THANKFUL FOR A HAPPY ENDING

A couple of Friday's ago, I was tied up with an inventory in Houston. What should have taken us 4 hours ended up taking 12 hours which made for a very LONG and FRUSTRATING day! After 11.5 hours, as I was keying in the last bit of data, Wes called. I ignored. He called again. I ignored. He called again and everyone around me said "I think you better answer it". So I did. On the other end of the phone was a very calm but serious Wes saying "Stephanie you need to come home right now. Colson got in a 4 wheeler accident. He's not hurt bad but he's scared and he wants you to come home."

I hung up the phone, quickly gathered my things, made arrangements for the lady who rode with me who couldn't leave to get a ride home and headed out the door. Part of me was thinking 'could this be a joke? What if Wes did this because he knew how frustrated I was'. Well of course it wasn't. As I headed out of the parking lot I called Wes back to get more details. You could hear Colson in the background with fearful tears saying he was not okay as Wes insisted to me he was. It turns out that the fence guy at our new place had put up two posts on one of our fences and run a single strand of barbwire across the entire width of the property. Noone saw the strand...not even Wes...and not Colson as he wheeled around on his 4 wheeler that afternoon. He came up from the bottom of a small ditch and the barbwire said "HELLO!" as he basically clotheslined him flipping him off the back. Running into the barbwire in and of itself is an accident. Being flipped off the 4 wheeler is a whole nother accident. Both of which could have been really bad if not deadly.

The barbwire punctured him once in the chest, once in the neck and once in the arm. And then he had scratches on his arms and neck and a few bruises. The one in the chest had the most bleeding. Every time his heart would beat, the blood would squirt out. Colson kept screaming "I'm not going to make it Daddy. I'm going to die". Wes' goal was to make him calm down so he could press on the wound and make it stop bleeding. Then Colson would be able to see that he was going to be all right.

By the time I got home, Mary had doctored him all up and Wes had calmed him down and he was lying on the couch watching some TV. Dr. Caperton made a house call later that evening and determined everything would be ok. I just needed to take him in to get a tetnus Monday, which I did.

The week prior, our Pastor had gotten into a dirt bike accident riding the trails in the National Forest. He had broken 13 ribs and broken his shoulder bone. So Sunday was his first Sunday back and he preached. Colson was a little subconscience about his war wounds so I let him sit with us during the service instead of going to his class. Pastor Ron used several illustrations from his accident. After church Colson came home and went outside to hit golf balls. As I passed him in the yard he was swinging the club like he was stretching. He told me he guess he needed to man up like Pastor Ron. "Man up?" I asked. "Yes, I can't let my accident get me down. I gotta keep going"

So today I'm thankful that he didn't have the strength to hold on. Had he been able to hold on, the barbwire could have severly cut his neck severing it badly. Today I'm thankful that his fall off the 4 wheeler was uneventful. Today I'm thankful for a happy ending.

LOOK HOW SWEET

The Schubert's don't let their dogs on the carpet and certainly don't let them sleep in their beds but they have agreed to let Lucy and Jax sleep with Calli and Colson. I am very thankful because I'm not sure Colson would sleep without Jax.

But look how sweet they look waiting patiently for their owners to come to bed.

YES ANOTHER TROPHY

A first place trophy for the Willis Rebels AGAIN...as our coach now says "These boys are going to be ruint". We called it a one run weekend because the first 3 games were won by one point. In the semi championship game we won by 15 and the championship game was won by 7.

The absolute highlight was Colson's 2nd at bat in the championship game. I should set the tone by saying he's struggled with his hitting in this kid pitch thing. I think it's mental but for whatever reason he went from being super slugger to frequent strike outs. He always goes down swinging and has a few foul balls in there though so he's working through it. So his first at bat he struck out. His 2nd at bat he knocked the snot out of the ball and hit it 200' plus...clearing a very tall fence. It's actually the same field he hit it over last year only the extended the field so that 9 year olds could play on it.

He smacks the ball and the expression on his face was priceless!!! Of course I didn't have my camera...or my phone ready...or the Ipad ready. And then I didn't think to whip it out as he rounded all the bases or crossed home plate. And then you have Wes yelling at me again to "GO GET THE BALL!". In the past his homerun hits have caused him to crack this little smile and humbly run the bases. It always looks like he wants to break out in a happy dance but he's kinda shy about it. NOT THIS TIME! His eyes lit up, his arms flew up, he started this laugh where it sounds like he's trying to catch his breath and then he lets out a "WAHOO!" I made him re-enact it today.

We were very excited and proud of ALL the boys! The second highlight was when the coach from the other team paused to say that when they played us two weekends ago and our game got cut short he told his wife "That's a classy group of kids" and after playing us yesterday that statement couldn't be any more true! So proud of our boys and the good sportsmanship they are and our coaches for creating that type of team!

WHERE ARE WE LIVING?

Since I'm so far behind at documenting the craziness of our life, I don't even know WHAT I've documented. And because I don't really have time to blog much less READ my own blog to see what I've documented, feel free to write me hate mail if I'm repeating any of myself. I'm pretty sure I won't have the energy to read it.  I know I've mentioned that our house sold in two days. I know I've mentioned we have moved out of our house. But have I mentioned where we are living? That I don't know. We are building a barndominium out on our land while our house is being built. But that's not done yet so we are living at my in-laws. Nice to have a roof over our heads....nice to have someone cook and clean for you all the time...nice to have someone help out with the kids when we need it. Yes we are intruding on them and we are trying to get out as fast as we can. They are very gracious hosts though!

I thought I'd give you a tour of our crib...you can see for yourself just how bad we are intruding on them.

 Here is our bedroom/my office. My office is above our head in the very convient extra wide window sill. My office chair is the 4 pillow behind my back and the cushy mattress underneath me.

 Here's a nice view of our refrigerator

And here is my pantry.

I knew we had a lot of clothes but it seems overkill when you are having to haul them all in. Most of our winter clothes are smushed in one of their guest closets. These are the clothes we wear in this season and then even more were stored in boxes. I went and bought us each our own rolling rack.

Wes' rack we store in the hallway....luckily it's a hallway that doesn't get used for regular foot traffic.

Colson has his own rack which if you look closely has my jeans hanging off the end.

And Calli has hers.

We've completely taken over but hopefully things will be back to normal (for them) when we move into the barn soon. I'm thinking within the next 3 weeks we'll be out of there hair.

THE ONLY THING IN LIFE SLOWING DOWN

I do have one thing in our life that feels like it's slowing down....baseball! But let me clarify....the practices and games aren't slowing down....we still practice twice a week and have tournaments every other weekend....but the pace of each game has slowed down. At age 9 the boys moved up to kid pitch. We've had two tournaments so far and came in 2nd in the first one and 1st in the second one.

 SECOND PLACE WIN

The second one was a big deal. Not only because we came out on top but because we lost both games on Saturday which seeded us in the middle of the pack and then we had to play 4 games on Sunday to come out 1st out of 13 teams. I ended up not seeing the championship game because I had to come home to pick up Calli from cheer. Since the park was over an hour away, it would have been kind of silly to drive BACK. And had the game started on time, I would have only seen the last 30 minutes or so. I had some guilt as I anxiously waited for texts to keep me abreast of the game. They started playing at 10:30 Sunday morning. The championship game ended up starting at 9:45 at night....a school night! And did I mention the park was over an hour away. So they got home about 12:45 Sunday night.

It was worth it since we won! The boys were really excited! Colson is still at second base and pitching occassionally. He does good when he pitches he just doesn't have the endurance yet. So he maybe lasts 2 innings depending on how many pitches he throws before he starts throwing more balls than strikes. We've still got a solid team and it helps that we haven't had any that have left which means these boys have been playing for over a year together.