What a day!

I guess I'll just start at the beginning of the day, and work my way through. It's easier that way.

Jeff needed new shoes. His old ones were basically falling apart. He's on his feet all day at work, and that takes a toll! His feet and back have been bothering him, so long story short, we went to Wal-Mart and bought him some new shoes. The plan was originally to buy him some new everyday shoes, and he could use his old ones(with a new pair of insoles) as work shoes. But as he was trying on new shoes, I looked at his old, ratty pair next to all those new pairs, and decided that the old pair was just too beaten up. So we got Jeff two new pairs of shoes today: one for work, and one for everyday living. He needs a work pair because of the nature of his work - running tests on various bodily fluids, it's only to be expected that sometimes a lab tech will get blood or something on his shoes or scrubs, and those specimens are usually infected with something or other. So it's best to keep work wear separate from daily wear.

After shopping, we had to rush to get a bit of lunch for Jeff and drop him off to work. Long story as to why we dropped him off instead of having him ride his bike: Yesterday was stake conference, from 10 to noon. But Jeff had work at noon. So he took his bike to work before conference, I picked him up and we went to conference. We left early from conference to drop Jeff off, and planned on him riding his bike home. But he had forgotten his bike key, so had to walk home without the bike last night. So today, his bike was still up at the hospital. So we dropped him off, and he'll bike home.

Anyway, after dropping Jeff off at work, the kids and I headed over to Mom's house. She's taking a math course this next semester, and I offered to let her borrow one of our TI-86's. I just found it this morning, and decided to take it over. Of course, we never really have just a short visit at Mom's house - it always turns into an all-day thing! So I gave Mom the calculator, and proceeded to thoroughly confuse her by showing her all the fancy-schmancy functions it can do. She learns more by doing though, so she'll be able to figure out all she needs by practicing.

A lady from Mom's ward came over to can some pears with Mom, so I took over putting together some lunch. I just did some mac and cheese with chili. I considered it a great success when I had the following conversation with Samuel, aka The Picky Eater King:

Samuel: What are these green things?

Me: Green chilies. They add a little bit of flavor and only a tiny bit of spice.

Samuel: Oh. I love this!

Samuel actually loved something with green chilies in it, after learning that it had green chilies! I'm good!

After lunch we thoroughly enjoyed some pumpkin pie make by Janelle, then got everyone settled in front of the TV to watch Zaylee's new Barbie movie, which I had brought over. Lots of fun. I then spent a good portion of the afternoon drooling over some of Mom's decorating magazines, and taking a very long nap.

When I woke up, Thomas was waking up from a nap as well, and was grumpy grumpy grumpy! Mom and I spent a few minutes trying to soothe him. He was thirsty but wouldn't drink, wouldn't take his pacifier, wouldn't take a cracker, all that fun stuff. Finally he stopped crying long enough to put his binky in his mouth, but was upset to realize that he couldn't eat the cracker without spitting out the binky.

In the midst of all this fussing over Thomas, Rheanna suddenly burst in through the back door shreaking, "She's bleeding!! She's bleeding!!! She's bleeding!!!!!" Zaylee's screams were in the background and my heart skipped a beat or two. I started to calm down when I remembered that Rheanna has the tendency to overreact and dramatize things quite a bit. Then I saw Zaylee.

There was blood all over her face, coming from somewhere on her forehead. It was pulsing out, covering her forhead, her cheek, her shirt. She was crying and Rheanna was sputtering out that Zaylee had slipped by the pond and hit her head on the rocks, and my heart was in my throat. I could feel the blood draining from my face. Janelle, next to me, was reacting just the same way.

After a couple seconds, the two of us were able to calm down enough to whisk Zaylee to the bathroom where we wet a cloth and started cleaning her up. After wiping the blood away, we learned that there were only two small wounds on her forehead. I had been expecting a huge gash, so the fact that it wasn't more serious was a big relief.

We got her all cleaned up (my hands were shaking the whole time), applied Neosporin and a band-aid, and got her changed out of her bloodied clothes. Since Janelle and I were able to act calm and cheerful while working on her, Zaylee soon calmed down as well. I gave her some Tylenol to ease the pain, and then she was back in business.

But I made her spend the rest of the evening inside the house!

On a more lighthearted note, Thomas had an adventure of his own. As Mom and I were in the kitchen working on dinner, he came toddling out of the laundry room / bathroom with a big wad of white goo in his mouth. Upon inspection of the goo and the bathroom, here's what I found: the goo was toilet paper. The floor was wet around the toilet. The toilet water was yellow. Apparently someone had used the bathroom without flushing, and Thomas had fished out the toilet paper and was happily chewing on it! Ewwwww!

Ahhh, everything fun happens at Grandma's house.