A Spring of Joy

It’s not quite how I had planned for Spring Break to begin, and I’m not talking about the weather.

But then again, the best laid plans…

Right now it is Sunday morning but almost noon, and I have coughed like a smoker all night long–those deep, heaving coughs that wrack your whole body. My Bri is still in bed starting with this same cold, and I pray his doesn’t progress to his chest. We all stayed in bed for a long time this morning, and it seemed I couldn’t will my body out of bed if I wanted to.

I am up now, full of syrupy medicines that halt the coughing but make me feel loopy and disconnected, and I still am not sure if the children ate breakfast. If they did I don’t know what they consumed, I just hope it was somewhat healthy.

Pardon this post’s disconnectedness. You’ll see why.

Let’s step back in time…

Friday night was great. We grilled steaks to celebrate spring and spring break and nine days of togetherness and no school and no work and no packing lunches! Ash-man went to a middle school lock-in, and we worked together organizing our new pull-behind RV (we’ve dubbed him Gimli… short and stout and ready for anything). Saturday morning we worked on flower beds and cleaning, and Bri was installing something in the car. Then we heard him yell and saw a flash as he ran inside.

Knife slipped.

Finger sliced to bone.

He was going into shock and almost passing out, and I helped him put pressure on and staunch the flow of blood and we piled in the car and raced to the ER with the youngest two. He was lightheaded and thick speaking, and I’d never seen him so pale. They got us back fairly quickly and I handed the kids our phones and let them play Minecraft in the room, because I hadn’t thought about packing a bag full of things to do (that’s a joke, y’all).

The thing with this finger laceration? The numbing medicine didn’t work (they tried several times), so my hubby told her to go ahead and stitch him up without. WHAT?! Oh. my. stars. y’all. Can I just say, this whole women are stronger than men and men are really just sissies when it come to injuries stops now. Partly because I hate the whole silly competition thing (and we aren’t allowed to say hate in our house), but also because my man just proved it wrong. (I told him afterward that now when we watch movies or TV when people get injured and have to be stitched up in the wild, he can say he knows how it feels–well, except he was in a hospital with clean stitches and nurses with gloved hands).

So we got home two hours later and Bri took a few ibuprofen and finished fixing the car. (He has little sensation in the tip of that finger and he may never get it back, so would y’all pray? He’s a guitarist. ’nuff said.)

All through the day I could feel this icky cold I’d been fighting creeping into my chest and the coughing began, but we just kept on working. Bear went to his first baseball practice, and I read while I watched him catch and field and run, and he came to the car telling me how awesome it was. We are super excited about baseball starting up again.

I went out and about with Bella girl and we got some things done, and we picked up pizza and she danced her way out the door, and I told her to slow down and wait for me, and she stopped for a moment, but then took off again, only there was loose gravel under her feet and she fell…hard. Knees, hand, face slamming into grit and gravel. I grabbed her up with one arm, three pizza boxes in the other, put her in the car and doctored her up as best I could while she tearily wailed, “I wish I had listened to you, Mommmmeeeeee.” Oh, Bella-girl, me, too. Me, too.

We got home and I bathed cuts and dug gravel out of her hand and bandaged her up. The screams, y’all. Oh, the screams! And an hour after I picked up pizza, we finally ate–coldish pizza while we curled together on couches and chairs and watched a short movie then tucked kiddos in bed.

And here we are. Today.

Not quite what we planned… but we’re still together. Weathering whatever comes. Remembering when things have been much worse for us, and thanking God for today.

And togetherness.

Whatever it brings.

Spring Break 2014… here we are.