On July 2nd the craziest thing happened. The kids and I were sitting around the house in complete silence (and how often does that ever happen??), Faith up in the loft at the computer, me sitting on my bed, and Buddy eating breakfast at the kitchen table, when all of a sudden Skittles started screaming/yelping at the top of her lungs. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen where she was lying on her back at the foot of the stairs.
Losing 140 lbs has made my blood pressure a little low, so sometimes my vision blacks out when I stand up too fast. No biggie, it's a small price to pay, but in this instance I forgot that and ended up passing out when I reached the kitchen! I was only out for a second, but when I came to, the kids were bawling--so worried about Skittles and not knowing what had happened to me!
The only thing that we can figure had happened is that she fell down some stairs and landed crazy on the tile at the bottom. It is weird, though, that we were all so close to where it went down, but didn't see or hear anything until the injury. Maybe she just missed that last step.
We finally calmed the puppy down and noticed that she was now limping on her right front leg. She is a huge baby about any pain at all (if she runs into the wall and bumps her head a little she'll scream for a full two minutes after it happens), so I felt her leg and paw carefully and did not think it was broken. She didn't whine about it any more, but she wouldn't put any pressure on it, either. Poor thing, we waited until the next day to take her to the vet (to be fair, I called that day but they didn't have an appointment until then).
When they x-rayed the leg, they found that she had broken the tip off her elbow (which is up high in dogs, closer to the shoulder, and protrudes quite a bit) and would need surgery and pins to get it to heal correctly. They couldn't get her in until after the holiday, so they wrapped it up with a splint and sent us on our way with some pain meds for her.
Here is how she looked on the 4th of July. You can see that Faith, Christian, and Dusty (aided by Faith) had signed her "cast".
She was to be doing minimal walking, so we carried her with us to the Kaysville City celebration.
We're not big on parades, so we got our fill of it while walking to the booth area from where we parked a mile away. We perused the jewelry and wares, ate some snow cones,
and did some inflatables!
Buddy picked up some magnetic marbles and Faith got this cute flower ring.
I had to work that afternoon, but Tony took the kids over to his parents' for their traditional barbecue. Tammy was going to take the kids mini golfing instead of fireworks (because it had been so dry and the fire danger was extremely high up where they live on the benches), but Boondocks had closed early for the holiday. She brought Zach over to our house, I finished up work, and we did the fireworks we'd picked up in Evanston on our way home from the Uintahs. Now that the aerial ones are legal here, we have a lot more fun on the 4th!! We did have a scare when a passing car knocked over one and it shot at us, but luckily we had a good, safe time.
On the 5th, Skittles went in bright and early for her surgery. We got her back that afternoon and she was a sleepy little girl.
I also got a shot of our baby birds. They're so big that they're busting out of that little nest! I'm so glad that all four made it this year.
The next day they started to test out their wings and finally got strong enough to fly away. Bye-bye birdies :)
The 16th was the beginning of Tony's July vacation from work, but I'm not sure what we did that day. Probably just vegged with the kids and watched some movies.
On the 17th we did another candy factory tour. This time it was at Taffy Town.
They make the absolute best saltwater taffy, ever. We always go out of our way to purchase taffy at the shop, and if we want to buy it on Saturdays (because they are closed), we go to Gardner Village to get it. The tour was very intimate (just our family), very informative, and lots of fun! We got to sample fresh taffy and then, of course, bought tons more. Love those hair nets!
After that we went to The Living Planet Aquarium. We probably spent over two hours, cumulatively, petting the stingrays.
The jellyfish were favorites, as always.
And we couldn't pass up the frog riding photo op.
Buddy wanted to make sure I got a pic of these awesome shark teeth,
and our penguin fun.
Amazingly, and I hope I don't jinx this from ever happening again by mentioning it, Christian did not throw a fit when he didn't get to pick something from the souvenir shop!!!!!!!!!!! We just had a quick look, tried on an otter mask, and went on.
We did allow a squished penny, and the kids loved making those.
We hadn't been to Chuck-A-Grandma's for over a year since (because of my surgery) I don't eat enough for it to be worth the cost. But we decided to splurge for our staycation, and the kids enjoyed loading their plates up and then only eating half the food, as per kids' buffet tradition.
That evening we went to the Clark Planetarium. We very much enjoyed their new displays.
We picked up our tickets for the show and then perused the Gateway for awhile.
At the Rocky Mountain Candy Company the kids were treated to bubblegum ice cream, which they had been begging for lately. Tony got chocolate dipped strawberries and I got a sugar-free mint truffle.
Back to the planetarium!
We went to the live narrated show called "Night Vision." It was very interesting, but the narrator was not quite as fun as the one we had last year. Here we are in the dome theater.
A super fun start to our staycation!
