Stitches

What a great scar!!! While playing a game in science class, Darian turned too quickly and fell onto the light post, which just happened to have a concrete base. The school nurse called and said get down here immediately, he is bleeding profusely and definately needs stitches. Of course I would normally drop everything and run down there as fast as I could. However... I was sitting in a waiting room at the diagnostic center waiting for Brady to come back from getting an MRI, and I didn't know how much longer that would take.

Allen was at work in Henderson, and it would have taken even longer for him to get there. Thank goodness for friends you can turn too in an emergency. Normally the school won't check out the child to anyone that isn't on the release list that I signed at the beginning of the year. My list includes my parents (who are now in France), my best friend Kathie (who is in chemo currently) and a friend Lori (who wasn't at home). The nurse was so anxious to get him picked up and taken care of, that she agreed to release him to another friend Penny. So my lesson is that it's time to update the lists at all the schools and put Penny on them.

Feeling Lucky??

Take a good look at this dog. It is the last time you'll see a picture of him in my house!! Don't get me wrong. We love "Lucky". He is fun, the kids love to wrestle with him, chase around the house with him, play ball, teach tricks and all kinds of other things....however.... Our backyard has been in disarray ever since he came to live with us. It's just gotten a little worse as he's grown bigger. He has chewed up many sprinkler heads, and dripper hoses. So we had to fix it. Last Saturday, Allen and the kids spent 4 hours in the back yard replacing the hosing to all of the drippers on the plants in our back yard, and repairing other damage he caused.

Well, sometime this week he pulled up all the the buried hose, right out of the ground and chewed on all of it. Some hardware parts were indistinguishable and there were teeth mark holes all the way up the entire hose.

So, we spent another few hours yesterday fixing the problem again. We got made at the dog and assumed that he got the point that we didn't want him to mess with the hoses. But just to make sure we put "critter ridder" , a strong pepper based powder to keep animals out of the garden, on all of the plant areas that have drippers attached to them.

We finished, clean up and went out for a couple hours. By the time we came back he had already gone right back to pulling up, and chewing, the tubing.

You've never seen Allen so mad!!! All he could say was, "that dog is gone".

Don't worry though, he has a friend that once told us that he wanted another "black lab-shepard mix" and would love to take him. The dog will survive and maybe I can get my house back, and Allen can have his yard back.

Zachary's collections

Zachary loves to collect things. When he gets into cub scouts, the collections section will be the first thing he can pass off. This is his most recent collection.... rocks. He has a name and label for each rock he collected. A few are "souvenier rocks" (brought home from camping). He named one "rainbow rock". He certainly knows how to do collections properly. Label everything, and get a picture of yourself with your collection. Maybe by the time he is old enough for cub scouts, we can find the scientific names for the things he collects

Spring Break at Silverwood Lake

The kids have been asking for a long time to go camping, so we decided to take them for Spring Break. We drove to Silverwood lake, near Lake Arrowhead in California. When the kids saw the beach with all the sand to dig in, they went crazy. We brought a great shovel (in Ethan's hand) that they used to dig tunnels, and waterways, and all kinds of fun things.




We decided to rent a pontoon for the second day, to explore all of the parts of the lake. Allen let all of the kids have a turn driving the boat. Brady thought it would be fun to try to row back to shore.


After the boat ride, we spent the rest of the day playing at the beach. We cooked hot dogs, played cards, and watched Ethan and Zach continue to dig on the beach. They made friends with lots of other kids that were there, and some kids helped Zach to hunt for Clams!! He found a full cup and a half of little 1 inch clams. He dug in the sand for hours and hours looking for more clams. We never had so much fun doing nothing at all.

Zach made friends with a little boy with a rowboat. Ahh, spring break!

Zach's chipmunk cheek

March 2, 2007

Zachary got out of bed with a big swollen lower cheek. I figured it was an absessed tooth, and planned my day around seeing the doctor first, and heading for the dentist second. Well the doctor sent us to the hospital for an MRI and x-ray. They told us he had cellulitis and made him stay in the hospital for 2 days.

This hospital has animal pictures all over the walls, and hallways of the pediatric wing. Just outside Zach's room there was a chipmunk. Grandpa Miller pointed it out to us. We thought it was appropriately funny that a chipmunk watched over our little boy with his swollen chipmunk cheek.