Time on the Water

Water Wind Sun
A little heat
A pile of meat
A child safe dock
A 10 foot drop
Friends

What more could you want for a picnic? Beauty seems to sneak up on us from the most obvious places. We know what a beautiful place the May River is, and yet it remains arresting and surprising how wonderful it really is even after years of visits.

Elaina leapt from the dock at low tide and plunged the 10+ feet to the water. Noah devoured potato chips and didn't jump off the dock. Andrew played with some new friends. Molly had her first shaved ice from a beautiful hand cranked machine which turned blocks of ice into the most delicate shavings. Emily and I just sat and were.

Beautiful.

Beah at 50 lbs!

Beah on November 15th, January 8th, February 20th and Today. Elaina only lasted about 5 seconds this time (and as my dad pointed out, a successful bull ride is 8 seconds) so any further growth will have to be measured using a crane instead of the poor girl's spine.

Molly's Cheek (day 10)

It's been a little over a week since Molly had surgery on her cheek and she's ready for the world. As you can see, she is healing very nicely. The healing is taking place so fast that we can notice a difference from the time she goes to be to the next morning. Her surgery was Wednesday (a week and a half ago), but keeping bandages together and stitches in proved impossible. 36 hours after surgery, the tape on her cheek was gone and we were re-taping her cheek multiple times a day. Friday evening, she managed to get a hold of one of the two tiny blue threads which were at each end of the incision and pulled. That left her with a long string on one end and nothing at the other. And the next morning the stitches were gone all together. A trip to the doc and he said everything was fine and not to worry. So, here she is. By the wedding, we should barely be able to notice it. Praise the Lord! (oh yeah, here's a before pic just for comparison.)

Molly's Surgery

Wednesday morning, Molly under went surgery for the hemangioma on her right cheek. Everything went very well and an hour and a half later she was watching something called Teletubbies and eating ice chips. It's been a real challenge keeping a bandage on her cheek for the last few days (where it needs to stay for a week). But, she seems not to notice any pain or change other than some tape she likes to pick at. I have included a pic I took last week of her having a "little bit" of watermelon. Pics of the cheek will be up next week when the bandage comes off.

Broken Wrist #2

After sitting quietly on the very edge of the trampoline for almost half an hour, Noah suddenly disappeared over the edge. With the cry he made it was obvious that something awful had happened, but I couldn't see what. He was holding his wrist and lying on hist stomach. Not disfigured, no swelling, just pain. A call to the doc and a shot of Tylenol with Codine later and he slept through the night with an X-Ray appointment in the morning.

A small fracture of the Ulna was detected and so Noah has a formed splint held on his wrist by an ace bandage with tape to discourage him from removing it. That's his second break on the same arm, and while no pins or other nasty things were needed this time, it's still hard to watch him go through the experience again. But, with no pain even the night after being splinted, he doesn't seem to upset. And this "cast" comes off for bathing and the occasional scratch!

Two to three weeks and everything should be back to normal.