Oh me, Oh my!

Oh me, Oh my....that is all I can say of our Thanksgiving holiday.

Friday, the girls and I headed to Dallas to begin our 10 days of Thanksgiving wonderfulness.  By Saturday morning, I realized that Katherine has lice.....again...like again for the 6th time. Thank goodness we were able to get rid of them this time (after a 1 hour metal combing session) because we getting were ready to adopt them as pets or start our own mini circus.

On Sunday, the girls and I headed to Mexia for a nice, relaxing 3 day visit with Mimi and Papa.  We were there in time for lunch with my parents.  The El Taqueria was super yummy but we were all surprised that Emily kept putting her head on the table and trying to sleep. Not like her at all. After we got home and she slept for awhile, Emily had energy to play.  No problems, right? Wrong. 

We headed to church that evening after stopping for Happy Meals to give the girls and cough medicine for Emily.  She was coughing so much it was almost painful to hear. 

The church service was very nice.  Brother Cleo preached for this years town Community Thanksgiving Service.  It was very uplifting and by the end, I think we were all ready to tithe all our money, give ourselves to the Lord and yell "Praise Jesus!!".  Brother Cleo is the minister of Antioch Baptist Church of Mexia.  Even he said, "The noisy people are with me."  We listened to Brother Cleo preach as well as his flock pepper the sermon with "Yes!", "Amen" and "Preach it, Cleo!".  It was to say the least interesting.  All in all though, it was a fairly nice sermon despite the political opinions that were dropped in at the beginning.

Anyway, Brother Cleo is not the point.

We picked up the girls from the nursery to find out that Emily had slept the whole time and expressed no interest in eating. hmm.  She was also flushed with fever and had labored breathing.

So....

7:30 p.m. - Mom and I get to the Mexia Parkview Regional Hospital E. R.
3:00 a.m. - get into Emily's hospital room where she has been admitted for pneumonia of the right lung.
7:30 a.m. - wake up with Emily after she has endured an I.V., breathing treatments and an oxygen tent.
4:00 p.m. - get discharged from the hospital with a prescription for 2 high powered antibiotics

For a small town hospital, I was impressed with Parkview.  They were completely focused on Emily, very professional and very, very caring.  For the experience were having to endure, it was the best one possible.

In between all of that, my dad took Katherine to see Happy Feet, Two.  She got popcorn, coke and a McDonald's lunch afterwards.  Funny enough, Mom took her for breakfast at McDonald's that morning.  So up to that point, with exception of the Sunday lunch, Katherine had 3 meals at Mickey D's.  Oh well...I am thankful that my parents could be so much help! Kathy was in charge of keeping Frank calm while he was stuck up here in the metroplex because he had to work.  She cooked him a nice dinner and listened to his worries.  Again, we are so thankful for family.

Now I have to tell you that while we were in the E.R waiting to be admitted we encountered some pretty interesting characters.  Don't let the small town of Mexia fool you....they have their share of weirdos.  When we first got there, Mom and I listened to the woman across from us moan, groan, cry and complain.  She kept going up to the receptionist to remind her that she was "in pain" and "had been there for 2 hours".  The "in pain" woman was placed in the triage bed next to us and come to find out she had an ear ache and tooth ache.  Personally (and yes...this is judgemental) we think she just wanted pain pills.  Around half past midnight while eating my ham sandwich and chips that Mom brought me, I was chatting with a woman who knew my parents.  This lady had been in my dad's band around the 2nd year we moved to Mexia.  It was a pleasant conversation and a nice distraction.  She was waiting to hear about some test results for her elderly father.  Well, to keep things interesting I guess, in walks marches a very, very thin woman.  She had on a very small and tight shirt, very small and tight pair of jeans and the most pointy shiny red ankle boots I had ever seen.  She shouts something incoherent at the receptionist, picks up the courtesy phone, talked to someone and marched out.  OK...odd.  Well, it wasn't long after, that her opposite walked in the door.  A short woman with a shirt so big and arm holes so stretched out that I could see her...um....well.....her....well, she had apparently forgotten to wear a bra.  She had also forgotten to put on shoes.  So as she shuffled past me and I mean shuffled...or maybe scooted is a good word, I put my sandwich back in the baggie and decided I was done with the eating portion of the evening.  All I could think of was "yucky...that is just yucky."  I had to leave the lobby at that point for fear of laughing straight at this woman.  I am sure it was the fatigue...or the fact that someone would come into an E. R. showing a lot of herself and wearing no shoes that would have caused that type of reaction.  It was certainly not my lack of compassion or the sarcasm that is always rising to the surface of my personality....no, no ....it was just the fatigue.

Just when you think you've had enough....Monday night, we lost electricity at the house for 2+ hours, Emily wouldn't sleep and Mom's foot was giving her fits.

Thank goodness, Tuesday was a pretty calm day.  We made rice krispie treat Turkey Pops with the girls.  They looked more like rice krispie balls with some icing slapped on there and candy corn shoved in the top that produced a result of crazy looking porcupines but it was fun making them.  By the end, we just flattened out a big blog of the rice krispies and let the girls go to town on the decorating.

We were due to leave pretty early on Wednesday morning but we decided to wait until Mom got back from the foot doctor.  Turns out that Mom aggravated a tendon in her foot from using the sewing machine foot pedal too much.  She can't walk on it for a week and in is in A LOT of pain.  I felt so bad for her!  It was the cherry on top of the sundae of our week. 

To wrap it all up, things are looking a bit better with us.  Emily is improving, Katherine doesn't seem to be effected by all of this and Mom's foot is sort of better.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal here with Kathy on Thursday.  We were blessed to have Gina and Jeff come to dinner.  They drove in from Arizona just to see us!  (OK, probably to visit with the rest of the family too but who's asking.

I am thankful that we are all getting better.  I am thankful for all of our family that has been willing to help! I am thankful that we were able to handle all of this with grace and a sense of humor.

I am sure the pilgrims had it much worse on the Mayflower.  In fact, I know they did because that was the old black and white (not to mention poorly acted) movie playing on the E.R. lobby television.