Reading time

The two resident princesses

Lunch with the littles

Never too young to pitch in

Jessica's room was recently painted. White walls are now some shade of pink (how do they come up with names for so many different shades of pink paint?). Jessica herself pitched in. In fact, everyone except Ethan "helped" out (I think Ethan was feeling cast-impaired). Actually, Brayton painted a sizeable portion of the room. Pretty soon we should be able to turn the entire job over to him.

Broken bones part 2

Continuing with the broken arm story: Ethan was supposed to go in to see the ortho doctor a couple of days after urgent care. Our loser HMO provider, High Desert Medical Group, messed up the paperwork. They said they would call in a couple of days to set up the appointment. I thought that was strange that a medical provider would provide that kind of service and I asked again if that was the case. Well, it wasn't. By Monday, we knew he needed to get in soon. Ylfelynn tried calling, got the run-around, and left a message. Same thing on Tuesday. I call on Wednesday and got the run-around. I call back again and finally talked to a competent person. She expressed dismay that something went wrong and scheduled Ethan for that afternoon. I left work to get Ethan out of school and take him to the ortho guy. I thought we would pop in for a quick cast and be done. No. In the 7 days that had elapsed since the initial break, Ethan's radius had healed enough to require surgery to reset it. So about an hour later, we were checking the hospital for outpatient surgery (we did not even have enought time to go home first). Eventually, they knocked Ethan out, reset the bone, and installed a cast. No pins were necessary. I think the worst part for Ethan was when he was waking up and the oxygen he had been breathing made his nose all stuffed up. We did not even get his Tylenol III prescription filled. He has felt great ever since. The doctor said the cast would probably be on for four weeks. A good thing that's not too long - today I was already noticing the stink arm smell emanating from the cast. Stupid medical provider - don't ever leave anything in their hands. By the way his wrist x-ray looked something like this.

The birthday and the bone

Everyone should get to leave work early on their birthday. I did. It was not the graciousness of my boss nor any sneaking out on my part though. Ethan really wanted me to be home early so he took a fall. Just kidding ... I don't think it was on purpose. During an outing to the park on Wednesday (parent-teacher conferences = no school) 28 September (33 years subsequent to my birth) Ethan said goodbye to the monkey bars he was hanging on and gave a high five to the sand. A couple of hours later, I was gone from work and sitting in the urgent care center. You may recall my previous adventures there. Anyway, here he is that evening with temporary cast in place. He never really cried until the doctor said that he would need a cast. You can see that it is his right hand. He loves to draw and write and is right-handed. He knew it would be tough to have a cast on. He is getting fairly good with his left hand now. Stay tuned for the next chapter: the permanent cast.

Ri the guy

For some inexplicable reason, I don't think there is a picture of Orion (Ri for short) on this blog. This post is to remedy that situation. Obviously, he is plenty cute and should have pictures posted all the time. Here he is on the playground being very serious.

And then ... there was two.

I attended an interesting meeting this evening. Three of the local wards of the Lancaster East Stake met together at the stake center. After the meeting, there were only two wards. Our former ward, the Joshua ward, was dissolved and combined with the other two wards. This was due to rapidly declining memberships of the wards mostly from people taking advantage of the high real estate values by selling and moving out of state. We are now part of the El Dorado ward. Next Sunday, we will attend church in a different building (closer to our house than the one we had been attending) with an entirely new ward. The new boundary cuts through all three wards so everybody has an opportunity to meet new friends. The entire Joshua ward was released from their callings this evening so we are calling-less. We shall see if we get a call this week. I am hoping to be the ward bulletin person.

I guess it works

For Fathers Day this year, I received a hammock. The hammock stand was not included. I favored a nice wood stand like this. Reality, however, set in and we ordered this steel stand for a steal. I immediately took the assembled hammock system for a test flight and the photo shows that it works. This is not a staged photo - I am actually sleeping and the photo was shot without my knowledge or consent.