This morning.

I was on the phone with American Airlines checking on escape routes flights to the states. So for some unknown reason, and I know you other moms know this too, the kids seem to go berserk the minute you lift the receiver from it's cradle. They cannot contain themselves. They scream, they run. They bounce off the bed and onto the floor. It's noisy, when only moments before the phone call, it was somewhat calm. Somewhat.

So I gave the kids a pen and some paper. Only I didn't have another pen at the moment, and gave Eddie a marker. This is what he did during my 5 minute conversation. Notice the design he added to his jammies.



He actually colored all over his jammie bottoms too. But I didn't notice until after I took these pictures. It might not have photographed well since the pants are so dark anyway.

After our fun with markers, he jumped off the bed and landed on a ball, which he bounced off of and fell backwards where he bit down on his lower lip. Screaming began immediately and when I helped to pick him up, the blood was already running down his chin.

For those of you who know me, know us, then you know what a terrible panic this sent me into. To those of you who don't, I will just shorten the story and share this with you. When Eddie was 14 months old, he was running in the house and fell on a cardboard poster holder, which he was holding in his mouth. He knocked out a tooth. Root and all. What a horrible experience to have your little baby lose a tooth like that. Right after he just got that one in too. But we lived. And there are worse things. Much worse. But seeing the blood run down his face this morning just sent chills down my spine. I swooped him up and rushed him off to tend to him. He is fine. The crying has ended and he just has a cut lower lip.

So before all the drama, I was trying to find out how much it might cost me to go visit my family. Is it sad that I've only been here 3 months 2 weeks and 1 day, and I already want to go back? Well, the flights that I have found are astronomical in price. Really. I'm being quoted around $6000 for me and the two kids to go. Since Miss Alexa just turned two, she is no longer free. Bites.

I think though, that I may have figured out a way to get the price down. We have those air miles, you know with AA everytime you fly. Only, we don't have a whole lot of them. But we could actually purchase more miles to qualify for the trip. And that would cut the total price of the tickets literally in half. So right now we are looking at around $3000 total. Still. That's kind of high. But a lot better. I also have a reward for an airline ticket worth $225 from my credit card. So that makes the price even better. OK. I'm going to go see if I can research some more before I tell dh how much I want to spend.