Usually a Fun Holiday...

Happy 4th of July

We are usually at the beach for the 4th of July, but this year we pushed back our beach trip a few days, so we were at home for the holiday.  I was not feeling well most of the day with stomach issues, but managed to hang in there.  Derek took the big boys to see a movie at the theater while Maverick, Jamison, and I stayed home and napped.

About 7 p.m. Derek went to the store to get a few sparklers, Pop-Its, and fireworks for a small celebration.  I was pushing Jamison in the stroller along our front sidewalk with Maverick and Grandma.  Chandler & Brighton were running around our yard and our neighbor's yard and then it happened...

Chandler starts hopping on one foot and screaming in incredible pain down the front hill towards me.  I had no idea what was going on.  I thought he had broken his ankle.  I kept yelling at him (since I was far away at this point....) "Are you hurt?  What is wrong?  Sit down!!"  He wouldn't answer me and just kept screaming in pain.  I ran towards him and unfortunately quickly figured out what the problem was.  He had stepped in a yellow jacket's nest!

I quickly scooped him up and ran towards the house.  I started stripping his clothes off him as they were covering his shorts and all over his legs.  Amazingly, he only got stung once (the initial sting) on the ankle.  I think his think jean shorts saved him from more stings.  As I was swatting bees they were coming for me and I got stung on my ring finger on my right hand.  Unluckily for me, I am allergic to bees and other animal venom (like fire ants) and my hand started swelling up very bad.  Two days later (on Saturday) I couldn't close my hand at all and it was super painful.  I didn't regain full use of my hand until 6 days later.  I knew it was a risk I had to take to get those bees off my baby, but I certainly wish it could have been Derek instead of me.  Like Chandler, after the initial sting wears off he would have been fine.

After calming down from the bee incident we did a few fireworks:

All I can say is that my stomach was no longer bothering me after that.  Probably because my hand hurt so bad I couldn't think about anything else.  Oh well....Happy Fourth!