Monkey Tse Monkey Do: All in a Week's Work

It has been a heck of a week at Tse, sirs. It is hard to believe we're still functioning at a fairly normal level, but we are. God is good like that.

Last Friday I took two very excited little girls to the field trip that happened "rain or shine". There was a little rain and very little shine. There was a LOT of wind.

We were mostly dressed for it. I even made a quick Target run for some emergency adult rain boots--why I never bought any with all of that rain in Belgium, I don't know.

The animals were great. They love carrots. I was not as nice as some of the mommies. I didn't spend an extra $6 so the girls could feed them. I made up for it by feeding the girls at McD's afterwards.

The hayride was the least pleasant part--Grace didn't say a word, but I know she was freezing! I certainly was. There is still hay in my purse. :)

And we were outta there...

We spent Friday evening in Detroit picking up our relay race numbers for Sunday morning. Dinner out at a new Mexican food restaurant here. We will not be returning customers. We're hard to please Texans. We got home late to some disappointing news. Our 5th and 6th (Hannah's BFF and her mom) guests to Disney on Ice had to cancel due to illness. :(

Saturday the five of us (with a somewhat disgruntled brother who did not have Disney on Ice on his Saturday agenda) plus one Grace loaded up and headed north.

We had good snacks. We did have limits. We passed on the $15 snow cones. I saw one spilled in the bathroom. That had to be a hard lesson learned.

We had good seats. We liked the first half the best. Peter Pan dragged a little. Overall, everyone enjoyed the show--even the big brother was head-bobbing from time to time. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

Then home for some football to balance out all of that Disney. Then the annual pre-relay race pasta dinner. More sugar was served. At one point, we found Sarah being served a gigantic piece of birthday cake. At least she knew who the birthday girl was when asked. Hannah, also found eating a large piece of cake, had no idea why the cake was even available. They take after their mother a little.

Sunday was race day. We didn't have to get up as early as last year, but we should have maybe rushed just a tad more than we did. I was only waiting a couple of minutes before my team got there. The weather was much improved from Friday and Saturday. We finished up our race and headed home where we found our babysitter raking leaves. At first we thought we might need to get more money out to pay her, but then we saw two very excited jumpers scattering them everywhere and realized it was all in the name of entertainment.

Monday was business as usual with Daddy in Cleveland. Tuesday Sarah had a "make-up" dance class for the one we knew she'd miss on Wednesday. Note to self: Using the phrase "make-up" with a four year old girl is not wise when there are no beauty products involved with the activity one is describing. The fact that she actually got to wear her new tap shoes in this "make-up" class made up for my misnomer.

Wednesday morning we were in the car before 6:30 heading just down the road to the surgery center for some new tubes and to leave behind some adenoids. Here is the "before" shot--I planned to have an "after" shot about three hours later...

I got this one instead. The surgeon came out to let me know the surgery had gone well, but that she'd had a little trouble waking up from the anesthesia. When I saw her in recovery, she was still wiped and needing oxygen. The goal was for her to wake up and not need oxygen, but when she was awake, she was irate and needed more oxygen. We had a rough couple of hours, but at one point she said she had to go to the bathroom and when she got back we sat up and colored. She was calm and talking and seemingly on the way out the door. Her oxygen level, however, was not cooperating. After a couple of visits from the anesthesiologist and an albuterol treatment, she just didn't seem to be getting better enough to go home. (She had been asking to go home since about half an hour before the surgery and by "asking" I mean throwing a nasty, very un-Sarah-like fit). The doctors decided she needed to be observed overnight at the hospital and once she heard that news, she threw the mother of all fits. She was crying and flailing and I was trying to call Joe, but hung up because when I opened my mouth to tell him what was going on, I was crying. It was the only time I lost it during the whole day. I was thinking that I had told her she'd be in and out. I completely let her down.

Of course, there are no pictures of the fits in recovery. After the mother of all fits, she passed out on her side and her oxygen level was the best it had been since she'd come into recovery. During her little break, I was able to text and call some updates and make some arrangements for the big kids after school. Daddy was on his way to get the van from surgery center. We were so confident that everything would go fine, that we even multi-tasked, by having Daddy's car in for service while he was home for the day. The ambulance ride was rough. She was so upset about the whole thing. When we got to the hospital, she was still inconsolable. Her oxygen level was not good. She saw her Daddy and got worse. Every new person in the room made her scream more. Then she got her oxygen mask, her new IV and some nick Jr on TV and she calmed down. She was so hot, but insisted on wearing her new bunny hat. She was upset again by the x-ray, but calmed down quickly and the oxygen made everything better.
Then we moved to hospital number two. The doctors at the first hospital weren't sure they could manage her should she get worse. The x-ray showed fluid on her lungs and they just weren't sure if she was getting worse or better. Thankfully, the oxygen and time seemed to be all she needed. For the second ambulance ride, she didn't even get upset and she even moved herself onto the bed. I took the oxygen mask off her myself at the second hospital once I realized she was not going to be seen as quickly and once we finally got someone in to see her, she was doing very well on room air. So almost 12 hours after we started our day, she was discharged and we headed home.

She spent the next day hanging out at home. After big brother and big sister came home from school, she came up from the basement wearing the new dragon costume from Aunt Daphne and Larry telling us she was "going to eat us all". She refused to pose for a picture, so this is the best I got with my phone.

Then I got this one. She went to school again on Friday. Good as new.

Today we enjoyed sunshine for the first time in a week or so, by getting out to the apple orchard. Caramel apples requested by the girls.

Donuts and apple cider for the rest of us. Even an apple cider slushie for our resident slushie fan.

Had some fun with the cut-outs.

Tried out a tractor.

Had some more cooperative children than others.

In almost every picture, "one of these things is not like the other"...if we said stand, she walked away...if we said sit, she stood. We know she can hear us now....must be that stubborn gene she inherited from someone.