Today we had our garage sale again.  All in all, I call it a success!  We made about $75.  We’ll set things out tomorrow morning, but then that will be the end of the garage sale season for us.  We’ll haul some things to the mission, and I’ll advertise a few of the bigger items on a local e-mail sale list.

I’m exhausted, but the children have really enjoyed the whole sale process.  They’ve been begging to have a garage sale for a long time, so this is good for them.

This summer we’re trying something new.  Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike us to get to the pool, we are scheduling it for every Wednesday evening.  My sister’s family joins us, since we can take a “family unit” into the pool as our guest after 4 pm.

It’s always a big undertaking to get a bunch of kids ready for the pool, but so far it’s going really well to have our Wednesdays as our pool day.  The kids are learning to swim, they don’t nag me the rest of the week to go to the pool, and it wears them out a bit.  One added bonus is that they get totally clean with chlorinated water once a week.  :-)

I hope we can keep up our tradition through the rest of the summer.

This morning we awoke to heavy rain. Ahh, well, that was fine. I guess no garage sale would happen today.

I listened to the weather forecast, and sure enough, it was going to rain all day with possible severe weather this afternoon. What a perfect excuse to cancel our sale!

An hour or two later, the rain had dried up and the sun was shining. But a glance at the weather radar showed that there was more severe weather on its way from the west. As each child awoke and asked about the garage sale, we told them that it was too rainy for a sale today. It was hard to convince them, as they glanced outside at the sunshine, that indeed, it WAS a rainy day.

Hour after hour passed. Still no rain. By afternoon some clouds finally rolled in. Here was the storm we were expecting! But alas, the rain held off.

Now that it’s bedtime and the breezes are cool, the sky is still overcast, and I know I felt a sprinkle or two a few moments ago when I took something out to the van. But the rain still isn’t falling, and the weather radar shows that our storm, the very storm we claimed as our own, has already passed by and is wandering east.

I guess we should have had our sale after all. Perhaps it would have rained.

Somehow the last three days have slipped by so quickly that it’s time for an eclectic catch-up post covering the interesting tidbits I’m sure you’re eager to read.

Wednesday, July 9

Much to our surprise, we received a delivery from “Cookies By Design” for Judah. There was a huge turtle cookie accompanied by four balloons. Judah instantly had an entourage of friends and well-wishers, hovering closely and begging for tastes of his cookie. I served as crowd control, telling siblings to stop asking for Judah’s treat, and instructing Judah to just enjoy his whole cookie. Judah did as I advised, and told everyone that they could not have any of his cookie and he was going to eat it all. After some time, I checked on Judah at the kitchen island, and it was then that I realized he had licked all of the beautiful icing off of the cookie. It was now a greenish, smeared cookie-on-a-stick. When Judah saw me he said, “I’m done. I’m going to share now.” Do you think that we are all just shameless enough to accept chunks of a cookie that has been licked? Well, we are. And it was delicious!

Thursday, July 10

This momentous day was none other than Michael’s and my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Michael surprised me by taking the day off work and arranging for child care so we could go out to lunch. What a treat! We spent the morning cleaning and sorting and working on projects around the house, and then Grammy showed up at lunch time so we could disappear for a while.

Before we left, I asked Laura to take our photo. I had the bright idea that we could hold up our fingers to indicate the numbers “one” and “five”. Isaac insisted that we were showing the number “six”, even though I argued that no, it was the number “fifteen”.

For lunch we went to Destihl and had so much fun trying several interesting things on the menu. The cheese curds caught my attention, because the menu indicated that they use locally-made cheese, which means the fried curds themselves are not mass produced. They were indeed fantastic! We also ordered the beer sampler, since Destihl brews their own. The beautiful small glasses were so interesting to taste and compare. The main dishes were just as unusual and delicious. Michael got a burger and I got soup and salad. We weren’t planning to get dessert, but then the waitress explained that Destihl makes an ice cream with their espresso beer in it, and I couldn’t resist, so we got a scoop of that. Amazing! All in all, it was a perfectly enjoyable lunch, and I’m already looking forward to our next visit.

Friday, July 11

Today was the day of our long-awaited garage sale. I felt so unprepared, even though I’ve been sorting and boxing things up for what seems like weeks. But I was determined to go ahead and work with what I had, so I started barking orders at the children.

“Carry these tables!”

“Post these signs!”

“Take care of the baby!”

“Haul these boxes!”

Finally we had some semblance of a sale, and customers were coming, so we smiled and tried to keep things as attractive as possible.

I was pleased that we actually had a fairly regular stream of folks stopping by, and little by little our coin dish sprouted dollars it didn’t have before. Most of our items only cost 25 cents or 50 cents, and at the end of the day we had fifty dollars in the “profit” line. Cool! Not exactly a new get-rich-quick scheme, but definitely worth doing.

The prize for today goes to our customer, “Aunt Carol”. She came all the way from Rockford to see our sale, and she spent the most money (over $15!). We’ll be sure to keep her on our mailing list!

We’ll probably have our sale again, since we have boxes of things that didn’t sell today, and we have much more to sort through. At some point we’ll call it quits and haul the leftovers either to the curb or to the local thrift store.

So, there you have it. Our last three days in review.

Judah kindly cooperated so I could show you a photo of his three little bandages.

Even though Judah is in good spirits, he is obviously very tender and sore from his appendectomy.

This morning I fed him oatmeal to help get some good fiber into his intestines. Then we took a walk around the block to help get things moving in those same intestines. Now Judah is resting in his comfy chair again taking a break from doing anything.

Judah is supposed to take pain medication every four hours, and so far he has definitely needed that pain control. But somehow through it all he has stayed cheerful and not very fussy at all. Praise God!

Michael told me that the folks sharing the hospital room yesterday were there recovering from a serious car accident caused by a drunk driver. Both of their daughters had severe injuries, including the little three-year-old in the next bed who had a scull fracture, among other things. The mother was also badly beat up, and could hardly walk to see her children. Michael’s heart almost broke as he heard the little girl call out to her papa, “Ayudame, Papa, ayudame!” (Help me, Papa, help me!).  And then when Michael heard the little girl being called “Lilly”, he simply had to leave the room.

Somehow an appendix seems very small in the shadow of such suffering.

My cell phone rang a few minutes ago, and the operator told me that a little boy wanted to talk to me.

Judah said, “Hi, Mama!” He chattered about all sorts of things, telling me what he had for supper (soda, jello, chocolate milk, ice cream), telling me about getting his appendix out, telling me he was at the hospital, and listening politely to my comments about our supper. “Oh! That’s nice!”, he replied.

Finally he said, “Daddy says we’re coming home tonight.”

What good news!

When Michael got back on the phone, he told me that when the doctor had come by a little bit ago, Judah was perky and inquisitive, asking, “What’s in your pocket?” The doctor asked Michael how things were going, and after hearing the good report, said it would be fine for them to go home tonight. All of the paperwork must still be completed, so it could easily be another hour before they get out of there, and then it takes almost an hour to get home. I’m thinking they might be home around 8:30 p.m.

I’m grateful that the end of our appendix adventure is going so well.

Update:

My guys arrived home at 7:40 p.m.!  We were all so happy to see them.  I was pleased to see that the children exclaimed their greetings to Judah, and he replied to them with cheerful, audible comments.  I expected him to be fussy and unwilling to communicate, but the opposite was true.

Michael and I settled kids into bed, and then left Laura and Isaac to stay up with Judah and we went to Walmart to get a few things.  When we got home, Judah was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a bicycle helmet and swinging the Wii remote, playing virtual golf.  What a funny little guy.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get a photo of Judah’s tummy to show to you.

Good night.

Christie

Hi, this is Christie again.  Michael told me that the hospital wi-fi network is down, so he’s not able to post updates.  This is the first chance I’ve had to slip away from the busyness of our day, so here’s what I’ve heard from them so far.

The surgery went well.  There was some scar tissue that had to be disconnected from the various insides, so the doc did that while he was in there.  The appendix itself was also attached to some other things, so that had to be detached before it could be removed. But all in all, everything went well.

I talked to Michael after Judah had been put in a room on the pediatric floor, and he said Judah was doing well and wasn’t fussy.  (According to all the noise coming over the phone, the child in the next bed was NOT doing so good!)

The next text message I got from Michael indicated that he and Judah were in the play room there in Pediatrics.  I was shocked!  I had no idea Judah would be able to get out of bed and go play so soon!

Michael said that the doctor indicated that if all was well, Judah might be able to come home tonight.  We are fully prepared for them to stay overnight, so it will just be a bonus if they can come back sooner.

I have been working hard here at home.  We shoveled out the girls’ room and straightened up the boys’ room.  So now the two bedrooms look great!  My sister, Joyce, stopped by with two boxes of donuts, so we eagerly took a break from our work.  At Joyce’s suggestion I mixed up some iced coffee and we enjoyed our coffee and donuts.  

Now I’m going to go rest and then think about what other industrious things I can work on this evening.

Thanks for all of your prayers and concerns for Judah.  We are thrilled that he’s doing so well!

I just left Judah for his surgery.  He’s scheduled in the OR from 8:00 to 9:30, so I’m taking advantage of the time to get some breakfast.  I figured it would have been cruel to eat in-front of him this morning since he couldn’t have anything to eat or drink.  I’ll post progress updates as they happen.

Tomorrow morning Judah will go to Peoria for his surgery to remove the appendix that was guilty of making him such a sick little boy a couple of months ago.  Michael will get up and out of here by 5:30 in the morning, arrive in Peoria by 6:30 a.m., and then surgery is scheduled for 8:00 a.m.

The doctor said for us to be prepared for Judah to be there overnight, so Michael is going to plan to stay there until Tuesday morning.  We are both hoping Judah might get to come home Monday evening, but we aren’t planning on that.

Michael will be taking both the laptop computer and the iPod Touch with him, which leaves me without my regular means to check e-mail.  Therefore, if you have something urgent to communicate with me, you might want to call rather than e-mail.  I will still try to sneak away to Michael’s computer hideout in the basement for a quick e-mail check now and then, but that’s a lot harder than grabbing the laptop here on the main floor.  I think I will challenge myself to limit my computer usage and just see whether or not I survive.

So, tomorrow’s the day, and then the next day hopefully Judah will be home and ready to get on with life.

This next weekend we hope to have a garage sale, so my week will be even more focused on sorting through boxes and finding things to get rid of.

Signing off until Tuesday…

Happy Fourth of July, Lilly!

P.S. Photography by Laura Lee.