summer's shaping up

It has been a strange couple of weeks. The last time I posted, The Mister was in an Emergency Room somewhere in Western New York, being treated for an undisclosed injury or some sort.

It was not until 12 hours after I had posted that I knew where he was. That's a little bit scary to not know where your Mister is, let me tell you. As it happens, he had ruptured a disc in his spine (L4-L5) and needed to have emergency surgery. The hospital was about an hour from our home, and I spent a lot of time driving back and forth. My mother-in-law kept my children for almost three days straight, and my sweet MOPS mamas brought us wonderful meals for a really long time. We are so blessed to have loving arms to surround our family when we need to be helped and comforted.

The Mister's surgery went very well, and he was up walking and discharged from the hospital, if you'll believe such a thing, less than twelve hours after his surgery. He was a very nice patient, and the superty good pain meds they gave him caused him to be extraspecially sweet and appreciative of me, so much so that I'm wondering if we could just set him up with a little mainlining action.

It has been so ridiculously wonderful to have him home with us. The short people had been having some really horrible behaviour things going on, and almost all of it has disappeared since Jon has been stuck at home with us. And the good news is that he will be here all stinking summer long. Yes, it is not good that he hurt his back, but there have been so many blessings that have come from this, like a whole summer spent together, instead of a whole summer when our Daddy works a bajillion hours a week.

My favorite moment of the week happened one afternoon, when all six of us were sitting under the enormous beech tree in our front yard. Pitting cherries was the task at hand, and everyone was helping except Jack who instead was cramming cherries into his mouth like a human cherry cramming person. Thing. Whatever. The sun was streaming through the leaves and everybody was chattering happily. Well, not Jack. He was chewing and spitting the cherry pits at his siblings.

It was pretty much perfect.