"What'd you git?"

So much fun to get gifts. Who cares if I had to get a new license with an AWFUL picture? I got to unwrap things!
The kids and the Aiden went to Shopko Tuesday night and came home bouncing with excitement (the kids not the cripple). They snuck into Alex's room and got everything wrapped and signed and then traipsed the goods out to sit on the tv stand and tease me until Wednesday afternoon. My children are sadistic and I don't know where they get it from.
I tried to bribe Ashley to tell me what it was. She just kept saying "um, NOPE!". I offered her the extra brownie, the first piece of Cool Mint Dessert the next day, an extra hour before bedtime, nothing worked. Oh, she's good. I tried her first because she's littlest and because the first Mother's Day Aiden was living with us he took the kids to get a flower pot stand and some flowers and pretty pots and stuff to do them up in. As the older two were outside helping set it all up, Ashley came in and told me "we got you flowers". I thought that even though she's a year and a half older that I could still get her to blab. Nope.

Annie, on the other hand, is the captain of ruining surprises. She has been threatened with her own presents going in the garbage if she tells anyone what they are getting for Christmas (and we limited how many she knows anyway). She went with me and Alex to get Ashley's present, walked out to the car after 10 minutes of talking about how we don't tell Ashley because it's a surprise, saw Ashley and told her all within 30 seconds. For SURE this is the kid that will tell me what's in the wrapping paper! But she wouldn't. Not totally. I started guessing things and she gave in a little bit. I knew she'd be mad at herself (and so would everyone else) if she kept saying more so I stopped guessing. She tried to egg me on but then realized what was happening and stopped all talk on it.

What did I get? I got some new slippers with snowflakes on them and a new board game from the kids. Aiden gave me a bottle of Mormon booze (martinelli's), two symphony bars, and a new word puzzle book. Those I got Tuesday night to try to appease the monster (me). It's a bath kit and if the chocolate holds out until later today, it will be used as such.

I also got money from Mom and Dad. Who doesn't love money? Ashley's preschool class sang Happy Birthday to me, Amy and James brought me a cute little jar with chocolate, and Aiden had one side of his face swell up at work. Luckily I was hanging out in the class across the building so I called the doctor's office where a nurse told me there were no appointments but suggested we go to the ER (oh man, again!) since it sounded like an allergic reaction.

It wasn't. It is an infected parotid gland. For those of you who don't know, that's one of your salivary glands in your cheek. The weird thing is it's apparently very rare to see. The nurse said she had one case the day before and before that it had been 30 years. I had my parotid get clogged when I was preggo with Alex and then an infected sublingual (under your tongue) this spring. So weird to have it three times between the two of us when it's so rare to begin with.

Yes, we went to the GD ER again BUT the upside is Aiden got off work at 2 instead of 6. I scored an extra 4 hours with him for my birthday. He kept apologizing but I loved it (besides that he didn't feel well).