We are THAT family!!

I have a 6 page paper, an edit on a 3 page and two classmates papers I need to workshop all due in two days, so needless to say...I chose to write in my blog!

I recently came across a blog that I love. It has amazing stories, advice and neat links and is found here, www.wearethatfamily.com I love the title of their blog, "We are THAT family". She goes on to describe THAT family as the ones with the black cloud following them around! Hey...I'm pretty sure WE are THAT family too!

So I shall now give you yet ANOTHER example of why we are THAT family!

This past Sunday was a beautiful day here. Sunny, a little cool but comfortable and an excellent day for a picnic at the lake! After church we stopped back at home and loaded the car up with chairs, blankets, books, a cooler and the kids bikes and headed off to Pollock Pines and Jenkinson Lake!

We had driven by this awesome lake before but never had been there for the day. I was SOOO excited to sit by the water, read a book and watch the boys fish. We found a great spot, parked and unloaded the car. Our "spot" was down a good sized hill but had trails all the way down. So we loaded up our hands, told the boys to get their bikes but stay on the trails and we headed off! The below picture is from where we were parked! Our destination was the water way down below. Isn't it beautiful!


We were there all of 20 minutes when Austin came back up the hill like this...


Staying on the trails proved too difficult (if not impossible) for Austin. The last words yelled excitedly out of his mouth as he took off on his bike were, "I'm going to BOMB this hill!".

The next words from both Matt's and my mouth were, "BRAKES...BRAKES.....HIT YOUR BRAKES....TURN BUDDY, TUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNN!" And there he went, flying down the hill, crashing through plants and never getting the brakes to slow him down. At the end of this hill is a 5 foot tall break-water with large rocks that separates the beach area from the trail. Austin hit the large rocks at the break-water and he and his bike flew about 20 feet to where he landed on the rocky beach.

After witnessing our son flying through the air at a high rate of speed we both dropped our stuff and ran...leaving Ryland to catch up. (That little boy is a champ, along the way down the hill he grabbed a bag of potato chips and found his way to us, where he sat on a rock eating chips!)

The scariest thing was not hearing Austin, he was silent. Matt beat me there, but when I was just about there he began screaming. He had lost consciousness and had no idea who Matt was, he was slurring his speech and outright screaming. Matt held his head still while I tried to look him over.

He kept screaming that he needed help and that he hurt everywhere. He continued to ask what happened, where he was and how he got so hurt. His face was hit on the right side and he was complaining of wrist pain. Matt and I continued to look him over and knew we were going to need some help. Some very nice people had come to help and we had them contact the Ranger, who then called for Medics.


It was so nice to have the Fire Dept. and Medics arrive, I knew that he was getting appropriate help. They were very concerned by his severe mechanism of injury and the fact that he was still very confused, he didn't know where he was, what the day or year was or how he got in this situation. The Medic decided he was going to skip our local hospital and they were going to take Austin to UC Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento, due to his trauma. They briefly considered to airlift him, but he was completely stable, so they decided to go by ground.

The very nice people who came to help continued to help us and loaded everything we had (which was strewn all over the hillside) back up to our car. The Fire Dept. loaded Austin in the ambulance and Matt rode with him. Initially they said they were going to go at normal speeds and that I may follow them down, but once they got all set up to go they changed their minds. I could no longer follow them and they went with lights and sirens all the way down to Sacramento. Ryland and I went straight to Sacramento. I called my family, told them what had happened and asked for them to meet me there.

Family is awesome...they all dropped what they were doing and showed up to the E.R. before the ambulance got there and obviously before I got there. It was so nice to pull into the E.R. and have my sister take my car and Ryland and everyone else there to help!


Austin had a CT scan of his head done and X-rays of his arms, shoulders, neck and head; he had urine analysis and 2 separate blood screenings done. Everything came back clear, (Thank God!) They wanted to observe Austin for awhile and encouraged him to eat. (All of these tests and reports took about 6 hours or so) He was able to eat a few crackers and drink some juice, but then he became very nauseous and they had to give him some medication for the nausea. At that point they decided to take a CT scan of his abdomen, which also came back clear! This entire time Austin had a roaring headache that he rated a 10 out of 10 on their pain scale. After all of the tests came back clear they were able to give him Tylenol which helped his pain.


Austin escaped any serious injuries or broken bones and was diagnosed with a concussion. A severe concussion, but it could have been so much worse! The Medics said more than once that his helmet really saved him! And I'm grateful his favorite drink is milk!

Today, 2 days later he is still suffering some serious side-effects of his concussion (which the Dr's. say is normal and could last weeks). He is very nauseous most of the time, has a headache that comes and goes, is sleepy, groggy and confused a bit and is having very restless sleep. He is having a challenging time right now.

He saw his Dr. again today for a check-up and she said as long as things don't get any worse he should be fine, and that he should start to get better over time. The Dr. has him out of school until his headaches are completely gone and he is able to eat without getting nauseous. He can't participate in anything recreational or mentally stimulating until a week after all of his symptoms are gone.

He gets a new helmet though! Although right now he doesn't even want to talk about riding his bike!

We are busy thanking God for allowing Austin to make it through this trial with very little injury! And we are praying that he recovers quickly, starts feeling better and is able to return to normal 6 year old things soon!

I want to thank everyone who has sent well wishes, phone calls and to my family who dropped everything to help us on Sunday!

Duct tape and the Derby!

Happy Valentines Day!

This past weekend Jim and Lori came to visit for the first time and we had a great time with them! We ate at some really good restaurants and enjoyed hanging out and visiting.

Saturday they came with us to Austin's Pine Car Derby for his Cub Scouts! This is the first time we have done Cub Scouts, and the first event Austin has taken place in.


Matt and Austin worked hard on his car. We signed him up about a week before the derby, so they had limited time to perfect the car.

And well...lets just say they could have used some more time...not with the looks of the car, Heavens No! The car looked amazing, so I guess that makes up for the fact that the car didn't run down the track!


The car was made with weights on the bottom, that Matt had routed out to fit flush and it was looking really good. Until he went to put the wheels on...the little slots for the wheels broke out when he nailed them in. So he had to drill new wheel holes higher than the original ones. We thought that it would leave enough room to not drag on the track..but we were wrong!

Before the race Matt looked nervous about the car. I was joking with him and said, "Wouldn't it be funny if when they get to Austin's car; it breaks apart and they stop the race and pick the car up and say over the mic, "Who's car is this" and everyone looks around and you have to go up there and get it....hahahahaha!" We laughed and he agreed that that would suck so much.

Well...20 minutes later...it really did suck so much! I was laughing hysterically as Matt slowly went up to the stage in front of about 100 people as they held his car high for all to see! The "race officials" gave him 1 minute to fix it; they (Matt and about 10 other Dad's who went off to watch) went over to the "pit" to try to fix it. He ended up taking the bottom weight off of the car and duct taping it onto the top!

And back to the track it went.. This time it ran down the track, just really slowly! Thankfully Austin didn't care and was having fun anyways!


They had given the time for the Derby to be from 3pm-7pm. But I thought, yeah right...we will race and go, there's no way we will be there for 4 hours! Little did I know, they trapped us! They did all the preliminary races, served dinner (spaghetti and A-mazing garlic bread) and then did the finals and the awards.

Ohh, and they did a duct tape wallet station! (that tape really comes in handy!) They didn't have pink duct tape (pshh..boys like pink!) so I didn't make a wallet. I have Hello Kitty duct tape, so I'll have to make one ! But both our boys made yellow wallets!

All of the boys were awarded a certificate for participating. They called each boy up and presented it to him. There were only about 4-6 boys left and Austin hadn't been called yet. I thought they had skipped him when they announced they were now going to give the awards for Best of Show.

YES!!!!! The car doesn't need to roll down the track to win... It just needs to have a Rockin' paint job, that makes it look fast sitting still!!!

Thank goodness the voting for Best of Show for each den happened before the race and subsequent duct taping!

Austin won Best of Show for his car! I was laughing so much...the new kid with the broken, duct taped car, won anyway!!!


It turned out to be a really fun evening, albeit long!

Throughout the night Matt never ceased to amaze me...he managed to spill an entire cup of lemonade at the entrance to the gym, get called out on loud speaker for eating dessert before dinner(seriously, he was standing at the table loading up on mini cupcakes when someone got on the mic and said "there will be no surprise desserts after dinner, if you choose to eat them now, they will be gone!) And then he fell off of the picnic-style seating...all before he graciously claimed his broken car and fixed it with duct tape!!!

But our Boy won Best of Show!! (And I'm still madly in love with his silly Daddy!)

Grocery Cart Mayhem and Cub Scouts-

My apologies, my poor blog has been neglected recently. The neglect stems strictly from the lack of interesting things going on around here!

Two weeks ago the boys went to my sister Aimee's house in Oakland and stayed for the weekend with her and her boyfriend Alpha. They had a great time at the Oakland Zoo, Fairytale Town and the beach. I wish I had gone! Matt and I stayed home...we were supposed to have a great "date" weekend...somehow these weekends are built up and full of pressure and are never what you expected! The weekend for us was not so great, for the boys however; awesome!

Since then we have been busy with school, homework and other normalcy's of child-rearing! Doctors have been set up for the boys and their first visits went well, Austin has to be seen by an ENT specialist for his ears/throat issues...but we expected that.

This past weekend was really nice! Friday my mom came up and spent the day with us. We went out to an adorable restaurant downtown for lunch and then picked up Austin, grabbed some frozen yogurt and hit the grocery store for stuff to make homemade pizzas for dinner.

The grocery store experience was traumatizingly horrific and hilarious all at once. First of all, my mom is not used to having two very rambunctious boys shopping with her. She was asking me why I didn't know where anything was in the store, but a little bit later she says, "no wonder you don't know where anything is, you walk around constantly putting things back on shelves, and chasing kids that you run in circles all over the place!". I just laughed, that is my life!

Soon the event took a turn for the worse. I NEVER allow Austin to ride on the bottom of the cart, I just don't. This time he jumped down there and I told him to get off or he is going to get his hands run over... he promised however to not put his hands on the ground. I was too tired to stick to my guns...so off we went. I should know better and trusted my instinct.

Halfway through the store my mom was pushing the cart when Austin let out this blood curdling scream. YEP... I knew this was going to happen!
No...his hand didn't get run over, he stuck his thumb in the wheel of the cart and then it jammed between the metal and the wheel. My mom thought the cart wheel was getting stuck, so she just kept pushing harder... jamming the thumb further into the wheel. (My poor Mother felt horrible!)

By the time I figured out what was going on...it was bad!!!
I backed the cart up and pulled his thumb out, once he was loose of the cart...the boy went INSANE! I mean, certifiably insane.
He screamed, cried, ran, jumped, threw himself on the floor....freaked out! Holding his thumb so hard to try to relieve the pain and running around in circles, screaming; I couldn't look at it at all.

Attention shoppers: Full blown psychotic episode on Aisle 12!

Finally we managed to talk the boy down. We got some ice and continued calming him while people turned down our aisle, saw the chaos and turned right around!

His thumb is fine! It swelled up, looked bad and was painful for a day or so...but now there are no complaints! The blisters have almost all gone away by now and he is now fully using it!
No wonder I don't know where anything is in the store!

On to Saturday! This day was spent working on Austins Derby car. He joined Cub Scouts last week and has his first pinewood derby race next weekend! Matt is thoroughly enjoying "helping" Austin on his car! Right now you can see your reflection the car is so shiny!

We decided to try a new church this weekend. I know I spoke really highly of the church we had been going to earlier in a post...and that church is really great. However; Matt and I began to yearn for a little more biblical teaching, so we headed off to try a new church this weekend. This one is smaller and we really enjoyed it. We were invited to a Superbowl party by a very nice couple at church, so we headed off to their house later in the day to watch the game. We had a great time watching, talking and eating yummy food!

Last night was Austin's first Cub Scout meeting! He was SO cute all dressed in his uniform. It was fun to get to meet other parents and see what this scouting thing is all about! I'm excited for it; not just for Austin but for Matt and I as well. We met really great people last night and I look forward to getting to know people in our town!

Is it bad that I put my kid's in extra-curricular activities so that I can meet people? I swear that's not the only reason...Matt wants to meet people too!
Ohh-and Austin was beside himself happy when we told him about all the awesome things he gets to do in Scouts!!!

It's a Win-Win!