Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving.  I would like to say that it was uneventful, but that is just not how our family works. :)  To start the day off, we had a power outage.  For the second day in a row.  (It was out for 4 hours on Wed.)  I was VERY thankful that I was not cooking dinner this year.  John's mom and dad took the ham and the turkey breast and put one in their trailer and one in Thomas' trailer (John's brother) to let them finish cooking.  They were already in the oven when the power went out.  I'm sure there were a lot of unhappy people around town who lost their turkey as the power was out for about 2 hours, or had to wait to start cooking.  We only had to push our dinner back an hour from when we were planning on eating.   A little while before we left for the Elementary school where we had dinner, we heard a crash.  We asked Zander what that was (he was the only child not in the room with us) and he came running in, said, "Please don't be mad at me!" and crumpled on the floor and started crying.  We laughed and then went to see what had happened.  He had kicked a ball into his light and it fell off the ceiling and shattered on the floor.  So, we cleaned it up and were thankful that it didn't land on Zander.  After that, we went to the Elementary and had a great dinner with John's family.  Only Paula, John's oldest sister was not able to make it with her family.  John's mom wanted a picture of the grandkids, so this is all of them, minus Paula's 3 step children and Tom and Shlisa's foster daughter (and her daughter).

After John's family left, we went home and decided to decorate outside as it was a fairly warm day.  It has been freezing lately, so we are greatful for the warm weather to work outside.  We realized that we had not yet winterized the yard, so we spent some time doing that first.  We put the pump and hoses away, got rid of my flowers on the front porch (by some miracle they were still blooming!), got rid of the pumpkins we had outside, and John got the blower out and blew all the leaves and dirt off the porch and in the flowerbeds.  We worked our way around the house.  Ian, Eli, and I were watching John blow off the back patio, and Ian and I heard a noise.  We both turned around to see what it was, and John was pulling on the cord to the blower and was moving the garbage can.  I told Ian to go put the garbage can back so it didn't get knocked over, and then turned back around to find that Eli was not two or three steps from me like he had been, but was crying down by the shed.  I couldn't hear him crying over the noise of the blower, but could see that he was.  I walked toward him thinking he had fallen down, and then I saw the blood streaming down his face.  I ran the rest of the way to him and had to go all the way around the house to get inside where I could clean him up because the back door was still locked.  The cut on his cheek was pretty bad, so I told Ian to go get John.  He came in and  we decided he probally needed stitches.  With the PA out of town and no one else on call--the ambulance wouldn't have been able to do anything either--it would have meant a trip to the ER in Price (there is no Instacare there--the joys of living in a rural community).  We decided to call John's sister-in-law who is an EMT and have her come asses the damage.  After talking it over, we decided we really couldn't afford another trip to the ER (we just got the bills from John's trip at the beginning of the month) for 2 or 3 stitches, and Shlisa said she could butterfly it closed.  We decided to go that route, and watch it.  John's dad came down later that evening and helped John give Eli a blessing.  He was blessed that it would heal properly and not get infected.  We felt a lot better about not taking him for stitches.  The cut wasn't very long, just kind of deep.  From what I can figure, Eli wandered down to the shed and tried to get one of our gardening tools out of the tool caddy.  It was one of those small ones that has the 3 prongs to turn over dirt in the flower beds.  I think he pulled on it and it got stuck so he kept pulling on it and it flew out of the caddy and into his face.  One of the prongs hit his cheek bone and another hit him by the temple but did not break the skin there.  We feel very lucky that it didn't hit him in the eye and that it wasn't worse!  What is it with us and holidays??  (John's ER trip happened on Halloween-lol)  I waited a few days to take the picture of Eli's battle wounds as not to gross anyone out. :)  It is healing nicely and there is no sign of infection.  We are very grateful for Shlisa and her nursing skills. She is a lot cheaper than the ER would have been! :)

The rest of the day was not that eventful, thank heavens.  We finished decorating outside, then cleaned the house so we could start decorating the inside.  John and I stayed up until about 3am Black Friday shopping online.  We got everything we needed to and a few more things that will be fun.  Yea!  Our kids will have something to open on Christmas day!  We didn't have much before now.  We were looking forward to sleeping in on Friday, but apparantly that was not meant to be.  Eli woke up at 6:30am throwing up.  He threw up every half hour until 1:00pm and wouldn't let anyone hold him but me.  This had nothing to do with his cut--it still looked good, and it wasn't food poisoning--too many hours in between eating for that.  The only thing we can figure is that he got it from John's sister's family.  Thier family has been sick with the same crud.  So Friday was spent holding the baby.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but wasn't exactly in the plans.  So far, no one else seems to have come down with it, so we are thankful for that.  We have enjoyed our Thanksgiving break together, even with all the mishaps.  It's always nice to be together as a family. :)