Life With the Herdmans

Justice (6 year old) has been complaining of a hurt tooth.  The gums around one of his teeth are swollen, and don't look right.  I took him to the dentist, and they took x-rays, and were kind of puzzled.  The dentist says it looks to be just irritated because it needs to come out.  Anyway part of what convinced me to take the kid to the dentist was as I was checking on our browser's history, you know to see what web pages my kids had been visiting, I noticed several entries where Justice had googled "hrt teeth"  "hert tooth"  "hurt tuth"  etc.  I figured if he was really that concerned that he was googling it, maybe I should pay attention.  Funny kid.

Since we were discussing doctors and such.  Lydia had a scary episode with some major allergy / asthma type of thing.  None of my kids have ever had anything of the sort, so I just thought she had some kind of bug.  She sure was coughing a lot, but I just figured she was sick.  When she asked to go to the doctor, I nearly said "No, lets give it a day or two to give your body a chance to fight it off."  But then I realized that she's has NEVER asked to go to a doctor before, and really doctor visits are not the favorite things of modest 14 year old girls.  So I listened and made the appointment for that afternoon.  Good thing too.  The doctor calmly told us that she needed a breathing treatment, and then walked out of the room.  I heard her in the hallway saying "We DEFINITELY need a 125 in here!"  Now, I'm not sure what '125' refers to, but her tone made me take things a bit more seriously.  After 2 more breathing treatments and a bit of steroids, the doctor told us that she wasn't breathing well enough for her to let us go home.  I was informed that she would have to be taken by ambulance to Children's hospital 45 minutes away, where she would spend the night, and likely a day or two.  She was then wheeled over to the hospital next door, and put in the care of the E.R. doctors there.  After a complete work up, another breathing treatment, and a total of 6 hours worth of doctors, they said that she was doing well enough to go home.  YAY!  She is on three different kinds of medicine, but doing fine.  I hope that is the end of that.

 So back to the lighter side of life.  Yesterday we took our annual family trip to the cemetery where Bruce's grandparents, and a few other relatives are buried.   As we were getting out of the van, I told Bruce that he should give the kids a review on cemetery etiquette.   (I know this is hard to believe, but sometimes my boys are a bit rowdy.  On a side note, my brother John once brought out his copy of "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and showed me this illustration on the Herdmans, and told me that it reminded him of my kids.  Yeah, it is pretty funny, but I'm not sure if I should be insulted or not.  I know I'm going to sound like every other stupid parent out there, but really and truly, my kids are generally well behaved, good kids.  Rowdy, yes, but GOOD kids.  Their teachers all tell me so. (Well, Justice did get into trouble several times for "being silly" in class, but on the whole, he really is a good kid.  I SWEAR IT! )  Okay, back to the cemetery:  I told Bruce that he should remind the boys of proper cemetery etiquette (i.e. no climbing on headstones, jumping on graves, etc.)  At the time, Justice and Clayton were a couple of graves away, examining a headstone, and Bruce must have had something in his tone as he called them over, because Justice replied with "What? We aren't peeing on it!"  (They weren't, I could see them perfectly well the whole time.)

On the way home from the cemetery, Justice and Clayton had the following conversation:

Justice (6yr old):  Jesus is dead.

Clayton (3 yr old):  No he isn't.

Justice:  Yes.  He DIED.

Clayton:  NO!  He used magic and powered up!

Maybe we need to go over a few essentials again.

One way that we survive sacrament meeting at church is to bring lots of paper and pencils.  As long as the boys can draw, we get through without too much incident.  Their drawings sometimes tickle me.  Here is a sort of random sampling, pulled out of my church binder.

 I don't know who did this one.

 I think this ninja one is Mark's.  This is our family as ninjas.  See how well we hide.  Bruce is apparently the best ninja, because he is invisible.

 This one is Ross'.  Something about his dream land?

This one was passed from Ross to me during sacrament meeting today, folded up.  As I often get folded up little valentine-like notes from my kids, I was expecting something like "I love you Mom."  I was wrong.















This one was done by Justice today.  I think he gets bored and draws things he imagines would be funny to happen?  Last week he did a drawing labeled "Cherch" with a guy screaming madly from the pulpit, and someone in the back of the room shooting the speaker.  I couldn't find that one to include.  (and no, LDS speakers do not scream from the pulpit.)  This one is kind of light, so I'll explain.  Here you find a spring loaded pew, and a guy shooting out of the seat, smacking his head on the ceiling, and falling head over heals onto the pews in front of him, smacking head and groin in turn.

And just to prove that we aren't complete heathens, here is a picture that I found in my binder of Jesus being tempted to jump off the temple.  (I'm not sure who did this one, but I think it's Marks.)



















The most hilarious one ever, I'm not allowed to share.  The illustrator is just too embarrassed.  It's been a year or two, so maybe I'll be able to convince him to let me share sometime.  I nearly busted a gut right there in church.  But alas, I can't share.