Don't you just love those 12 am ER visits?

So after we all went to bed Monday night, I was awakened by the sounds of Kyle crying. I went to check on him and he says his stomach hurt. I calmed him down a little bit and went back to bed to sleep. About 15 minutes later he wakes me up again, but this time he is almost screaming that "it hurts". So I do the mom thing and ask him if it's hungry hurt, if he has to go to the bathroom, check his forhead and press on his belly (thinking possible appendix issue), etc. Finally, after about 45 min I call Tim (who's in CA this week - it's always when he's on a trip) and ask him what he thinks I should do. He says what I'm thinking, head to the ER. I wake up the girls and get them in coats and boots and they head to the car. I literally have to carry Kyle to the car 'cause he can't walk and as I'm getting my stuff to go he opens his car door and throws up! So the girls are sleepy and scared and I'm trying to get a towell and a puke bowl and off we head at 12:30 in the morning. We get there and I carry him in to the waiting area, sign in and wait. Luckily not too long, the nurse calls us back and I carry him in to have his vitals taken and then they get a gurney to wheel him to the room. He gets an xray, has blood drawn, gives a urine sample and we wait. Meanwhile they give him an anti-spasm medication in the IV and he takes a couple of super tylenol. He's still in pain and we're just waiting. The girls are tired and it's supposed to be another hour until we get lab results back so I called my AWESOME friend, Kelly to take the girls to her house so they can get some sleep. No sooner than that, the doc comes back and says it's not his appendix, not kidney stones, but there is a LOT of air in his colon. He says it's probably IBS or spastic colon. Not much to do but wait it out, maybe give him a mild narcotic to relax him and let him go to sleep and hopefully it'll be better in the morning. So they do that and we have to wait about a half hour to see if he's responding and not having any reaction, etc. Meanwhile, Kelly shows up and I ask her to wait to see if we can leave or if Kyle will need to stay longer. Finally the doc says he can go home, but we need to moniter him for 8-12 hours to be sure it's not something more serious. Kyle is about asleep and relaxing from the medication so we all leave, carrying Kyle to the car, of course, and get home about 3:30 am and everyone gets back to bed. I wait and call in to work that I won't be in and we all sleep in til 9 am. Phew, what a night/morning! He's fine now, we're $600 more broke, and we have to change his diet. No carbonation or caffeine, more fiber, less fat, lots of fruits and veggies, but not the gas producing kind, etc. Luckily there hasn't been a re-occurance, hopefully there won't be.

I'll be so glad when Tim gets home from his trip.

Thought I'd share some video...

This may or may not work, but I'm trying to link to some video of the "river" we had yesterday. Click here to see the back yard and here to see the front yard. Then you can click here to see what it looks like today.

Talk about a climate change...

So the last couple of weeks were REALLY cold, I mean it was -23 degrees about a week ago. Then this week it warmed up, over 70 degrees warmer! Yesterday it was 49 degrees above. Needless to say, that does a lot to the snow laying around here. It melts, though with permafrost going down about 4 ft, there is absolutely no where for the water to go except over. So here's a couple of shots of our back yard yesterday afternoon and this morning. It's still in the 40's but we're supposed to get back into the 30's later this weekend and next week. Maybe we'll actually get some snow with that...

Should old acquaintence be forgot...

Has another year ended? Seems like only yesterday we were taking down the stockings and packing up the tree from Christmas 2007. Here it is, January 2, 2009 and we've received the annual tax packet from accountant, information on filing for our 2009 PFD's, the tree is still being lit up in the evenings, and the stockings are still hung by the chimney with care (though St. Nick is on vacation in the Bahamas - where I wish we were!)

If you haven't noticed, the weather up here has been frightful, frightfully cold that is. So far we've seen a low of -20 degrees and a high of -6 degrees. Today it warmed up to a sunny -10 degrees. Yikes! I love winter and snow, but this cold is getting really old!!

The kids are having one last sleepover night before school starts back up on Monday. Thank goodness, with the wind and now the cold, it's been an indoor Winter break and everyone has cabin fever. Hopefully it warms up a bit next week and is warmer for the Iditarod events that are coming up soon.

Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and that their New Year's was a little less eventful than ours. We slid off the road into a ditch New Year's Eve, luckily the only damage was a broken stem valve and a flat tire. I told Tim that was his "one" for the year. Way to start it off right, right?