President's Day Weekend

My brother, David, came to visit us this weekend. We felt very special because the Putnam men do not come to visit unless there is hunting or fishing involved. Don't worry though there was lots of destruction, adrenalin and screaming. . .

Anyways he came on Wednesday a day earlier than he was going to come. His work training went faster than it was supposed to. He came back with a hand held PDA thing that was only worth about 2500 dollars. He liked his new toy. His job seems pretty relaxing to me. Trips to Alaska, trips to Southern California and someone else pays for all his gas. What more could someone want?

We went to Disneyland on Friday. I don't know how much he wanted to go but it was the only thing I could think of to do with the kids and David that would be fun. I think we all had a good time. Ashling achieved the goal of her life (she is only 2) and she got to meet Ariel. Ariel invited us to go swimming with her sometime and it is all the girls will talk about lately.

On Saturday the adults went skiing at Snow Valley. I like skiing but I am morally opposed to ice skating. Especially on skis! Needless to say the day for me involved a lot of snow plowing down the hill in fear. I don't even like the sound of skis on ice. It sounds awful like the music before jaws comes. It wasn't my favorite day to ski but I think I got a good workout. Cameron took David back to Slide Peak but after one icy run they decided to come on the front of the mountain too.

So we decided to go hiking in the afternoon down at the bottom of the hill. It was beautiful. Everything was green. We came to a point where there were rocks all over the road. A guy had told us that the road was impassible. Well for some people that might have been the case but I was with Cameron and David. So they decided that this was the perfect time to roll the large boulders off the steep road and into the ravine. They broke trees, crushed rocks and made lots of noise. The girls loved it and tried to create the same effect with much smaller rocks.

Next we built a rock dam at one of the many creeks we crossed. Ali could walk across it and enjoyed trying to make the water stay in the hole we created. We then went on a nice 4 by 4 drive where we were seeing all sorts of interesting scenery and still trying to find the biggest rock to roll of f the hill. All of a sudden Ali started crying and saying that her ear hurt really bad. She had been saying this a little when we went down the hill but was too busy enjoying the day to notice. Now it got so bad and she kept crying. By this point we were so far on the drive that it was faster to keep going than to turn around. We started discussing going to the doctor and eventually I decided to call nurse advice. She told us to come in as soon as possible.

After that we kept trying to hurry. At one point we came to a hill covered in mud. There were several people who could not go up the hill at the bottom and we were worried that we would have to turn around. Ali was crying, screaming, moaning and alternating that with sleeping. I was so worried we would have to turn around but David and Cameron decided to keep driving. I had in my mind the image of a life flight helicopter having to get Ali in the middle of the road if we got stuck between two mud puddles. (The good news is that the cell phone reception along this road was amazing so I could have called for help.) But my little escape with only high four wheel drive kept going through the mud crossings. (I know it was my husband's excellent driving ability and fear of his daughter's wrath if we had to turn around that really kept us going.)

Finally we made it to the urgent care! The nurse gave Ali some ib profin and told us it would be awhile. By the time we saw the doctor Ali said her ear was feeling better. We were almost ready to leave thinking it couldn't be that bad if medicine made her feel fine but they called us back.

Ali had a double ear infection which they prescribed antibiotics for. On the way back up the hill her ear drum ruptured. (Amazingly an ear drum rupture is actually pretty painless once it happens. I was trying to give her more medicine to help her up the hill and as she took it she called it magic medicine because her ear drum ruptured and everything was fine.

I am glad that we live in times where we have medicine and are not always stuck with nothing to do for our children when they are in pain. I also learned that there should always be medicine in the car for everyone because a little medicine would have made her comfortable until we could get her help.