The Fourth... Ouchies and Cupcakes

He's okay.
I, on the other hand, am trying to recover.
Preston and I went outside in the morning to do our normal "doggie poopie pick-up" in the back yard. He ran to the grass to start taking inventory (he likes to tell me where it all is...) and I stopped on the far end of the patio to fight a battle with a spider and it's web. Using the big broom as my weapon, I didn't hear Preston come up right behind me. I took a big sweep backwards right as he ran up to me... and wham... impact.

The most sickening feeling overcame my stomach. The sound of the broom handle and his eye meeting along with the sound of his screams and sight of him shaking in pain will take a long time to leave my mind. He's okay... I talked to the advice nurse at the hospital and am doing and watching for all the right things. He is seeing normally... and we will continue to monitor that carefully for a while. He took a mighty blow and will surely have quite a shiner to show for it. My mommy heart is scarred, though, for being the cause of this accident. Not so happy morning of the fourth.


Little Miss was not dressed for very long today. She has a raging ear infection in her left ear and spent half of the afternoon asleep in a diaper under the ceiling fan. But, while she was dressed and awake, I took these pics! The hat that Gracie's wearing was a project at school, as are the decorations I taped to the mirror behind the kids.
(Thanks, again, for the adorable outfit, Clayton Family!)

How to eat a cupcake...and how to recover from a battle with a broomstick handle.

Thankfully, Gracie rallied a bit in the evening and when John got home from work we all went for a walk. We ended up meeting some very nice people a few streets away and they invited us to watch fireworks. It was really a nice, unexpected ending to a rather dreary (but for the cupcakes!) Fourth of July. Preston befriended a sweet nine year-old who was so patient with him and Gracie was very content sitting in the stroller (out of the smoke line), signing "colors" and "lights" over and over.