Anniversary!

I would write a witty wonderful story about what I did for Mother's Day, but it would be labled IRONIC at best since we spent it in the after hours emergency place with Jeffrey. He had the MOTHER (pun intended) of all asthma attacks. It pretty muched freaked us all out. Jeff and the boys ate Burger King in the car and drove around for two hours while Jeffrey got a shot of steroids and 3 breathing treatments to get him up and going. We did get to spend a few hours together, me and my eldest son, but there you have Mother's Day.

So, moving on to Tuesday. Tuesday was our 14th wedding anniversary. wow. 14 years. I certainly am not old enough to be married that long. (I was a TEEN bride, so if you are doing the math, I am still WAY less than 35). We had high hopes of spending the afternoon and evening togehter - babysitter lined up and everything. You can hear where this is going, can't you?

Monday night I am bathing Blake and I can literally feel the lymph nodes poking out of his neck. Being the daughter of a chemo nurse, I, of course, freak out. I load up the three little ones and go see the doctor (tuesday morning). He is puzzled, thinks he may have mono, runs some blood work and calls the other 2 doctors in his practice to come have a look. This freaks me even more since the only other time he called in his partner, was when he diagnosed Andrew with Downs, and we have now been in this tiny room for almost two hours. The quick strep and mono test are negative, but his white blood counts are elevated so off to the ENT we go. The good news is that he does not have an abcess in his tonsil (which was tossed around as a possability) but the bad news is we still don't know what is wrong.

We get sent to the lab (I have since called Jeff to come with me - no need to have all this fun ALONE) for full blood work and we are waiting for results. I'm too tired to bore you with more details, but we are heading back to the ENT tomorrow so she can take a second look and see how things are. She said he does NOT have cancer, so after that I settled down. He looks fine and is acting fine, so we are trying not to worry. Hmm, happy anniversary.

So we did spend the afternoon together - me, Jeff and Blake. Family took care of the other boys till Kara got here. Jeff and I laughed at how easy one child was. We thought about not going out (the day was a little stressful), but he had made reservations at the restaurant we had eaten at 14 years ago on the morning we left for our honeymoon.

We, feeling somewhat better that Blake is ok, leave all the kids with Kara and head out. Our only goal is to stay out late enough that all of them are in bed before we get home. Dinner was nice - the food ok, but not great, but the wine was great and the view from the restaurant was amazing, so all in all not a bad anniversary. We saw a movie before we came home (dinner was over by 7:00 - too early to go home).

The funniest part of the night was talking about what we had done on our previous anniversaries. I am embarassed to admit that we could not remember years 1 through 9 AT ALL. Seriously, no clue whatsoever about what we did. We do know that one year we went to a friend's bed and breakfast, but that was about it. Years 10-14 went like this...

10 year anniversary : on the heels of a miscarriage and failed IVF, we take a last minute week long cruise to Mexico. We only had Jeffrey at the time (left at home with family) and the trip was FABULOUS. It was the last real vacation we have had. sigh.

11 year anniversary : (this one made us giggle). During our 10th year of marriage, we sold our house, built a new one, did invitro, got pregnant with twins and gave birth to twins. whew. Our anniversary was 2 weeks after the twins were born. We went to a Japanese steakhouse for dinner. We were so tired we could barely stay awake. We came home and paid the babysitter to stay so we could sleep.

12 year anniversary : We go to dinner at an amazing private restaurant, 6 tables. I had just found out that we were, ooops, pregnant with baby number 4. I had to skip the free champagne. How quickly life changes in a year.

13 year anniversary : Andrew was recently home from his 2 week hospital stay. We were exhausted and he was still on oxygen. Leaving him with a sitter was not an option will all his monitors and tubing. We got Tijuana Flats and ate take out in bed while watching TV.

Which brings us to year 14 which you have already read about. Does this mean our years are getting better or worse? I guess it doesn't matter since we married for better or for worse.