Burns of the second degree variety

This weekend was Michael's section camp out. It was suppose to be Friday night thru Sunday, but we opted to skip the camping part and instead decided to head to Denver's Cherry Creek State Park to meet up with everyone for the cookout yesterday afternoon.

We packed all the gear - and snacks - we would need to spend the rest of the evening visiting friends and having fun. We arrived just before 4:00 and unloaded. Michael took the boys for a walk around the camp site, then they came back and roasted their own hotdogs over the open fire while our host grilled up everything else. (The face painting was from the zoo in the morning).
Our hosts allowed the boys to use their camper to watch movies, so they spent a bit of time watching a movie, then outside playing and eating and were really well occupied and safe since there were so many adults and older children present. And Rachael was her normal, happy self!!

We enjoyed our evening, but figured that by the time we had driven the hour home and gotten unloaded and everyone settled it would be pretty late, so at about 7:30 we began packing up. We had EVERYTHING packed and were ready to load the boys in the van (Rachael had already been buckled in and was snoozing!), when Eli said to me "mommy, that was hot" and pointed to a stray hot coal on the ground outside the fire pit. By this point he was squeezing his finger with a panicked, painful look on his face...

I took a look at his fingers and asked him what happened and he told me he had picked it up. Yeouch! I immediately sent him to dunk his hand in a cooler full of ice and water. Then looked over to Jacob and it turns out he had done the same thing. Repeat.

So, we gave them cups of ice water to keep dunking their hands in on our drive home - it was quite an interesting journey home with two boys crying and in quite a bit of pain. We made a stop at Walgreens for some BurnStuff and proceeded home to bandage them up. Turns out they both have 2nd degree burns in small spots on their fingers. Eli has blisters on his left thumb, index and middle fingers. Jacob only managed to touch it with his thumb, but his blister is a bit larger and looks worse.

(Bedtime last night with bandages on fingers.)

They both seem quite a bit better today and aren't in nearly as much pain. It's funny how these things happen just as you're getting ready to leave, when you think you've made it through the outing without any injuries...

What we're up to.

I've been MIA for a couple of weeks and will be for a couple more weeks...

Eli, Rachael and I are in Florida visiting my family and having ourselves a grand time! And Michael and Jacob are in Australia visiting Michael's family (that's where he grew up and everyone except his mom and 1 sister still live over there). It's strange that it worked out the way it did, but we are essentially on 2 separate vacations.

I've posted some photos of what we've been up to on my flickr page. I don't have enough time to upload them all here, but you're welcome to hop over there and check them out.

We're staying with my parents and we've been to the beach several times, been out on my dad's boat, seen my grandparents, played lots with the cousins (my brother and sister-in-law and their 2 daughters live on the same property as my parents and it makes it easy for playing together) and we are really enjoying ourselves!

I won't be home and back to a normal routine until the 11th of July, so expect the hiatus to continue.

Fun weekend!

Wow! It's Monday again!

We had an absolutely wonderful weekend that I must tell you about!

Michael took the day off on Friday and we had a family day spent in Denver. We went to the Aquarium (tickets purchased at a discount on base!), had a picnic lunch in the park and went to the Denver Museum of Science in Nature (free for military families!!!!). Then we had dinner at CiCi's pizza, I know, not the healthiest place to eat but it's rare because we don't have a CiCi's in Colorado Springs.

Saturday was very busy with Jacob's t-ball pics at 7:30, his first t-ball game at 8:00 and then a birthday party for one of our friends (who is only 2 weeks younger than Eli) complete with water slide and kiddie pool!! The boys had a blast!

Sunday was spent relaxing after church. I made a quick trip to Walgreens and Dollar Tree in search of new water guns (all of ours were broken). Other than that, we didn't go anywhere. Michael's request for Father's Day was to watch the PGA golf in the afternoon and he was wonderful to record it on the DVR and watch it delayed so he could spend some time outside with the kids spraying them with the water hose!!

The T-shirt thief

Friday evening we went with a group of friends to our local AAA baseball team's (the Sky Sox) military appreciation game. Active duty (including spouse and children get free tickets). Our friend didn't get our tickets early enough in the week and we got suck with tickets for the grass - which is from third base to the outfield wall on the left field side of the field. This wasn't a bad place to be sitting. We all brought our blankets and had an area where the kids (there were 6) could play without bothering others!

If you've ever been to AAA a baseball game, you know that sometimes between innings they play these silly games with either the entire crowd or just a few select people. Well, we were doing this see-which-side-of-the-field-can-yell-the-loudest type game to get t-shirts thrown into our side of the crowd. Our side won and they began throwing t-shirts up into the crowd. One came right to us and landed right in the middle of our blankets and as the kids were all scrambling and tripping over each other to try to get to it this man from a few blankets over runs up and just swipes it right off our blanket (he even had to reach over one of the kids). At that point Jacob had been the closest to the shirt and as he was going for it this man just stole it right out from under him......... SHOCK. And all the other people around us saw what happened and you could hear them talking about how awful it was.

Michael got up, but sat back down (I think he needed to calm down a little before he confronted the guy). By this time, Jacob had started bawling, he was sobbing horribly saying things like "that man took my shirt" and "That was mine, I want it back" all while sobbing VERY loudly. Michael finally said something to the guy "hey man, he's only 4" and "that was pretty rude" and "nice lesson you're teaching to your kids sitting there with you".... UGH.

I guess his conscience (or maybe the fact that so many people saw and heard what was going on) got to him and he sent his 7/8ish year old daughter to return the shirt. I can't believe he'd send his daughter to return that, but then again, I guess people like that can't stand up and admit their mistakes. Jacob was totally happy to get the shirt and said thank you to the girl and everything!

A few minutes passed and Michael went over and shook the guys hand and said something to him - I don't know what because he was too far away, but it all turned out ok in the end. I'm sad that Jacob had to learn how people can really be in such a rough way. It broke my heart to not be able to do anything about it, but I'm glad it all worked out.