Weekend Wrap-Up

Before I begin my longest post ever due to all my pictures, I wanted to share what I heard on the news Friday about the donations received via the text of $10.00 to the Red Cross that I mentioned in my last post. The organization has already received in excess of 5 million dollars. Can you believe that? It seems like such a small, insignificant amount, but I guess $10.00 from every family in America would really add up to a substantial amount of money. Amazing!


Well, we have had a very interesting couple of days. Reagan's 4 year old birthday party was Saturday and all week long I have been picking up things, finalizing details, running errands, cleaning the house, making lists, crossing things off the lists, etc. You know all the crazy things that you do before any big event. Things were ticking along wonderfully until Reagan woke up Thursday morning with a limp. I thought this was a bit odd because she was fine when we got home from church on Wednesday evening and she was fine when she went to bed. I honestly thought she was faking. This is probably a horrible thing to think about your child, but she is a little dramatic and loves attention. My first thought was that she saw someone at church limping and she thought she she would try it out. She woke up at 7:00 and by lunch she had not walked anywhere without limping, she continually pointed to the same leg and the same spot, and the pain got progressively worse as the day went on. By dinner, she wouldn't walk anywhere and I had to carry her if she had to use the restroom. I made her stand on the hurt leg a few times that night and she would cry out in pain. By bedtime she was crying off and on so I put her in my bed to sleep with me. She slept for about 2 hours and then woke up around 10:30 crying uncontrollably. She was literally rolling left to right, writhing in pain, rubbing her hip. I spent a little over an hour trying to comfort her and then decided to wake Gene up, who went to sleep in Reagan's room. We decided to make a trip to the emergency room because at that point, I thought something in her hip or lower stomach might explode soon if we didn't do something fast. Gene and Reagan left at 12:30 a.m. and returned home at 4:00 a.m. I paced the house and prayed and tossed and turned from 12:30 until close to 2:00. I guess I fell asleep a little after 2:00 and woke up as soon as I heard my car coming down the driveway. I wasn't exactly in a deep sleep. I was so thankful to see them. The weird thing is that the doctor didn't find anything wrong with her and the x-ray came back clear. He did give her some medicine to relax her muscles and wrote her a prescription with the instructions to watch for fever and encourage her to rest, staying off her leg....no problem with a hyper 3 year old, but sure...... The doc said it could be something as simple as growing pains that can cause inflammation of the hip tissue or even cause fluid to build up around the hip joint. I was thinking something much more serious, but I will get to that in a minute.



Gene and Reagan both slept until lunch on Friday but I had to get up with Gracen at 6:45 and no, I didn't get a nap that day either. Gene went to work around 1:30 and my mom came to my house to help with the girls while I tried to clean my house for the party. You know with young kids, you cannot really clean ahead too far ahead of time. Thanks Mom! Reagan did rest most of the day and was limping Friday night, but not screaming out in pain. I was thankful because she was so excited about her party. I didn't want to cancel it and I didn't want her to have to just sit through it either. By Saturday, she was better, walking with a slight limp.



She had a wonderful party and a great time with all her friends.

Reagan wanted an Ariel party, so that is what she got. Here she is in her Ariel costume and Ariel tiara before any of her guests arrived. What a cutie! You can see the Ariel place settings behind her. It looked like Ariel threw-up on everything.





Here is a picture of her Ariel cake. It was made by Debbi Gordon and she did a fantastic job. It was chocolate (Reagan's favorite) with chocolate chips thrown in for extra calories. It was so moist and delicious. I am not really a birthday cake person and I have had 3 pieces....one during the party, one after supper on Saturday night, and one after lunch on Sunday. Not good....I know.


We hired Ariel from "The Party Planner" to come for the birthday entertainment. She spent an hour with the children, telling her story and singing her songs from the movie. Reagan LOVED this! I thought she did a wonderful job interacting with all the kids and made Reagan feel very special.

Ariel gave all the children musical instruments and led them around the room in a little parade as they sang "Under the Sea." So fun!

Here are some of Reagan's little friends listening to Ariel tell her story.

Here is a group shot with Ariel...or at least those who wanted to get in the picture. We also took a picture of Ariel with each individual child that I will be sending to them as a thank you note.

Here is Reagan about to blow out her candles. Of course, my camera has a ridiculous delay so I missed her actually blowing them out, but I'll live.

Here is picture of Ariel and Reagan and Katie Rice after Ariel "becomes a human". Notice the change in clothes.
Here are a few shots of Reagan opening her presents. She received a lot of nice gifts from all her friends and from family members.

Here is my sis Lindsay with her hubby Brian and their daughter, Hayden, enjoying the festivities.

Gracen loved the balloons. She was so good during the entire party...so sweet and easy going.

And of course she had to eat. Thank goodness for my parents. They took care of Gracen during the whole party so I could be with Reagan. My mom spilt baby food all over her shirt right after this picture. I should have taken a shot of that.

Here we are right after the party. My make-up is faded, my lipstick is gone, and Gene's eyes are a little red. Yes, we were tired. In our defense, Reagan wanted 4 little girls to stay after the party for a "play date". She wanted pizza for lunch and then wanted the girls to play dress-up, and end the day by watching the movie Barbie and the 3 Musketeers. We had to say yes to that, right? I mean it was her birthday. So the party started at 10:00 and this picture was at 3:30, after we had taken all the girls home. We deserve the "Parents of the Year" award after this day.

Back to Reagan's leg...I think she over did it at the party. She had a soft limp the entire day and by bedtime she was crying again. She woke up at 4:45 Sunday morning and was crying about it. She did go back to sleep and slept until 8:30....thank the Lord. When she woke up she was limping pretty bad and she did not want to walk anywhere. We stayed home from church....(oh, how I miss going to church EVERY SINGLE Sunday) and I have carried her everywhere she needed to go or she has crawled. Something is clearly wrong.

Monday morning I will be calling her pediatrician for a second opinion. My heart always fears the worst. I have had two people tell me stories of children discovering they had leukemia from unexplained pain in the legs. I know that is a worse-case scenario, but she has been limping since Thursday with no real explanation. This morning I was already looking up verses on fear, trying to calm my little heart.

Trials come don't they. I have heard it said that you are either in a trial, about to enter a trial, or just coming out of a trial. That is just the way life is. I know we live in a fallen, sinful world, but I don't want my trial to be through one of my children. As I say that, I know that I don't get to make that choice.

I would like to ask all my blog readers to pray....pray that this is absolutely nothing, pray that I will laugh about even suggesting the "L" word, pray that it is something as simple as growing pains.

Hopefully the doctor will see us tomorrow.

I'll keep you posted.