The Stringham Scuttlebutt: All the Other Stuff that Happened in Spring

Seriously, my kids have a selfie problem.

Shawn's ride to work on April 28th. It was nice when he left home, but he was riding in snow before he got to the office.

Shawn with a couple of his buddies.

My parents' garden.

Peter all set to get his stitches out. (Of course I'm realizing that the stitches were never blogged about in the first place. Suffice it to say that there was a random accident that took place in the basement that involved Peter spinning around and falling on a plate that one of my disobedient children had taken downstairs and left on the floor. The plate broke and sliced his leg open. Megan, who witnessed the accident ran away as quickly as possible when she saw the blood and poor Peter sat on the floor freaking out and crying by himself until Samantha finally came to see why he wouldn't stop crying. Poor Samantha, who can't handle the sight of blood at all, took control, got the first aid kit and cleaned it up and applied pressure while convincing Amelia to call me on the phone. I often get phone calls with the message that Peter bonked his head and wants you or some such message, so I was not overly concerned although Amelia did relay the message form Samantha that he needed stitches. So now I knew there was blood. I was already on my way home and when I got there and lifted the gauze off of his leg, I could clearly see the muscle, so the girls were right. I was so proud of Samantha for holding it all together while my boyscout son hid out upstairs and ignored the whole thing. As soon as I got there, though, she said she needed to go lay down. Of course, as is always the case, the timing was not convenient. We were hosting a water polo tournament that started in about 40 minutes and I had just picked up the vinyl that needed to be placed on the bottoms of all the chairs at the new pool. I called Shawn a couple f times and he didn't answer, so I sent a text saying, "I need help now!" Amazing how that did the trick and he called me right back. Luckily he was just at the pool and not all the way at his office, so he ran home to take Peter while Samantha and I worked on chair leg covers, then I dropped my polo players off and ran to instacare to relieve Shawn so he could go coach, while calling a neighbor to see if she could cover my shift at the scoring table at the tournament. Whew! He got 4 or stitches, although could have used a couple more since there is now an open hole in his leg. Oh well, I'm glad it was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, although I felt terrible as he screamed in pain while they were cleaning it and he just looked at me like how could I let them do this to him. And now he will have this fantastic scar for the rest of his life. So far, he has required the paramedics and a couple of instacare visits. He's way ahead of my other kids. He now has two self-imposed rules: 1) No dancing int he shower (that resulted in his skin gluing) and 2) No spinning if there are plates on the floor. Two very important lessons if you ask me.)

Anyway, he was pretty worried about getting his stitches out because getting them in had been so painful, but it wasn't so bad and we're both glad it's over despite the hole in his leg.