Then we took a little trip to the hospital.

The day after our wonderful and exciting Thanksgiving and Kira's "real" eighth birthday, we had an adventure I hope to never relive.

Shawn got an intestinal blockage. It was ugly, involved intense pain, vomiting and other such ugliness. We went to the ER only to be sent home and then we went back 6 hours later and they admitted him. (Duh.) Sadly, that was our first mistake. Condell wound up being the biggest nightmare of a hospital ever.

Only after he was home did people start saying "Oh! I'm so glad it worked out, when I heard he was there I was really worried..." Great. Really? It is known to be a problem hospital, unfortunately for us, we had to learn our lesson the old fashioned way.

In addition to everything else, we don't actually know many people here who can just drop everything and take my kids and my life over. Lucky for us, we didn't have too. Katie and Terry pulled through and Katie flew out here for 12 days to help me. And it was a true help. I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly thankful we were. And while I hope to never have an opportunity to "repay" them, I would in a heart beat. She moved right in, cooking, cleaning, running errands, picking up and dropping off the kids and just let me be a wife. And let me tell you, there was no bigger relief in the world that someone loves my kids nearly as much as me showed up to take them on. And trust me, Shawn needed a wife. He needed and advocate in that hell. Those people were just down right scary. Seriously? What doctor wants to perform surgery on a patient but is hesitant to get their medical history from previous dr's? Who? Crazy right there, and they thought they were going to just have me smile and nod my ok.

In any case. I know this is a massively abbreviated version of our story, but I just am not up to typing it all out right now, I don't even really feel like thinking about it. But I needed to insert it, so everyone could understand why my sister was here.