Blessed

Last Thursday was a really bad day. It all started bright and early at around 7:30am. Claire went off to school, and Chris went off to work. I was feeling lucky that the baby was still asleep, so I decided to throw a load of laundry in before he was up and hanging on my legs. A little while later he woke up and I went to put in his hearing aids, like I do every morning. They weren't in their container. I looked in all the usual places where they could sometimes be forgotten. Not anywhere. So I called Chris. He didn't answer. So I waited. Then I was getting pretty anxious about it, so I texted him again. Sure enough he knew where they were. He had left them in his shirt pocket when putting him to bed the night before. Immediately my mind flashed to what shirt he had been wearing the day before, and I KNEW instantly that it was in the pile that made it into the wash. I raced up the stairs and took the shirt out. Sure enough they were both still in the pocket...soaking wet. They had made it through almost the entire cycle. I was devastated. I quickly dried them the best I could and put them in their overnight drier. I didn't know what else to do. For those that don't know, hearing aids are very expensive, and we are past the 1 year replacement warranty. I was certain that we would be getting new ones for our Christmas and anniversary presents.

As you can imagine, I was pretty angry. I slammed my computer keyboard tray, which apparently scared my cat...and broke my keyboard. So the cat started hissing, clawing, and growling at me. I was definitely not in the mood for that. I decided that I would just walk away and let him cool off. That didn't work out too well. He started following me around the house, trying to jump at me while growling and hissing. I actually got pretty scared. He has never acted like that before. Eventually, I just didn't feel safe anymore so I called Chris in tears to come and rescue me from the cat. Thankfully, he was able to come right away. Of course the cat was behaving himself in front of Chris, but he did put him in his cage for me before going back to work. I drove the cat to the shelter with the intention of leaving him there. Unfortunately, they wouldn't take him. They were full. So I brought him home, released him in the house, and left to go run other errands, resigned to the fact that the cat was going nowhere. About 3 hours later we came home with groceries. I figured everything would be back to normal. Grace went in the house just fine. Then, with my arms full of grocery bags, I went to walk in the door, and the cat decided to block the door hissing and growling at me again. I had it! I told Grace to open the front door, and the cat went outside. He just sat around in the front for a couple hours looking through the bushes. I opened it up around dinnertime and he was gone. I haven't seen him since. It was a rough day.

I let the hearing aids dry for 24hours and then tried them out. To my amazement they actually worked! I even had them checked out by the audiologist and they are perfectly fine. We are so very blessed to have another chance. I'm still shocked that they are working at all, let alone not damaged.

Halloween night

Halloween was a pretty low key event after the weekend that we had, with birthday parties and the ward activity. The kids dressed up again, and stopped by both Grandma's houses for special treats. Then we hit the neighborhood for some candy. The girls were much less timid this year about going up to doors. I took Neil in early because it was really cold, and he was falling asleep in the stroller. Grace ended up coming in early too, because of a melt down over not getting candy at a particular door. It was quite strange. Oh well. They had plenty of loot for me to "check" at the end of the night. Another successful Halloween! Here are my cute kiddos...a bee, a "butterfly", and Lightning McQueen. (Grace apparently hates ladybugs, but she really liked her "butterfly" costume, so we ran with it. I cringed a bit every time someone said how cute she was as a ladybug. I thought for sure that would be the cause of a meltdown. Fortunately, it didn't phase her. She just knew that they were all confused.)

Tooth Fairy

Claire has been looking like a shark lately. Not in a evil, scary way...she just happened to have two rows of teeth on the bottom. Yep, her adult teeth grew in behind her baby teeth. It had been looking pretty crazy. Finally, the baby teeth started to really loosen up. She was terrified of the pain that surely would come from pulling them out. Then on Sunday night I asked her if I could "look" at it. I gently wiggled it and saw that it would rotate all the way around and point down at the floor. Uh, ok Claire, it's really time to get it out. So I just grabbed it and pop. Easy as pie. She was super excited! And it didn't hurt at all! Now she has a nice $1 bill compliments of the tooth fairy, and we can get to work on the next tooth. :)