No more thumb + some

February 2016

One cool feature about our house is that Matt can ski down from our yard into our neighbors yard (which is a big hill). He made a couple jumps so he could get a little air as he went down. He would ski down and the neighbor boy or I would pick him up at the bottom of the hill. He went out one night with our neighbor and when he came back... well something was wrong. He had skied off one of his jumps and when he landed his ski pole (he has the old wrap around poles) hit a icy patch and jammed back into his thumb. He thought he had dislocated his thumb and had our neighbor pull real hard on it to get it back into place...that sure didn't help. They took him to the ER and got x-rays and found he had broke a bone in his thumb in two places. It broke kind of like a T. They wrapped it up, gave him some pain killers, and told him to see a hand Doctor soon. We went the next day and they said it looked like things were in the right places and he probably wouldn't need surgery. We went in the following week to do some more x-rays and found out things had moved quite a bit. They set up surgery for the next day. The surgery went well and he now has 2 giant pins in his thumb. I would say they are more like nails skewering his thumb rather than pins. (He finally got the pins taken out on April 14th! It will still be a few more weeks before he can start moving it, but we are getting there.)

Matt has been such a good patient - he never complains. He has been really positive about everything. He has gotten pretty good at using his left hand too - to write on the board at work, playing basketball, and doing just about everything he needs to do. I feel bad that this happened to him, but we both have been thankful it was just his thumb and nothing bigger - like a knee. I am also so grateful we have good insurance and a health savings account from Matt's job.

 ER visits are expensive!

Pretty gross huh?!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Helping Dad grade some papers. :)

Playing with our Bubble Machine in the Kitchen. 

I started watching two little boys twice a week. Autumn has a lot of fun playing with them and it's been nice to make a few extra bucks. One of the boys is a 3-4 months older than her and the other is 3 1/2 years old. They all play pretty well together, for the most part. :)

I like BLUE dum-dums! 

Autumn did her own hair. Pretty girl!

I just love her in snow clothes, especially her hat. 

We saw an elk in our front yard. It's almost as big as the horse.

To compare here is a deer.