A Quick Trip to Denver

After a long and terribly boring February, I felt very antsy that I needed to get out and do something different.  One day after thinking about Hannah for a few days, I said to Jared "What if I went to Denver?" and he said "Do it!  Go Tomorrow!"  It was really sudden, but I called Hannah and she liked the idea because Eric was about to go on a business trip and didn't want to be all alone for a long time.   We packed up some stuff and took off the next morning.  Lily had school, so she stayed home with Jared and I took just Jack and Annie.  The drive was not too bad, being pregnant I got really achy by the end and Jack was super tired and whiny.  Of course, neither kid slept the entire time.

On the second day we were there we went to a playground,

Jack rode in Eric's new truck that he'd just bought.  Jack was still really tired from the drive and not sleeping, and when he's tired, he gets really clumsy (he was excessively tired on the day he broke his collar bone and also when he got stitches in his chin).  When we got back to the house, we were getting the girls out of the car and talking, I heard Jack start to cry.  I immediately brushed it off since I knew he was sleepy, until he came over to me.  I looked down at him and saw blood on his hand.  I thought it was a simple hand cut until I glanced up and saw a big gaping hole in his eyebrow and tons of blood coming down his face.  Instantly I looked at Eric and said "That needs stitches.  We have to go."  It was a gusher, there were blood drops all over the driveway.  We hopped back into the truck and started driving.  I got a little freaked out because on the way there he started to get sleepy and I wasn't sure if it was because he was so exhausted or he was concussed.  Once at the instacare he was calm and brave and everything went fine.  He got only 4 stitches, but the Dr who took them out said he would have put in a couple more.

No one saw him fall, but I think what happened was that he was climbing out of Eric's truck and tried to step down onto the step bar, which we have on our truck, but wasn't on Eric's, so he just went head first a few feet onto the concrete.  Poor kid has a big, heavy head and it always lands first.  Getting the stitches out was far more traumatic.  He freaked out and it took 4 people to hold him down.  He's still got a pretty good scar.  I'm hoping it will heal up a bit better, if not, it still looks kinda cool.

The thing that surprised me was how calm I was.  I am generally a really paranoid mom and I think a lot  about worst case scenarios and horrible things that could happen.  I fight against it so that my poor kids don't  feel my anxiety.  Jack's had several big injuries and when I think about them I get really freaked out, but when it happens, there's some kind of weird mother trance that happens and I just click into go-mode.  Hannah said she got really nauseous, but I didn't freak out at all.

Besides the eyebrow drama, the rest of the trip was great.  We hung out around the house a lot and relaxed because little Baby Aaron is still only a few months old.  We watched shows, blew bubbles, took baths, etc.

Cate and Annie have a complicated relationship.  Cate likes things to be done just right and Annie likes to do whatever she wants.  They fought a lot but I'm confident that in a few years they'll be friends.

Jack and Cate get along very well, they seem to have similar stubborn personalities. There is also not any competition between them, like there is with Annie.

The last day we went to a bouncy house place.  It was a good time.

No one slept very well the whole time.  I had bad pregnancy insomnia and Jack just won't sleep ever.  I was planning on leaving around 5 in the morning, but I woke up around 3 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to just start driving.  It was good because the kids slept for a couple hours, but bad because once I got on the road, I got sleepy.  Plus the first part of the trip is through the mountains and I'm super paranoid about hitting deer, so I ended up driving really slowly.

One crazy thing that happened was that I almost ran us out of gas.  In general, I'm kind of an idiot about remembering to get gas, it's just not something I think about until the beep happens.  On the way home, I was so tired and distracted with other stuff that I forgot to stop in Green River as I had planned and didn't realize it until I was in the middle of nowhere, with a hundred miles to the next station, and was it dangerously low.  It was to the point where I was drafting behind trucks and coasting down hills.  Luckily I rolled into Wellington on fumes (All the way from Denver to Wellington on one tank! Not too shabby).  Once there I lost my wallet.  I was searching through garbage cans, the whole gas station, everywhere.  After 10 minutes of panic, I found it on top of the car.  Did I mention I was pregnant and very tired?

Despite all this, it was a nice trip and I'm glad I went.