A Night to Remember and The Big Break(and no I don't mean June, July, and August)

I had just finished one of the most rewarding nights of my short teaching career Tuesday. For information purposes I will quickly tell of what that entailed. This year I have had a few real fantastic students and wanted to find a great way to reward them. You see with the population of kids I work with when they succeed I want to make a real big deal about it. So I did. I had a few donations, close to $1,000 to give these kids the night of their young lives. I worked with the West Valley City Council and had them formally recognize these five kids, Trisha Lindberg, Josie Lozano, Candace Coggins, Josie Lozano, and Jordan Sewell. They were given an award and got their pictures taken with the city council. It was pretty sweet. Personally I must say I felt like a loner, each of the kids was with their families, I was all by myself. It was my event and it was a little awkward. After all the hoopla we went to dinner in style. A limo. A good friend paid for it and it was kinda the icing on the cake. This was my first time in a limo and without a doubt it was unforgettable. We went to the Gateway Mall and ate at the premiere steakhouse in the city, Flemings, another generous donation. Let's just say that may be the first and last time any of us eat at a place like that. It was lavish and expensive. Erik Bates met us there. We spent roughly $4oo on dinner between the seven of us. The food was great, the dessert was the best ever, this chocolate lava cake. Decadant. In all, it was a night to remember. A fantastic memory. Hopefully one of many memorable nights for those kids.

After I dropped them all off I went home and was helping Janalynn prepare for her preschool graduation. Finally around 1 am I went to bed. Janalynn was still up putting the finishing touches on her graduation. When she finally went to bed, Porter had gotten up and found her in the preparing, she was walking him down the stairs when her foot slipped and she tried to land holding him. It was a bad landing. Instantly she knew it was broken and I raced to the stairs and knew it was broken too. Her foot was rotated roughly 30 degrees the wrong way and it looked like the bone was sticking out of the skin. It wasn't, luckily, but I knew right then it was not going to be good. Janalynn was in major pain and I was calling the paramedics, we all knew it was bad. The kids were awake and it was pretty chaotic, I was doing my best to talk to the operator at 911 and keep things relatively under control. There was a time when I thought Janalynn was going to pass out, she didn't. The paramedics showed up and put her in an aircast and took her away. I made a few calls, got a hold of Lisa Peterson who obliged to come watch the kids while I went to the emergency room. I might add this was at 3 am. When I got there Janalynn was still in a heckuva lot of pain. The doctor shot her up with a lot of stuff and then put her foot back in place. That was a wild few minutes. The rest of the time was spent in a lot of pain. Then because of insurance issues we were sent home at 6am.

I called in to the school and told them I wasn't going to be there. We went to Cottonwood hospital at 10 am and were in the emergency room until about 3 pm. It was chaotic and Janalynn was not only in pain but being in the hallway was making her anxious. Finally at 7 pm they did the surgery. It lasted until 10 pm. In all she got 3 plates and 12 screws in her leg to repair the bone. She has been off it for the last two weeks and has 6 to 8 more before she can put any weight on it. Bummer of a summer. Now more than 2 weeks afterwards she is not feeling as much as pain and can get around better now that she has this scooterlike contraption she can skate around. She missed the NY trip so that was more of a bummer, but seems to be in better spirits now.