More Good News, Bad News

The good news: I was right!
The bad news: I was right.

I needed to get Caleb into the pediatrician for one last check up before we go to the US, so we all headed to the hospital this morning. Josh went to a Sports Medicine clinic and the rest of us headed to the pediatrician. By the time my kids were done with the doctor, Josh still hadn't seen anyone. We met up with him for a quick cuppa joe (strawberries n cream frap for Josh and Bella), and then we had to head home to pick up Kenzie from school, so we left him to wait for the doctor.

Just as I was pulling into school, Josh texted, "Unhappy Triad?" My gasp was loud enough to freak the kids out a little. In addition to the torn ACL that we were praying against, the unhappy triad also includes injury to the MCL and meniscus! Unhappy, indeed.

So the kids and I prayed on our drive home from school. Josh had his MRI about an hour later, and shortly after that the doctor confirmed that only the ACL needed repair! The MCL was just a little stretched, and there was a little trauma to the meniscus. On the MRI, the doctor showed Josh bruises on the femur and fibula where they collided with each other during the injury! Crazy.

Anyway, I went from praying that there was no ACL tear to being so grateful that it was ONLY an ACL tear! Funny how it works out like that sometimes.

He is scheduled to have surgery on Wednesday afternoon. He is supposed to go on a ministry trip on Sunday to a southern island, but the doctor said he can't travel until June 6, so he will join them then. Meanwhile, the rest of us will keep our plans the same. I'll be with him for the surgery (I even asked Josh to ask the surgeon if I could be in the OR! You never know in this country...) and his first 5 post-op days, and then I'll leave him in the capable hands of friends. Then he'll meet up with us somewhere over the rainbow.

We had the plan for him to fly into Kansas City, pick up our vehicle and then drive to NJ. We'd all hang out for a few days and then drive back to KC, via a family wedding in IL! Now I can't imagine anything more uncomfortable for a post-up knee than a cross-country drive (except for a cross-world flight, but that's unavoidable.) Thankfully, God had this situation in mind when He created Josh and his (not-so) charming procrastination characteristic. Josh kept putting off booking his flight, so thankfully he isn't locked into any kind of plan. He can stick with the original plan of flying into KC, he can fly directly to NJ, or even fly into Miami and cruise on up to NY. (Although, if he does that, he'd better show up with some serious bling for yours truly!)

Anyway, we're both excited to have it taken care of and would really appreciate your prayers as he goes through the surgery, the anxiety that goes along with surgery, the post-op, the rehab, and the travels and trials he has ahead of him.

He'll be in good hands once he gets to the US! His brother is a physical therapist so he'll get him back in basketball shape in no time. And I'm training for a marathon, so I'll be good for some boot-camp style motivation. "What? Are you kidding me? I'm running 20 miles today and you're whining about bending your knee a few degrees? Boo-hoo!"

Two of the pastors from his basketball team came by to see him tonight. They felt so badly that Josh got hurt and were so concerned. They said that the whole gym was fired when he got injured, thinking that the other guy had purposefully taken Josh's knee out. Josh kept assuring them that that wasn't the case, he just landed on someone's foot and his knee took it from there. 

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Prior to all of this, Mackenzie had Literacy Day (which she pronounces "Litra-cy", thanks to her South African teacher). It's a fun occasion, and I always enjoy trying to guess what all the characters are. Mackenzie picked hers out from Purple Princess Gets the Prize. 

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, Deacon set up camp in front of our air conditioner with a pillow, a blanket, and a good book. Sounds like heaven.

Good News, Bad News

The good, actually great, news is that my mom arrived on Friday afternoon! The kids are beyond excited to have her here. They all had cards made to welcome her. Caleb just stared at her for the first day. You could almost read his thoughts on his face..."I feel like I know this lady..."

We put her straight to work in doing one of the things she does best - roast dinners. She made a delicious lamb roast and we had an Aussie friend over to enjoy it with us. Other than that, she's been catching up with friends, reading books to the kiddos, and fighting jet lag.

So onto the bad news.

 Last night, Josh had a ministry game that was about an hour away on his motorbike. At about 10:30 pm, he called me and told me that he thought he had torn something in his knee. I was worried about him getting home, but he said he could make it. It was blindingly painful at first, but then the pain subsided enough for him to function.

So when he came home, I put my athletic training training to work and tested his knee for an ACL tear. It was already pretty swollen, but I'm pretty sure that tibia was sliding forward. I'm praying that I got it all wrong!!!

 He's been RICE-ing like a boss and we took him to the ER this morning. Sadly, the MRI machine was all booked up for today and the Ortho was in surgery, so even though the visit cost much less than an ER visit in the US, it was still a useless $23. So we came home and Josh has looked like this all day.

Someone let Josh borrow a crutch, so after we got it up to 6'8" size, the rest of us have been playing with it. You know, machine gun crutches, baton crutch twirling, general poking.

But the kids are under strict instructions to to be gentle with Daddy these days. Deacon keeps asking Josh if it still hurts and wants to know exactly what happened. Bella and Kenzie are sweet in taking care of him, but really, the crutch is the main attraction.

Chemicals are Good!

When Josh and I first came back from the US after our last furlough, I told him that I wanted to get my hair rebonded before our next furlough. I don't know if many people know what it is, but I didn't know until I came here. Rebonding is pretty much the opposite of a perm. Instead of making hair kink-tastic, it gets chemically and permanently straightened and silkified. I think it's quite expensive in the US, but here it ranges between a P799 on the side of the road to a P11,000 at a high-end salon. ($20-$275)

Anyway, much like a perm, you can't get it wet for 3 days. That's fine with me. The killer is that you can't put your hair into a ponytail or even tuck it behind your ears for the same amount of time! I couldn't ever find the chunk of time where hair down for 3 days straight would work for me.

 Queue the knee pain. During my last few runs, my left knee started getting really painful going downhill, which is a crying shame since downhill is supposed to be the best part! I kept running through the pain, but it started to get worse and more frequent, so I decided I needed to stop for a few days.

I think the pain means I need new shoes, which is bizarre to me because I just got these shoes in November. But all the running web sites will tell you that running shoes have a shelf life of 300-500 miles, and then they run out of quality cushioning. I've put well over 500 miles on these, so I'm hoping that a replacement will take care of the knee pain! Unfortunately, I have to wait until I get to the US to purchase new ones.

Anyway, do you see where I'm going with this? I shouldn't be running and I can't run without a ponytail and I can't wear a ponytail after rebonding. Badabing badaboo, basic Algebra told me that today was the day that I should rebond my hair. (Right? A = B, B = C, therefore A = C? Kinda?)

 I took a "before" photo while I was driving to the salon. Ads always feature a dumpy and unhappy "before" gal, so I went with it! I'm hoping the other drivers on the road were oblivious to my mini photo shoot.

I was going to take pics of the entire process, but I felt silly when I wasn't in the privacy of my car. But if I had, you would've seen a guy named Fed shampooing and blow-drying my hair. Then he and Miss Malou applied the product and left it on for about an hour. After another rinse and another blow-dry by Fed, he and Miss Malou took straighteners to my hair. They did about an inch of hair at a time, so it took a while to get the entire head done. Then they applied some other cream product. Then ol' Fed rinsed and blow-dried one more time and Miss Malou gave me a trim. And....VOILA! Dumpy and unhappy girl is delighted by her silken locks!

I just cut a nice chunk of time out of my getting-ready time, which will be fantastic while we're in the US! It doesn't matter if I just woke up, just showered, just came in from dancing in da club (yeah right), or just finished running, I'll have straight and shiny locks. Some women are blessedly born with it, and some of us need the chemicals. It'll just be a little secret between you, me and the rest of the blogosphere!

Finishing Up

We're tying up all kinds of loose ends these days in an attempt to be ready to leave in T-minus 16 days-WHAT?! I still can't believe it. Multiple times daily, I say to Josh, "This term has flown by!" I'm so excited to get to the US, but I will miss this place a lot!

I keep seeing and doing thing that I want to make sure I do one last time before I leave. I have a long list. But I'm pretty sure it can't be as long as my To-Do list for the US! I just have to share this one thought before I get to my post...I just got some clothes altered. First of all, they cost $2/piece to alter and second of all, I like my jeans better now than when I first bought them! Hello, that'll make your day.

 Anyway...

 Bella's little preschool class sang a song in chapel this week. I do my long runs early early on Friday mornings, so Josh is on primping duty for school that day. I forgot to tell him to make sure Bella's hair looked cute, clothes matched, shoes intact, etc. But he did a good job! When I showed up at chapel, she was ready to rock. They were missing some of the boys in their class, but the girls did a great job. It doesn't get much cuter than preschoolers! I love how they fidget so much and how they look around the room frantically until their eyes land on mommy and daddy and their expression reflects genuine happiness. Precious!

We've had a busy weekend! It seems like all the young kids these days are born in May, because we've been swamped with birthday parties! Swamped in a great way, of course. Who doesn't love a great party? I'll tell you who...the mom who has very little self-control when it comes to birthday cake!

This morning was the 4th birthday of the sweet little daughter of one of my life-long friends since 1st grade. She was born just before our last furlough and I got to snuggle her when she was 6 weeks old.

 I know this isn't a great pic, but since I still don't have my memory card, I was only able to capture one lonely little photo from the party (I took video of Bella's song and it was taking up all the memory). This was a game called the Princess and the Frog. Each child had a paper with an animal on it. The Princess would walk around blindfolded and listen while each child made their animal noise. When she found the frog, she gave him or her a kiss! A Hershey kiss, that is. Deacon caught on really quick and started making a "ribbit" noise every time, even though he was supposed to be a chicken, elephant, rooster, and cow.

We had to leave in the middle of that party to hit another party! Today was the pizza party for all of the Saturday morning basketball players. It was fun for the kids to get their ribbons and medals, look at their slideshow, and of course, eat more food! Deacon was exhausted by this time and literally fell asleep sitting up!

Now I must cut this off because, yes, I have one more party to go to today. But this one is for grown-up girls only. Yey! I'm excited for some girl time with my friends.

The kids were so excited to celebrate Mothers Day! Caleb wanted to be the first to yell "Happy Mothers Day" to me, so he went ahead and did that at 1:00am. Being 9 months, I'm not sure that he understands the concept of Mothers Day and that it's frowned upon to wake her up in the middle of the night. Bella seemed to be the most excited, as she walked in with 7 Mothers Day cards that she had made.

She also made a necklace for me. I couldn't quite get it over my head, but I was prepared to rock that beaded crown to church! After a little manuveuring, though, I got it past my head and onto my neck.

I had a terrific Mothers Day! Breakfast in bed, a little shopping, Chinese food (the American kind, not the authentic - yum!!) for lunch, a quick nap, Bible study, a 3 mile run by myself and a 3 mile walk and talk with Michele. Bliss.

 (Insert segue here)

 I've been going through everything, deciding what to pack away, what to bring to the US, and what to throw away. When I pulled out this old basketball hoop of Deacons, Caleb knew right away what he was supposed to do with it. I gave him a ball and he went to it, sending it through the hoop over and over again. That is, when he wasn't trying to eat the hoop...

Now he is down for his morning nap. I glanced over at him and saw just the one lone leg sticking out from his blanket. Deacon used to pull his blanket completely over his face too. Hopefully Caleb won't wake up in a pool of sweat!

Milestones

That boy Caleb went from crawling to pulling up to creeping in about 5 minutes. It may have been longer than that, but it sure seemed like an instant transition!

He is into EVERYTHING! We put him down in the living room, surrounded by all kinds of great toys. He takes a look, yawns with displeasure, and heads straight for the telephone cords. He loves cords. Anything that is attached to an appliance is his thing.

Just like all of our kids at 9 months old, he runs around in only a diaper for most of the day. The word "blazing" is a good one to describe our weather right now. However, I'm going to have to put clothes on him constantly now because he's figured out how, and loves to take off his diaper. Thankfully, there haven't been any catastrophic messes to clean up!

Caleb has two sweet little teeth poking through his bottom gums. Just as he gets his, Bella loses the same one, so she is now without her two bottom teeth. I love what it does to her voice. She has a bit of a whistle when she talks now.

She put her P100 tooth fairy money into safe-keeping when she went to school. But when she got home, she couldn't find it. The poor girl was devastated and inconsolable! She was searching all over the house through her tears. I know Josh decided to plant another P100 bill near her safe-keeping spot, but I think they actually found her original money. So we all packed up and headed to the Mini-Stop convenience store to pick out some goodies. It was a fun night celebrating Bella's tooth victory!

Plie With the Pros

This week Faith hosted a Christian ballet company who took a little time to teach the girls ballet class. My girls were so excited about the opportunity! Bella spent the morning with her friend, Faith. They looked so cute all done up for class, I had to take a picture. Faith should take that poker face to Vegas!

I love watching the focus on their faces as they try to get everything just right. The feet, the knees, the hands, the arms, the chin, the expression, it's too much to concentrate on!

Here are some of the little girls with the professionals. They were really sweet and good with the girls. They taught them a lot of new, fun things! Oh, and don't think that I wasn't mentally taking notes and trying out the tricks when I got home. (They don't call them "tricks")

Kenzie's class of older girls did even more complicated tricks...maneuvers?...moves?...stunts?

I maxed out my memory card at ballet. I can't find my regular memory card, so I've been using the one that came with the camera. It holds a good 10 photos, so you gotta make them count!