This amazing gift for our boys from one of Gabe's grateful patients touched my heart.

Gabe was born to do what he does...help people who are in pain heal so they are able to move on and live their lives. It always amazes me to see him work when I visit the clinic. He talks to patients with compassion and makes a point of getting to know them and who they are, beyond their pain. I never thought much about it until now, but I have a feeling that this is a very important aspect of their recovery. He has been blessed to know some amazing and very interesting people. It's not surprising that there is an immense amount of gratitude from most people when they finally start to heal and begin feeling better. Some people will even give Gabe tokens to show their appreciation, such as home baked goodies, his favorite candy etc. Yesterday a patient who was being dismissed from therapy went a step farther and presented Gabe with this amazing handmade Tin Man for our boys that he had constructed himself. It obviously was a labor of love....as evidenced by the Tin Man's heart proudly displayed on his chest. The fact that this man, whom Gabe knows very well, but is unknown to the rest of us, spent hours working on this as a token of his appreciation for what Gabe had done for him really touched my heart. It not only shows that truly good people really are among us, even when events on the news result in us looking over the shoulder during what were previously mundane trips to the grocery store, but it also reminds me that God chose this career path for Gabe so the he can serve Him by serving people. I am proud of Gabe and what he does every day, and though this tin man may not match our "decor" he will be proudly displayed from now on as a reminder to our children that they.can do anything they choose in life, as long as they allow God will use their talents to serve Him.

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The week from....well, read for yourself and fill in the blank.

So this past week hasn't exactly been what I would call....ideal to say the least.  Not to complain, but to sum it up:
Sunday (a week ago) fell and hurt my ankle...and then had to drive all 3 kids back to Franklin from BG. What fun. Thank goodness no sudden stops were needed. Middle of the night realized it was REALLY hurt.

Monday: No school for the kids...
               Gabe took off work to drive me around and help me hobble on my crutches (LOVE HIM!)
                Carter: dentist. Has an abscessed tooth that needs to come out. On antibiotics for that (oh, and they helped him pull 2 more that were loose while he was there...He is pretty much toothless at this point)
                 Me: Dr. office for exrays of foot, which showed something "odd"
                 Me: off to BG to see dr. from Vandy sports Med, who ordered a "boot" for me. Oh, and the "oddity" would be an extra bone that I apparently have in both feet. Yes, leave it to me. Apparently I tore the tissue holding this little bone to the rest of my foot. For something that shouldn't have been there in the first place, it sure has reeked havoc on my life.

Tuesday:  Stupid boot didn't come in, so I had to baracade baby to family room and sit in a chair pretty much all day. Started feeling like i was coming down with something too. Thank goodness for DEAR friends who helped with the dreaded 3 rounds of carpool.

Wednesday:  UGGHH..threat of snow.  Boot was delievered....to Gabe's office in BG. Which meant yet another day of hobbling on crutches and baracading Xan Man. This also happened to be poor Gabe's birthday. Thank goodness he took care of buying his own present...totally unromantic I know, but had he not, he wouldn't have had anything, b/c let's face it...I was in no shape to shop. Did manage a b-day cake for him. Also managed to load up the kiddos to meet him for bowling with our church in BG..(side note...I stopped at Mcd's to get food for all...and ended up having to wait for our salads for 15 min....at McD's.  I ended up deciding they had forgotten about me. Having all 3 kids, and a bum foot, I wasn't about to go in, so instead i rolled down my window in true redneck style and politely (as possible) got the attention of the chick in the window.SEVERAL minutes later our salads appeared.
Anyway, fast forward to leaving bowling. Gabe and I are in separate cars. I have a screaming baby and a screaming Hayden in my truck with me...lucky me.  Moving slower than usual of course, and searching for a passy (unsuccessfully), I guess Gabe got a head start. can you guess what happened next? No? Well....my battery was dead. I tried waving to Gabe before he got out of the parking lot...but guess he didn't see me.  Thank goodness for cell phones.  I must admit...I was feeling a wee bit frazzled by this point. i ended  my night with desperate pleas with the big guy to send the snow anywhere but here....of course that didn't work. Which leads us to Thurs.

Thursday:  Things start out pretty normal for once that week! the boot was allowing me to get some things done. No snow flakes in sight and I am thinking the kids are going to make it for a full day.  Little did I know that apparently our phone/internet had gone out so i missed the dismissal call saying that I needed to get Carter at 1:30. Thank goodness for WBKO text alert. I did end up getting the text in time. Needless to say, we didn't dodge the snow bullet...which brings us to Friday.

Friday: SNOW day (and gabe's day off, thankfully).  Determined to get out of the house, we kept appts. to see 2 houses for sale by owner in BG (and talked to the owner of another house..but based on that conversation, deemed her to unstable to deal with...we won't be going to that house.) Came home to drop off the kids with Mallory for a much needed date night. While we were here, Hayden begins to cry and says his toe hurts. OH MY....his poor big toe was so VERY VERY RED and swollen..and streaking. I had no idea what was wrong. Gabe gave him some antibiotics he had left over and some tylenol. Gabe and I ended up cutting our date short. We were supposed to see a movie after dinner, but we were both exhausted and fighting colds, so threw in the towel and came home...to find Hayden had spiked a high fever and was in a lot of pain. It was a long night....he was up for most of it.

FF to Sunday... (Sat. we pretty much cleaned and chilled out ALL day...but Hayden's toe was looking worse) Gabe dropped me off with Hayden at Urgent Care then took the other two to church while we saw the dr. AFter a VERY long wait, we ended up seeing a GREAT doctor who was very good with hayden. For an urgent care place, I was very impressed.  They lanced it and gave us scripts for several medications (the doctor also said he may have strep throat as well and could be on his way to ear infections). Poor guy. No wonder he had been a bit on the grouchy side.
I ended my day by leaving Gabe with the kiddos (along with instructions for helping Carter finish his homework) and went to BG for Small Group.  It's never good to get a text that says "Please tell me you are on your way home."  I think last night gave Gabe a new appreciation for evenings at home with the kids until he arrives.

So that was our week. Go ahead and fill in the blank. At least it's behind us and a new week has dawned. I know it could have been much worse...(my foot could have been totally broken, Hayden's toe could have fallen off...(.   We are so blessed that 99% of the time our lives are pretty much smooth sailing. Weeks like this past one just make us appreciate that fact!


            

what smells like roasted chicken but is sooo NOT?

That would be a feather pillow that gets stuck in the agitator and burns (still not sure how that happened considering it was in water...but trust me it did!) It's been one of those days. Let's just say the house may smell like roasted chicken, but we will be eating papa murphys pizza! Who has time to cook when you are trying to clean feathers out of your washing machine. Not to mention getting them off of all the other clothes that were in there with the busted pillow!

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Cozy & Comfy

Hayden & Xander are loving the newest digital book on the iPad..."There's a monster at the end of this book" Grover narrates this hilarious interactive book himself and it is absolutely hilarious and totally entertaining! Even carter, who originally objected to the "baby book" loves it! If u have young children (or don't buy are a grover fan) its definitely a must have! It was on sale as a featured app yesterday for only .99!

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We've resorted to homeschooling....

So today marked Snow day #3 this week. I have never seen 1 little inch of snow reek such havoc on a school week.  It must be one slick inch of snow....somewhere in the county. Not around my house, but it is a big county with lots of curvy country roads. I haven't ventured farther than a couple of miles from our house, so I wouldn't know for sure. 

 To break it down...our kids have been in school exactly 8 days since December 10.  So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and "homeschool" today.  Now, I must admit that as an educator, I am amazed by the blogs I read about all of these amazing women/mothers/home managers who are able to effectively homeschool their children (while also maintaining interactive blogs that outline all of their other amazing abilities and I'm assuming managing to keep everyone in clean clothes and fed and transported to and from extracurricullar activites...I must be doing something wrong around here...but that's another blog for another day).  I for one, am not ashamed to admit that despite my formal education in the field of education, I am not cut out for full time home schooling (nor would I do it even if I felt I could). But, since mother nature has decided to grace us with these snowy days, I decided to take matters into my own hands today in hopes that my kids don't start falling behind in the absence of formal education.  

After doing a short phonics lesson and reading a book with Carter, we decided to turn to the internet to do some research on a topic that he has been asking about...and I've had a hard time answering.  Mummies.  So, we read up about Mummies on several kid-friendly sites and he now completely understands that while Mummies are real, they do not walk around with their hands in front of them,despite whatever he may have seen on tv.  We focused on a few key vocab. words, such as preserve, tomb, embalm (gory I know...), Egyptian, pyramids and shroud and talked about what they meant as we read.  He then wrote a sentence and drew a picture about what he had learned. I thought he summed it up pretty well by writing "The Egyptians made mummies to preserve the dead."  He then drew a picture of a pyramid with a mummy inside.  After that I turned to the best learning tool out there in my opinion, the iPad!  I even downloaded a couple of new apps. We played a few rounds of a cute Math BINGO (addition and subtraction).  and he and Hayden took turns creating cars (really cute app called Create a Car). They even got to turn them on and see them run when they were done.  With Carter's "homeschool" session over with, Hayden and I spent some time on the Ipad as well. We are practicing typing his name and naming the letters in his name.  Then we downloaded what could be the VERY best App I have ever seen. It is a digital book of one of my favorite childhood books."There's a Monster at the End of this Book." (starring Grover).  It is absolutely hilarious. Hayden and I played (and laughed) with this app for a long time...and now he is sharing it with Xander...who also loves it! It was on sale for .99 today, and that may be the best .99 I ever spend!  IF (and that's a big IF) they happen to go back tomorrow, it will be the only day until next Tuesday. They were already scheduled to be off on friday and Monday. I am going to have to pull out my creative hat (hmm...do I have one of those?) to pull this off!  

Oh no you didn't....

Okay, so it was bound to happen at some point...I just thought (hoped...) it would be, oh, say 10 years from now.  You know, that moment when your kid is passionate about something and all of a sudden they slip up and say one of those words you really hope never comes out of their mouth....yeah. so it happened a little earlier than I'd hoped.

One of the biggest changes that occurs in the process of growing up from child to adult is that at some point along the way we lose the sense of "awe" that comes from ordinary mundane events. Carter has yet to lose that sense of "awe", and for this I am thankful. I think this is one of the most precious things I get to witness as a parent. SIGHHH....with that said, sometimes it can be hard to muster up the proper level of enthusiasm required to satisfy his level of pride and excitement  in whatever it is he has shared, found, done that to anyone else (at least over the age of around 12 or so) would seem ordinary and mundane.

Which brings us to the scenario above.  A little background....as I was taking down my Christmas decorations (uh..humm...a couple of weeks ago) I took the holiday rug in my kitchen to the patio to shake it.  Now I am not proud to admit it, but apparently I forgot to bring it back in. Therefore, it was still resting at the foot of our back steps.  This is where the story picks up.
As Carter played in the snow yesterday, he "discovered" this rug buried under the inch or so of snow.  He came bounding up the back steps, flew open the door, and called for me like his life depended on it. After I almost broke my neck dodging, jumping and tripping over toys to see what could be wrong, I arrived at the door to see Carter beaming and holding a dripping rug over the kitchen floor. "Look mom, the rug froze!! Can you believe it??"   I hated to point out to him that technically it was melting at this point, so I mustered up all the "enthusiasm" I could to show support for his amazing discovery.  "Wow Carter! That's pretty cool! Wonder why that happened?"  He returned to his play, but later came in and was still talking about the frozen rug. "Mom, it was like really hard! It was stiff too! It really froze out there!" Yes Carter, cool.  (My enthusiasm was starting to ebb...) Fast forward a few hours to dinner. Gabe had been in the garage during Carter's discovery and had missed this amazing story.  As Gabe washed up and I was setting the table, Carter began to relay this story to Gabe. (Now, this is at least the third, maybe fourth) time that I have heard about this rug.  Let's just say I may have not even looked up from what I was doing as he relayed it yet again.  My excuse for not paying much attention at this point was that I had already heard the story several times. Apparently Gabe must not have been giving this story as much attention as Carter would have liked either, because the following nightmare-like slow motion event occured. Carter stands up from the table (he had already sat down, though Gabe and I had not) and exclaims so that all within earshot would be sure to hear him, (in reference to the rug...)"I'm telling you it was sooo DAMN hard!" Picture me standing over the sink and a dish crashing down as time stands still in the rest of the house. (Okay, that didn't really happen, but in a movie, it would have).  The look on Carter's face as soon as it came out of his mouth was one of...Did I really just say that? Now what will happen?  Of course, my respone was, "I KNOW you didn't just say what I think you did!!!!!!"  I went on to give the lecture about how mommy and daddy don't talk that way and that it is not acceptable.  But I think his point was actually that he was trying to get us to pay attention to what he was saying and be excited with him and he knew that would get our attention! I guess we all learned something from this.

Best Idea Santa Ever Had!!

Okay, so our elf, Joseph, tipped Santa off that the Smith boys had a little extra energy from being cooped up indoors. I can imagine his exact words were probably "those kids are bouncing off the walls!" Even though Santa was technically done with his gifts for the boys, he went ahead and put an order in for one last special gift....the indoor trampoline. Hands down the best decision ever! Our boys have jumped and jumped and jumped. Great way to get some exercise.during the long winter months. Even xan man enjoys.bouncing on it! It plays music, makes silly sounds and will even count their jumps! They are wrestling and running around less and our furniture is thanking us. We had planned to put it in their room...but they take turns jumping the whole time they watch tv, so we left it right there in the middle of the family room! If you have kids with energy to spare, this is a small investment that will go a long way toward saving your sanity!!

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