The Accidental Day

Okay, with a title such as this I may have you wondering.  I hope so, because this was no ordinary day for us!  In my book this day is going down as one that I will not forget.

Memorial Day has always been one of my favorite holidays.  Back in California, the city we lived in had a beautiful cemetery.  The cemetery would enlist the help of our Boy Scout troop in placing flags on the graves of soldiers on the Saturday before Memorial Day.  I absolutely loved participating.  On Memorial Day our family would always buy donuts in the morning and then head on over to the cemetery to participate in the Memorial Day service.  It was always so full of patriotism, the kind that gives a person goosebumps and brings a few tears to the eyes.  Well, with us being in Colorado now, Memorial Day found us feeling homesick.

When we woke up in the morning Mark and I decided we were going to keep our tradition of getting donuts.  The boys of course, had no problem with this.  The only problem was that donut shops in Colorado are few and far between.  It takes a long drive in the country to get to a donut shop.  Well, before we left I put on a pot of potatoes to boil while I got dressed.  I was planning on turning the stove off before leaving.  We left the house and enjoyed our nice time out when all the sudden I realized I did not ever turn off the stove.  We rushed home as fast as we could.  The drive home was agonizing.  It wasn't like we were around the corner.  Anyway, as soon as we made it back to town we looked for smoke.  We pulled up to the house and all looked well, but when we opened the front door smoke came pouring out.  Someone rushed to the stove and turned off the burner.  The bottom of the pot was glowing red!  We are blessed of God that nothing worse happened than a burned pot and smoke.

A little bit later our landlord happened to show up.  Thank God he laughed when he heard the story.  He got the swamp cooler hooked up for us which I am thankful for.  While he did that we were working on fixing the ceiling fans in the living room.  Later, after our landlord left the boys went across the street and visited with our neighbor.  He let them ride a motor scooter around the neighborhood.  They were having so much fun.  Brandon, my daredevil son, took the scooter a bit far from home.  He was going too fast, hit a patch of gravel in the road and flipped the bike and himself.  He hit his shoulder hard and his head.  Thankfully he had a helmet on.  He blacked out for a bit and when he came to he began knocking on doors to find someone to take him home.  We are blessed that someone was kind-hearted enough to give him a ride home.

Mark took Brandon to the hospital.  He had road rash and his shoulder was very swollen.  After x-rays it was discovered that he broke his collar bone.  Please pray that it will heal properly.  If not he will have to have some surgery.