So, vacation is wonderful. We had such a good time in Disney World with my family, but after 10 days, we were ready to get back into our routine. The kids had done such a good job with their homework (the girls were completely caught up before we left) and Jack tried his best to get his stuff done.
On the day we left to come home, Matt took the boys to Animal Kingdom so that Jack could finish his requirements for his Wilderness Explorer badge and the girls and I stayed back at the hotel to get things packed up and get us checked out. This worked great; I think we'll be doing this from now on. Matt always likes to make the most of all the minutes of vacation before we leave, and I'm always ready to go home on the day we leave. I don't want to be late or distracted or hurried. By taking my busy little boys, and leaving the helpful children, we both got what we wanted. Yay!!!
As we were sitting outside the hotel waiting for the boys, we were soaking up the last few rays of Florida sunshine. The bus pulled up and the boys jumped off. Jack ran over to me and showed me that he had been promoted to Senior Wilderness Explorer. Then he said, "My tummy doesn't feel so good." Within 10 minutes, he had barfed all over the sidewalk. Just what you want to have happen as you're about to get on a 5 hour flight. Ughhh!!!! The folks at Disney were so nice. They cleaned the whole thing up for us, got him a Power Ade and even offered new clothes for him to travel in (we didn't need them.) We kept their roll of paper towels and got on the bus for the airport with our fingers crossed.
At the airport, Jack was back to his normal, crazy self. He felt well enough to eat and it seemed to be a fluke. I'm sure you can figure out, though, that it wasn't. Two hours into our flight, with no warning or time to get the plastic bag that I insisted he travel with, his tummy exploded again (all over the plane, the seat back pocket, his backpack, his dad's sweatshirt, etc.....) Not fun. Matt and I spent the better part of the next hour cleaning things up as best we could. We had an awesome flight attendant who did everything she could to help us and get us what we needed, including a complimentary vodka to sterilize the area. Her actions stood in great contrast to the other two flight attendants who joined our fellow passengers in giving us dirty looks. Boy, did I write a scathing letter to Delta.
When we arrived home, we found out that Matt's Grandma Betty had passed away. She had suffered a stroke earlier in the week and had been going downhill as of late, so it wasn't really a surprise, but more a matter of time. Matt's parents have been caring for her for the last 5 years and have done an excellent job. It has not been easy, and the amount of patience and sacrifice required has been considerable. It is nice to know that Grandma's suffering is over and that Steve & Malinda will finally be true empty nesters after nearly 40 years, but the emotional demands of loss and grief can be hard to bear and we found ourselves, along with the rest of the family, planning for her funeral.
Grandma Betty's obituary
Moving forward, it is always good to have a little time back at home after vacation before you have to launch back into life. We were lucky this week because Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Tuesday, the kids were off school for a teacher workday. Monday, we spent time with Matt's parents helping to plan the funeral program with Matt's siblings. We also got to eat some yummy food provided by their Relief Society; a great thing since I still had not been able to get to the grocery store. I was able to get most of the laundry done (I'm going to count this as a high) and then the highlight of my week; we started to potty train Will. I hate this phase of parenting. You're on the cusp of greatness (no more diapers) and yet trying to convince this little guy that this is a good thing can be daunting. It was time, however. Nearly a week later, I am happy to report that I think he is mostly there. He is telling us when he needs to go, and staying dry through the night. He's had one successful poop in the potty and we are hoping for more in the near future.
Tuesday, the kids and I were able to get things ready for school, finish up all homework and such. Jack was back to 100% and we had lunch with Holli, Grayson and Archer at our favorite place, Noodles and Company. Tuesday also brought another bit of bad news. My Grandpa Jones had been taken to the hospital by paramedics for unknown reasons. After a myriad of tests, it was finally determined that he is diabetic. His blood sugar was over 600 and he was extremely dehydrated. After a day or so in the hospital, they were able to get him stabilized and he is home now, but gosh, we had a real scare that day.
Historically, January is not a great month for our family. Over the last 5 years, Matt and I have lost four grandparents during January. Fortunately for us, we also have the birth of our two boys to celebrate during this month.
Speaking of celebrating, William is now THREE! His birthday was while we were in Florida and we did plenty of celebrating down there, but we were happy to be able to make him a cake and give him his birthday presents that we had waiting for him here at home. On Wednesday, we did just that. This little guy loved being the center of attention.
Although I didn't get any pictures of him with his presents, he got a couple of Imaginext Monsters University playsets. He is currently thrilled with any type of little figures that he can play with. He spent a lot of time on our vacation playing with "his guys." Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Homer for the Snow White and Seven Dwarfs "guys"; to Ben and Shanna for the Jake and the Neverland Pirates "guys" and to Greg & Sarah for the Tangled "guys." He has had a great time playing with them and he LOVES the bubble gun that Aunt Suzy gave him. His birthday collection of figures was rounded out by Dave & Holli with some awesome Iron Man "guys" and by Mom and Dad with his Superhero "guys." So much fun!
So now we're onto Thursday. Productive day. Got the house cleaned, the Valentine's decor up and a stew in the crockpot. Dave & Holli and Alan & Katie were coming over with their kids that night for dinner and a run-through of our musical number for Grandma Betty's funeral. About 7:00 as everyone was getting here, the kids were running around crazy and we were trying to get dinner dished up, Annie and Pax decided to be naughty and run out the front door. Annie does this frequently, but this time Pax chose to follow. I told Matt that he needed to get the dogs inside (as they tend to listen to him better) and he went out to retrieve them. Next thing I know, he comes in the house yelling "damn it Pax!" Never a good thing. When I asked what was wrong, he informed me that Pax had been hit by a car and that his leg was broken. The bone was sticking through the skin and he was bleeding all over my living room. Seriously? Well, so much for practicing our musical number. We found a pet emergency room in Sunset and headed off to see what the prognosis was for our Paxer pup.
Let me just say, that this occurrence is nothing new to me. I grew up on a very busy road and we had more than our fair share of animals to meet their fate on the road. However, it never gets any easier. Matt and the kids were extremely upset and this is the hard part of being a pet owner. You find yourself faced with the decision to save/prolong your pets life or to put them down depending on the severity of their injuries. We do not have any kind of insurance for our animals, although at times like these, I find myself wishing that we did. That would help to make the decision easier, for sure.
Got to the hospital and it appeared to be just the broken leg; but extensive x-rays finally confirmed what we knew about Pax all along. He is not a well dog. He has always struggled with movement in his back legs; he doesn't jump and rarely runs. For a lab mix, he is incredibly calm and that is why we love him so much. It turns out that he has really bad arthritis in his hips and lower back and that three of the vertebrae in his upper back have fused together. So, our dog that had two good legs was now down to one good leg and an incredibly bad back. According to the ER doc, he has the skeletal system of a 10-year-old dog. Poor puppy!
This only served to complicate matters further. Surgery would for sure be required, maybe even amputation. What kind of life was our pup going to have from here on out. We left him at the hospital, sedated and triaged, and headed home to decide as a family what our course of action should be. We talked extensively to the kids and decided that based on his ailments and injuries, it would probably be the merciful thing to do to put him down. We all cried, and prayed and none of us slept. We were all in the car in the morning at 6:30 to go and get him from the ER. We wanted a chance for all the kids to be able to say goodbye and we would bring him to our vet for a second opinion and to put him down. Imagine our surprise, and joy, when Pax came out hobbling on three legs. The hospital had splinted his leg and he was getting around. Now, we weren't so sure. He was wagging his tail and looked up at us to tell us that he was ready to go home. Crap! The decision gets harder. Now instead of a merciful thing, it was like we would be leaving a man behind.
Erin was really upset, which is understandable since Pax is her dog. All the kids were late to school that day as we were waiting to hear from the vet as to what the prognosis was.
A phone call from the vet and it was his opinion that we could save the leg and that his back wouldn't be too much of a detriment in the healing process. So, basically, it was just down to the money. Did we feel as though we could spend it? Well, we thought long and hard about it, and the decision we came to was, "what is a tax return for?" Paying vet bills, of course.
Pax was into surgery later that morning and by 2:30 his leg was fixed. We got the call to pick him up at 5:30 and massive amounts of instructions for medications and care. They brought him out and he was getting around pretty good on three legs. We got him in the car, got him home and boy were our other dogs excited to see him. Actually, we were all pretty excited to have him home.
We had a few minutes to enjoy him before we had to quickly change and head of to Grandma Betty's viewing. We left Erin home to care for Pax and headed out to the viewing.
It was nice to see everyone at the viewing and to have the opportunity to talk about Grandma Betty and her life. It is especially interesting to get a broader view of her life. She had been a widow for 47 years, and as one of the younger children, my mother-in-law had a different perspective on things from her older siblings. We finished the evening off at Noodles and Company where we feasted on Macaroni & Cheese, among other things.
Meanwhile, back at home, Pax was enjoying his new bed and undivided attention from Erin. We decided that since he was used to sleeping upstairs with us, that it would be better for Erin to sleep on the main level with him, since he wasn't supposed to do stairs.
But..... when did what was supposed to happen turn into what actually happened. This dog was not going to be held down. Despite our best attempts to keep him sedentary and on our main level, he has ventured upstairs and downstairs and refuses to use the ramp that we set up in the backyard for him to get down to the lawn to use the bathroom. We're left to try and balance what he's supposed to do (for proper healing) and what he obviously feels like doing. We're going to place a call to the vet first thing tomorrow to see if he has any further advice on how to get him to be still.
Saturday morning dawned and we were onto what I would consider a sausage making kind of day. What is that, you ask? Well, most people think sausage is yummy, but probably wouldn't if they saw the way it was made. This is how our Saturday was going to go. We had a lot to do, multiple places to be and a tight schedule. From the beginning we knew it wasn't going to be pretty, but hopefully, we could get everything we needed to done.
I dropped Jack off at his basketball practice at 9:00 am, and then headed to Kohl's to get him some new church shoes to go with the suit he had received for his baptism next week. This has been on my to-do list for a few weeks, but I haven't been able to get to it. Found the shoes and then I ran back home to get all of the stuff together, get Will dressed and to make sure that Allie had everything ready for her ballet dress rehearsal later in the afternoon. Once all of this was done, we headed off in two cars to rendezvous at the funeral. Matt had Erin, Allie & Will and I was off to get Jack from practice and to help him change in the car for the funeral.
Arrived at the church at 10:15 and headed to the Primary room to practice our musical number (for the FIRST time.) Fortunately, Matt's mom had picked a song that was fairly easy. We ran through it 5-6 times and we were good. We headed into the viewing and participated in the family prayer.
The funeral service was beautiful. It was nice to hear about Betty as a young woman and mother and to know of the sacrifices that she made for her family. We never knew that she worked at a munitions plant during World War II. Our musical number went well, and despite the fact that Will nearly wandered onto the stand and was subsequently climbing over the pews, we didn't cause too much of a disturbance at a somber occasion.
At noon, I grabbed Allie and Will and we headed back towards home for Allie's ballet dress rehearsal. We endured another wardrobe change in the car and scarfed down lunch. Allie was on time for her rehearsal and Will and I headed home for a potty break; the dogs, and him and me! Before too long, Allie was done and we were back in the car to head to the Salt Lake Cemetery for the graveside service and the burial. I am so happy that we were able to make it to everything we needed to; no small feat. I spent my time at the cemetery following Will and Aspen around, trying to keep them from walking on headstones and from throwing rocks from freshly dug graves. Not an easy task! By the time we left, Will was covered in mud, thanks to the dirt/snow combination, but we all survived.
As we were leaving, Allie remembered that she had her last dozen cookies in the back of the car to round out her experiments for her science fair project (is this day over yet?) We tasted and recorded and we were on our way home.
We finished the afternoon and evening with a trip to Costco, and finishing Allie's science fair project. As long as I'm counting blessings, I ought to say that I am incredibly grateful for the kind of student Allie is. I know that I don't have to worry about her getting things done. She knows what she's supposed to do and she gets it done. We worked on getting her titles, papers and graphs printed and she worked on dressing up her display board. I hope to post a picture of the finished project soon; at any rate, it will be over tomorrow. THANK GOODNESS!
As I finish this up, I am mentally planning and preparing for the upcoming week. Cleaning house, a family party, a baptism, a baby blessing, massive amounts of ballet and parent teacher conferences for all three kids. I'm hopeful we experience more successful pooping and that Pax will heal.
Have a great Sunday friends!
