Do bad things come in three?

So first we had some lunatic knock on our door at 1:00 in the morning and scare the holy crap out of me. Then Maddie smashes her finger in the door and has to have big time surgery. And last but not least, I was called to be Primary President at church. (That's the children's organization for those who aren't familiar with LDS jargon.) Okay, so being Primary president isn't a bad thing, of course. I'm actually looking forward to it. However, it's a BIG responsiblility. When the bishop asked me if I'd accept the call to serve, I looked at Aaron (who is in the bishopric) and gave him a semi-evil eye. He just said, "I told him May would be a good time." :)
TIFANI--this makes me miss you and your sweet kids!! I keep thinking of our awesome Primary in Provo! Things are a little different in the real world. :)

Little Man

In case anyone was wondering, Wesley is doing really well! He continues to get taller and taller. He looks so much more like a little boy than a baby. :( He's crawling around and starting to get into everything! He has two teeth and it looks like he's working on a third. Here are some pictures I took a couple of weeks ago. He is the cutest little thing ever! :)

(Not the cutest picture of Aaron, but it shows Wesley's cute laugh. I wish y'all could hear it!)

My recent projects

So I had a million things to do but it's so much more fun to do frivolous, unnecessary things, right? Here are two shirts I made for Maddie. I wish I had time to embroider/monogram all of her shirts!

More craziness.

I know, I know...three entries in one week. It's a minor miracle. But this really has been a crazy week!

So yesterday after school one of the teachers down the hall comes to get me (I was talking with another teacher down a different hall.) She said Maddie needed me. I wasn't worried until I saw several teachers walking down the hall with her. Maddie's crying and holding her right hand up in the air. They said she had gotten her finger shut in the door to my classroom. These are solid oak doors, so they're pretty heavy. I took her to the school nurse to get it cleaned up. She looked at it and told me I should take her to the doctor. I was really thinking it was not a big deal but Nurse Mitzi said she was worried it might get infected.

Well, Dr. Nelson looked at it for less than 30 seconds and told me that she was going to need surgery to fix it and it was out of his area of expertise. So he referred us to a plastic surgeon. So we drove over the Dr. Lober's office and he scheduled surgery for the next afternoon (today.)

Apparently Maddie did an excellent job smashing her little right pinky finger. The top of the bone broke off and the nail matrix (the part of the nail that's under the skin that's attached to the bone POPPED OUT and was lying on top of the finger. It looks as bad as it sounds. And since this would be such a painful surgery, they were going to have to do it in the hospital and put her under general anesthesia. CRAZY, huh? I mean, it was a smashed finger. I was hesitant to even take her to the doctor. Thank goodness I did!

The surgery today went well. Maddie was great about not eating after midnight and waiting for 3 hours at the hospital. Post-surgery was a different matter. No one mentioned to me that children react very emotionally and almost violently to anesthesia. When I went back to the recovery room, Maddie was crying a little bit. But after a few minutes, she was almost hysterical. She was thrashing and kicking, screaming "I can't breathe." (Apparently the oxygen made her throat dry and her nose very stuffy.) She kept getting this wide-eyed, scared-to-death look in her eyes. She didn't know where she was and asked over and over, "When are they going to fix my finger?" It took a good 15 minutes to calm her down. I kept looking at the nurses and they said, "This is normal." NOT FUN!

Pre-surgery (and happy--even after 3 hours of waiting)

Not for the squeamish
Post-surgery

Scariest night of our lives

Okay, so this seems like just a bad dream now, but last night the scariest thing EVER happened to us.

At about 1:15 AM, I hear knocking and the doorbell ringing. I wake up and think it's just in my head. No, I hear it again and it's definitely real. So I wake Aaron up and he's like, "I'm not answering the door." Well, about 30 seconds later it happens again and this time I hear horrible sobbing. I am SCARED TO DEATH at this point. I'm scream-whispering to Aaron to DO SOMETHING and he's looking at me like I'm crazy. I go to Maddie's room because she has a room that faces the street and I don't see anything. The knocking stops but no one ever comes off the front porch. I'm shaking from fear. We finally get it together enough to get our phones to call the police but both of our phones are in the living room and we're afraid that the person at the door might see us through the window at the top of the door. I'm thinking this is some kind of gang initiation where they use a lure to get into someone's house and then do who-knows-what to the poor homeowners. Then Aaron says "What if it's Corie?" Corie is my 19-year-old sister who lives in Athens. So then I really start freaking out.
Just at that moment, I see two police officers walking through our yard. Apparently the person at teh door was the girlfriend of the our neighbor's son. Sheila is out of town and they have been staying at her house. (Sheila looks our age, so I didn't even know she had a child that old.) I guess they got in an argument and he beat the holy crap out of her. She ran out and was trying to get help. The worst part is that she was holding their 18-month-old little girl the entire time this jerk was beating her up.
When she couldn't get us to answer the door, she ran next door and they called 911 and helped her out. (It's a house of 4-5 men, so I guess they weren't as scared as us.)
And apparently this isn't the first time he's done this because when he police asked her if this had ever happened before she said, "Yes, btu never this bad." The jerk also stole her car but when the police asked her if she wanted to report it stolen, she just kept saying, "I just want my car back."
Being the nosy neighbors that we are, we watched the rest of the drama through Maddie's blinds. The police took pictures of her face and neck. Later, the deadbeat came back to the house. (Apparently he wasn't afraid she would call for help. Stupid girl. She's probably bailing him out of jail as I write this.) So, we got to see the police arrest him. I swear it was like watching an episode of "Cops."
Oh, and of course both kids woke up in the middle of the craziness. Maddie was just as freaked out as I was, and Wesley was like, "Hey, everyone's awake--party time!"
CRAZ,Y, CRAZY, CRAZY!! I have never been into guns, mostly becuase they scare me, but after last night, I told Aaron that we are getting one.

Okay, okay, okay...

Things have been really busy and I haven't had time to post anything new. I haven't had time to respond to e-mails either, so sorry if you've sent something. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just BUSY!

So I'm finally posting pictures from Maddie's Hollywood party. We had so much fun! (Well, Aaron might say differently. I tend to be a major perfectionist and get a little stressed when things don't go right. Oh well, everyone has their faults, right? hahaha)

We had Maddie's party in Aaron's gym at his school. We have the wonderful problem of having too many kids to invite to Maddie's party. She has friends who have been coming to her parties since she was a year old all the way to the new friends from the current school year. Good problem, but we CANNOT have the party at our house! Thankfully Aaron's principal agreed to let us have the party at the school!

Maddie with her cake

(My mom made it --isn't it beautiful?!)

Maddie with her bodyguards

(Carsten, her cousin, and Peyton, Carsten's bestfriend)

Maddie and her Entourage

(Wesley--who is not sure why he's been thrown on the floor for a picture--

and cousins Carissa, Carsten, and Caitlin)Table decorations

More decorations

(I wish you could see the glitter stars hanging from the ceiling)

Refreshment Table

(We had a chocolate fountain with yummy dippers.)

The Lemonade Fountain

(The kids LOVED this!)

Star cupcakes The Clean-Up Crew :)

(Another reason why Aaron doesn't like my birthday parties!)

Any ideas for next year? We're already looking forward to it!! :)