Poor Lexie

So, the wives dinner I had last night went great. Lots of people showed up and everyone had a good time. The kids were well behaved. The weather was nice, so the older ones were in the yard playing and we had a babysitter downstairs with the toddlers. It was nice to be able to socialize without kids running through the house everywhere. The house is now clean and I took Ellie to camp this morning (Operation Purple Camp which is for kids whose parent is/has deployed). She will be gone for 8 days and I'm sure she'll have a blast. We will miss her though :(

I am heaving a great sigh of relief that everything went as planned.

We had a late night last night and then had to wake up early to drop Ellie off. I pretty much just woke the younger kids, dressed them and put them in the truck. When I woke Lexie up, I was shocked. She wasn't able to open one of her eyes all of the way and she doesn't seem to know what happened. It isn't bruised at all, so she didn't bump into anything/get hit. It looks to me like some sort of bug bite. She says it doesn't hurt, but it feels very strange to her since it's swollen half shut. It was still swollen tonight when she went to bed. I am just surprised that she wouldn't have noticed being bit by something on the eyelid. If it isn't going down by tomorrow, I suppose I should take her in to have it checked out. Sorry that the picture I took is sort of out of focus. I didn't notice until I uploaded it....

I am afraid to take her to church tomorrow because each day last week at VBS, she showed up with some new mark on her face. I'm afraid that people are going to think I beat her or something! The first thing she did REALLY scared me. First of all, I want to explain that a couple of months ago there was a death of a toddler on post. He died from strangling in the cord to the blinds. This really freaked me out and as I was looking around my house at all of cords hanging off my blinds, I thought that I should probably get rid of them. Andy quickly talked me out of this and called it a fluke - just one of those freak things that happen. Then, last week, Lexie (who is 4!) was in her bedroom with both of her sisters and for some strange reason decided that she was going to wrap the cord AROUND HER NECK!! She was just playing around and got it all tangled up. This scared her and caused her to panic. She was pulling the cord back and forth along her neck trying to get it untangled and got rope burn on her neck. I am just SO thankful that is all that happened. She really could have hurt herself. It really frightened her though and I can't see her ever doing that again - but she has two younger siblings, so who knows what insane thing they might do - especially Nick. Andy will be taking the blinds down when he gets back and I think we will shop for some drapes instead.

Anyway, back to Lexie - on the way to our second day of VBS, we stopped at the grocery store. Nick and Lexie were sitting next to eachother in the car cart when they started fighting and Nick scratched her right under her eye. On the third day, she was running in the house and cut her chin open on something. She really looked like she'd been in a barroom brawl. And now she has an eye swollen shut!!! The poor child is having a hard week. Honestly though, I am so tired and sleep-deprived that we will probably just sleep in tomorrow anyway....

I am hoping to relax for a couple of days and start working on some school-related stuff in preparation for the fall. I got my first shipment from Rainbow Resource Center - next year's math and grammar. Kate is ready to dive into her math book, but I think I'm going to make her wait :) Ellie won't be excited until the history and science books come!