insta-friday 1.3.2014

Can you believe it’s already the first Friday of 2014?!? 2014! It’s crazy.

Here are a few of the pictures I’ve snapped with my phone over the last week.

~~~~~

Can I tell you how much I love Famous Footwear? I loooove Famous Footwear. Like I want to sit in a tree with them.

The Man-Child needed/wanted some new shoes. The boy is seriously the roughest person on shoes ever. So he and I headed over to Famous Footwear to find some shoes for him. It wasn’t difficult since he already knew what he wanted. I pulled out my trusty little Famous Footwear app and realized I had a $20 reward certificate and they had a $10 coupon on their app. I can handle saving $30 on a $50 pair of Vans.

If you don’t have their app…get it!

And no they don’t pay me to say that…but they should!

Well I guess they kind of do with all the money they save me on shoes!

~~~~~

The girlies wanted sparkly finger nails and I gave them very sparkly finger and toe nails!

~~~~~

We have enjoyed some pretty amazing sunsets lately.

~~~~~

We spent Sunday evening watching movies. I love, love, love that Hammie will still climb up on my lap and cuddle.

Such a sweet boy.

~~~~~

And speaking of Hammie…

He finally had his last physical therapy appointment. It has been a really long 5 months and it’s nice to be done with all the mess with his leg.

He still has a little bit of a limpy run with that leg, but it hasn’t slowed him down in the slightest.

To get the full impact of this broken leg saga you have to go back to the beginning of the Chaos story. The leg he broke was the same one that had so many issues when he was little and had so many years of therapy already. The limpy is just another bump in the road that will be overcome in time. This boy is a serious miracle child!

~~~~~

New Years Eve was spent with my Family. We had a great spread of food so it wasn’t a problem to stay awake and welcome in the New Year.

All the drinks from QT might have helped also…

~~~~~

Well not all of us were together for New Years Eve. The Man-Child and Einstein went to the New Year Eve Dance with Cousin Emma. Aubrey stayed home with the rest of us and played games.

It’s nice to finally have cousins that are the same age as the kids living so close to us.

~~~~~

On January 1st Christmas was cleaned up. I am usually ready to take the Christmas tree down the day after Christmas, but this year it took a little while longer to get the job done.

Plus my Christmas decorations had outgrown our totes and we had to add a new one this year. It drives me crazy that it’s red with a green lid and not green with a red lid… OCD much?

~~~~~

By the time Christmas was cleaned up it was time for dinner and thankfully crappy pizzas hit the spot.

~~~~~

I was pretty pathetic on my reading last year and this year I vow to get my reading mojo back.

This is the first book of the year…with a goal of reading 50.

I better get busy reading.

~~~~~

Rainbow Loom…

Need I say more?

The girlies are getting really good and fast at cranking these bracelets out. I’m not quite sure I need 7 rubber band bracelets…and how long do they really expect me to keep wearing them?!?

~~~~~

Find me on Instagram @embracethechaos

cast-away

After 6 1/2 weeks the big day finally arrived…

It makes me laugh that Hammie uses his tongue to help him climb up in the suburban. I wonder if he would be able to climb in if he had to keep his mouth closed?

He was a little nervous this morning so he brought George along to keep him company. I don’t know how we would’ve made it through this broken leg without that silly monkey.

His nerves were working overtime as we waited for the nurse to come in to take his cast off.

Finally they got started with the cutting. The saw is so loud…and a little scary.

It took awhile to cut through all the different layers. Since he basically had a cast over a cast over a cast.

Finally all the layers were pulled away and his dirty, stinky leg was revealed.

And all that dead, flaking, itchy skin. Blech…

We got him home and showered and scrubbed and lotioned and Benadryled…

He is still afraid to put any weight on that leg and his knee is pretty stiff. I was looking forward to being done with the walker, but I think it will be around for at least another day. He will probably get a few days home from school to build up a little strength and confidence and then he will be off and running…

wordless wednesday - one more week

be strong

Hammie decided that maybe our life was just a little boring and needed some excitement thrown in…

Last Saturday evening we had just finished dinner and it was just about time to start showers and all the other fun stuff to get ready for early Church the next morning. Hammie asked if he could go outside and play and started asking all the other kids if anyone else wanted to go jump on the trampoline and nobody wanted to go out with him. He went ahead and went out by himself. I saw him jumping all by himself so I went out and asked him if he was having fun. He assured me he was having fun, even if he was alone. I went back inside and when I turned around he was crumpled on the trampoline screaming. I don’t think he was having fun anymore…

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever one of my kidlets are hurt I have “The ER Debate”.

Is there really something wrong? Or is it going to be something silly and the Doctors are going to laugh after I leave?

After talking to Ham, through his tears, I realized there was really something wrong. As soon as he said he heard a POP I knew this was probably an ER worthy injury.

It’s horrible sitting with your baby while he is in pain waiting to see the doctor…even if we didn’t wait very long at all.

After the x-rays and getting him comfortably numb on morphine he was back to his happy self…on morphine. He had the BEST nurses in the ER, they were the most caring and funny guys and they were perfect for helping Hammie through this horrible night.

The Man-Child and I (and the awesome nurses) couldn’t help laughing about the Brian Regan comedy routine about the ER. If you haven’t seen it look it up. Trust me it’s worth it.

That first day home wasn’t too bad. I think he was still sailing by on the morphine from the night before. He was happy to just hang out and play on his iPod.

Soon that was gone and he and I spend a few days and night trying to keep his pain managed. It was kind of horrible.

I must admit I would get a little jealous when he would sleep during the day knowing that we would both be up most of the night struggling with pain and exhaustion.

Thank goodness for Curious George on Netflix. That silly monkey was there for us day or night.

After a few days of laying on the couch with no option of bathing I realized that pain wasn’t the only issue we were going to have.

Thankfully we have a friend that lives down the street that has her salon in her house.

You can tell by his face it felt good to finally get his hair washed.

Then we took it a step further and Becca shaved all that stinky hair off.

Thank goodness the Man-Child was willing to come and hold his leg up during his little make-over.

His hair was clean, but the rest of him is still pretty nasty…remember he was out jumping on the trampoline when this happened. He still had all the trampoline schmutz on his foot and leg. Well except for the dirt that was rubbed off his toes onto his splint.

It made sleeping a little easier without all that hair and smell.

I think Hammie might say the broken leg was worth getting his own wheels…

He is a pretty good driver for being 6.

Almost a week after his accident we finally had the visit with the orthopedic surgeon. We had spent this whole week with the fear of a possible surgery. Thankfully the doctor said that his leg looks really good…except for the broken femur and a pressure sore on his heal from the splint.

Finally that huge annoying splint was gone and he had a new snazzy cast.

This week we made another step back a normal life when he went back to school. I think he may be a bit of a celebrity in his 1st grade class.

Another step back to normal is him getting around our house with a walker. He won’t be able to use it at school, but it sure makes it easier at home. And he is pretty proud of himself.

We have another visit with the doctor next week to make sure everything is healing on track and then a few more weeks in a cast…and then Hammie will be running around better than ever!