Lab Bill!

Only a short bit of info..I got my lab bill for my trip to Little Rock..it was a whopping $2916 for those 11 tubes of blood!!  I had nooo idea!  Add that to my $134 for the doctor visit, $8585 for the hospital, and lab, and doctor-now I'm up to $13,000. (Ok, to be fair, it's all pre-insurance.  It's not all settled, but doctor/hospital is around $1750 for my part.  Haven't gotten my EOB for the LR labwork).  But can you believe it??  Highway Robbery!  (what does that mean anyway?)  I'm just shocked.
Now have a picture (you'll see why below..)

Do you remember the bloated frog that Clay found in the skimmer out by the pool?  Did I tell you that story?  It was gross, and hugely puffed up from the death/salt water.  We fished it out, and it slowly shrunk.  Now it's this nasty shriveled body (you can see the ribs under the blackish skin).  So nasty.  Well..I knew something was up when I heard Clay strongly persuading Mary Claire and her friend to come upstairs to his room to see something.  I said I'd go, but he wasn't so excited.  When I got up there, he'd brought that shriveled carcass up there!  He'd put it in a K'nex lid (aahhh-germs!), and I freaked out, properly.  He took it outside (to the garage recycle bin!), and I freaked some more.  He put it on an outside table, and I accepted it.  I'm hoping one of those wild cats will eat it, and we'll be done!  Mom thinks he's a blooming biologist, I think he's all BOY!  So, now the k'nex lid is in my dishwasher, but I'm okay now.

Nasty Frog:

 

I took Mary Claire to the doctor, and she's okay too-we did the whole xray thing, and it's not broken.

It's was just hyperextended, and it's okay.  We learned that tendon is stronger than bone, and sometimes when you hyperextend, the tendon will pull off a small chunk of bone where it was attached, and the sliver will cause irritation, swelling, and has to be surgically removed.  Then, there's the physical therapy.  Let's just say we are sooo happy it's fine!  The doctor said to just wrap it in tape to the middle finger, and it'd heal.  I feel bad that she went to gymnastics on Tuesday with a sore hand!
Ok, Clay kidnapped my camera, so I predict there will be a nasty frog picture coming soon..
On a better note, I did a tiny bit of cooking today!  I made a beautiful roast beef (but the pictures just made it look bad, Mom says it looked like bad granite), cinnamon streusel muffins, and we had chocolate chip cookies after school.  I mean, I'm a great mom!  hahahaha say the kids.  (ok, so they were break-n-bake!)
And guess what I found on my bar today?  You'll never guess, so I'll tell you.  Some big, huge (redundant, I know) plat map for a neighborhood I've never heard of!  When is he going to tell me about it??

Then, I have this big boy, who runs from the camera.  He won't let me take any pictures any more.  It took 14 to get this one decent one.  I kinda tricked him, so he thought I was counting to three.  He's learned my technique, so he turns his head on two (but I flashed on one! hahahahaha!):

So. The title.  When I took Mary Claire to the doctor, she looked around at the brochures, and asked what puberty was.  !!  I told her it was when her body started to mature, she would grow hair under her arms, her breasts would grow, and she'd start her period (yes, we've gone that far).  She asked what BOY puberty was.  (cough, cough)  I told her they grew hair under their arms too!  Then she interrupted and asked to see the brochure.  I got it down (uh-oh), and she asked what the puberty hormone was.  (?)  I read it, and it said pituitary gland.  We talked about hormones, then the doctor came in (hooray!).  When he left, she asked me to put the brochure back, and I asked if she wanted to take it home. She said Eww-no!  (Should I be glad?)  I SO don't want to have the big talk.  My kids know that babies come from God.  I'm not ready to go farther!  Prayer.  I need more prayer about this.

Ok, we are now camera-happy, so you get to share our fun (like it or not!):

Muffins and Cookies!