Saying Goodbye

I've always said how fortunate we were to have moved overseas with our company and at the time we did since there was a large influx of families moving overseas together.  We all experienced this journey together- we had the same fears, hesitations, unknowns, and we all learned to adapt and make due with Saudi life.  I met some amazing, beautiful women and developed some precious friendships with women who taught me so much about life.  These are women that have essentially been our expat family and made life overseas completely bearable!!  

I was blessed with a going away luncheon celebrating my journey and time in Saudi along with 6 other ladies who were leaving in early June as well.  It was really sad saying goodbye, but what a fun time we all had together. It's a tradition that when its time to leave everyone gets together and sends you off with a gift.  I received a beautiful, gold necklace with a camel, & palm tree, filled with Saudi sand.  It will definitely remind me of my time spent in the Kingdom.  

I don't think I ever shared on our blog that last December, Delia, our wonderful helper moved an hour and a half away and no longer worked for us.  It was very sad not having her in our home anymore, but we were blessed with one of her dear friends, Ivie, who embraced us and kept our house going and loved our kids like they were her own, too.  She was an amazing helper, especially our last month while we were packing up, organizing, decluttering, etc.  Even though she was only with us for 5 months, we LOVED her and had a hard time telling her goodbye.  Miles and Brooklyn loved their Ivie.

Moving overseas, we had to say goodbye to a lot of our friends back home, but we never expected we'd get to say hello to some very special friends who moved to Saudi a year after we did.  It was wonderful getting to spend 2 years with the Acord Family and to be apart of one another's lives and have the chance for our kids to "grow up" together.  We met up with John, Che, Peyton, and Graham for dinner at Outback and spent one last evening together.  It was heartbreaking watching the kids hug each other and say goodbye.  It was also hard to tell a very good friend goodbye knowing once we both moved back to the states we'd be in different states.

Our amazing neighbors came by to say goodbye the day we were leaving.  They also came and waved goodbye to us as we got into our cars to go to the airport that night.  These are some amazing people who we loved spending 3 years together borrowing cups of sugar from, watching one another's kids, sharing meals together, and just plain ole' having fun together!

After Jake's birthday party it was time for us to say goodbye to our close group of friends.  I was not looking forward to this.  None of us were.  An hour before we had to leave us girls started saying our goodbyes.  It was an extremely emotional night!!  Imagine the sick feeling in your stomach when you're struggling with the heaviness of a situation and it just lingers.  That's how I felt all day and all evening.  We all talked about the fun times we had and the memories we made and made a pact to one day attempt to get our husbands all working at the same Chevron Phillips plant someday.  Hey, we can dream right?!?!

Gavin and Tucker were two years old when we moved to Saudi and were the only kids from our group.

Last Days in Saudi

Once the packers/movers came and went, we took advantage of the time we had left living in Saudi and  filled our days spending time with friends, enjoying the beach, going out to eat, and even played at a public playground while we waited for Chili's to open after prayer time.  We sure are going to miss having a beach in our backyard.  

Rodel- one of our drivers

I kept the boys out of school one day and we spent the morning at the Acords house and had a blast playing together!

Parties & Get Togethers

Once we found out we were moving, we did everything we could to spend as much time with our friends as possible.  That included going to parties and having dinners together.  We celebrated lots of friends birthdays and enjoyed all the "extra" time together hanging out!  

Basketball

This past week Brooks experienced his last Tuesday night Saudi basketball game. It was the end of an era for him and I'm pretty sure this will be the thing he misses the most about Saudi.  He has loved getting to play basketball every week with a group of guys the last 3 years! Before Micah and Dan left for vacation we took some pics at basketball to remember these times.   I'm thinking Brooks is going to have to find a group of guys to play with and a court in our new place!  

Brooklyn and Hospital Trips

A few weeks ago Brooklyn and Miles and I were in the backyard playing.  I set up some toys and we ran around from one toy to the next.  Miles wanted to set up the baseball tee and hit some balls.  We have different sets of baseball bats and balls for Miles and Gavin, but Miles really wanted to play with Gavin's, so I let him.  I stayed close by while he hit the bat and ball.  Brooklyn thought Miles was having so much fun she wanted to play, too. So, I set up our plastic tee ball set and gave her a foam bat and ball and she went to town.  After a while, the little ones wanted to play together and kept putting baseballs on one another's tees.  I stood between them worried that they might hit each other on accident, and before I knew it, the inevitable happened.  Miles swung around with Gavin's metal baseball bat right towards Brooklyn.  Thankfully, I was standing there and used my leg and body to block his hit, but he still managed to catch Brooklyn's forehead.  I feel like my block minimized the force Miles could have hit Brooklyn with and the location of where the bat hit her, but he still hit her.  

Brooklyn fell to the ground with her eyes closed.   My heart dropped and panic set in.  It took her about 30 seconds to open her eyes, all the while I was grabbing her, shacking her, and calling her name.  When she came to, she cried and screamed for a good 20 minutes, but then calmed down.  She acted fine and was her normal self.  She ate dinner and played with her brothers the rest of the night.  After baths, we were getting ready for bed and noticed Brooklyn had spit up.  Ten minutes later she spit up again.  A little while later she "spit up" again and then it dawned on me, she was hit in the head and is now throwing up. I called two ladies on our compound who are nurses and they both said take her to the ER.  We called for a car, took the boys to Micah and Steph's house and put them down for bed.  The hospital pediatrician saw Brooklyn and ordered an X-ray.  We weren't real happy that they asked for an x-ray instead of a CT scan, but we went with it.  They asked a lot of questions and said the main concern is vomitting.  We were sent home with orders if she vomits anymore, bring her in immediately and monitor her for the next 24 hours.  The x-ray showed everything was normal.  I stayed up until 1am watching Brooklyn through the monitor, just incase.  The next day we ran a few errands and she seemed fine.  At lunch time, I put Brooklyn in her high chair to eat and noticed her pupils were dilated.  One was dilated so much you couldn't see the blue in her eye.  I watched her eyes for a few minutes, moved her around the room, turned lights on and off, and when there was no change, I called my neighbor to come check and see what she thought or if I was seeing things.  She noticed it, too.  So, off we went back to the hospital. Turns out, that hospital doesn't have a neurosurgeon or a CT scan machine so we were told to go to another hospital with a trauma unit, neurosurgeon, and CT machine.  At this point I called Brooks and asked him to come meet me at the new hospital.  We went through the ER, she was observed, we told multiple doctors what had happened and then just waited.  Eventually, Brooklyn was admitted into a hospital room for observation, blood work was done, which meant an IV was needed, we had a scheduled CT scan two hours later and when we arrived, the technician said we had to back to our room so a nurse could put Brooklyn to sleep.  4 hours after we arrived at the hospital, a friend brought us some snacks and food while we waited for the sleeping meds to kick in.   The CT scan was done on Brooklyns head and 2 hours after that, we got the ALL CLEAR news!  Praise the Lord.  Apparently, when B got hit, she suffered a minor concussion causing her symptoms, but nothing caused internal issues.  Praise the Lord.  We were told Brooklyn had to stay over night, but I refused so we compromise with the doctor and had to stay at least another 2 hours to see if she could hold food and drinks down.  We eventually made it home.   

Fast forward a few weeks....

While on our vacation to Thailand, we noticed one of Brooklyn's toes was turning red.  We just assumed it had to do with her wearing some new shoes and walking a lot.  Then, we realized any time we touched it, she'd scream.  On our flight home, Brooklyns toe was HUGE and had turned purple.  We notice a spot on it and Brooks tried picking it to see if we could relieve some of the pressure.  The flight crew helped us administer first aid to her, but after a while she just wanted to be left alone.   It only caused Brooklyn to cry hysterically for an hour in the back of the plane.  When Brooklyn woke up I found her toe looking like this.  

Before

It was actually as big, if not bigger then her big toe.  We were our pediatricians first patients that morning.  Upon showing our doctor B's toe, she rushed us out of the room and we went straight to the hospitals' general surgeons office.  He took one look at it, turned to me, and said, "she may lose this toe." I was panicked.  I sat and prayed and prayed and prayed.  He said that Brooklyn had some kind of trauma to her toe that got infected.   The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get the infection out.  Brooklyn screamed her head off while myself and a nurse held her down.  After two attempts of draining her toe, the next move came when her toe nail was peeled off and the infection literally gushed out.  It was one of the grossest things I've seen.  We spent the next week going to the surgeons office every few days to have her bandage removed, the wound cleaned, and her toe observed.   Thankfully, everything has healed up and Brooklyn's toe is looking and doing good! She was a trooper the whole time!

After