4th of July

This 4th of July we were a bit exhausted as we had just flown back home from our awesome trip to Montreal and although we would have loved to stay in bed all day, Merrin wouldn't have let us. We started off the day by taking Merrin to our neighborhood's 4th of July parade and had the best time. Even though Keith and I have lived in the neighborhood for three years now, we have yet to attend the annual July 4th parade so we had no idea that we would in fact BE the actual parade. Usually when you think of parades, floats come to mind but in this case "we the people" were the parade. It was lots of fun though, the Charlotte Fire Department started off the parade with a very nice speech on how dangerous fireworks can be and to use caution. Then the parade was in full force with cutely dressed kids, oddly dressed parents and amusingly dressed dogs! We marched around the neighborhood and once we made our way back to the clubhouse there was FREE ice cream for all the little ones. Merrin had her very first bubble gum flavor pop cycle and ate every bite (well, dad helped a little)!

We were home from the parade by 10:30 and the rest of the day went down hill from there...around 1:30 I received a phone call from my mom saying they were on the way to the emergency room!!!!!!!!!! My heart almost stopped and I think instead of giving her an immediate reaction I didn't say anything at all so she proceeded to tell me that my dad had fallen off his ladder while trying to trim some limbs out of a tree in their yard. She said that he thought he might have broken his ribs and in fact not only did he break one of his ribs but cracked every single other rib on his right side. Needless to say they gave him some very powerful drugs and after they started to take effect they sent him home. Apparently there is not much you can do for broken ribs except pray that you don't laugh or sneeze! Daddy has been in pretty severe pain all weekend so I ask all of you to please pray for him and a quick recovery. My dad is not one to stay still for long and I know this is hard on him to be "down and out" for awhile. When we went to go visit him, poor Merrin didn't know what to think...she couldn't figure out why Papaw could not hold her and every time my dad had a muscle spasm (which apparently can hurt worse than the actual break) he would yell out in pain and give Merrin a little scare. Not to make light of broken ribs but we are all just thankful that nothing worse happened, I don't know what I would do without my parents. I LOVE YOU DADDY & MAMA!