sorry its been so long since an update. we did have a bit of drama on the way back from florida to north carolina right after new year's. we flew out of fort lauderdale and the visibility was really bad at tri-cities, so they diverted us to greenville, sc to wait it out. after a brutal hour on the plane they finally hard mercy on our bladders and appetities and let us hang out in the terminal instead. gabe managed to make some little friends and while they were running around, he tripped and hit his head on a chair and started bleeding profusely - there was blood EVERYWHERE from the neck up. imagine my joy!
once we got him cleaned up it turned out he had a pretty bad gash above his eyebrow. the airport medics (a great bunch, although they seemed a bit overstaffed: we had about 10 folks hanging out with us for over an hour) sent us to the emergency room to get stitches, so we rented a car and drove to a hospital with a pediatric ER. turns out it was in the 'hood (who knew there was one in greenville?) and there was a 3 hour "minimum" wait so we headed to a different ER which in contrast was disturbingly empty. they patched his "big boo-boo" and he was handsomely rewarded with m&m's for dinner (at 10:30PM!). after we were done there, we went ahead and drove the 3 hours to my parents house, which was a good thing because it turns out that the flight couldn't go on from greenville because of the fog, so they sent everyone back to FLORIDA at about midnight. glad we weren't there, but our luggage was, so it didn't get back to NC for 2 more days, and didn't get to us for a week. given my wardrobe challenges, you can imagine the horror of going without most of my clothes for a week! it ranked up right up there with the bloody-child-in-airport (although that one couldn't be fixed at the mall).
here is a picture of gabe in his injured glory:
