The Ultimate Nightmare

Have you ever had the kind of nightmare that causes you to wake up in a cold sweat?  Like the kind in which a stranger calls to tell you that the people you love the most have been involved in a car accident?

Well, I have.  It was called Tuesday evening.  Except I didn't wake up from it because it was real.

There I was, humming along to my Pandora mix and putting the finishing touches on all the appetizers and desserts I was preparing for my book club when a stranger called to tell me that Ryan and the kids were involved in a car accident on their way home from eating out.

It had to be the absolute worst moment of my entire thirty something years of being.

I, of course, became hysterical.  The saint on the other end of the line reassured me that the kids were scared, but fine.  Ryan, however, was a different story.

He had a seizure while driving the kids home from the restaurant.  According to Sydney, his head flopped to the side, he began shaking as the van veered across three (usually congested, but at that exact moment, thankfully open) lanes of traffic.  They went up and over a median and then halfway up the concrete embankment of an underpass's turn-around-lane wall.  At that very moment, a car came through the turn-around lane and was able to stop before hitting the door right next to Evan.

This driver of that car turned out to be an angel sent from God.  She got Sydney to unbuckle her booster and then unlock the van.  She then managed to lean across the still seizing Ryan, put the van in park and turn it off.  She called 911 and helped him through his seizure (no easy feat - I know from experience).  Because they couldn't find his cell phone, she convinced Sydney to tell her our home number and called me.

I did an absolutely horrid of job of trying to calm Sydney down over the phone (being completely hysterical myself) and hurriedly called my parents to ask them to go sit with the kids while I made my way there.  Fortunately, they live just a few minutes from where the crash site.

My poor neighbors.  Who knows what they were thinking when I ran over to their house and pounded on their door until they answered.  Sweet people that they are, one offered to drive me to the scene because heaven knows I was in absolutely no condition to drive at that point.  I  could barely breathe; driving was out of the question.  Her husband offered to tell all of my book club friends that the evening's meeting was canceled.

That was the longest drive of my life.  I have never prayed so hard.  My neighbor dropped me off at the scene, but traffic was too bad for her to be able to stop.  I ran as fast as my short, stubby legs would let me and fell into my mother's arms.  Not my finest moment.

I checked on the kids first and they were fine.  Evan looked like he had no idea what was going on.  Liam's eyes were red, like he'd been crying and Sydney was just as, if not more, hysterical than myself.  I reassured them that everything would be OK and just I was turning around to run to the ambulance, it pulled away.  My mother reassured me that Ryan was fine, considering what had just occurred; he'd been lucid enough to talk to her right before I got there.

I drove the van home after the police officers asked me a few questions and my mom bathed the kids and put them to bed while my dad and I made the now all too familiar trek to the emergency room.

Ryan was fine.  He didn't hit his head when the van finally came to a halting stop and the airbag didn't deploy so we're guessing that he wasn't going all that fast.  His neurologist has told him to double up on his anti-seizure medication and make a follow-up appointment.

In the meantime, he is not allowed to drive.  His driver's license hasn't officially been suspended yet, but it's just a matter of time since the police had to file a report.  And even if they don't take away his license, I'm not going to let him drive for a very, very long time.

I've talked about angels before and I am convinced that angels were everywhere during this whole thing.  The lanes of traffic that they crossed are almost always congested with cars (as in several thousand cars pass through that intersection during the evening rush hour), but at that exact moment, there were none.  The van also missed the six gigantic cement pillars that hold up the freeway overpass.  The woman who stopped to help them and call me was definitely an angel here on earth.  I found out where she works and I'm going to try to locate her and give her the biggest hug imaginable.  My parents are angels for taking control of the situation and looking after the kids while I made my way there.  My neighbor, who said she completely lost it after I got out of her car and she saw exactly where our van ended up, is an angel for getting me there safely and attempting to calm me down on the way.

What did I learn from this?  For one, count your blessings.  Every.  Single.  Day.  Your life and the lives of those you love can change in an instant.  Second, there are genuinely good people left in the world.  The evening news may make you doubt that, but in a crisis, people, even complete strangers, can and will do the right thing.  And third, I learned just how much I love my family.  I mean, I knew I loved them.  Of course I love them; they are my family.  But in that split second when I thought I'd lost them all, I found out just how desperately I love each and every single one of them.

It's been a couple of days now and I've finally calmed down and the adrenaline has finally left my system.  At some point, we're going to have to tell those around us, not just our family and closest friends, what went on.  People are going to start to wonder why Ryan never drives anywhere or why he's working from home.  I'm sure it will be awkward, but it is what it is.

I'm just happy to have everyone home safe and sound.  The rest doesn't really matter.

I'm Such a History Geek

Over the weekend, my mom let my niece go through several boxes of old family items for a project on WWII.  At the bottom of one box, she (my niece) found a really old leather wallet (as in hand-stitched) with the following note inside:

"This was hand-made by my grandfather, a Methodist circuit rider."

My mother recognized the handwriting as her grandmother's.

Sure enough, someone had written the name of my great-great-great-grandfather and the date April 1830 in some kind of super ink (to have lasted this long) on the inside of the wallet.

The wallet is almost 200 years old!  How cool is that?!?

This ancestor went on to have several children, one of whom moved to California during the gold rush and another that claimed land in Oklahoma during the Land Rush.  The former was unsuccessful in his attempts to become rich, but the latter was my great-great grandfather and our family still owned some of the original land rush land up until a few years ago.

Talk about having some true American history in your family!

I feel like I could compete with some of the celebrities on that show Who Do You Think You Are? for who has the coolest family history, especially since this is the same branch of the family that can trace its roots back to the American Revolution and to a specific county in Ireland before that.

Someday when I have time (so around 2030 when Evan's out of college?  :)  ), I'd like to do more family research, maybe even travel to Ireland and search their local records.  But for now, I'll have to be satisfied with the awesome work my mom has done and bask in my historical geekiness.

Harry Potter Drinking Game

One of the things I promised Sydney before her tonsillectomy was that we'd have a Harry Potter movie marathon.  She didn't forget about that promise, either.  We watched all eight movies over a one week period and while she was in heaven, the rest of us went a bit batty.

I got to thinking about a way to make such a marathon a bit more bearable for adults (not that we'll ever do it again).  I guess kids could play it, too, but with a soda.

So, here goes.

Take a drink every time:

1. Harry Potter's lightning bolt scar hurts him.
2. Hermione Granger answers a question or solves a problem that no one else can.
3. Ron Weasley says, "Bloody hell."
4. Draco Malfoy sneers at somebody.
5. Professor Snape says, "Potter."
6. Professor Dumbledore introduces a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
7. Lucius Malfoy complains about something.
8. Argus Filch tattles on a student.
9. Bellatrix Lestrange laughs maniacally.
10. Someone says the phrase "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
11. Someone says the word "horcrux."

There.  By the end of any (or all) of the movies, you should be completely sauced.  Or, in my case, asleep.  Either way, it will make the marathon more bearable.

Vegas, Baby!

Since we didn't do anything big for our 10th anniversary last year, Ryan and I decided to go on a quick trip to celebrate our 11th anniversary.  What better place to have some childless fun than Vegas?

It's too bad our anniversary falls in December because the pools outside our hotel room looked quite inviting:




We had lots of fun just sight-seeing.  We walked through most of the major hotels and watched the Bellagio fountain shows (during the day and at night) and the Mirage's volcano show.  We marveled at how big everything is, too.  After all, who needs to go to Paris when you can see the Eiffel Tower in Nevada?



And forget the real Venice when you can see the gondolas at the Venetian:






The Christmas decorations were phenomenal, too.  This polar bear at the Bellagio is made entirely of flowers (you can see the worker repairing his paw):




I even got Ryan to pose in front of these super cute penguins:




We took a half day trip to the Hoover Dam.  And, yes, since our dam tour guide encouraged us to take "all the dam pictures you want to", we did:




(The only picture we have of the two of us together!)


The highlight of our trip was the Beatle's LOVE show at the Mirage:




(The entry way to the show)


(I thought the cocktail list was cute.)

Ryan is a huge Beatles fan and I'd always wanted to see a Cirque de Soleil show so this was a perfect fit for us.  He really enjoyed the music and the symbolism involved in the show (which I totally didn't get because I don't know their music as well) while I was just awed by the whole thing in general.  Wow.

As for gambling.....well, we're not big gamblers.  Ryan broke even on the craps game he played and I lost one dollar in a slot machine just to say I gambled while there.  Other than that, we didn't even glance at the tables and slots.  The city of Las Vegas didn't get a whole lot of money out of us.

As always, we learned some lessons while there:
1. Keep your hands in your pockets so no one can hand you fliers while you're walking around.
2. Don't even make eye contact with the guys trying to sell you a time share.  Definitely don't talk to them; otherwise, they'll follow you and won't leave you alone.
3. Once you've walked through all the hotels you care about seeing, use the monorail or bus system to get around.  Save your feet.
4. Despite what the ads may say, don't take your kids to Vegas.  It is NOT a family oriented place.
5. If you do take your kids, don't let them take pictures with the people dressed up like Elmo, Hello Kitty, Disney characters, etc. that stand on the street corners.  We saw a few of them take their costume heads off and well, let's just say they're not the classiest people.
6. Vegas isn't just a tourist destination for Americans.  Don't be surprised if you start to think that there must be no one left in Japan when you're visiting.
7. There's no such thing as a cheap buffet in Vegas anymore.  That is most definitely a thing of the past.
8. Get your inevitable embarrassing moment out of the way as soon as you arrive.  If possible, get the same cab driver we did; he dropped us off at the wrong hotel and since we'd never been before and didn't know where we were, we looked really stupid trying to check into the wrong hotel.

Overall, it was a fun trip.  I don't know that I want to go back any time soon, but it was definitely memorable.

Bye Bye Tonsils

Thanks to her already enlarged tonsils and several bouts of strep over the past year, Sydney was the lucky recipient of a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy a few days ago.

She and I went shopping for every conceivable soft food product a few days beforehand.  None of them were healthy.  She got to have pizza for her "last meal."  And she had the undivided attention from both me and Ryan since the boys were shipped off to their grandparents' for a good 24 hours.   Now that was a rarity.

She was feeling fairly confident going in:




And she looked really pitiful in recovery:




Both the wheelchair ride and the valeted van were new experiences for her, too.  Is it sad that she had to ask what "valet" meant or does that mean that we're doing a good job of not spoiling her?




Overall, her recovery is going well.  She's still not eating much and we have to force her to drink a lot of liquids.  Luckily, all she really wants to drink is water.  And Ryan saved the day by buying a bag of Sonic ice for her to munch on.  She hasn't been turning down ice cream, either, and seeing as how that's the only source of calories that she can tolerate, I guess I don't mind that she's eating it three times a day.

Hopefully, she'll be ready to go back to school on Thursday.  The boys, especially, are getting a bit stir crazy and they're not particularly happy that she's pretty much had the TV to herself for the past few days, either.  I'm getting a little tired of Harry Potter movies myself.

But, if this works and she doesn't have to fight strep anymore and sleeps a little better without all the tonsil related snoring, then it will be worth it.

Right?

A Crafty Christmas

I've never been an artsy-craftsy kind of person.  I can follow a pattern to make something, but don't ask me to come up with some kind of cute idea all by myself.

None of the following crafty things were my ideas; all of them came with some kind of pattern, recipe or example for me to follow.  Feel free to steal these ideas for some of your Christmas gifts, too.  (None of them came from Pinterest, either.  I fear that I might get sucked into Pinterest so I'm doing my best to avoid it.)

First, a really sweet lady from one of my book clubs made these for all of us last year and I just had to steal her idea:




All of the candy can be found at your local dollar store.  They are inexpensive, easy to make and super cute.  I made these for Evan's classmates and I got quite a few "That is SO cute!" and "What a great idea!" exclamations from his teachers and the moms of his classmates.  His classmates, all of them three years old, didn't care about the cute factor.  That was fine with me.  I still got to look like an artsy-craftsy rock star to their moms.

I found recipes for the following on or through Crunchy Betty's blog:




Again, they were inexpensive, simple to make and cute.  I took this set to a friend who is recovering from hip surgery and is pretty much stuck at home for the next few weeks.  They seemed to brighten her day.  She really liked that the bath salts (which she will be using for a foot soak since she can't get in and out of the bathtub very easily) were candy-cane striped:




This last craft is a bit more complicated since you have to know how to cross stitch to make them.  It is also a lot more time-consuming, but the effort is completely worth it when you see the result:




I made Sydney's and Liam's stockings years ago, but just finished Evan's about a month ago.  The kids love them and I know that they're the kind of thing they'll hold on to for a long time.  Well, Sydney will hold on to hers; the boys' future wives will probably be the ones to hold on to theirs.

Of course, now that I have theirs done, Ryan wants one of his own since he claims that his stocking (that his mother made for him when he was little) doesn't match the rest.  Somehow my stocking (that my mother made for me when I was little) does coordinate with the kids' stockings.  But I don't mind the mismatch:

What do you think?

A Glimmer of Hope

A while back, I heard about a study done in the 70's that measured a child's ability to delay gratification.  In the study, a child was seated at a table alone.  A scientist would then place a plate holding one marshmallow in front of the child with the instruction that the child could eat the marshmallow right away, or if he/she would wait five minutes, then he/she would get a second marshmallow.  The scientist would then leave the room.

The children were videotaped.  Some of them ate the marshmallow immediately.  Some of them looked at it for awhile and then ate it before the wait time elapsed.  The rest of the children waited the whole five minutes and received a second marshmallow upon the scientist's return to the room.

The children were tracked down years later at different milestone ages and even well into adulthood.  The children who ate the marshmallow immediately were more likely to have dropped out of school, gone to prison or become drug addicted.  The children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow, or those who were capable of delaying gratification at a young age, were more likely to have finished school, gone on to college and hold down steady jobs.  I don't remember anything about the middle group, but I'm guessing they fell, you know, somewhere in the middle.

I often think about this study when observing my own kids.  Sydney has almost always been capable of waiting for something she wants; at eight years old, she gets a kick out of seeing how much money she can save up.  Even little Evan, at age three, is well on his way to being able to delay gratification, too.  Sometimes I think the boy has the patience of Job.  

However, I've always worried about Liam.  At five years old, he is our impatient child, the one who given a marshmallow wouldn't hesitate to pop it in his mouth immediately.  I think about the kids in the study who went on to drop out of school or try drugs and I fear for this kid.

Just this past week, though, he's really surprised me.  A few days ago, I fixed him a snack of raisins, a cereal bar and his absolute favorite snack, fruit chews (like Gummy Bears but made with juice).  He ate the raisins, then the cereal bar and saved the fruit chews for last. 

Then for dinner a couple of nights ago, I gave him a plateful of bacon, eggs and biscuits.  He ate the eggs, then the biscuits and then the bacon (his favorite among the three).

And just today after Sunday School, Sydney gave him a little bag with two cookies in it.  I told him he could eat them if he wanted.  He ate one and then gave the other to me "for later."

Wow.  I don't know if it's because he's maturing or because he sees his siblings being able to wait for things they want, but he truly has improved.  

I still haven't worked up the nerve to repeat the marshmallow experiment with him (the boy loves those little puffs of sugar), but I think I might try it soon.

There just may be hope for him yet.  

Thank goodness.