.owie.

I am bored.

My house, is not clean.

My lawn, is not mowed.

All the things I said I'd do whilst my children were away, I have not done.


I sleep in until ten.
And then wonder what to do with myself for the rest of the day.



I kinda miss those little boogers.







I shall use this time to document a first in the Smith family.

I was at work when this horrendous mishap occurred. I had forgotten my phone at home. When I arrived at the homestead, I found a note in my husbands hurried chicken scratch:

At the hospital.
Riggdon cut his hand.
Campbells asleep.
feed the bird.

First, and probably not the one you are most worried about, I will explain the bird portion of this note: My sister in law found a newly hatched baby bird that had fallen from its nest. When she found it it was near death. She looked up how to take the place of its mamma and had been nursing the creature back to health. When they went on vacation we became its makeshift mamma. This entailed keeping it in a warm room, replacing the shredded paper in its replacement birds nest (a black storage crate) and feeding it wet dog food every two hours.

"awwwww. how cute." is what you are saying in your heads right now, arn't you? that and, "who cares about the baby bird, what about Riggs?" We'll get to him but right now I want to explain that this bird was not cute. It was, as I said before, a creature. A creature that stunk. badly. A creature that had to be fed once ever two hours, much like a newborn baby but without the cute toes, warm snuggles and sweet baby smell.

by the way, Mary, I am in no way complaining about having to watch your baby bird, It was...... an adventure. Just wanted to emphasize that I will probably not be adding Bird rehabilitation to my list of hobbies. Or acts of service. I'll stick to making baby blankets for the hospital.

ANYWAYS. So this baby bird was screeching and making such a racket I don't know how anyone could sleep through it. Which brings me to the next part of this note I am going to cover. (the suspense is killing you, I know)

Yes, my husband left my 2 year old son home. alone. alseep. With no way of knowing when I would return. But before you go calling DFS, I need to explain our arrangement. You are all aware we live in a mod. home, on my in laws property. one of the great conveniences of this arrangement is the beauty of the baby moniter. Many nights we put the children to bed and take the 24 steps over to "the big house" and entertain ourselves with a variety of different activities. i.e. dominoes, movie watching, or my personal favorite... relative watching. 12 kids, 50 some odd grandkids...theres a lot of us, remember? And we can do this while the wee ones slumber by turning on the baby moniter that is permanantly stationed on my in laws kitchen counter.

so thats that.

which brings us to.... "riggdon cut his hand" wich by itself is nothing to fret about. I am raising two very active boys on a ranch. Neosporin and bandaids are a staple in our household. Its the first line in addition to this that made my stomach flip.


We are at the hospital.


the hospital is the absolute last option. once you check into a hospital there's no telling how long until your out of there. hours. days. weeks. If danny rushed my son to the hospital for a cut that means it was way beyond butterfly bandages and yes, even superglue.

I find my phone and call danny. While shoving pieces of mushy dog food into the pterodactyl's screeching beak he tells me riggdon sliced his hand. bad. get over here with a diaper bag and a new set of clothes for riggs.

"is there blood all over them?"

"that and puke. he's in so much pain the poor little guy threw up all over on our way in"
I slammed down the phone, grabbed a diaper bag and a onsie, and rushed to the hospital.

my baby needed me.
or i needed to see my baby?

long story short... haha yeah I'm not so good at that.... the plastic piece covering the dryer door fell off a couple weeks ago leaving a sharp metal edge. Riggdon was holding onto it, lost his balance and it sliced into his pudgy little baby fat like butter.

He was a champ at the hospital, climbing up the docters tray, smacking his head on the concrete floor and almost falling off the hospital bed resulting in numerous comments about how this wouldn't be the last time they'd be seeing this one. He's a busy little bee, that one.

The nurses were great and also commented on his supernatural strength that they had never heard such a scream in their life. It took, me, danny, two nurses and 45 minutes to put in 8 stiches in his little hand.


It's all over now. We even took the stitches out last sunday. But boy, just telling the story is draining.

In my haste, I forgot to grab a camera to take to the hospital.

okay, thats a lie. I forgot the memory card. so the camera was useless.

but this is the end result.
I know its not a great picture but it wasn't exactly an easy thing to capture.


you get the picture.
yummy.