May 13, 2009 - Happy Mother's Day . . . NOT! . . . Just kidding!

So you know how the whole splitting up of holidays goes . . . you have to pick whether you will spend the "actual holiday" with your family or your husband's family. We have been lucky that both sides of the family have always been very flexible and we pretty much take turns each year, and that works out well for us.

This year we spent Saturday (the day before Mother's Day with my mom at my sister's house. We planned to grill filet mignon and sit out by the pool and just have a relaxing day. Well, that would have been all fine and good had I not had a little accident while loading the car to head over there. You see my sister loves the way I cook green beans (LOL)! Everytime we have a family get together at her house and I say "What do you want me to bring?" Her answer is: "Your Green Beans!" I don't do anything special to them -- I fry up a pound of bacon with some onion and then add the green beans -- that's it! But she says when she does it they don't taste the same. I think we all feel that way about our cooking!

Anyway, I decided I would just wait and cook the green beans at her house instead of fixing them at mine and then taking them to hers. You have to understand when I do make green beans, I make a lot, because my sister, Tammy, always keeps a tupperware bowl full to eat on after we leave. So I bought a 5 lb. can and a 3 lb. can to fix at her house -- people -- that's 8 lbs. of green beans :-).

Well, on the way to the car I dropped the 3 lb. can on my right big toe. First of all, I don't think I have ever screamed in pain like that before -- even during childbirth! I thought I had cut my toe off when I looked down and saw the pool of blood in my flip flop and on the concrete in the driveway! When I realized that my toe was actually still attached to my foot, I then freaked out thinking that my toenail may have come off (CRINGE!!). So I wiggled my toenail -- nope -- still attached. In the meantime, Cameron had run into the house to get me some papertowels to stop the bleeding. Upon his return, I took my foot out of the flip flop and applied pressure to my toe and wiped away the blood. To my utter surprise, there was only a tiny cut -- about the size of the end of my pinky fingernail on top of my toe. Mercy -- so where in the world did all that blood come from? Well, after getting on the internet to do a little research, Cameron found out that there is an artery in your big toe (the digital artery) that is right at the joint of the toe -- right where the cut was. I couldn't believe so much blood came out of my toe from that small of a cut, in an instant!

After a little doctoring, we headed to my sister's house. My brother-in-law, Steven, is a doctor, so he took a look at my toe and said it may or may not be broken, but the darn thing wouldn't stop bleeding. I soaked band-aid after band-aid before my sister (the nurse) broke out the real bandages and wrapped it up good and tight. I was told by the doc to keep my foot elevated and keep the toe wrapped tight. Back at home at about 11:30 p.m I decided I would take the wrapping off and see how it looked. Well, as soon as I took the bandages off the darn thing started bleeding again. At that point I thought I'm going to bleed to death from a tiny cut in my big toe! Luckily Tammy sent me home with a kit of stuff to wrap it back up, so that's what I did. The next morning Tammy called to check on me, so I took the bandages off again to check it -- STILL BLEEDING! Are you kidding me!!??!! I can hear my sister telling her husband that it's still bleeding and WHY would it still be bleeding. After all, this happened at 2:30 p.m. the day before. At that point, he said it had to be broken -- tell her to keep it wrapped tight and elevated! What a bummer! You know there isn't a dad-gum thing you can do about a broken toe! So here I sit with a broken, black and blue toe -- that still decides to bleed off and on. CRAZY! On a positive note, we leave for the beach in a couple of weeks and now I'm just praying that I don't lose my toenail (thanks for that info Tammy)!

My Mother's Day was actually awesome though. We had a great time with my sister and my mom and then spent the day at my mother-in-law's on Sunday. My boys both gave me the most wonderful cards! I swear they both write so beautifully that they really don't even have to buy cards. I actually had this idea of buying them each a journal and telling them to just write in it on holidays and my birthday and give that to me to read instead of spending the money on cards. Hmmm!!

So that's about it for now. I've got a lot of catching up to do blogging. Since I just got my new blog design, it's taking me a little time to get everything transferred over - so be patient with me! Until next time . . .