What's a weekend without another trip to the doc in a box?

Last weekend was the Madison show with her migraine and the IV drip in the ER.  This weekend it was Marc and his ankle and Jerome and Thomas for their sinus infections.  Where to begin.......?

Yesterday all of us, the whole darn family, pulled together, pitch forks in hand and began cleaning stalls.  The weather was glorious, especially for a November day in North Dakota.  Marc was feeling frisky and in a giddy leap from the tractor, promptly landed on the side of his left ankle.  Being the spider monkey hand-to-hand combat guy he is, I thought the tuck-and-roll maneuver he executed was just part of his muy macho persona, but oh no.  As he struggled to stand up right, it was obvious that his ankle was unusually puffy.  He refused to stop working in the barn and persisted on which only exacerbated his injury.  Today he longer has an ankle, but he is now proudly sporting a man cankle!  It's a lovely hue of purple, black and blue complete with little mud turtles for toes.  I tried to make him lie down today to elevate his foot and ice it, which he did for about 3 1/2 minutes.  We'll have to wait and see how it looks and feels tomorrow.

Jerome fell asleep in church today not because Pastor Paul was boring, but because he has complained for several days now of a chronic headache.  He has a cough to boot and being the outstanding mother that I am, immediately realized he probably has a sinus infection.  Thomas also has had the same symptoms and so in a two-fer deal, I took both of them to doc in a box today.  I liked this doctor much better than the ER doctor Madison had last weekend, but I digress.  Both boys are now on Zithromax and I hope it clears them up and their lingering throbbing headaches.

I took Madison for a follow up appointment with her pediatrician on Wednesday and he felt as I did that her headaches are largely hereditary; closely followed by the fact she too has a sinus infection, stress and hormones.  She is on Amoxicillian which now puts our household up to 3 out of 4 kids on antibiotics.  Her ped. whom I really like, suggested that we hit her headaches ASAP with a combo of Tylenol and Motrin and if that fails to abort the headache to follow up with the prescription he gave us of Hydrocodone.  He doesn't want to prescribe Imitrex or similar drugs yet, since his goal right now is to avoid ER visits for pain and to allow her to function without being completely dopey and unable to function.  Poor thing has had migraines since she was 4 or 5 years old and as she gets older the headaches are becoming longer lasting in duration.

Tomorrow Madison has another dressage lesson on her new horse, Ka Ching.  They are becoming quite a nice pair and are working well together.  Now all we need is a new Sprenger bit, dressage headstall, a mattes pad for her saddle and new half-chaps.  I think we have aptly named the horse!  Everything involves mucho dinero and both Marc and I keep hearing that cash register sound over and over of ka ching, ka ching, ka ching!

Richnigthder is still my brilliant, driven little man.  He has been riding my horse both bare back and in an English saddle and is taking my horse over Cavaletti poles and itt-bitty jumps.  He has a blast and no amount of my arguing with him that the horse is a reiner, not trained to jump, fails to deter him.  He loves the horses and has a natural knack with them. 

My sweetheart Jerome announced tonight at dinner, out of the blue I might add, that he is "Most happy that I have my family!"  I think he sums up what is most important in life.  Having someone to love and be loved, health, happiness and people to share it with.  He embodies all that is good, innocent and simply joyful in life.  How fortunate I feel to have my 'problems' when so many other struggle with tragedies.  Today, I am thankful for my fighting, yelling kids that now require me to get up and stop the impending blood shed.  Just when I am on a roll of ridiculously happy thoughts, their arguing snaps me back to reality! :)