from the floats (mostly marde gras necklaces) were cut in half.  They also seemed VERY stingy with the goodies this year, so I constantly had a child crying or unhappy about not getting goodies...

It was rough... so I doubt we do it again.  There was a nice guy there with his son and he had green hair paint and offered to paint all the kids hair green.