Big Morning

Henry ran a fever all day Saturday and when we finally got it to break at midnight so he could sleep, Ken and I both agreed that I would be staying home from church with him today. He slept good all night and this morning, he woke up with no fever. I debated on if I wanted to take him to church or not. Ken's only request was that whatever I decided, he was not going to be late this week. We have sacrament meeting first and the only seats that are always empty are on the very front row and when 8 of us walk in late, it's like a parade. I agreed so I jumped up to get to work getting us all out the door on time. I was finishing up Kate's hair and glanced at the clock, taking note that I now had 5 minutes left to spend on myself. Good enough. I grabbed a chunk of her hair in the back to curl it and my fingers got caught on something. I felt it again and thought, "Great! How did you get food in your hair already?" I pulled on it and it wouldn't come out so I pulled her hair apart to investigate.

I SCREAMED!!!! (I do this alot, actually)

It wasn't a piece of food. It was a bug stuck to her head and the skin was all read and irritated. I immediately guessed it was a tick! NASTY!

Ken came and looked and since this was our first experience with something like this, we loaded her up and headed to the ER. So much for being on time to church.

Thankfully, at the ER, they didn't even check us in. They just took us back, put some lidocaine on it, the tick started to pull out, the doctor grabbed some tweezers and pulled really hard and out came a string of blood and a big fat tick! He then pulled out the pincher's which had broken off and were still in her head, told us what to watch for and sent us on our way. I guess ticks around here don't carry Lyme's disease but they do carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever and Colorado tick fever so we'll watch her for the next couple of weeks.

She was very brave and was mostly just embarrassed that her hair wasn't finished when she went to the ER. I, on the other hand, think that I will be traumatized for life thinking about pulling on that thing thinking it was some food and then realizing what it was. It was about the size of a pea so I thought that was pretty big! YUK!!

So, the big question is, where did she get it from? I wish I could say we had gone to the mountains or out to the desert to play this weekend, but we didn't. She just played around the neighborhood with friends yesterday. So, we have no idea where she got it from. Maybe the grass?