Last Meal

My surgeon called today and asked me to come in tomorrow (Monday) for the surgery on my hand instead of Wednesday. I had an anxious afternoon trying to get everything ready and find a place for my girls to go, but thanks to the wonderful ward we live in, everything is taken care of. I'm nervous, but I'm ready.

Now I'm off to eat my final meal before the surgery and watch some X-Files with my favorite guy.

Reason why I love Alan #76589

I admit that one of the things I most lamented about after cutting my hand is that my super sweet pumpkin carvings would never be. We were talking about going to our ward party on Friday and I was saying how lame our trunk will be for the trunk or treat with no glowing pumpkins around it. The pumpkins were our only decorations, so it would just be a trunk with candy. Lame.

 

Remember how I said I had one pumpkin all cleaned out and ready to carve? Alan woke up early to carve one of my designs into it before I woke up. I really love that guy.

Can you tell what it is? I will get a picture of it with a candle in it tonight. This year's theme was going to be "Hunger Games" and I was going to try my hand at carving faces. I was going to have a Katniss, Peeta, and a big Mockingjay pin.

A little update on my hand: I met with the orthopedic specialist and I will be going in next Wednesday (Halloween) for surgery. He will extend the existing cut to find the ends of the tendons and reattach them. After the surgery I am looking at 6 to 8 weeks of physical therapy to get mobility back in my finger.

No pumpkin carvings this year...

Maybe I think I'm cooler than I actually am, but I like to think I'm pretty good at pumpkin carving. I don't know why vegetable gutting and shaping seems to get my creative juices flowing, but I like it and I look forward to it every Halloween.

This is what I did last year, the year before, and the year before that. I just like carving pumpkins.

There will be no pumpkins this year and I'm very sad about it. The girls painted a pumpkin each and they are cute and will get a post of their own. After they went to bed last night I set about gutting my pumpkins for this years creations. I had finished cleaning out the first one and was moving on to the second when my hand slipped on the knife...

Lots of blood and lots of pain. Alan called the doctor and they sent us to the Urgent Care. A ward member came over to stay with our sleeping kids. The Urgent Care took a look and gave me a few stitches and that would have been the end of it, except I couldn't move my pinky finger...

They wrapped me up and sent me over to the ER to see the on call hand doctor.

Four hours, several tests, and x-rays later it is determined that I sliced my flexor tendon. It has to be repaired, but thankfully didn't require emergency surgery right then. At 3am they finally stitched my pinky wound closed and put a huge splint on my hand to immobilize it.

I have an appointment tomorrow with another orthopedic specialist to talk about the surgery to fix the tendon. I don't know exactly what they will do besides that they have to dig around and find where the end of the tendon settled after it snapped. I guess it's worth it to have a working pinky.

Right now I'm just grateful for kids that slept through everything, Ann Wiltbank for sleeping on my couch even though she teaches early morning seminary, and for a husband who will wash my hair and tie my shoes.



PS I typed this whole thing left handed. Be impressed.

Playing at the Pumpkin Patch

Our ward playgroup met up at one of the local farms to let the kids play. It was a very cold morning and every one was bundled up.

 They had a lot of different things to play with, but my girls spent most of their time in the Kitty House. They had three kittens running around and the girls loved them.

 The other two kittens were being passed around and tried to escape the clutches of a dozen little kids swarming them, but this kitten sat with Elsie almost the whole time. She loved that kitty, and that kitty loved her. It snuggled up against her and was purring so loud you could hear it over the noise of the other kids.

 See the difference between Elsie's kitty sitting so nicely snuggled up to her...

 And Alice's kitty trying to jump out of her lap.

 Elsie would lean down to snuggle and the kitty would nuzzle Elsie's face. Elsie would give it a kiss and the kitty would look up and lick her face.

 It was so hard to say goodbye to the kitty. Not for Elsie; she accepted the fact that the kitty lived at the farm and was ok with it. But I had to just pretend that I didn't see the "Kitty - $10" sign. I had these visions of Elsie and Kitty growing up, Kitty following Elsie around the house, sleeping in the same bed at night, and being best friends... *sigh* We won't always live in a rental and someday we can have pets (that aren't fish).

 We went on a little hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and picked out two little pumpkins.

 I had packed a picnic lunch for the girls, but it was just too cold to sit outside and eat it. They got to sit in the car with blankets and eat their lunch before going home.

Playing in the leaves

National Museum Day

I've been running a sick ward around here this last week, so I am very behind on blog posts. We'll see if I can catch up while the girls are taking a much needed nap...

National Museum Day was a few weeks ago. We printed out our free passes and went to the Children's Museum downtown. We spent a lot of time in the 5 and under area. The girls had a fun time running around trying to see everything.

We finally moved upstairs to see what else the museum had to play with.

This was Elsie's favorite place to play. It was a big glass window with a tray attached to the bottom. There was a lot of paint to use on the window with spray bottles to clean the paint off when they were done. She happily played for a good half hour before deciding it was time to move on.

On the roof was an observation room with a microscope, local fish and reptiles, and a chicken coop.

The girls took some binoculars outside to look around.

Elsie: "I see the capitol building with the gold mermaid on top!"

We stayed until the building closed and they had to kick us out.