Not QUITE the Trip I Was Planning On

You know you've had a really big week when, after an evening spent with friends, you buckle your daughters into their car seats, hop behind the wheel, pull away from the curb and then ask them if they need anything. Surprisingly, there is no answer, so you turn around only to find that both of them have completely zonked out before you have even reached the corner.  Yes.  It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Last week - now almost two weeks ago - Bitty had her one formal event of the summer (Stomper's was cub camp - wish we could have had THAT every day!).  She was in a small dance class every day for an hour and her performance was on Friday.  Nothing spectacular, but she loved it and came away from the experience with a giant purple tutu and a rose-studded coronet for her hair.  Miss Natalie knows how to make little girls very happy.

The morning of her performance was a hectic one because I was busy stuffing our car absolutely chock full of camping equipment, which the girls and I would need for our ONE NIGHT in the mountains.  Bitty's dance camp overlapped with the annual Preslar family campout, so the boys took off on Thursday morning and the girls and I followed suit on Friday afternoon.  We went to a small campground just outside of Preston, Idaho, which was a nice place minus the heavy traffic.  Hope I'm not being offensvie when I say that I don't ever need to camp with ATV-riding folks ever again.  Ever.  I swear, there was more noisy, roaring traffic in that campground than there is at my house downtown.  But the mountains were nice and the family had a really good time together.  Until that night.  And then I learned what it is like to feel like an extremely crappy mommy. 

I was sitting in our camping area after dinner, hanging out and knitting and chatting with my cute 16-year-old nephew and my mother-in-law.  We were watching Bundle wander around walking Rascal, my in-law's little dog.  Rascal has his hyper moments, but this was not one of them.  He was just patienty letting Bundle lead him along, and Bundle was so fascinated that she was watching the dog behind her instead of the ground in front of her.  Which is why she didn't notice the fire pit.  Now, dinner had been over for hours and all that was left in the pit was a heap of white ash.  I wasn't even thinking about it.  In fact, when Bundle tripped over the metal ring surrounding the pit and landed on her knees in the ashes, the first thing I thought of was the powdery mess I'd have to clean up.  Luckily my nephew's brain was actually functioning and he was out of his chair like a shot and grabbed Bundle before things got a lot worse than they already were. 

Those next few moments were some of the worst I've experienced.  Bundle's one shin was badly burnt - although how she managed to localize the burn to that one area is beyond me and I sincerely thank our guardian angel for that tender mercy. Her skin looked melted and bubbly and very scraped up.  I was rushing around like the proverbial headless chicken looking for water to rinse it with as the family gathered in alarm.  It was only 10 minutes later that we had located Troy, turned down many kind offers from Stomper and his cousins for various items from their first aid kids (way to go, cub scouts, but a band-aid just ain't gonna do it right now), secured Stomper and Bitty's care with their aunts and uncles, hopped into the car and were high tailing it for the hospital in Preston.

I was expecting a long awful night waiting our turn in a tiny ER, but it turns out that if a town is small enough, there just aren't that many emergencies going on at any one time.  We were lucky enough to be the total center of attention in their one emergency room and I have to say, we all did a very good job.  Bundle did, and I did too.  The doc on call lived close by and was there within 10 minutes or so, and cleaning up her burn was not nearly the ordeal I was expecting.  Bundle was treated quickly and was made as comfortable as possible with a little help from our friend Tylenol with Codine.  She was very brave and I did a very good job distracting her and using all my long-dormant Child Life skills.  We assured Bundle many times that she was doing great.  I assume that is why, the moment after her bandages were secure and I immediately slumped into a near faint and had to be lowered to the floor by our kind doctor, that she approached me, gave my knee a pat and told me, "You're doing great, mom." 

After only an hour or so we had little choice but to head back to camp, though I loathed the idea of sleeping in a tent with my poor injured gal. We made it through pretty well.  We had one dose of medicine to administer in the middle of the night but really it wasn't so bad.  It has now been over a week since the accident and I'll just say that today is probably the first day that Bundle has seemed like her old sweet self, though of course she's still sporting a bandange over her slowly healing wound.  We affectionately call it her "special sock."    She has also enjoyed a bug bite on her wrist that swelled her hand to twice its size, and a touch of heat stroke that left her feverish for two days.  I'll just say that the folks at the pharmacy have stopped asking questions about me showing up there twice a day.

So the rest of the camping trip was really quite enjoyable.  It was just that one little itty bitty thing about the emergency room and my daughter getting 2nd degree, borderline 3rd degree burns on her her shin.  The rest was fun.  After all, when you get Troy's brother Rick and his wife Tonja in front of some dutch ovens with bacon in their hands, there is little that can go wrong.  Plus the kids got to go fishing.  They lasted about 15 minutes each time and came no where near to catching a fish, but they sure had a great time!

Oh yeah. And every single day since then has been absolutely cram packed with stuff.  Which I will blog about later.  Maybe.