Independence Day

We started Independence Day with something that I think we'll start doing as a tradition from now on.....and we ended it doing something I hope will NOT be a new tradition.

We all woke up early and headed down to Provo for the Balloon Festival. We have wanted to go in the past, but have never managed to get out of bed early enough. Matthew's parents often go and this year they wanted to take Ember & Kya with them. So we decided we'd go too. I absolutely loved it and I think the kids did too. Peyton was so giddy watching the balloons get bigger and bigger, but as soon as they started the flames she got a little scared. Afterward we went to breakfast at Village Inn with Cluff's. I was so excited to see that they had Stuffed French Toast back on the menu.....it is one of my favorite foods in the entire world. So I ordered it, but it turned out that it was NOT the same thing they had on the menu years ago. I still managed to clean my plate! Yum!

On the way there I saw this flag and thought it looked so cool against the sunrise. I actually got a little emotional over it. I think this year was the most emotional I've ever been. Every time I saw a flag I would tear up!

Peyton was so excited watching the balloons.

Did I tear up again? Sure did!

It was such an amazing sight to see all those balloons all together. Someday I'd love to actually go for a ride in one.

Easter and the 4th of July are the two big days each year that I love to get the kids new outfits and take pictures. Here's a couple snapshots from this year:

If you look closely at Logan's left eye you can see that it is a little swollen. I'll explain more about that in a bit.

Does their hair look like fireworks?

That night we had all of Matthew's family over for a BBQ. The kids had so much fun just running around the backyard and playing on the trampoline. They also would not stay out of the drink bucket. Most of the kids kept grabbing drink after drink, but Khalil was going for the ice!

Logan had been absent most of the night because his eye was bothering him. He had come in the night before complaining that his eye hurt. We couldn't see anything and just figured it was just something in his eye, so we sent him off to bed. The morning of the 4th he woke up and his eye was a little swollen and it continued to get worse throughout the day. We thought it was kind of strange but we were so busy the whole day that we kept brushing it off. At one point we thought about giving him some of the leftover eye drops we had from an eye infection he'd had a few months earlier, but again we got busy and forgot. We are such terrible parents!! But Mike (my brother-in-law) took special interest in him and at one point during the BBQ when I couldn't find either him or Logan, I went upstairs and they were in the toy room. Mike's mom is a nurse and he had called her to ask her about it. Based on what he told her she thought it was possibly this thing called Orbital Cellulitis. She recommended taking him to a dr. and having it checked out. Well, not only was it a Saturday, but it was also a holiday AND 8:30 at night. I knew that not even an Instacare would probably be open and I didn't want to take him to the hospital for a silly, swollen eye. Plus I was really looking forward to the fireworks and didn't want to miss them. But he kept urging me and urging me. Finally I decided to at least call a couple of the local Instacare's to see if by some chance they were still open. I was able to get a hold of a dr. at one that was just finishing up paperwork. He asked what the issue was and I explained it to him and even told him what Mike's mom had said. He agreed that that's what it sounded like and he said, "You do NOT want to mess around with that. If it progresses it can be life threatening. I would take him over to the ER right now!" What?!? So off we went. I expected to arrive at an ER full of patients with firework injuries, but it was practically empty and they were able to take us back almost immediately. I explained everything that Mike's mom and the Instacare dr. had said and sure enough after looking it over the dr. said that's what it looked like. The next thing I know she's ordering all sorts of things to be done. Within 30 minutes of arriving at the hospital they placed an IV, did blood-work (thankfully it was through the IV so it didn't require any extra poking), gave a Tylenol suppository (he had a very high fever by that point and he will NOT take medicine orally), swabbed his throat for a strep-test, and last but not least did a CT scan! I was completely overwhelmed and freaked out, and he wasn't exactly thrilled about being completely violated. He screamed bloody murder through most everything but finally settled down and actually fell asleep during the CT scan. Then we waited for the results of the scan. It seemed to take forever even though it was only about 45 minutes. Turns out we were able to catch things in time before it progressed and it looked like everything was going to be fine, he'd just need to be on antibiotics. The nurse came back a few minutes later and started some antibiotics through the IV. I don't know if they had something in it to make him loopy but he sure started acting strange after that. Then suddenly he needed to pee. He was attached to his IV pole and I didn't know what to do and before I had a chance to find a nurse to help me he had peed his pants! Someone went and found some small hospital pants. They didn't have any type of underwear and the biggest diaper they could find was a size 3. Logan was very nervous about having to go commando, but what do you do? They finally discharged him just as all the fireworks were ending back home. They felt so bad he had to miss the fireworks that they sent him home with a stash of lollipops. They wanted us to come back the next day for a follow-up check and for another round of antibiotics, so they left the IV in. They wrapped it with cast stuff so that he wouldn't mess with it, but we were still nervous he'd try to take it out so we had him sleep in our room. He slept on the chair and slept the whole night thank goodness.

Poor guy!

The next morning his eye already looked so much better. We took him in and did another round of antibiotics. Then they said they'd just give us a prescription for the remainder of the antibiotics. I knew there was no way Logan was going to take anything orally so just in case they decided to leave the IV in his arm again and gave us an order to bring him back for a couple more days of IV therapy, but just up in the pediatric unit so we wouldn't have to have any more ER charges. Sure enough it was a no-go on the oral medicine. So it was off to the hospital again the next day. The nurses all just doted on him up in the pediatric unit and even gave him a blanket that had been donated to the hospital. They felt so bad because what should've just been a very simple and painless process turned into yet another traumatizing experience for the poor kid. They tried to flush the IV line and it started leaking. They tried a couple more times and then told me that the line was bad and that they'd either have to place a new one that he could keep in for both days (if the line stayed good) or I could opt to have them do an extremely painful shot both days. I opted for the shot. It took me and 3 other nurses to hold him down the first day. Then the 2nd day we tried it with me and 3 nurses again. He is VERY strong and this time he knew what was coming and he moved and they had to do it twice. He sure doesn't like to make anything easy. But we were DONE! And by that final day his eye was pretty much completely better. We were very thankful that Mike had pretty much forced us to do something. I felt like such a terrible parent, but who would've guessed. Even though Logan is completely traumatized and may never want to set foot in a hospital ever again, we are very thankful everything turned out o.k.