Musical Chairs

Friday, Feb 1st, the took Pepaw to the ER by ambulance.  He had sores on his legs (from diabetes) that were infected.  The infection became sepsis.  His blood sugar, blood pressure and fever were fluctating.  Saturday Libby had a tournament in Mulvane and both little girls had basketball games.   Memaw cannot be left alone, so when he's in the hospital we have to scramble to make sure someone is with Memaw 24/7.  So we got the weekend covered and got all of the girls to their games.

Then Monday night, they had to take Memaw to the ER.  She had been to the doctor that day and they had changed some of her medicine.  Her blood pressure had spiked very high which is particularlly dangerous for someone who has had a stroke.  So Bob had already picked Libby up from her basketball practice after school, so she and Bob were already up at the hosptial with Pepaw when Lena called to say they were taking Memaw to the ER. 

I was at basketball practice with Madi and Carlie.  So Bob took Libby to stay with Amira at Memaw and Pepaw's house while Lena took Memaw to the ER.  Memaw was still in the ER at 9pm.  They'd told us that they wouldn't admit her but they wanted to run a bag of IV antibiotics through her before they let her go home.  Libby needed to go to bed so she could go to school the next day.

So Bob picked up Libby AND Amira and brought them to our house.  By the time Memaw was done at 10:30pm, no one felt like trying to get Amira back home.  So she spent the night with us.  Then Bob took her back to Arlena early the next morning when he went to visit Pepaw before his school started.

Whew!!!

Just stamp "Sucker" on my forehead....

So my cat Duff is having trouble urinating. This can be a deadly situation, it killed one of my older cats. So I took him in Friday morning by the vet on my way to work. This is a country vet, and I notice in an outside pen a scruffy little black and white dog. There was a sign on the pen that said "Please Adopt Me". Well I have pets and kids running out my ears, so I didn't think much about it.

It turns out that I couldn't go get Duff until the next morning, Saturday. And I had to have him picked up by Noon when the vet closes. I also had to have my Sister-in-law to the airport by Noon. So I stop by at 11am to pick up my cat. The girls are in the car with me, and they are asking about the "Cute puppy". So I go in to get my cat and she's explaining the medication.

I don't know what prompted me to do it, but I asked about the little dog. And said "Oh, honey, we are going to put him down when we close at Noon."

I asked her why, and she said his leg had been broken and not set and it was crippled. Someone had brought him in for shots and then called and said they didn't want him. He'd been out there a while and no one would take him.

Soooo...do you see where this is going??? I tell her not to put him to sleep he can run around my farm. No problem.

Well I left him outside for the night and he BEGGED to come in. He's a terrier and we could see his head pop up above the window in the door every few minutes. I finally let him inside. He seems to be potty trained and hasn't bothered anything in the house. He LOVES to snuggle with kids.

Oh, and let me finish the story about Duff. We picked him up at 11am, and I didn't have time to take him back home. So he had to go with us the hour ride to the airport. I didn't have a cat carrier. So I told each girl she was going to have to hold him wrapped in a towel each way. So Madi held him on the way out there, we dropped off Carrie, and Carlie held him on the way back. On the way back home, he let the cat pee fly. I guess he doesn't have a problem urinating any more. It went all over Carlie and she tried to DIE.

I'm a nut.

It's a Shoe Thang

You know you hear about these women who have shoe addictions. I have like four pairs of shoes.

Carlie has a shoe problem too. We can't keep any one her feet!!! The other night at a football game she had on a parka and flip-flops!!!

Last year during the winter, Bob took the girls to school when he noticed that Carlie got out of the car and didn't have any shoes on. He had to take her back home to get some!!!

Whenever we get ready to go somewhere, she can never find two shoes that match. She'll wear anyone's shoes if she can't find her own.

Yesterday I was in the kitchen about ready to leave for work. I look out the window and the three girls are waiting for the bus, and....drum roll....Carlie doesn't have any shoes on!!! I yell out there and ask what she's doing without any shoes. She says she can't find any so she's just going barefoot to school and she'll put on her gym shoes there.

NOT. So I made her come back in the house and find some. She sits in the driveway to put them on. When she gets up, Libby trips her....maybe on accident....maybe on purpose....depends who you ask...and she skins her elbow.

So I finally head back to the house. The dog is whinning in his kennel. He hardly does that, so I think I'd better let him out one more time to go potty. He always stays close to the house. For some unknown reason, he took off running like a bat out of hell!! He would NOT come back. He ran all the way down the side of the road to the neighbors house and then crossed the road in front of the school bus into the ditch. When I finally caught him, I beat him all the way back to the house.

So now I'm really flustered. I get in my car and get out on the highway and realize that I do not have my phone. Now my Blackberry is like an arm or a leg to me. So I go aroun the country block to go back and get it. I make a turn onto a gravel road, and the bus that the girls are on comes barreling up a hill in the MIDDLE of the road. I almost got run over by my kids' own bus. As soon as I got in the house, my phone was ringing, and it was Libby wanting to know what I was doing on a dirt road.

Ugh!!!

Fire Fighter....aka Things That Can Only Happen to ME

Had a great day Saturday with my parents and family. Sunday I went to church. After Church I open up the windows because it was nice outside. I was helping Bob do football laundry because he was behind and he was away at practice. Suddenly a fire truck comes flying down our road.

We don't ever see that because there's a highway a mile away they normally use. They turned at our intersection, and then went down two houses to our good neighbors, friends and preacher's house...the Lauxmans!!!

I immediately call Sarah and ask "What's going on at your house, a fire truck just pulled in???" And she goes "What do you MEAN. I'M NOT HOME!!!" Go see what's going on. Well I pulled in right behind their 18 year old son.

The neighbor between us had been burning trash and it had gotten away from him. We got their water house out and wetted down what we could. The fire got within 30 ft of their house!!! And burned up most of their pasture.

So I'm standing there with the hose watering down a hot spot, and the neighbor who started the fire comes by on his golf cart. He's in his late 70s, doesn't have a shirt on, and has a huge black smudge under his nose across his upper lip. He goes "Oh, hey. See you're fighting the fire. That's great. By the way, this is my wife, I don't think you've met her."

I'm standing there putting out a fire he started that burned up my friend's pasture and he's introducing me to his WIFE!!!!"

Luckily the house was saved and they got it contained pretty quickly. The fire fighters did a wonderful job.

Lost cat, ER, termites, crazy boss, late for work...

need I say more?

I knew it was going to be a long day when I realized about 25 minutes into my 45 minute drive to work that I'd left my laptop at home. At had to turn around and go back and get it. So I was 30 minutes late to work.

I hadn't been there very long, and I got a text from my husband saying "Your $600 cat got out of the house and we can't find it." Well Duff only cost $250...not $600 but he is a house cat who is declawed and doesn't ever go outside. I asked Bob to have the girls look for him under the trailer.

Then I had a meeting with my boss...well we aren't even going to discuss that.

THEN, we are supposed to sell our house on Friday. And I get a call late that morning (four days before closing) that the termite inspector found live termites in the garage. So I am on the phone trying to find someone to treat them...making sure the buyer isn't going to back out on us. The house is only 5 years old...how did it get termites!?!!?!

Work is crazy we are trying to plan an implementation that is going to start on Fri and end Monday night with people working shifts for 24/7 the whole time.

I finally get to head home. I get there, and Carrie (Bob's Sister In Law) said her blood pressure was high and could I help her make an appointment. She lives in Michigan, so I suggested that I run her up to Walgreen's Take Care Clinic. We get there at 7pm and they close at 7:30pm. Her BP was 209/102 and they told us to go straight to the ER. So I took her there. They gave her nitroglycern and put her on two BP medicines. We got home at 11pm.

When we got home, Bob insisted that I look under the trailer and call for the cat, because they hadn't found him all day. So I pull back a section of trailer skirt. And he's sitting there under the trailer about 20 feet away. So I crawl under there to get him...its just 20ft. I still have my work clothes on. I just touch his tail and he gets up and moves 20ft further under the trailer. I go after him. Finally he gets so far under there that its too low for me to follow. So I crawl back out with spiders in my hair and dirt all over my clothes...and no cat.

What a day. I sure slept good that night.

First Day of School

The first week of school is probably by far, the most difficult week I have in a typical year. And this one didn’t let me down. In fact, it started out the day BEFORE the first day of school. Bob is doing two a day practices. He was supposed to get the kids up and get them dressed before he left for practice, because Granny had said she was coming to get the early and take them out to our new trailer to work on getting it cleaned up. He was so excited about his first practice that he forgot. I didn’t want them to be in bed when Granny got there, so I had to get them up and get them dressed before I left. I had told Mom that Frank had a meds appointment in Wichita at 3pm and that the three girls had their “meet the teacher” night at 5pm. So she was going to have the girls back at our main house at 4pm so they’d have time to clean up.



So I take Frank to his appointment. The doctor decided to completely change every one of Frank’s meds…right in time for school to start the next day. That sounds like a GREAT idea…change all his meds on the first day of school. So I go by the pharmacy to get his new meds and they are out of stock. So I drive home with Frank, and it’s after 4pm after I get there. There is no sign of Granny and the girls. I call her cell phone and get no answer. I figure that if I drive out to the property they’ll be on their way in and I’ll miss them. So I wait ‘til 5pm and finally head out there. Granny had worked hard all day (the trailer looked GREAT by the way) and had forgotten about meet the teacher. So I rush the girls home to get their school supplies. They are in play clothes, swim suites and covered in paint, and we don’t have time to change. So I take them to “meet” their teachers….look out school…here comes the Pooligans.



After that we went back out to the land to swim in the pool and I started a bon fire. We roasted marshmallows. They wanted to spend the night and didn’t want to leave. I explained they had to get up early and go to school the next day. I was finally able to drag them home, get everyone bathed and in bed. We get lunches made, backpacks and instruments ready. By now its 9:30pm. Bob came in a few minutes later from football practice. He walks in the door and says “Juuulie” and I can tell by the tone of his voice that something isn’t good. He said “I just ran over someone’s cat…..and it’s dead.” So we walked back up the street and there is the poor dead kitty. We don’t know who it belongs to so we start knocking on doors. We finally locate the right neighbor. The cat belongs to his two little boys. We apologize profusely, and their Dad is really nice about it.



So we go home and go to bed. Then Day TWO begins…..



Libby is so excited about starting school that she got up at 4AM. By the time the rest of us get up and start getting ready she is so grouchy and hateful that no one can stand to be around her. She jerks open the fridge door so hard that it hits the back of Carlie’s heel and draws blood. So Carlie comes to me in the bathroom crying. I get her taken care of. Then Madi had this plastic stick shaped toy that makes noises. Carlie had it, and Libby was trying to reach over her head and take it away from her. Carlie let go of it, and it pops back and cracks Libby on the head. This makes her furious so she whacks MADI across the back with it…never did understand why she whacked Madi and not Carlie. So Madi comes in my bathroom bawling and has a big red welt across her back. So Bob takes the toy away from Libby and whacks her across the legs with it several times to see how SHE likes being hit with it…and now Libby is bawling too.



Frank now goes to Junior High which is in a different town. It’s on my way to work so we decide that I will drop him by school on my way. At 7am, Carlie is ready to go to school and insists that we take her RIGHT THEN. We try to explain to her that she isn’t supposed to be at school until 7:50am, and they only let us take them up there at 7:30am as a favor to Bob because he’s a teacher. But she throws an awful fit that she wants to go right then. So she’s sitting in my bathroom bawling. Then I ask her why she’s crying….and she says her eyes are hurting. I tell her that her eyes are hurting because she’s CRYING. Ugh.



So I’m trying to get a befuddled Frank and all his stuff in the minivan to leave…and I’m already running late. He starts crying because he’s nervous about his first day of Jr. High and he can’t find all his stuff. So we get in the minivan, and I realize I haven’t given him his new medicine. Did I mention that it was raining??? I dash back up the steps to the house and hang my toe on the first step, land on the side of my ankle on the second step and ROLL across the wet porch. So I get up, go in the house….errrr limp into the house….change my clothes and get his medicine.



I get to work, and my beloved Blackberry (Crackberry) is not on my hip where it’s supposed to be. I don’t know if I left it at home or if it flew into the bushes when I fell up the porch.



Awwwww….those good old days of school.

Living Life in a Fish Bowl

Usually and I tell stories about my kids….but I’m going to tell one on myself today. There is absolutely nothing normal about me or my life. Nor can I have a typical vacation. Memorial Day and the Redden Reunion turned out to be no exception!!



Bob and the kids went down on Wednesday. I had to work and didn’t go down until Saturday morning. So we had two vehicles down there. We had a great day on Saturday and went to the Reunion on Sunday. Bob and I had rented a nearby hotel room because my in-law house was full. Two of my Sister-in-laws were there along with one of their husbands and my grown niece. We decided we’d stay in the hotel room with all four kids on Sunday night and then get up that morning and head back to KS. We were going to stop by Tulsa on the way and see the older kids’ birthday family as well.



About 5pm on Sunday, I start throwing up. We go back to the hotel hoping it will pass quickly. Bob took the four kids down to the indoor pool so that I could rest. He was in the exercise room, watching the kids through the glass wall. He saw Libby dunk Madi and Carlie. And then she dunked Frank. We’ve told her and told her to leave him alone and he’s have severe issues with his temper and anger right now. When she dunked him, he chased her all the way out of the pool with murder in his eyes. She got up on a pool chair to get away from him and still her pursued her and punched her on the leg as hard as he could. All this happened before Bob could get to them. When Bob pulled him out of the pool, he got aggressive with Bob and started cursing at him and got in his face. Bob pushed him (not slammed him) up against a wall to contain him. Another gentleman at the pool saw this happening and tried to intervene. He was Christian man wearing a cross and told Bob something along the lines that he needed to parent in a Christian and loving manner. Bob explained to him that we believed the same way he did, but this was somewhat a special situation.



When they came back to the room, I remember them telling me that Frank had hit Libby. But I don’t remember them saying anything about the guy at the pool. Frank continued to be aggressive and angry. By that time I was really, really sick and we decided that I needed to go to the ER. I’ve had gastric bypass surgery. And when you get a stomach virus, you get really sick, really fast. We asked Memaw to come stay in the hotel with the kids. So we found ourselves in a small town ER on a holiday weekend near a very large lake. We sat in the waiting room for two hours with me throwing up into a bag as the police brought in handcuffed drunks, people who’d been in fist fights….you name it.



While we were gone, Frank put on his very best show for Memaw. He was throwing a fit and screaming and banging on the floor. We didn’t get home until 4am. Monday morning we sleep in, but we were both exhausted. We both NEED to be at work on Tuesday. We decided to drive the two vehicles home, but I got 30 miles away and called Bob and told him that I couldn’t drive safely. Bob didn’t want to leave his truck in OK, so he called my FIL and BIL. They came in Pepaw’s truck. My BIL Mike drove Bob’s truck home, Bob drove me home, and Pepaw drove his truck. I was so mortified!!! I slept all the way home. We had to cancel the visit with Frank and Libby’s birth family. We got home about 5pm, and had only been home a few minutes when my Mom called. I was half out of it. I told her I’d been throwing up…but I guess I didn’t tell her about the ER or about having the in-laws drive us home.



The next day Frank had a doctor’s appointment, so my Mom brought him to Wichita and I met them there. My Mom goes “What did you think about what they guy said to Bob at the pool?” And I go “Huh???” So she tells me all about it. I’d had no idea. So we have the meeting with the new doctor, and the Frank goes home with Mom. She asked him if he was good while he was in OK. He said “Mostly, except for the part when Mom was in the ER.” And my Mom goes “Huh?” and Frank says “Yeah, we all went back to the hotel room and then Dad took Mom to the ER.” And my Mom goes “And they left you in the hotel ALONE?!?!?!” And Frank says “No, Memaw came and stayed with us.” And then he got to telling Mom about Uncle Mike (my BIL by marriage) and how much he liked him. And he said “Yeah, Uncle Mike drove my Dad’s truck home.” And Mom goes “He did, why would he do that?” And Frank said “Because Pepaw was driving HIS truck.” And Mom goes “Well where was your Mom and Dad?” And Frank said “Well Dad was driving Mom in the minivan because she was sick.” Sooooo…she finally gets it all put together.



So later than night, Memaw calls Bob and tells us she’s really concerned about Frank and how awful he was acting at the hotel. They talk nearly an hour and Bob explains to her that we are in the process of changing Frank’s doctor and therapist. I took a bath, and then called my Mom to see if they made it home alright. Well apparently as soon as Memaw had hung up the phone with Bob, she’d called MY Mom and they’d discussed the situation.



And I love them all dearly and they are wonderfully supportive…and thank God we are all on the same page about what needs to be done for Frank. But I laid there in bed after I hung up with my Mom and thought “I feel like I’m a goldfish living in a round goldfish bowl. I don’t know what’s worse….that everyone can see everything that I do……or that I’m swimming around and around in circles….or that everyone is watching me swim around and around in circles!!!!”



At least my life is never boring.

Manic Monday

I was gone to Dallas last week, and this week I knew that I'd have to go to Corpus Christi on Monday. So all day Sunday I spent getting my presents wrapped up. They looked so pretty under the tree. Sunday night I packed for my trip, and I was really tired.

I woke up at 5am on Monday morning with four hysterical kids in my bed screaming something about presents. It took me a minute to get woke up enough to understand what they were telling me. During the night our cat had unwrapped half of the presents. Ugggggh!!!

I think he got mad because all of the presents I wrapped on Sunday covered the white cloth under the tree. He seemed to think that we put the tree up just for him.

I didn't have time to do anything about it then so I just piled the unwrapped presents in a corner of my room. Someone suggested that my kids might have done it. But I told them that if the kids had done it, they'd done a wonderful job of imitiating little cat bites and claw marks!

I'm flustered and running late, and Libby comes into the bathroom and says "Mom, you are a La Conata." And I go WHAT? And she said it again. I asked "What are you talking about....what does that mean?" And she says "It means pussy in Spanish." I said "WHERE did you hear that?!?!?!?" And she said Frank told her. So I go into the living room and he is looking up dirty words on the internet in SPANISH on an English to Spanish translation website. NICE!!!

So I checked in at the office for an hour or so before I headed to the airport. The flight was late, so we missed our connecting flight from Houston. But luckily we were able to get on another later flight and made it into Corpus Christi at a pretty decent hour.

Hopefully my traveling is done for a while. I got home today and the house was trashed!!!

When I got home today, Carlie said she had slept in my blanket while I was gone because it smelled like her Momma :0)

Wild Night in 2004

The Wildness is still the same when you have as many kids as I do...its just the types of things they get into that changes

Feb 2004 - The kids are 5, 4, 2 and 1 years old.

I had the kids by myself tonight because Bob was running the clock at a Junior High Basketball Tournament. So I made them some dinner. Carlie had not taken a nap at daycare, so I'd put her down for a nap earlier. Before we could eat dinner, I caught Frank sneaking some marshmallows out of the cupboard without asking. He knows this is against in the rules and ended up in a tantrum where I had to hold him down. He hasn't done that in FOREVER. So I put him to bed for a while, and fed Madi and Libby. I made noodles in tomato sauce which everybody loves. By the time they were finished Carlie was awake, and I let Frank get up.

Frank was eating, and I was feeding Carlie yogurt which is her favorite. I'd just given Carlie a bite or two when Libby comes to tell me that Madi has locked herself in the bathroom (I imagine she had a little help, but can't prove it *wink*). So I have to leave Carlie in the high chair who throws a raging fit because she's not done eating her very favorite food...the yogurt. So I have to hunt up the set of little tiny screw drivers to spring the lock on the bathroom door. It only took about 10 minutes, but by the time I got Madi out she was so hysterical she was broken out all over in hives.

When I go back to check on Carlie...she is happily eating the noodles off of Madi's tray and is wearing them all over her. I guess I should be glad she wasn't eating them off the floor or eating cat food.

I then begin the bathing process. I call it a process because bathing four kids under the age of six is NEVER a simple chore. Since the bad incident a few weeks ago where Madi pooped in the tub while Libby was in it, Madi has had a phobia about poop in the tub. I had put Carlie into the tub first, and some of the noodles in her hair washed down into the tub. So when I tried to put Madi in the tub she started bawling hysterically again screaming *No Poop, No Poop, Carlie Pooped.* SOOO...I had to drain the tub with Carlie in it and refill it with clean water. At least now I have two kids clean.....two to go. Libby is in and out quickly and easily, and I am glad of this. Then I assume that Frank will be easy too. Well he was...except for the fact that Madi had gone back into the bathroom when I wasn't looking and threw a roll of toilet paper into his bathwater. Frank's supposed to have the door locked while he's in the tub to prevent such accidents from happening.

SOOOOO....I get all that cleaned up. In the mean time, I am about a month behind on Foster Care Logs which I'm trying to get caught up by Wednesday. Libby's teacher sends home a poster TODAY saying she's the Student of the Week this week and please put pictures and captions on it BY YESTERDAY. Hmmm...how do you do that one? And Frank's homeroom teacher calls while I am dishing Toilet Paper out of his bath water to ask me to please bring two bags of chips to his Valentine's Party on Friday.

Bob walks in the door a few minutes later and cheerfully says *Hi Honey, how was your day?* and can't figure out why I looked daggers at him. LOLOLOL.

Granny's Response

Oh well, those are the happy times you will remember twenty years from now. LOL Love, Mom

Aunt JoLynn's Response

Hahahaha! I am dying laughing at Madi not wanting to get in the tub cause she thought Carlie pooped in there!!

Is it a Full Moon tonight?

He didn't want me to take his picture being ugly, so he put the pan over his face.

For some reason having Frank and Libby together just equals trouble. Frank has been away all week visiting with Memaw and Pepaw in Oklahoma. I had very little problems with the girls while he was gone, and he got into very little trouble while he was away.

He got home late yesterday. The two of them started in on each other first thing this morning. Bobby said he sent Libby to her room early in the day, and she ended up spending a chunk of it there.

Then I came home from work and started dinner. Bobby had to leave for to run the Weight Room as soon as I got home. After we finished dinner, I asked Frank to empty the dishwasher and re-load it. I came back a few minutes later and he is gone, and the dishes are still piled high in the sink. When I called him upstairs he INSISTED that he'd emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it.

Well what he'd done was taken a couple of dishes out, stuck one dirty one back in there and said he was done. Now I was born in the day time, but I wasn't born yesterday.

So I make him empty the dishwasher and reload it while I stand over him. He gets a total attitude. He finally tries to run from me, but I anticipated what he was going to do. I got him by the neck and took him down to the floor before he could get more than a step. We stayed on the floor for close to an hour during which time he told me repeatedly that I was the meanest mom ever. When he was finally back in control of himself and ready to apologize, I let him up so that he could complete the chore of emptying and reloading the dishwasher. THEN he had to do additional chores for me since I'd had to spend so much time making him do the first one the right way. So now I have a really clean house!!!

While I was outside having Frank pull all of the weeds out of the patio, I hear screaming from the house. Madi comes outside dripping wet with a towel half-wrapped around her naked person. She tells me that while in the tub Carlie has thrown a Barbie at her head and caused a big knot. I herd her inside. I find Carlie in the bathtub, naked, looking very guilty. She explains to me that Madi MADE her hit her in the head because Madi was being a TOTAL jerk.

So I tell them they are both going to bed IMMEDIATELY. And not only that, I was going to make Madi sleep in the room they share, and Carlie was going to sleep in MY bed. That was the worst possible thing I could do to them. They begged and pleaded to be allowed to sleep in the same room. I calmly explained that they couldn't stand each other (or at least I thought so from the way they were treating each other) so I didn't want them to have to sleep together.

While they were finishing cleaning up the bathroom, they came up with a plan. They found me in the livingroom and informed me that they had kissed and hugged, so could they please sleep in their room together. So they are in bed right now chattering away to each other like the bestest of friends!!!

Awwwww...the joys of parenting.

Storms and Stitches

Bob runs the weight room for the High School on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. On those days, he needs to leave just as soon as I get home in order to make it on time. Well Thursday, they'd been predicting bad storms all day long. I got home at 5:30pm, and Bob was heading out the door. The storms had already hit Wichita and were quickly heading our way.

Frank came upstairs and asked me if he could go over to the neighbor girl's house. I told him that he needed to stay home. He whined "Well, LIBBY is over therrrrreeee." I told him to go and get Libby, because I wanted them all home when the storm hit.

Well I went ahead and started unwinding from my day, checking the mail, etc. I didn't realize that Frank had never come back from the neighbor girl's. I'd just been home a few minutes when Carlie starts crying in my bedroom. She hardly ever cries when she gets hurt, so when she does cry, I know it's serious. They'd been on my bed playing, and Madi and pulled Carlie by the arm and she hit the post on my bed

LIBBY is also in there with the little girls. I asked her what she was doing in there and she said she'd been asleep in my bed. It briefly registers in my brain "Well, where's Frank then?" But I am trying to take care of Carlie and see where the blood is coming from. She has a hole in the corner of her upper lip about the size of the end of my little finger. It's going to need some stitches.

I'm not freaking out, but there is an edge of panic there. My two-seater sports car is parked behind the SUV. So I decide that I will take Carlie in that to the ER to get stitches. I put her (bleeding and crying) into the car, and then Madi and Libby run out and ask "But what about US?" I realize that I can't leave them there alone...especially not with a huge storm coming. I don't know what I was thinking. So I get Carlie out of my car and into the SUV and get Madi and Libby loaded up and realize that Frank is missing.

He never came back from the neighbor girl's. By now, the storm is really close. The wind is blowing and it's dark. I drive to the neighbor's house, but no one is at home!!! I have NO idea where Frank is. Again, for a split second I think about just leaving him. LOL. I decide that I will drive through the neighborhood looking for him. The winding is blowing, and I'm driving around shouting from my car window "FRANNNKKKK....Where ARE YOU?????" I run into the older lady who lives across the street. She's walking her dog. I ask "Have you seen Frank?" She says "He went that way. He said he was looking for Libby." I go down a few houses and another set of neighbors are sitting out on their porch watching the storm roll in. They again point me in the direction Frank went. Eventually, I catch up to him, and get him loaded into the car.

We make it to the ER right before the storm hits. By this time Carlie has quite crying, and she's completely calm, cool and collected. Much more so that I am!! She was SO brave at the ER. She told the ER doctor, that she wants to be a doctor too, but she only wants to take care of 1st graders! They put a stitch in her lip and send us home. She did not move or make a sound as they gave her a shot in her lip and sewed it up.

On the way home, I call Granny to tell her what's happened. She is on her way to the cellar. The storm has just hit their area. Granny and Papaw had just made it to their cellar when a small tornado went over their house. It brought down one of their trees along with tons of other big limbs. It lifted up the edge of the roof of their house as well. But they were lucky they were in the cellar and there was no other damage.

By 8pm it was all over. Whew!!!