Labor Day Weekend 2011

 I know I'm WAY behind on my blog which is funny because I'm usually so good about it.  Here's a blast from the recent past in an effort to get it all updated...

9/5 - My poor Amelia with her stitches. Here's the long version of what happened...

After we got home from church on Sunday Amelia wanted to play on the swings. We don't play outside on Sunday so I told her to come on inside. She wasn't listening and my hands were full with Alex. I called Aaron over and handed him Alex so I could go get Amelia. Right then she slipped on the grass and cut her forehead with the chain that holds up the swing. It was bleeding really bad. We brought her inside, took of her dress, and laid her on the kitchen counter to clean her up and get a good look. I knew the cut was pretty bad but I didn't know anything about stitches. I sent a picture to my mom on her phone and she said Amelia needed stitches.

Initially we wanted to go to Urgent Care because the copay was so much cheaper. However it was after 5pm by the time we got into Ankeny and all the ones I knew of were closed so we ended up going to Methodist where she was born.

They got her all checked in and came in with some numbing stuff on a q-tip. It was hard to watch but she was such a good girl and just laid there and didn't even get her hands in the way. Later someone came and turned on Veggie Tales (LOVE!) on the screen that was mounted to the ceiling so she could lay and watch it. She got a little cold and the nurse brought her a heated blanket and told her it just came out of the oven. Amelia squeeked, "It burn me!" and was not convinced that it was safe until she poked out an experimental toe. After that she LOVED the blanket and was making all kinds of happy moaning sounds as she watched her show.

Later they came back and put the q-tip further into her cut, which made me shudder, and gave her some medicine to relax her. She was hilarious once that started kicking in. She's typically quite random but after that everything was so so funny and she jumped from topic to topic with a lot of excitement.

She said at one point that her hospital bracelet said, "My name is Amelia and I am beautiful." It also said, "I love my mom. I love my dad."

When the time came for the actual stitches she was such as trooper. She laid there and was almost always found to be smiling. She was telling the doctor and nurses about her favorite animal and colors. She said, "I like ducks. I like frogs too. Frogs have TEETH!" The doctor told her they were painting on the iodine but never told her what they were doing next. So the whole time Amelia was talking about how they were painting her. She asked several times how her paint was coming then assured everyone that she looked beautiful. When they were all done she excitedly proclaimed, "I good girl! I didn't cry! I happy! I got pretty paint!" She didn't want to leave the hospital and keeps asking to go back to watch some more Veggie Tales in her room

9/5 - We wanted a fun Labor Day but Amelia wasn't feeling up to much with her big head injury so we decided to have a fun night in. We started by making a marshmallow catapult that I found on Pinterest. The kids got to help Aaron and they all had a lot of fun with the assembly.

9/5 - We used pencils for the arms of the catapult and Miya got to put those in.

9/5 - Spencer helped zip tie the pencils together.

9/5 - Amelia helped zip tie pencils too.

9/5 - Here they are with the completed Schloemer-polt. It was so fun!

9/5 - Amelia got to fire the first marshmallow and everyone ooohed and aahed.

9/5 - We put the catapult on the foot stool to try and get more distance out of the marshmallows. Miya was the first to shoot it in its new position.

9/5 - Spencer was excited to get a turn shooting the catapult and he was the first person to hit someone with a marshmallow, he got Miya.

9/5 - Alex woke up from his nap to find us flinging food across the house and was happy to join in. Aaron helped him with the catapult and they loaded his marshmallow. However, while the arm was swinging by Alex with lighting fast movements grabbed the marshmallow right off and it swung empty.

9/5 - Alex was so proud of himself snagging the marshmallow. I gotta say it was pretty impressive how fast he was.

9/5 - After the kids all got a turn Aaron had some target practice. He had the kids stand in front of him as he shot marshmallows at them. It was so great! Here you can just see it about to strike Spencer near his arm.

9/5 - Later that night we made smores over our gas stove. Everyone kept lighting theirs on fire but all in all it worked really well. We usually build a fire outside but Aaron was out of dried wood.

9/5 - Spencer and Alex roasted their marshmallows together. They had fun and it was such a yummy treat.