This week we celebrated our son's adoption day, we call it GOTCHA DAY! In our home when it's your special day (birthday or Gotcha Day) you get to pick your meals. Our son picked cold cereal for breakfast, we normally have hot breakfast so this was a treat. Lunch was a favorite buffet restaurant and dinner was Subway.
In the past we have spent the night at a hotel swimming, gone to the zoo, played board games all evening long or find other fun stuff to do for his Gotcha Day! We had planned a fun field trip to tap maple trees for syrup but those plans unraveled. We got on the road by 7am with my sister in law (AKA favorite Aunt of the child) in tow and headed toward the forest of maple trees.
About an hour into the drive husband calls to say the field trip was cancelled due to weather. From the backseat comes a yell to head to the children's museum instead. OK, foiled plans are now made in to more fun plans!! It was cold (33 degrees) anyway and I think we were all a bit glad it was going to be an inside day.
We decided to take a side trip to look at the baby chicks at the feed store, always a fun time.
We now have
BABY CHICK FEVER! lol. We will need to go to the doctor for that cause I ain't got no energy to care for baby chicks right now, though we only have about 4 chickens left in the freezer. We did buy a chicken hutch that was $119.00 on sale for $89.00. When I am up on my feet again we will get some meat birds to fill that up. YUM!!
Then we headed off to the museum, we get in free with our son's AOPA membership so that is pretty cool! Since I am not up for much in the way of walking around and expending energy since my surgery/leak/infection, I rested on a bench, then sat for a few hours in the lunch room. I brought the Kindle Fire along with me to watched an episode of the Duggars show 19 Kids and Counting, if you want to know exactly what my only child is like, he is a carbon copy of the Duggar boy that is interested in cameras and photography, I will have to ask our son what that boys name is. If anyone knows post the name, I know it starts with a J . . . hahaha, but I can't come up with it, post it on my blog please. Josiah is his name!
After the children's museum we headed off to the mall since I needed some new pants, none of mine fit anymore since the surgery, my stomach is still swollen, though this morning I did see a bit of my large incision, so the swelling is going down some. We walked around the mall and sat down a few times. Son treated his Aunt to a chair massage, they both liked it. I thought it might be too much for me so I just watched. Did not buy any clothes, but got talked into being a model for a fashion show and I will get 40% off my purchases that day. I'm thinking it was the pain meds that made me do it! Otherwise I would NEVER consent to being a fashion model. But for 40% off everything that I buy, well I'm thinking I can do this. And the child was going nuts about it, so I said "YES!"
After all this they wanted to go to a bookstore, I conceded and headed out to the car to recline. I napped and ate some egg salad (what other type of sandwich would you eat when you raise chickens?) and chips. They enjoyed themselves and Auntie thought she would never get the child out of the bookstore...hahaha, she was getting tired and there are no chairs in this particular book store, I guess they don't want you to sit around and sample the books before you buy.
We arrived home around 10pm, I was pooped (pun intended after my intestinal surgery. . . LOL), the next day I did NOTHING but breathe, sleep and eat. I am for sure not ready for a day out like that again for awhile.
There is a silver lining to all this.
After all the stress of my illness and added responsibility that the child has had over the last 6 months, remember I broke my foot, ended up on bed rest with it, then was hospitalized in December (Diverticulitis), then again in January (surgery), then yet again in February (infection). Now my recovery phase (should be back to normal by summer, but really what is NORMAL. . . hahaha.) It's been a really long ride for all of us. So this comment from our son really threw me for a loop, it got me thinking WOW I guess love is what it's all about (the love of the Father first and foremost) and you just do what you have to do to make it through. I think this has all been a
HUGE learning experience for our son, in watching how Daddy takes care of me and how our marriage vowes really come into play with something like this, especially when your spouse is not able to function for months on end, you have to take on household responsibilities and new financial responsibilities (my medical bills just for 12 days in the hospital + all the extras of tests, co-pays, prescriptions etc. are well over $100,000.00 and insurance is fighting $48,000 of that saying it was not medically necessary for me to be in the hospital for the infection and IV antibiotics. Prayers would be appreciated in this area. I am thinking that there is an insurance coding glitch or something since I was very ill and I don't think I would have fared very well at home in the condition I was in, there is no way I could have functioned at home.
I pray that our son will remember us getting through these times when/if his wife or children should ever become ill. I look at this as a time of growing for all of us, and WOW what opportunities I had to share through the course of my illness, to God Be The Glory is all I can say! As I feel up to it I will share more things that I encountered through my illness.
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| Visiting Mom in the hospital. I look much better now! |
I will leave you with the comment from our child the night before his Gotcha Day, he says to me "Mom, I am so glad that you adopted me." I said "Why?" He says "Because I get to grow up in a Christian home, I get chickens and I get to have a dog." I told him "Thank you and also be thankful for your birth parents, they made a really hard decision in placing you for adoption."
How does your family celebrate Gotcha Day!?
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