Ouch!

Need some comic relief? Stay tuned, I have a story for you!

So today my mom, sister and I had a yard sale at my house. We live on a dirt road, in a semi-rural area. Our road, although it is unpaved, is right off of a major CA highway. I wanted to catch the eyes of passing highway motorists and thought the best way to do so would be to park my van at the corner and cover it with huge "Yard Sale <----" signs. Our yard sale was pretty successful and by noon we were almost sold out. The corner where I parked my van is about a mile from my house, definitely too far to walk. My mom gave Landon and I a ride to the corner to my van so I could take the signs off and drive it back home. We got to the corner, I got out...ran across the street to my van and spent a good 5 minutes removing the signs. About the time I finished I looked back to my mom's car just in time to see her pick up a hysterical Landon off the asphalt! He was crying so loud, so I knew something bad had happened. I ran to them and my mom said he was in the backseat and had fallen out of the open window. She did not see how he landed, but we did not see any blood on the road or on him. Luckily the car was in park and no other vehicles were passing at the time. It only took a few minutes to calm him down and he seemed to be ok, not seriously hurt...just upset! I told her I'd drive him back in my van, she said "See you in a minute" and turned her car around and headed back towards my house. Landon and I made the short walk back across the street to my van, I put him in his seat and went to back out. UH OH, within seconds my van was stuck in the dirt, tires spinning, high-ended. There was no way I was getting out of this sand. AND, for the first time ever I had left the house without my cell phone! I knew my mom would realize I was taking too long to get back and I knew she would come to see what had happened. I decided to start walking back up the road towards home, until she drove back and could give us a ride. I got Landon out of the car, locked it, turned to walk away and stepped on a cactus! I saw the cactus, I tried to avoid the damn thing, but somehow my foot stepped right into the cactus. HOLY CRAP, it hurt SO bad! I live in Southern CA, therefore I wear flip flops all year long...even when it's raining! BIG mistake today. I immediately screamed in pain and in doing so Landon was again hysterical because Mama had a weird, scary plant stuck to her foot and her ankle. Yep, that's right. The cactus was in so deep that I could not shake it off. I couldn't pull it out without stabbing my fingers. SO I took my sweatshirt off, wrapped it around my hand and pulled the first chuck of cactus out of my toes. I tried to pull the second chunk out of my pant leg and ankle and it would not budge. With every tug the pain was worse and worse. Landon was crying and screaming because he knew something had happened to Mama. I decided that I would not be able to get the cactus out until I got home and could have Travis pull it out. I started limping up the road hoping that my mom would come soon. I walked only 100 feet or so and there she was! I could see her coming towards me in her car. We stopped on the side of the road and waited for her to come to us. She said she knew something was wrong because it took me too long to get back home. I told her what happened with my car being stuck and the cactus still in my leg. She took Landon and I home and I hobbled into the house and went straight for the couch! Amy saw the cactus in my leg and decided that she would pull it out! Now this wasn't just a thorn or two, it was an entire 4" long piece of branch that had broken off. I told Amy to use pliers and she said No, she would just use 'rose-bush gloves.' HA, big mistake! She put the gloves on, counted to three and pulled. The cactus came out, I screamed (Oh my gosh, it hurt SOOOO bad), and then Amy screamed! In pulling it out of my ankle Amy had squeezed too hard and the cactus was now stuck in her hand. She instinctively went to grab it out of her left hand and got the cactus stuck in her right hand. She finally wrapped a kitchen towel around it and pulled it out of her hand carefully, then we threw it away towel and all. Within a few minutes I was feeling a lot better and we started to laugh about how crazy the day was turning out. A few hours later Travis went back down to pull out my van with a neighbor, a 4wheel drive truck, and a tow-chain. While hooking up the tow chain under my car he accidentally rested his arm onto the chunk of cactus I had pulled out of my toes earlier! He did the same thing Amy did and went to pull out the cactus. Yep, you guessed it...stuck in his hand! It took a minute but he got it out of his hand, and also got the van out of the sand. Pretty crazy day just for a yard sale! But we had a good day overall (: Atleast we can all laugh about it now. Here are the pictures of the cactus piece that was stuck in my leg~

As for Landon he is doing fine after his fall. He has 2 bruised knees and a good sized egg on his head. Poor boy...it's always something with him! Poor Grandma too, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. She loves her 'Big Boy' and would die if anything ever happened to him. We are so blessed to be surrounded by people who care so much about our babies. It was only an accident, and had Landon been listening he would have been sitting on his bottom and not hanging halfway out the window! Auntie Amy and Uncle Nate babysat for us tonight so Travis and I could go out to dinner and run some errands. We had a great dinner, shopped at Lowe's, and then walked around the mall while we ate ice cream. It was such a fun date night and we had a great time! Thanks Auntie Amy and Uncle Natey!