Another Trip to the doctor

Our day was started off on a run today. We had a doctors appointment for four out of seven kids scheduled for 9:30. We are about 20-25 minutes from the office and they told me to get their early since I had lots of paperwork to fill out for Barbara and Sharlene. At 8:10, I woke up from my slumber to the sounds of lots of laughter and what it sounded like to be children jumping on their older brother who had been sleeping only moments before. I think the yelling from the older brother to get off of him is what really woke me up.

After it dawned on me that the time was indeed what it was, I jolted from my bed. I had to get four kids up, fed and dressed in about 30 minutes time. Thank goodness, I have slave labor...a 12 year old and a 10 year old. Grace helped me get them ready and I sent Brad out to the van to get their car seats situated since we had to switch cars do to the fact that the 'burb' is in the shop having a certain dent and some scratches repaired (it's a sore spot which I won't go into but I will say that it involved a couple men who decided to go bahaing through a swamp). Upon unloading the children from the van at the doctors office, I found out that the car seats where in the upright position and the girls were in fact buckled in their seats but they were NOT buckled down from behind making them glorified deluxe booster seats that you have when you are dining not driving. >Sigh< I'm glad Brad buckled them in but I guess I assumed he would know they needed to be attached to the seat by the seatbelt. My fault completely. I should have realized that I needed to download thorough instructions from my brain and have uploaded them to the kids the night before.

I get to the check in counter and they give me all the paperwork to fill out. I updated Kara and Ryan's record to show that we are currently cash paying customers which they repeated back to me a few times to make sure they understood. I felt like we were on exhibit. I'm sure there are lots of other people who are also cash paying customers. I didn't think this was something odd or abnormal. They were kind enough to tell me that if I was on their 'prompt pay' program (meaning you pay right then and there before you leave the office) that I would receive a 10% discount. I guess that could add up to a wonderful discount in our family. We reserved the 'suite' there at the doctors office so we had room to turn around...well, some of us turned around, other's sat in the chair thoroughly exhausted from what she went through to get everyone there and then chasing after them around the waiting room pulling them off of chairs which they thought they were suppose to climb on.

The doctor came in and checked all four of them and informed me they all needed to be on antibiotics. Since Aaron was in earlier this week and now these four, this virus is making the rounds. I am also not feeling that great but it seems to have hit my throat mostly making me hoarse. It's never good to loose your yelling voice. How can I properly yell at those little darlings? They can't even hear me amongst the noise level in our home.....it's just not fair! After the doctor left the room and I managed to get these cute little lambs to the counter to check out, I handed what paperwork I have on the girls from the social worker for them to make a copy of for their file. As we are waiting for that to take place, the kids were busy checking out the blood pressure machine, the bathroom, the different offices, climbing on the chairs...working me into a sweat. Of course, while the nurse was making the copies, the copy machine decided to jam up and it took them an eternity (at least, that is what it seemed like to me) to get it unjammed. At this point, my patience level is wanning big time so I lined them all up against the counter stressing that they needed to sit and not get up. This was not in line with their thinking which sent a couple of them into a crying fit. I thought, oh great! Just Perfect. After the crying came to a halt and the little halo's appeared, one of the nurses came down the hall seeing these cutie pies sitting all in a row, exclaiming how cute they were....and for being so very good for their mama, they each got stickers. I thought to myself, where is my sticker? Shouldn't mother's be offered a sticker? It's a lot of work to get them to sit all cute in a row. I thought that was quite an accomplishment. But no sticker for me. All I can do is wait for the sticker to be forgotten about or find it laying on the floor, stuck to my shoe or detach it from the wall and gently place it on my shirt while telling myself...what a good job I did today. I was very glad when it was time to go.....all that was going through my head after they were all clicked in their car seats correctly, was.......

I survived and am still able to talk about it!