Seven Snippets: Easter Egg FAILs, an Eventful Return to Children’s Hospital, and a Non-Scary Lion

— 1 —

I can never be accused of going overboard with a secular Easter. Other things, yes. I’m particularly bad at Easter candy/eggs.

Exhibit A: A few years ago, Sarah Kate needed filled Easter eggs for school, which I realized (remembered?) about fifteen minutes before we were to leave the house. Mr. Andi swiped some plastic eggs from our neighbor’s Easter yard display and I filled the eggs with random leftover candy I found in the pantry.

Exhibit B: Sarah Kate got a lot of Easter-themed gifts during and after her hospital stay. Rather than go to the store and purchase original items for Nathan’s Easter basket, we just swiped some stuff from her stash.

UPDATE: My friend Dawn reminded me of an Exhibit C – two years ago when she bought Easter goodies for my kids and brought them to my house for me (in my defense, Sarah Kate’s cat died unexpectedly and Nathan was in the hospital in semi-quarantine that week – which of course doesn’t excuse my procrastination).

Mom. Of. The. Year. – Twice. Three times.

— 2 —

Sarah Kate got her first set of casts off on Wednesday – they did it through the OR under anesthesia because they were not “just” changing the casts, but also placing her legs into full extension. She got to choose her color this time and she picked…Tie Dye. It’s really more like a girlie camo pattern (and not as bright as they appear in this photo).

— 3 —

You know The Cowardly Lion, but do you know The Non-Scary Lion?

— 4 —

Ever since she left the hospital, I’ve been terrified to drive Sarah Kate anywhere. Because of the casts, she’s had to sit in the front passenger seat with it slid all the way back and her feet still touched the glove box. I’ve been living in fear of a car accident when she was in the car.

Well…my fear was realized on the way to Birmingham on Tuesday afternoon.

Construction crews had one lane temporarily closed and at the time of the accident my lane was stopped. The woman traveling behind me didn’t notice the line of stopped traffic (!!!) and slammed into the back of us. Fortunately, we are all okay and my car is sorta-drivable (it seems to run fine but the exhaust system is bent so we have to be very careful until it’s fixed) so we made it to Birmingham for her cast change and back. It truly could have been a horrible, horrible scenario.

I called my mom later that afternoon to let her know about it and she asked me what time it happened. As it turns out, at around 12:45 she felt a strong need to pray for us to be kept safe on our trip, so she and my stepdad prayed aloud together right then. That was less than five minutes before we were hit – possibly at the exact instant of impact.

— 5 —

Our trip was also full of “Woo-Woo-Woo Cars” (and trucks). “Woo-woo-woo car” is Nathan’s word for police cars, and he got to see two of them up close and personal on Tuesday – that of the state trooper who worked the accident and a marine policeman who happened upon us before the trooper arrived and assisted. He even got to ride in the marine policeman’s vehicle, but he was less than thrilled (i.e., he cried). He may have thought he was being kidnapped (or arrested?). On Wednesday afternoon, my dad took him to the local fire station. He was much more enthralled with the fire trucks.

— 6 —

Since Sarah Kate had to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m. for her cast change, Nathan stayed home with my dad and stepmom. My dad got up around 5:30 to shower, checking on Nathan first to make sure he was still sleeping. When he stepped out of the shower, he heard a little noise and cracked open the door of the bathroom. There stood Nathan in the dark with my dad’s iPhone in his hand. He could see that it was on so he grabbed it and saw “Rick” (the principal of the architecture firm my dad contracts for) on the screen. He hung it up real quick and hoped that the phone hadn’t woken “Rick” up.

A couple of hours later, he spoke to Rick and asked if he’d gotten a call from him around 5:45 that morning, which Rick said he had. My dad laughed and told him the story – that it was actually Nathan calling and he’d just gotten out of the shower and was still wet. Because, you know, when you’re a granddad something like that is a cute, funny story about your adorable grandson. That’s when Rick said, “Well, it wasn’t actually a phone call. It was a FaceTime.”

— 7—

Don’t forget about the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle! It’s only available for six days and then it’s gone!

But even better than the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle is something I’ve been looking forward to for months years – Jen’s book comes out this week!

Have a great weekend!

This post was inspired by and is linked to Conversion Diary‘s 7 Quick Takes.