Happy St. Nick's Day!

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas and he snuck into the house late last night and filled the stockings with treats - coins that represent the dowry he paid for the three poor girls and some small toys for the little ones. Jack got a set of Little Einsteins figurines and these little Jack's-hand sized trucks. SO cute!! He's sitting on the floor with them as I type, putting a Kelly shoe into the back of one. They're the farm equipment line of Tonka trucks with small faces on the front and the bright colors seem to keep his interest. I never imagined I'd love the whole John Deere thing nearly as much as I do - being born and raised quite the city girl - but this little set of farm trucks includes a couple classic gold and green that reminds me so much of the John Deere line.

Today is blustery and cold - and the snow has just begun to fall. I pray it's settled and melted by the time we leave for the next cast. Speaking of, if you haven't heard by now, we had to cancel the last casting. Jack suddenly spiked a fever in the middle of the night and it was over 104° - going down to 102° even with motrin on Friday night. All day Saturday he was fussy and miserable and feverish, and just wanted to sleep and nurse, so we thought we'd better call the hospital. Thank goodness the resident was there and spoke with us, as well as the Weekend Coordinator. They called Jack's doctor, who wasn't in town, and spoke with anesthesia when no one else could be reached. Because of his age, they said it was too risky to intubate and put him under general with a recent fever and cancelled our OR time. By Saturday night he was awake, feeling much better, and the fever had broken. Go breastmilk power!!!

Fast forward to Monday and we finally reach someone at the hospital. We now need to go to the doctor and get a statement of wellness from our local primary care physician in order to even get a time slot in the OR. So, we get an appointment, drive all the way over, and spend an hour at the doctor to get a piece of paper that says what we already know - Jack is fine. Faxed that over, and we are on the schedule for Tuesday morning. This works out so much better anyway because now we can have his cast cut off on Monday and get x-rays, then go in for our Tuesday morning slot.

Not much else is going on here. Today is our 11th anniversary and we're having a quiet (Ha!) dinner at home with our whole crew to celebrate our 11 years of being a family - and tomorrow is Skylar's 8th birthday. She's been really keeping her chin up about not having a party and completely lost it today after lunch. But, I think we have some special things planned for tomorrow that have lifted her spirits - even if it snows, we'll play Yahtzee (her favorite!), have family movie night, and hopefully the roads will be okay to go to Our Lady of Snows and see the Christmas light display like we had planned.