Samantha's determination to hurt herself

Samantha has been very determined to hurt herself over the past few days. First, she jumped off the trampoline, but got her foot caught in the springs so she was hanging upside down by a foot when Shaylee heard her screaming. Luckily, her leg was just fine in the morning. The next day, she decided to climb the tree, but slipped and ended up sliding down the tree bark on her stomach. Later that night, she fell off the front porch, but jumped right up and announced that she was okay.

Finally, on Friday night, she was jumping off our neighbor's trampoline when Shelby reached out her arms to catch her. Unfortunately, Sami tripped over Shelby's arm in mid-air and landed on her hand. She said she heard it pop so I thought maybe she had popped her elbow out of joint. She did a lot of screaming and crying, but that's normal when she hurts herself. So I got her out of her clothes and gave her a bath and put her in bed. For the next two hours, she called me every 15 minutes to tell me how bad it hurt.

By this time, it was midnight and because of our lack of insurance, I didn't want to take her to the ER. But when I looked at her arm and it was swollen and feverish, I knew it was time to go. I decided to take her to Wee Care Pediatrics in Layton because they are open 24 hours. I paid $65 for the office visit and they called us back to see the doctor. He looked at her arm and said it was definitely broken, but he would need x-rays. Unfortunately, it was 1am by that time and their x-ray tech left at midnight. So he said we could either go to the ER, or he could put a splint on it and then we could bring her back in in the morning. We opted for the splint. The doctor was so nice, he wrapped it up and refunded our $65.


It was a long night, a very long night. We got home at 3am and I made a bed up for Sami on the couch so she could watch tv because it seemed to distract her from the pain. I hoped that she would be able to fall asleep, but it didn't happen for more than a few minutes at a time. Finally, it was morning and we could go over to IHC to have it checked out.


If you look at the x-ray on the left, you can see a fracture in the bone on the left, as well as a small peice of bone that is not connected to her elbow next to it. Both of those bones were broken. The doctor spoke with their on-call orthopedic surgeon and he looked at the x-rays and said that it was a pretty serious break and he doesn't deal with kids that young. So we were told to go to Primary Children's Hospital.

This is a picture of Sami on the way to the hospital. Her sisters felt so bad for what she was going through, they made her a comfy little bed in the backseat, complete with her teddy bear.





In the Primary Children's ER waiting, waiting, waiting, and waiting to see a doctor.


Still waiting, so she decided to get comfortable while we waited.

Getting ready to "try" to get her bone back in the right place. They hooked her up to a bunch of different monitors and gave her an IV. She complained more about the IV than she did her broken arm.

In this picture, she was fully sedated and the doctor (in green) was getting ready to wrench on her arm. It was painful to watch. The big machine on the right is a portable x-ray machine so that she could bend, push, and squeeze on Sami's arm and watch all at the same time. The only male in the room (besides Chris) was this really funny doctor named Dr. Nelson. He kept us all laughing everytime he came in the room. And he seemed to be going 100mph. At one point, Chris said "I can tell you are really busy" and he replied "No, I'm just really hyper!" And he was! He was our theatrical entertainment for a while. He told Sami that she was very creative because her arm broke in a very unusual way and place.

Unfortunately, the bending, squeezing, and pushing didn't work. So this is Sami getting ready to go into surgery. Is she just tired, or is she a little loopy? Probably both.

The doctors told us that they were going to use a rod to align the bones and then pull the rod back out; but that there was a small chance they'd have to make an incision and go in to fix the bones. It turns out that she did have to have an incision, just like we thought. The surgery took about an hour and a half and they said it went very well. This is Sami, sleeping peacefully, after her surgery.

The doctor's wrapped up her arm in another sling that she will have to wear until next Monday when we'll take her back in to get her real cast. (How cute is that pink & purple tape that they kept the IV in with?)

Surprise, surprise...look who else broke their arm (in almost the same exact place) and got to hang out at Primary Children's with us. If you look at Carter's right arm, you can see the swelling near his elbow. They lucked out and got to go home at 1am, us not so lucky...It was 3am when we finally left the hospital.



***Notice how Sami is smiling in all of her "awake" photos. She said she didn't want to look like a dork, so she smiled through the pain.

Just to add insult to injury, Sami started vomitting yesterday afternoon and couldn't eat or drink anything without it coming right back out. I called the hospital and they suggested that we stop giving her the Lortab because it has that effect sometimes. So we stopped, but the throwing up didn't...until finally this afternoon. She seems to be doing better now. She's drinking Gatorade and eating dry toast and hasn't thrown up for about 4 hours. Hallelujah!

Fun at the Beach!

Here is the last of our vacation photos. We took so many that I had to make slides in order to show them all. On our last day in California, we took the girls to Newport Beach. It was a cool (60*) overcast day at the beach, but that didn't stop the girls from getting in.

The girls had a lot of fun chasing eachother with big long vines of seaweed, and by the time they were done, they were all covered in sand. While we were on the beach a cute little old lady who lives on the beach came outside wondering why people were at the beach on such a cold day. It was cute. There we are in our swim suits and flip flops, and she is wearing her jacket, a sweater, a scarf, pants, and socks and shoes. She was amazed when we told her that where we come from, most of our winter is colder than freezing. She must have lived on the beach her whole life... What a hard life, indeed...

Random Disneyland Pics

As you know...we won the trip to Disneyland in the "What Will You Celebrate?" contest on channel 2 news... These are some pictures of us celebrating being in Disneyland!

Disney Characters

The following are pictures of all of the characters that we met in Disneyland. Chris loves The Queen...is it because she's tall, her impeccable make-up, or that you can't make her smile?

The girls loved Tinkerbell! Shaylee and Sami showed her all of their Tinkerbell pins that they had traded for, but Shelby didn't have any Tinkerbell pins, so Tinkerbell made her stand to the side so she could take a picture with just Shaylee and Sami. Shelby's favorite is Eeyore, but she didn't want to stand in a long line to get his autograph...so she collected a bunch of Eeyore pins instead.

By the way, if you're going to Disneyland soon...buy your pins on ebay before you go. (I can recommend a good ebay seller). You can get them for about $1.30 each vs. up to$15.00 each in the park! The employees are required to trade pins with anyone who wants to trade. It was so fun for the girls! Just when they were starting to get tired from walking, they'd see an employee with pins and forget all about their tired feet.

California Nature

I love, love, love nature...flowers, trees, birds, rocks, mountains, you name it... So here are a few of the pictures of the beautiful things that we saw in California. My favorite is the last of the slides...the trees with purple blossoms. We don't have trees that blossom in that color of purple here in Utah and I wonder why not???

Driving to & from California

On Monday, May 11th, we left for Disneyland. We were supposed to leave that morning, but we told the girls that we couldn't leave until the house was clean...so it was after noon by the time we were able to leave. We had a few places to stop on our way out of town, so it was about 3pm by the time we finally hit the road. We drove through Las Vegas and on to Primm, NV; on the border of Nevada and California, where we stayed the night. We stayed in the Primm Valley Resort, which I wouldn't recommend. The room was very dated, not super clean and one of the metal bed frames was sticking out and Shelby walked into it and bruised her leg. Not fun, but they did give us a half price room at the neighboring resort, Buffalo Bill's that we used on the way home. The only good thing about Primm Valley was the Bonnie & Clyde car that they had on display. Pretty cool stuff. The bullet holes in the car are amazing. Next morning we left for California where we stayed at the Lemon Tree Hotel in Anaheim. What a cute little place with AMAZING grounds and landscaping! It was only about 10 minutes from Disneyland. The girls went swimming while Chris had a nap in the room and I had (an unintentional) nap by the pool. Then we watched The Biggest Loser finale in our room. It was nice to take it easy the night before our first big day in Disneyland.
On our way home, we drove back through the 104* heat in Barstow, CA and stayed in Primm again. Outside of Barstow, I had to take a picture of these two random piles of rocks on each side of the freeway. It was weird because the land was mostly flat, covered with cacti.
Buffalo Bill's is a much nicer place to stay with a nice pool, but the coolest thing is Desparado...the huge roller coaster around the hotel. It has the second highest drop of a roller coaster in the country. Shelby, Shaylee and Chris went on it. The girls loved it, but it scared Chris. Proof that he's getting older because it didn't bother him the last time he rode it; but that was about 8 years ago. Then the girls got in the pool for just a minute until security came and told us that the pool had closed at 6pm). Are you kidding...6pm???
Next morning, we hit the road for home, with a little detour through Las Vegas so the girls could really see the city. We finally rolled back into good old North Ogden a little after midnight on Sunday the 17th. I suppose technically it was Monday. What a fun trip, but we were glad to be back in our own beds!

I have to brag...

I have the best friend ever! Last week, Melanie read my last post and being the awesome friend that she is, she came over (and dared to step into the war-zone of our house) to help me get ready for the boutique. One hour before the boutique opened, I realized that my 3 big crates full of beads wouldn't fit in our little red Audi...Melanie to the rescue again! We loaded everything into her van and rushed over to the boutique. After we got the beads organized, we started tying tags onto the bracelets and pricing them. It was at this point that the boutique opened to the public. It's almost like the running of the bulls when they open the doors. Dozens of crazy ladies race through the isles looking for "the" thing to buy, and it is a race to get to that "thing" before anyone else does. I've seen ladies practically running down the isles! Once they run through the show, they go back and take their time looking in every single booth. So here we are, Melanie and I, working as fast as we can to get jewelry tagged, priced and out, and there are crowds of women in my booth. Melanie was answering questions and helping however she could. She ended up staying and helping me for 2 HOURS! What a blessing she is to me!

And then...on Friday night as I got home from the boutique, here comes Melanie, walking across the street with a big basket in her arms. She had made us a travel basket for our drive to California! I am amazed at her thoughtfulness! The basket included a few magazines, puzzle books for the girls, pencils, lots of different snacks, baby wipes and hand sanitizer, tissues, bottled water and even washable markers made for writing on glass! It's been killing the girls to stay out of the basket until we leave! We did try out the markers on the sliding glass door though...I started it, I couldn't help it! Chris still isn't sure about letting the girls write on the windows of his truck though. We'll see if we can talk him into it.

Thank you, Melanie, from the bottom of our hearts! You are the best friend ever!