The last several days...

...have been fraught will illness, summer fun, illness, garage sales, illness, etc. I have wanted to post, but I hadn't even downloaded the pictures from Father's day until today. :) It was fun to finally look at my pictures!

After Graeme got back from Mexico he was sick and sicker, then Noah and Elijah were sick, then Noah, then me.....it goes on an on. It is much nicer being sick in the summertime I have to admit, even though sick is still sick. :)

Two Thursdays ago we went to Day out with Thomas with our good friends. It was a blast! We, being the cheapskate Baptists that we are, actually didn't ride the Thomas train, but instead opted for the regular train = twice as long of a ride, open air car, 1/2 the price. We thought that a good deal! We still got to see the "cheeky little engine" and Sir Top 'em Hat which was the reason we came to the overstimulating mayhem, I mean fun and excitement of thousands upon thousands of pint sized Thomas fans.

Noah LOVED the "too-too" (choo-choo) and love, loved seeing "Tomish". Now he will actually watch a Thomas video for a whole 7 minutes. The engines were load and we noticed Elijah was a bit startled by them. In general he gets overstimulated more easily than the other kids, so we kept an eye on him. However, when lunch came and he didn't eat anything, I started to get a little bit concerned about him. He loves to eat and when he forgoes food, I know something is desperately wrong. :) He seemed to get more clingy as the day went on and didn't say a word except shaking his head yes or no. He isn't a talkative kid, but still, something just wasn't right about him.

The little kids in a giant Thomas made entirely of legos...



Here comes "our favorite little engine, Thomas is his name"...



Taylor and Jordan, ole Thomas pros...



I thought Elijah had a tummyache, so before we got on the train, Tina gave me a plastic bag for "just in case" and we set off on our trek. The train ride was sooo fun! We could barely keep Noah from climbing right out of the train, he was in heaven!



Noah did this...


And this...the whole ride...we had to keep a tight grip on him or he would have been out the window.

Sophia did this too...

But Elijah only did this most of the ride...

We got off the train and met Sir Top'em Hat (our kids were afraid of him). Then we decided to do a few of the many other fun activities with the kids. We split up as the kids wanted to do different things. As Elijah and I crossed railroad tracks, he tripped and fell rather stiffly to the tracks. He started to cry and I promised to clean him up as soon as we finished crossing the tracks (Thomas was coming down that tracks so we had to cross).

We got to the other side, met Graeme and Sophia at the snow cone vendor and Elijah started to quietly cry for a snow cone because Sophia had one. We told him it was okay and we'd get him some when all of the sudden he fell on the ground, his eyes, rolled back into his head, and started making jerking movements with his arms and legs. It was as if he was gone and some weird something took over his body. His skin turned dark red/burgundy. I remember Graeme picking him up and the "snow cone guy" telling him to put him back down on the ground. I thought he was having a seizure and knew that febrile seizures are fairly common in children (I had read up on them and was deteremined to not flip out if one of my kids ever had one ). He just kept going on and on with the seizure and "the snow cone guy" started to put their ear to his chest to make sure his heart was beating and then I went into hysterics! I knew in my head that it was most likely a simple seizure, but "Momma Bear" switched on and I screamed over and over for someone to come and help my baby because I had to protect my "cub" and make sure he got help because what if it was something more serious? It was so weird how my instincts took over. It was a sort of out of body experience.

I don't handle gore well at all. I admit, I am a panicker from way back. His seizure lasted over 3 minutes, which, let me tell you, seems like an eternity to an anxious parent. After the seizure was over, he was still unconscious. The medic came and put a little oxygen mask on his face (so sad...he was "fine" just a couple of minutes before), and they called the ambulance and brought over the medic cart (a John Deere Gator...one of Elijah's favorite trucks) and they took him in the gator over to the ambulance. He finally got to ride a gator, he's wanted to ride one forever, but he doesn't remember it because he was still out. Graeme rode to the hospital in the ambulance with him, and the D's and I went over to the hospital together. They were totally awesome! They watched Sophia and Noah and fed them and everything in between and stayed until the end with us. We were so thankful to have them with us. Their son Jordan had a similar situation, so it was realy comforting to have them there. Thanks guys!

After much, poking, prodding, IVing, and a multitude of tests and hours waiting for the results, Elijah was declared to have had a febrile seizure. We were so glad to be going home that night. It ended up being a much longer day than we had expected. I was struck once again at how blessed we are the USA to have hospitals and medical care. Even though we were far from home, he still got the care he needed.

So, we stared the day thinking we were going to have a nice day out with Thomas and we ended with the question: "Elijah, which did you like better? The train ride or the ambulance ride?" Our days are in the Lord's hands, are they not?

The next morning was the first day of our two day garage sale. It was a chaotic week/weekend. We have.never.had.such.a.big.garage.sale. I vowed to never buy anything ever again after it was over.

The next week was sick, sick, sick. Followed by sick, sick, sick. Now we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel...until someone else gets sick, but at least that someone will not be me...I hope.