And So It Begins

 This week marked the start of feeling behind for Christmas. I told Jeremy that I don't think I have ever been so stressed about Christmas before. I have bought essentially nothing yet and what is worse, I don't have a game plan for what I am buying. This is not a feeling I enjoy.

It kind of feels like everywhere I turn, I'm being bamboozled. Before I can even get to Christmas planning, this week was Carolyn and Jeremy's birthdays. Luckily, Jeremy and I are giving each other a trip/concert for our birthdays so there was not too much to do on that front, mostly just planning birthday meals. For Carolyn on the other hand, I spent a long time trying to think of the perfect gift. I finally came up with an idea, but it required an old meaningful photo. Unfortunately, the ones I had access to were too low resolution. I asked AI to try and clean some photos up for me. The result was comical. Needless to say, I was back to the drawing board on the gift and ended up with something much less heartfelt.

Yesterday, Elsie had a birthday party to go to. CC decided to come along and after we dropped Elsie at the party, CC and I went shopping. She and I found some amazing deals and I got some ideas for Christmas, but unfortunately, I couldn't really purchase anything with my little helper in tow. Turns out she has become really fun to shop with though.

I'm sure it will come together in the end. It always does, but this is exactly why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, Christmas is too stressful.

New Treasures

What to say about this week? It's been a busy one, with lots going on. Last weekend, Merrick, CC, and I went thrifting. CC need a black skirt for her choir concert this week. While we did find a black skirt, Merrick scored big time. I found on the top of one of the racks, two big bags full of ties. This particular thrift store typically sells their ties for about $5/tie. These bags were packed with about 40 ties each and labeled $9.99. Merrick was over the moon. He decided he wanted to call his cousins and see if they wanted in.

What followed would best be described as a tie draft. They took turns, round by round picking their favorite ties. Merrick was definitely geeking out about the whole thing.

With her new skirt, CC was ready for her choir concert on Thursday. Choir concerts tend to not be my favorite experience, but this was short and sweet and she did great. She did look a little like she was in pain throughout the concert. Afterwards, she said she was really nervous. Luckily for her, she has lots of concerts this year to get over her nerve.

The week was capped off with some big excitement yesterday. Jeremy and I drove about an hour out of town to check out a car we were interested in. One thing led to another and we ended up coming home with a new car. We are now the proud owners of a new 2025 Nissan Pathfinder. I wanted a sunroof and leather seats. Turns out to get those features, we would need the platinum trim level. To say this thing is fully loaded, is an understatement. It's a big change from the Pilot. I don't know. I'm excited about the new car, but I'm still not sure I need all the bells and whistles. It may take some time to get used to.

Halloween 2025

 This week was Halloween. We started the celebrations on Thursday, with our church harvest party and chili cook off. Our costumes were a bit of a debacle. CC didn't get to be what she wanted to be because we didn't have time to go a million places and piece together her dream. Instead, she settled for wearing a costume we had at the house. We also were in a tight spot with Elsie when we discovered that her costume would not fit over her cast and we were scrambling to find something that would work at the last minute. It definitely was not the ideal, but we got in together in the end. 

Friday was Halloween and the kids had the day off of school and I took the day off of work. I thought maybe we would go do something fun, but instead Merrick had basketball practice and then went to hang out with his girlfriend. Elsie and CC were on the lazy schedule. It was pulling teeth to get them to get dressed and ready for the day. They said they wanted to conserve their energy for trick-or-treating.

At some point I did convince the girls to carve Elsie's pumpkin. We then roasted roasted the pumpkin seeds for a fun fall snack.

The weather had been nice during the day, but we looked at the weather and noticed that it was supposed to start raining a 7pm. We decided to push up our trick-or-treating timeline and go from 5-7pm. We had an early dinner of "Frankenpizza" and headed out with our cousin, Isabel, to hopefully miss the rain. Unfortunately, the rains had different plans. It started raining a little after 5 and pretty much rained the entire time.

Thankfully, I had thought ahead and bought some ponchos. It was obviously important for Elsie to keep her cast dry so she spent much of the night checking, adjusting, and making sure we were accomplishing that. It was wet, our costumes weren't our first choice, but they got plenty of candy, so I guess it was mission accomplished.

Black Cloud

 Last week, I reported that we had started to see light at the end of the tunnel. In hindsight, it turns out, that while it appears we were at the end of that tunnel, there was another one right behind it. This week has felt like a cruel joke.

Monday, Elsie came home early from school with a stomach ache. While CC's chest pain has been feeling way better, both girls have been battling some stomach issues. After a little TLC, Elsie was feeling a little better and everyone went to school on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday was also my birthday and while I had to work and do all my regular adulting, it was blissfully quiet. 48 hours. We had 48 good hours and then the other shoe fell.

Thursday, just after lunch, I got a call from Elsie's school. They said she had hurt her arm at school and that I needed to come pick her up. When I got to the school, it was clear that she was in a lot of pain. I decided to take her straight to urgent care to rule out a break.

Unfortunately, at urgent care, rather than ruling out a break, they confirmed it. The said they couldn't cast it and we needed to head to the pediatric ER immediately. Because I am apparently living under a black cloud, I realized I didn't have enough gas to get to the hospital and I had to stop with my very distressed daughter and get some gas. I pulled into an overpriced station on the way and handed my card to the attendant, telling him to just put $10 in. He tried my card and it didn't work. He said I would need to go inside and talk to them. I told him I couldn't get my daughter out of the car and could I try a different card or different pump. He told me to scoot back and try the pump behind me. I tried a different card on that pump and it still didn't work. I don't know if it was their pumps or user error, but clearly a card wasn't going to work. Between Elsie and I, we had $4 in cash so I got $4 of gas a prayed it would be enough to get to the hospital.

We finally made it about 3:45 and the epic wait began. You would think when you arrive with an already diagnosed broken arm, that there would be some sense of urgency, but apparently not so much. We finally got in, they got her some pain med, and we did repeat x-rays. They told us that she needed to have surgery, but that couldn't happen until the next day, so they splinted her arm and sent us home. They told us to keep her as comfortable as possible overnight and report to the orthopedist at 9am the next morning. We headed home about 9pm (and got to make yet another stop for gas on the way). Oh, and because they didn't originally know if they would send her for surgery that night, they would not let her eat or drink anything all afternoon/evening.

Our waiting continued at the orthopedist the next morning. We were considered a "walk-in", but they did at least know we were coming and had a tentative plan for us. She had two breaks. One above her elbow that was not displaced, and one below that was displaced. After meeting with the orthopedist and discussing the surgery plan, we were sent to report at the hospital around 10:30.

We were told they had to work us in to the OR schedule, but it would probably be early afternoon and sure enough, about 1:15 they wheeled her off to get started. The first choice was to try and manipulate the bone into place from the outside. That was unsuccessful. The second choice was to insert a wire temporarily to push it back into place. That was successful. Because they were able to get it with "choice B", they didn't have to go with "choice C" or "choice D", which involved putting in temporary pins or a permanent wire or opening her elbow to correct the problem.

The surgery took a little less than 2 hours and then the recovery began. Elsie was in a lot of pain and pretty sad as she woke up. She was also pretty loopy. She kept pointing at the Trolls movie she was watching. When we asked her what she was pointing at she said "why is there two of them?". She was seeing double and it really made her upset. 

Eventually, we got her calmed down and only seeing one of everything and were able to head home and start the road to recovery. We came up from the basement of the hospital, where we had spent the day, and found a double rainbow welcoming us. It has been a brutal few days, on the heals of a brutal year, but I'm hanging on to that rainbow. Maybe the black cloud that has been over us will soon produce a rainbow. Closing in on 48 hours later, we have seen a big reduction in pain.

In the mist of all this drama, Merrick also had a big weekend. He had Homecoming. It was a rainy, windy, yucky day, but they still attempted pictures outside. They then went to a fancy dinner before heading to the dance. They stayed at the dance for about an hour before going to Merrick's date, Inez's house to watch a movie. At least Merrick had some fun this weekend.

Light in the Tunnel

This week has been interesting to say the least. Last Friday, Carrigan's chest started feeling better. It was such a blessing because it had been so long since that was the case. But then the other shoe fell. Friday afternoon her stomach started to hurt. We then endured several days of extreme stomach pain. On Monday, we ended up back at the ER to have her checked for appendicitis since her pain was primarily on her lower right side. The trip to the ER was once again a waste of time and money. They told us that it wasn't appendicitis, but they didn't know what it was.

The next several days were a blur of pain meds, gritting our teeth, and just trying to get through. On top of that, Elsie started reporting pain in her bladder and pain when going to the bathroom. This meant missed school for her and yet other trip to the doctor.

It feels like we have been in the dark tunnel for so long and on Thursday we started to see the light. While Elsie was still home from school, CC started to feel better. She went to school. She went to volleyball. She came home and she didn't fall apart. Instead she said something she hasn't said in forever, she felt good. Since then, it has been more of the same. She has had a few brief periods that her stomach has hurt, but mostly she feels good. Elsie has also started feeling a little better.

Yesterday, CC went to her volleyball game and it was so amazing to see her run around the court. She had energy and seemed like her old self. To say that this a weight off is a huge understatement. It has been so long since we haven't felt like we were in complete survival mode.

As I typed this CC and Elsie were just running around the house. All of the sudden CC just stopped. I could tell by the panicked look on her face that something wasn't feeling well. She said her chest and stomach hurt, and she felt really hot. Looks like we aren't out of the tunnel as we hoped. At least we had a glimmer of light. The light is there and hopefully we can continue to move towards it.

Fall Break-ish

This week was the closest thing we get to a fall break. Elsie and CC had conferences and Friday was a state-wide in-service day. That meant that Elsie had Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off of school. Carrigan had Thursday and Friday off and Merrick had Friday off. While I worked on Wednesday and Thursday day, we still managed to have some fun on Friday.

Friday was a big day for Merrick. He turned 16 a little over a month ago and now is allowed to start dating. He has a girl that he likes and has been hanging out with but hasn't really gone on any official dates with her. Friday, they went to a pumpkin patch together. Not only that, but before they left he asked her to homecoming. Merrick was definitely nervous to ask her. As he got out of the car he said "I think I'm going to throw up". He is definitely his dad's son. From my perspective, she is the perfect girl because her family is moving back to Spain in a month and a half.

As for Carrigan, she had a birthday party on Friday for one of her friends. They went to a trampoline park. Thankfully, she felt up to going. She has unfortunately since developed a really bad stomachache from her pain medicine she has been on, but at least for a day, she got to go be a kid and fun with her friends.

That just left Elsie. She really wanted to go to Dave and Busters. By the time we got CC off to her party, we didn't have long until we had to get Merrick from the pumpkin patch so we decided to hang at the house until he was ready to be picked up and take him with us. Dave and Busters was a fun time as always. Elsie always favors the experience games over the ones that give tickets. That's just fine by me.

It wasn't much of a fall break, but at least a solid day of fun.

Healing

 As I think about this week, I think about all the time and effort that has been put into healing. For Carrigan this week has definitely been a mixed bag. We had missed school, sleepless nights, a missed game and practice and horrible panic attacks. On the other hand, we had PT appointments, exercises, effort, and periods of hope.

This weekend in particular has been a positive one. It didn't start out that way with CC not feeling well enough for her game on Saturday morning, but then a switch flipped mid day. She wanted to choose dinner, she wanted to go the store and help make her dinner idea, she was dancing around and telling jokes. This morning the glimmer continued. She's playing with Elsie, dancing around, being silly. I don't know how long this will last, and it's definitely a lot for the boys in the house who have gotten used to a more subdued CC, but for me it represents hope, something I haven't felt in a while.

I also have been working hard this week on healing my ankle. Sometimes, that also feels like an impossibly long road, but I can already see how far I have come and I know we will get there eventually.

Yesterday, Merrick had a fight of his own. His basketball game yesterday afternoon was not going well. They were down by 15 and, after an injury in the first half, they had no subs. They were exhausted but he (and they) continued to fight. The game ended in a tie. Overtime ended in a tie. They ended up winning the game in sudden death after Merrick got the jump ball to start the sudden death period.

Life has been hard lately, but we continue to fight and not give up. Maybe that is the family theme of the week.