Lending A Hand

In case you haven't heard, Dave cut his hand quite badly on Thursday night. (Read this post for more details.) Therefore this weekend turned out a little differently than we had planned. Thankfully Dave's parents took the kids for night on Friday and Dave and I caught up on our sleep. After a two hour night on Thursday, Friday's nine and a half hour sleep was a huge improvement.

Saturday morning we ate breakfast and then Dave really wanted to play the folk song, "Two Good Arms" on the piano. (If you go to the You Tube link, skip ahead to 1:00 to hear the song). Then we undertook a sit-down shower for Dave. Thankfully the whole bathing process went a lot more smoothly and quickly than we had anticipated.

Dave spent a lot of time on the couch to recuperate from his "jam packed morning" of breakfast and sit-down shower. I was trying to get things done around the house like taking out the garbage and putting laundry away, and I asked Dave how he was doing. He commented that he got to watch squirrels "frolicking" on the windowsill. Okay, that's what we'll call it then :)

I took a picture of the squirrels during one of their "frolicking" breaks and they nicely posed for me!

Dave's dad brought the kids home around 1:30 or so and they ate some lunch and then watched some Franklin videos. I did the piles of dishes which had accumulated and Dave napped.

Tim, Janice, Tessa, and Willem showed up at 5 and I felt like the cavalry had arrived! Tim and Janice made supper and dried dishes. Tessa read to Rachel and Willem entertained Sam. I unpacked the kids' overnight bags, got their rooms ready for putting them to bed, and took all the dirty laundry downstairs. We had a great supper and afterwards, Tessa helped put Rachel to bed while Tim and Janice cleaned up. Then we had lime sherbert floats for dessert. Yum!

Yes, we still had the St Patrick's Day tablecloth on the table. And we used the festive cups as well. I finally got all that holiday stuff packed up yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday we went to church and we felt so surrounded by a loving, caring, church community. You all know how much I love my church, and while I am the first to admit that it isn't perfect, the way the community has rallied around us in this situation just brings me to tears. My friend, Margaret, wrote, "I hope I never see Dave turn those colours again [she was with us in the ER when Dave was close to passing out from the pain], but if he does, I pray that someone will always be there with you along the way. I would want to know that someone from [church] would be there for me if I was in your shoes. This is what faith community should be. Thanks for letting us care for you." To me this is a beautiful description of what we have experienced and we are so grateful.

In the afternoon my friend Carla had Sam and Rachel for a play date at her house and Dave rested, and watched Seinfeld, while I did dishes, made Sam's lunch (probably the earliest I've ever made it!), did some laundry, showered and generally tried to get on top of things for the week ahead.

Our friends, Margaret and Nolan, brought us an amazing supper of carrot-lentil soup and bread. The picture above also shows a loaf of bread another church member dropped off for us this past weekend.

Both kids were melting down a ton yesterday, so after supper I gave them both showers (neither child was particularly pleased about that), and then Dave read some stories. Rachel had the epic meltdown of epic meltdowns and cried for forty-five minutes about the fact that I wouldn't let her play an iPad game. Then she fell asleep in my arms. Dave read to Sam that entire time, and then Sam fell asleep too. You can tell Rachel was losing it even in this picture. (And this was before the epic meltdown.)

Once both kids were asleep, Dave needed to eat to take some of his medication and I needed to eat to take some of mine (being on prescription drugs this past week has completely messed with my "not eating after supper for Lent plan" as I have to take two medications with food but I can't take them at the same time.) Anyways, Margaret had also brought some black bean cupcakes. Their family is gluten free and so they make some alternative recipes. I so want the recipe for these cupcakes because they were a little bit of heaven in my mouth. Oh. Yum. 

 

So that was our weekend. It wasn't at all what we were anticipating, but thanks to all of the support from our church community and Dave's parents, we made it through. And we have a new appreciation for those people who lend a hand when needed.