Wednesday the 20th was David’s birthday, the big 10! He was very excited to be a double digits kid, finally! 
His brothers gave him lots of extra love. We baked pound cake cupcakes (I recommend a double batch for the future) with chocolate buttercream frosting for his class. Now for a quick story about my son’s fabulousness: I called the school that morning to double-check the number of kids in David’s class. The vice-principal looked it up and told me 18 kids including David. I wrote it down. I said “So with the teacher, that makes 19.” “YES.” So we had two cupcakes that came out extra crispy, and Gregory and I each tried one, so that had us down to 20. We left one behind for Nick to taste. We got to the school, ate lunch with the kids, and as we were eating I was counting kids. I kept coming up with 20. Twenty kids. I asked David if I was right. He said yes, there were 20 kids in his class, counting the deaf ed kid and the new kid. 20. I had 19 cupcakes. The teacher wasn’t with us in the cafeteria so I gave her cupcake away, but that still left us one cupcake short. David and I looked at his special cupcake, the one with the shiny holder and sprinkles. He picked it up, carried it to his newest friend, and said “I’ll get more cake tonight. You have it.” *beam* I was so proud. 
That afternoon we had a double playdate with David’s best friend and Ben’s best friend. Greg’s friend had to drop out at the last minute. After dinner we had another pound cake, sans frosting as per David’s request. 
The rest of us had ours with sliced strawberries. 🙂
Thursday the 21st was my birthday, the big 35. I was a little less than enthusiastic to start the day, but the kids had left me a trail of homemade birthday cards to follow out to the kitchen. Nick brought me flowers, my favorite kind of red-and-yellow tulips. 
One of my friends met me at MDO and her and her kids serenaded me with “Happy Birthday!” I got to order a really cheap Kindle someone I knew was selling for my gift (my other gift plan had been something more extravagant that wouldn’t have been available until after Mother’s Day, so this was cheaper and better). Some friends met me for lunch at my favorite little French cafe/bakery and we spent a long time laughing and talking. I sped over to the kids school and helped out with Ben’s class’s spring party. 
Nick picked up Greg for me, as he’d gotten part of the afternoon off for Good Friday (I don’t know why they got part of Thursday off, I really don’t). We had a pack meeting for scouts that night, so I got to get happy birthday’d by some of them while they learned to put tents up the right way. 
Then we came home and had special ravioli, wine, and yummy parmesan zucchini and more pound cake for dessert (I didn’t have time to make another cake just for me, which was just as well since we had extra cake in the house).
Friday the 22nd was Good Friday. Nick’s church doesn’t celebrate it in any way, but we always have a family bbq at our house that day. This year we were having it much later in the day due to bad weather make-up days. We worked on cleaning up the house in the morning, then went over to a friends house for Greg’s playdate in the afternoon while Nick stayed home and cooked. Greg and his friend K and S got to play in the sprinklers and in the sandbox while we moms did our toenails in preparation for Easter open-toed shoes. Haha. More on that later. 
It was a bit awkward because the house next door was having an Easter Egg Hunt in their yard with kids that our kids knew, so there was a lot of standing-at-the-fence-staring-into-the-other-yard for both sets of kids, with one set wishing they were wet and the other wishing they were egg hunting and us moms just cringing a bit because of some weird war-of-silence the two neighbors have going on. I hate those kinds of things and try not to get involved at all, but it’s hard when it affects the kids. Anyways, they had fun, nonetheless, and much wetness was had. 🙂 I changed Greg’s clothes and took him home and started decorating for the bbq. People started arriving and the kids started playing and everything went really well. 
The food was good and there was lots of it. 
Nick made my favorite lemon blueberry pie for dessert, but the kids had ice cream instead. It was a really good day.
Saturday the 23rd we got up and Nick made us a quick breakfast before the kids and I left for College Station. On the way to the car, Ben stepped on the back of my shoe. I kept going forward, but my toes did not, as they were stuck in the shoe. It hurt a lot, but we were in a hurry, as my sister was just in CS for a limited time and we were already running late. So we drove to CS and my foot swelled and turned purple while we were in the car. There wasn’t anything I could do for it besides take off my shoe. Got to my parents house, hobbled inside, put ice on it and kept it up all weekend as much as possible. 
The kids dyed eggs & threw confetti eggs with their aunt & grandparents; I took photos but kept my toe away from people. 
We watched The Kings Speech and ate a mini-Thanksgiving dinner (my mom’s been obsessed with that since we did T-giving at April’s house this year). April left after dinner & instead of going out to watch the Doctor Who season premiere with friends, I sat with my foot up & kept icing it. I couldn’t sleep because of the pain, so I stayed up late talking with my dad, the only upside of the whole foot pain episode. 
The next morning I tried to figure out how to go to church with shoes on. I tried, I really did, but ended up barefoot. 
My parents church is really casual most of the time, so no one said a thing. There was beautiful music (most of the Brazos Valley Chorale was in the choir & their director is the music director for church). Greg spent time in the little kids classroom, but Ben had to stay with us. He wasn’t happy about it, so he curled up under his chair and went to sleep. 
After the service was over the kids went on an egg hunt. We brought the eggs home, but discovered that they were full of ants, so we took them outside and threw out all the chocolate candy, as they were the ones filled with ants (why they would fill eggs with chocolate on an outdoor hunt in the fire ant capital of Texas, I don’t know). 
Anyway, we had leftovers for lunch and then my friend S brought baby S over to visit. Baby S is getting bigger and bolder and cuter! 🙂 Love her! 
And then it was time to leave, but not before stopping off at my other friend’s house to happily hand off all the baby/toddler/family books we’d outgrown, since they are just about to grow into them. 🙂 (Sadly I hadn’t brought down the little boy clothes another friend needed, because I thought they were out-of-town, but they weren’t! and now I’ll have to mail them after all.) We made a billion stops on the way home, much to the unhappiness of my toe, which by then I was convinced was broken, so we ended up getting home just in time for bed.
Monday the 25th was the Last Day of Unleavened Bread. We had two church services and a potluck in between. I wore my flattest shoes and still limped around. In the morning I played clarinet with the ensemble (which included a couple different people from the week before), and also played a piano duet with my mother-in-law for offertory. After the ordination of some deacons & deaconnesses (who know Nick’s church had deaconnesses? Not me.), the kids sang a couple songs with the kids choir. 
People afterward kept coming up and asking when Nick and his dad would sprout some musical ability and join us up on stage. It was pretty funny. 🙂 
After potluck(there was lots of brisket. Hmm. I wonder where that came from?) I played with the ensemble again. By the end of the day I thought my foot my fall off on its own, so I called the doctor and set up an appointment for the next day.
Tuesday I got up, got the kids ready in record time, and took them over to my parents house here in town. My dad loaded the kids back up in my van after second breakfast and drove them to their various schools while my mom drove me to my MRI. Remember that? I’ve still been having that numbness and tingling off and on and off and on, though never as bad as it had been that one Saturday. We went up to the hospital, got some more bloodwork drawn, had an IV installed, and went off to wait. They did the first MRI without contrast and the second one with contrast. A nurse took a very detailed history of my issues before I left for the radiologist to look over. We went straight from there to my primary care physician’s office, where I had three x-rays of my foot taken, just to make sure that nothing else was damaged besides my toe. To my surprise, nothing was broken, just very badly sprained. I was told to a) wear tennis shoes from now on, and b) never, ever wear high heels again because my feet are very susceptible to injury. Pretty much what I expected as far as instructions went. Then he asked about the MRI and told me that he expected answers within the next day or two. The rest of the day went by fast. I put my tennis shoes on and my toe immediately felt better (not 100% but quite a lot). I picked up kids, hung out at my parents house for a bit, then took kids to piano lessons.
Wednesday the 27th we had nothing much going on. My parents left town and Greg and I were on our own for the day. We did some cleaning and played. Big kids came home and it was more of the same.
Thursday the 28th I woke up exhausted and stayed that way. After I got all the kids to school I declared it rest day and spent some time catching up on the internet and some TV. I perked up enough to hit a close-by estate sale in a house I’d always wanted to see inside, just for a little bit, before picking kids up. We had a fairly normal afternoon and evening.
Friday was super-extra-long in itself, so we’re moving it off to tomorrow. 🙂
Lisa Holcomb 