The end of holidays

And trying to recover from it!

It has been an incredibly nutty holiday. Partially wonderful and partially horrible.

I decided to make holiday treats last minute so I spent an entire afternoon and evening cooking those treats. I enlisted a help from my kids- much to their delight . . . So that they can be the first ones to sample those sweet treats.

On Thursday, I spent most of the day finishing off holiday card/newsletters. It was a lot of work and I forget that every time every year. I guess that I can't let myself to back up and go on lack. I mean, I have been getting letters from my friends and I think they deserve something in return.

On Friday, I made some food for church party held at a house. I had to do some washing and packing to do since that we were leaving on Saturday. We spent a lovely evening at Holland's. When we returned, we had to finish off the packing. We went to bed very late.

We got up very early- 6:30 a.m. and finished off what we needed to do in the morning. We were barely able to leave at 8:30 a.m. Clint was so cranky that we have been getting so much delays. He wanted to get past bad weather in between now and Rock Springs as soon as possible. When we were ready to leave- the battery in our van is D-E-A-D . . . IT made Clint even more cranky. He borrowed my keys and used his car to jumpstart our van's battery. Well, guess what? While I was busy feeding our kids breakfast, I didn't realize that Clint DID not even take my keys out of his car. Yes- he left it RUNNING all day long. When I was looking for my keys next day- I could not find my keys and - boy- did I chew him out for it. Well, when I calmed down considerably, I realized how blessed we were . . . Nobody was around to take advantage of the situation and broke in our house or stole our car. Sandra was able to come around and took the keys out for us. She is our real lifesaver!

Well, our trip was uneventful too. Weather was so horrible that Clint had to focus all of his attention on the road. I spent most of the time trying to referee disagreements or needs of my children in the backseat. I paid the price for it . . . I had muscle spasms in my left arm for stretching and overusing all of the trip- nine hours of it. I had to put up with muscle spasms all night long and on Sunday. Well, we were able to arrive and hearing the parents exclaiming how closely we were able to bypass two closed gates on the Wyoming highway. We realized that the gates closed immediately when two huge accidents occurred on different places. All we knew was that we had to wait long time in long lines of cars.

The week at Dad and Mom's was pretty good. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day with the family. On Friday, we had a family gathering to cut that dead tree down in the backyard. Dad and mom were concerned that it will die and branches will fall down and injury somebody. So they decided to enlist the help of family members to cut it down in orderly fashion. They started in the morning- cutting branches down- and pull it toward certain site where they want it to fall with mountain climbing ropes. Clint was up in tree most of the day, holding chainsaw for his dad while his dad did the risky stuff- climbing and cutting. It was a little after noon when dad cut the trunk down. It made a great noise! We ate lunch before the men returned to the job which was chopping the trunk down. After chopping them down- Clint and dad decided to cut the stump off down to the ground so that dad can clobber the roots with other machine other time. Dad was going to do horizontal and Clint was doing vertical. Dad did 1/2 part then Clint completed the vertical. Dad went off to other part of yard doing something. Clint grew a bit impatient and proceeded to do his dad's another half. Guess what? The chainsaw jumped and jerked back while Clint was kneeling on the ground . . . It cut part of Clint's right leg. Clint didn't feel the pain at first. Probably because of the shock and body not realizing that it was injured. Clint limped to the back porch and told me directly that he hurt himself. EVERYONE came out and was shoving each other to see if they could help him! Clint nearly passed out on picnic table. We ran off to the den where Clint's mom was in- talking on her cell phone. She came out and grabbed a pair of latex gloves . . . I was scrambling in the closet door- for first aid kit. I brought them in. Mom examined it and said we are going to ER. The cut was deep. Curtis, Clint's brother, volunteered to drive while I insisted in joining them. Clint's mom followed us in her car. We drove to ER . . . We waited there for three hours and half before Clint was able to return home all stitched up. We counted our blessings . . . Chainsaw could have grazed his muscles and it could have required the major surgery but it didn't. We stayed for three more days. And during those days, Clint's mom cared for him- changing bandages and such. On the second day, Clint developed an infection and his mom was able to identify it and took him to ER again. Clint got a whole host of fat antibiotic pills to swallow. I had to drive all of the way all myself for nine hours from Colorado to home.

Clint just had his stitches out today. He will need some physical therapy since that he has trouble bending his leg now. I have been taking a bit of household responsibility more than normal to care for the needs of my family while that Clint has to keep his leg up for a while. I end up being so mentally and physically exhausted sometimes.

Ha- I have heaps of laundry to do today. My kids, for some reason, had to keep up the cadence of accidents- bed wetting twice with different child and spilling something. I used up so much towels soaking up those kitchen messes. I am praying that there won't be any more of it. I am tired of it!!

Suzy and Ian are back in the school. I am a bit tired of their sibling rivalry and am grateful that they are back in the school with something to keep their busy little souls occupied. Anna is having a bit of trouble trying to get used to routine right now. I am praying that we will have a bit of time between now and in the future that we can work out those trials out of our life.