Year 3, March 26th-28th: Life, Please Slow Down!

Castaway! Monday, Justin got his cast taken off, woot! Woot!  First, we thought Jared and Benaiah had the day off from school but they actually have next Monday off because it's Easter Monday.  Whoops.  I wanted to be there for the appointment, but I know that Jared was the one who had talked to all the doctors and knew his way around the buildings.  But he had to get to class soon after, so we ended up taking both vehicles.  It was a good thing because it took a little longer than I had anticipated.  I'm glad Jared was there for part of so he could take care of wiggly Abishai.  Justin and I went back to the room where they sawed off the cast.  No big deal there, and the nurse was quick. She also went ahead and washed his arm.  She used Johnson and Johnson baby wash and we noticed later that he had a rash from it.  Johnson and Johnson baby soap is actually very drying and full of ugly chemicals.  Oh well, that's why we don't use it much at home.

Then it was off to x-ray before the pins were pulled so the doctor could make sure that everything was healing nicely and she could pull them out.  (Screenshot of x-ray is below)  Yeah, these pins were 3 inches long and 1/8 inch thick!  Jeepers!  Anyway, back to the room, but I had to take Keturah and Abishai with me because Jared needed to leave.  The super nice, super young (younger than me) PA (physical assistant came in) and checked everything out.  She had Justin sit on the bed away from the kids partly because of the angle of the bed and partly so they wouldn't see, because they didn't need to witness all that.  She took a pair of pliers and carefully, but forcefully, pulled those pins right out of Justin's arm! There was some spurting of blood for a few moments, but not a whole lot.  Justin was super nervous about it and nearly cried before she pulled the first one.  But it didn't hurt hardly at all.  It just felt super weird he said.  They put a bit of gauze on the somewhat open wound, wrapped it up in a ace bandage and that was that.  They said maybe give it a day to scab over and then he could shower, but not soak it in a bath.  And of course the skip on his whole arm is now peeling because it couldn't flake off naturally when it was under the cast.  So he's been picking at that the past two days.  He doesn't have to keep it wrapped though.

We'll go back in 6 weeks for a final follow up, and hopefully, he won't need any physical therapy.  He has low tolerance for pain, so it will take both Jared and I forcing him to gentle stretch those muscles and nerves.  I'm really surprised at how stiff his arm is!  Jared was in Florida for a job for 3 months soon after the first time he broke his right forearm, so we didn't see him do his physical therapy then, and I think for the 2nd break, he knew what to do and just did it throughout the day at work.  Or I could have just been so busy with two kids (um, two kids busyness is not the same as 4 so really, it wasn't that busy) to notice his arm those first few weeks.  Anyway, our goal is to not have to take time for physical therapy appointments.  But we'll do what's necessary of course.  Justin was a bit weepy the rest of the day, but we managed to get some school done.

Tuesday was a full day of school.  Fairly quiet, although I was having some deep discussion on social media that completely drained me.  Thankfully, I didn't take it out on the kids too much.  I also spent a lot of time working on the blog and catching up on loading videos etc.  My laptop is full again and it's slow when it does that, so I had to first fix that so I could continue with blog stuff.  Anyway, as of tonight, I'm caught up, yeah!

On Wednesday, we spent the day at a new friend's house, enjoying her 3 very loud boys, aged 7 and younger.  Her daughter was away for the day with Grandma, so poor Keturah didn't have anyone to talk to.  Us moms talked about a lot of things, but she did invite me over mainly to talk about essential oils since I'm on her team.  I knew that from the get go and I did need some help.  We don't know each other well yet, so we did want to fellowship and feel each other out better.  She's going to be a great friend for me, although, she was kind of pushing the business thing again, and I'm not really ready for that yet, if at all.  Now we are all exhausted and needing some peace and quiet.

Jared took Abishai tonight to go back to Benaiah's school to pick him up because Benaiah spent the day in the space habitat!  I can't wait to hear all about that!  He had to do some physical fitness tests earlier this week and, as we knew he is, he is very out of shape.  He ran a 14 minute mile at home on Monday, and a 8 1/2 mile run/walk at school on Tuesday.  But now he's super sore.  I can't remember what he said about pushups per minute.  Maybe 22? And maybe the same for sit ups?  They went into the habitat about 8 am this morning and was supposed to be done at 8pm tonight but finished up early.  While in the habitat, they had missions to accomplish, like build robots and not be bored by playing card games and had to experience eating food from their non soil food growing thing (which didn't work so they ate PB and J, chips, crackers, and Gatorade).  They could leave the habitat to use the rest room but weren't allowed to talk to classmates (actually, they did say hi in passing) that were just outside the habitat eating lunch.  Fun times!  He did have to miss Bible Bowl tonight though.

This is NOT an Instagram or Snapchat filter!  This is one of those rainbows that come from the front door window!  This time, however, it made it all the way into the dining room!  Abishai loved it!

Last few minutes in the cast!  You can see his hand starting to peel here.

4 pins.  It's no joke!

Ew! But, it's technological advancement because it's better than screws, and they don't have to do surgery to remove them.  They weren't that tough to get out either.

I love elevators with windows!

Time to get little guy back out on the snow so the other two could have some peace and quiet to do their school work.  We spent a ton of time outside.  He kept bossing me around and telling me to shovel this or that.  At one point, he was shoveling out the flower bed.  I think he saw me clean leaves and junk out of that flower bed last week.

"Sigh. I take a rest, Mommy."

Have you ever raked snow before?! Me neither, but it was quite interesting!

1 momma duck, 4 baby ducks.  I had to create a new adult account so we could access YouTube because the men couldn't figure out the old account's password.  No why didn't I do this last week?  I prefer Abishai to be on the big screen because then he can't click on other videos and go down a rabbit trail of who knows what.  I've got more control when I have to change it when he wants it changed.

20 years ago this week!  Actually, these are the first two letters we wrote to each other and the dates are April 14th, 1998 and April 19th, 1998.  But, mine was written a day or two after Easter that year, and it's now Holy Week here, so close enough.  I read through them again this week, and wow, were they ever goofy!  First of all, I was 16 1/2.  I had never written anything to a guy, nor really talked to a guy before.  Jared was going to turn 19 a month later, and had had two short lived girlfriends before this.  He actually wrote 4 pages to my 2 pages.  I had to send the letter through my friend Chris Bilodeau because I knew they were in the same dorm/floor at college and I only knew Chris' last name.  It's a small college, so just having the name would get the letters there.  I had also written to a guy named Thaddeus because I thought he was cute.  Jared had rubbed my shoulders that week and it meant a lot to me because I had had a rough morning so I was thanking him for it.  So, you never know how a simple gesture like a neck rub and a simple thank you note will change your life!  I can't wait to reread all of these letters from that first year before we started to write emails and phone each other (long distance, expensive, and Gary paid them all.)  The hot sauce packets are sort of a joke from Jared to me, and those little sayings on them are things he thinks of me like "I do" and "caught you staring" and "you're my forever."  Anyway, here's to 20 years of friendship!  (and no, I won't stop talking about it from time to time because I think 20 years is a long time for a friendship turned marriage in our culture.  It's significant.)

Meanwhile, Abishai has all of a sudden wanted to be Mommy's helper in the kitchen.  In this case, he's doing Keturah's chore, but how cute!  He gathered up the utensils and put them away.

He can't do them perfectly, but he's close!

We finally made Justin sleep in his own bed after he got his cast off.  The fireside room feels so spacious when the spare bed is put away!  But now his bed is too comfortable and he's not getting up on time for breakfast and chores. Time to send in the preschooler alarm.  You can't sleep through that one!

"I cook with you, Mom."

Typical preschooler thing to do.

He kept digging out more pots and bowls and trasnferring frozen veggies between them all.  Normally you steam them in the bag, but this did keep him quiet and occupied for 20 minutes, no joke!  And he didn't spill a single vegetable!  He was very bossy and told us exactly how it's supposed to be done.

Back to DSLR pics of the morning sun on our creations.

Good-bye, Mr. Snowman.

The snow is starting to fade....

Blocking the hallway so the ball can roll down it and not go out.

Work, work, work.

We don't get to see many footprints in the snow here, so this is a nice treat.

A dog watching over his domain.

Superman in the snow.

I encouraged him to do it when he lost the nerve to do it.  Head first into snow!

Snuggling  his baby.

Scratchy kisses.

Daddy's been busy.

Much, much smaller.  Boo!

Keturah found this gnome in her room and set it up like this.  Now what do we do with it?

24 hrs after taking the bandage off and it already looks a ton better!  Kids heal fast!  The scabs are itchy of course, but so far so good!

Helping Daddy change the air filter on his truck!  The kids were thrilled to help!

That's a lot of stuff in there! - Keturah

These weren't open when we left for Bible Bowl a couple of hrs later.  Are daffodils one o those kinds of flowers that only upon at dusk and dawn?  I'm the glad the snow diddn't hurt then.