Musketeer Training

Tuesday night was Awana night. I called Jenelle to dinner. Curt and I hear a big THUD from the living room. Not an unusual sound in our house. Jenelle jumped off the back of the couch in the living room. She comes into the kitchen crying and holding her wrist. The Gilliland side seems to be prone to wrist injuries so I put a pack of frozen pees on her wrist. Well, the crying continues to go on and on. Again, that is not so unusual in our house. After 20 minutes, the crying continues and the wrist looks a little swollen. So Curt and I pack things up for the emergency room.

I must say that Jenelle was extremely brave. Once we got to the hospital she didn't shed a single tear. She was moving that wrist around for the doctors and for the x-ray. She has a buckle fracture in the left wrist. The bone compressed in the fall and instead of being straight, it now has a little bump to it. She is in a very bulky temporary cast with a sling. We'll go to the ortho on Friday where she'll probably get a cast (in hot pink, of course) for a few weeks.

Jenelle got the new Barbie and The Three Musketeers movie for her birthday. She has wanted to watch it every day. Barbie and her friends are Musketeers in training and they do all kinds of cool moves in the video. Jenelle has jumped off the back of the couch a zillion times (apparently), but I think last night she might have been trying out a new Musketeer move. Who knows?

When we were leaving the ER Jenelle says to me, "I'm so lucky. Now I don't have to ride my bike." Then she says, "I can still go bowling." I don't know where the bowling thing came from. But I guess she really doesn't like learning to ride without training wheels. She even mentioned it again this morning about how lucky she was. I guess that's finding the silver lining in all this.

Seeing Jenelle in her sling brought flashbacks to when she had a broken arm as a baby. I thought I'd post the picture for you to see. Hopefully, this will be our last injury for a long time.

Happy 7th Birthday

Jenelle had her 7th Birthday party last weekend. We had a Webkinz party. For those of you who don't know what Webkinz are; they are stuffed animals that you can take online. The online Webkinz world is really fun. The kids take care of their pets up there; feed them, bathe them, buy them clothes, etc. There are lots of games. Jenelle LOVES her Webkinz. So that was our party theme.

We invited all her girlfriends from school. We had eleven girls at the party. It was a little crazy, but fun. We played Webkinz games and had a wheel of wow. The kids went on a gem hunt and made jewel studded collars for their pets. The kids had a great time. Jenelle got lots of fun presents.

Jenelle said that she wished every day could be her birthday. I can't believe she is seven! Everyday she seems a little more grown up. But then there are those days when she acts like she's three.

Jenelle is already planning next year's party. She will spend lots of time talking and organizing for her next party in the coming year. That's my little party planner.

Camping in Estes

We did our last camping this weekend. It was our worst camping trip of the summer. The weather was so disappointing. It rained a lot. We spent a lot of time in the camper playing games. We didn't build one fire.

We arrived Friday night and had dinner. It was very windy so we didn't make a fire. We got up on Saturday and went in to Rocky Mountain National Park. It is near impossible to get a parking spot at Bear Lake, but we got one! We did a long hike to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake and then Emerald Lake. It was very beautiful. I think Jenelle's favorite part of the hike was all the chipmunks. We had trail mix with us so she would feed the "chippies" some peanuts. There is a sign before you enter the park that says "Don't feed the animals". Now I know why. Those chipmunks are a little too friendly. They were getting on our shoes. I was leaning over and one climbed on my back. It scared me too death! Those little guys are getting a little too tame. After the hike, we had a picnic lunch in the park and then headed back to our campsite. It rained and rained so we decided to go out for dinner.

Sunday we got up and went fishing. We didn't catch anything, but we had fun hanging out near the water. Jenelle and Curt made a rock castle. Soon it started to rain. So we headed back to camp and played some games. Finally it stopped raining. Jenelle and I went to play at the very wet park. She gave that up and found a nice rock pile to climb on. Curt and I packed up camp. As we were driving out of the campground it started to rain AGAIN.

We plan on going back next year. Hopefully, we'll have better weather.

New Bike

I bought Jenelle a new bike at Goodwill last week. She was getting way too small for her other bike. She was also way too dependent on those training wheels. We raised her training wheels earlier this summer thinking that she would learn to balance. Jenelle wasn't too happy about that. She compensated by just leaning over to the right and rode on the one training wheel. Big mistake on our part! Yesterday we took Jenelle out on her new bike and she was leaning over the whole time. Jenelle did a fair amount of moaning, groaning and crying. Curt and I are going to try to get her on that bike every day. Pray for us! Wish us luck. I don't think this is going to be easy.