Collisions, planned and unplanned

Nothing particularly exciting has been happening around here. Well, unless you count Gus getting hit by a car.

He really did! I can hardly stand to think about it. Here is what we pieced together. He was riding his little bike. He went back through our alley and started to dart across the street just as a car was coming around a corner. The car couldn't stop in time and it hit poor Gussie. It was an Amazon car (not a van, just a car) and the driver stopped immediately to help Gus. There were some people walking by too, and our neighbors came out to help. Sam drove up, coming home from work, just as everyone was gathered around Gus on the side on the road.

The first I heard of it was Sam yelling through the house. "Come check Gus's leg, he got hit by a car, I put him on the couch and I'm going out to talk to the driver." My heart dropped, but when I saw Gus I felt better—he was crying but looked fine. He had a scrape on his leg and some others across his back. I felt around carefully and had him move his foot around. He seemed to be able to move in every direction. I had him try walking and he could do that too.

Sam talked to the driver, who felt terrible. When I went back outside he kept apologizing to us and gave us both big hugs. Gus really had just zipped out right in front of him from behind a mailbox, so I don't think it was the guy's fault at all! He couldn't stop in time, but he wasn't going fast. We told him Gus was fine, but he had to make a police report anyway. When we told Gus he had to talk to one of the policemen, he started crying WAY harder than he had about getting hurt! He was so scared! I had to reassure him ten times that no one would be mad, the policeman wasn't going to take him to jail (!), and we would be with him the whole time!

Gus's description of the accident was "It felt like a tree fell on my leg." We kept ice on it as long as we could, but he was up and walking around within the hour. Limping, but walking. It all seemed fine and I was feeling relieved that everything had turned out okay. 

That night when Sam and I got home from our date, though, Daisy said, "You better go look at Gussie's knee." It was swollen up HUGE. Like the size of a (small) cantaloupe. It was horrifying. Daisy had been having him put ice on it and he didn't seem TOO uncomfortable, but I thought for sure it must be broken after all. The swelling went down a little with the ice so we decided to wait till the next day to take him in.

The next morning it already looked lots better, and the x-ray at the doctor's office showed no breaks. In fact, I learned—this seems hardly possible, but the x-ray girl assured me it was true—that children don't even have kneecaps until the age of 5 or 6. Did you know that?? I could see on the x-ray that Gus's was just barely starting to grow—it was a thin fingernail crescent floating in the middle of a bunch of soft tissue. I guess that's good, because if he had had a patella, I'm guessing it would have been broken!

So! That all turned out the best it possibly could. I had a few quiet moments of thinking about what could have happened and feeling shaken and grateful. (Sam saw an article that very night about a little boy Gus's age who died getting hit by a car in Pleasant Grove. It's so heartbreaking to think about.) Gus limped around cheerfully for a week or two and then was back to normal!

He has had several good drawings of late. This bunny,

these bugs,

and this Caw! So cute!

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These three play together quite a bit. On this day they were being two firemen and their fire dog.

Clementine in Gus's old pajamas

Fun airplane Gus built

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Sam and I were, sadly, in Quebec the night of Malachi's debate program ("The Soapbox"), and even though I expressly forbade him from entering the contest ("You will win," I said, "and then we will not be there to hear you"), he entered anyway, completely defying my orders, and of course he did win and ended up giving his speech without us there. Hmmph. Daisy went to hear him, at least. And I got to read his speech—it was about Quebec, actually, or at least it talked about "je me souviens," and the reading of fallen soldiers' names at the Citadel, and the empty churches, and remembering. It was really good. I wish I could have heard him give it.

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Clementine sleeping with her hands neatly folded in her lap

Matching

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As you know, after a five-year hiatus (is that the word I want?), my kids sang in the Utah Children's Choir again this spring. The older choir, the concert choir, wears blue choir robes, and five years ago at Target I had seen a little blue graduation outfit for dolls, and gotten it for Daisy's doll Rosie, in anticipation of when Daisy would be in that older choir. Then of course COVID changed everything, my girls started ballet, and I figured Rosie would never wear her blue choir robe.

So when the spring concert rolled around this year I was very pleased to be able to get it out of the cedar chest after all!

Rosie hasn't changed much. Has Daisy? :)

The choir concert was very cool because it was the 40th Anniversary Concert, so Miss Asay invited an alumni choir to join the children for part of the concert. My three oldest boys are all alumni, and they all agreed to come! They did it because they wanted Miss Asay to be happy, but I think they ended up really enjoying the singing too. It was super fun for me to watch. Not all of them were extremely enthusiastic singers back in the day :) so it was really cool to see them all participating voluntarily and with a bunch of other grown adults. It's fun to be part of something good, and this was really good. They sounded wonderful!!

Can you find the three boys?

Abe, Seb, and Ky

This was just a funny moment during the rehearsal before the concert, where Clementine was waving at her siblings and they were all delightedly waving back! :)

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We've been studying Shakespeare all spring, and I got my mom to save us some newspapers so we could make swords while we were learning about fight choreography. It's pretty cool to learn even some basics of how people make fighting look more real on stage and on film. I split the kids up into groups of two and had them choreograph their own fight scenes.

These two just liked whacking their swords together and laughing about it

Goldie and Teddy worked Clementine and Gus and Zig into their little scene and it was almost like a mini-play. Super cute.

Daisy and Junie's fight scene was amazing! They did Romeo and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. They fought with swords, fists, and feet, and were practicing all morning to get it exactly right! It was like a complicated dance, and they did it SO well…I thought several times, "Oh no, they really hit each other!"

There was even one part where Daisy slashed at Junie's arm, and she clapped her hand over the wound, then lifted it away and looked at it covered with blood. She had colored with red marker on her hand and arm in that spot, to reveal it at that precise moment, and it was actually SO realistic and somewhat terrifying!

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Ziggy went to D.I. with me and was so excited when he spotted this reversible basketball jersey! He told me he'd always wanted something of this sort and was even more thrilled when I said we could get it. (He had, politely, upon first seeing it, said "I don't try to make you buy anything, especially if it costs a lot of money. But when I get older and earn some money this is exactly the kind of jersey I will buy.") I think he wore it for a week straight after that. He's so cute!

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My darling niece Katy and her husband Josh are having a baby, and we are SO excited for them! The three girls all crocheted special gifts for the baby shower. This is the darling bear that Junie made.

Goldie's little…well, he started out trying to be a fox but we think he turned out more like a kangaroo.

And Daisy's tiny wee bunny. Won't the baby have fun with his little animals?

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I just thought you might like to see what these delicious maple snickerdoodles look like after being baked for…oh, I don't know, at least 40 minutes, probably. Goldie put a batch in the oven and then went off to her friend's house. Luckily I finally smelled something and took them out! I have never seen any cookies so black!

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A cousin's "Kentucky Derby" party

My brother Karl here for a quick visit—helping Clementine dunk

Church carnival

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Goldie's birthday (observed). She was turning 12 on the 12th this year!

We'd brought home some cheese curds from Quebec (they don't need refrigeration for the first couple days) so of course we were having poutine for dinner! And it was SO good!

Our beautiful Marigold Eve!

And that is all…

except some stormy skies, for good measure!