Halliday Family Blog

Today we decided to take a little excursion and went up to the Hammond Candy Factory in Denver.  This place is a pretty popular place, especially at Christmas!  They make world-famous candy canes, ribbon candy, and other fun stuff to eat!  We went to the store there at the factory and got some stuff and then took the tour of the factory.

It was fun and the boys especially liked it.  🙂  At the end of the tour, everyone got a large candy cane that had been broken or didn’t quite come out right.  Same great taste!  🙂

Today we went to Zach’s first basketball game.  It turns out that his team is REALLY good.  They totally blew away the other team by something like 25 points!  I wouldn’t be surprised if the team went undefeated this year.

After the game, the girls had a service project cleaning and repairing bikes at the hospital.  They had a great time doing that.  While the girls were serving, the boys and I got to go to the new movie Frozen.  It was REALLY good and they loved it.  I did to!  🙂  I think that the girls were jealous that we got to go.  Oh well, they’ll go sometime next week I’m sure.  🙂

Tonight we went to an awesome Christmas party at the Fradin’s, some friends of ours.  There were a ton of people there that we knew and we had a wonderful time!  We ate a lot of food and we had a fun white elephant-type gift exchange (gifts for the guys, gifts for the girls) that we got some laughs out of.  Malinda Liddell babysat for us because Kirstyn had Pep Band at the High School and Brittany had to work.  This was the first babysitter in a long time we had to pay for!  🙂

Great news!  Ben is going to be just fine!  I went to Children’s Hospital today and  picked up Ben and Angela.  He’s doing MUCH better and has that cute smile back on his face.  The doctors say he can’t do any jumping, sledding, going outside on the ice or anything for at least 2 months.  He’s not too happy about that, but he doesn’t have a choice.  On the way home, we stopped by Smart Cow and got him frozen yoghurt with all the toppings he wanted for being so brave.

He was so cute!  While at Smart Cow, he wrote Ben loves Mom and Dad on the table and was so happy!  We are very relieved that he is going to be OK.  Our prayers were definitely answered.

Today we had a BIG scare!  Ben and  Zach were out on the patio shoveling off snow to make a fort, and Ben tripped and fell backward into our window well!  🙁  It was about a 6-7 foot drop.  Fortunately he landed on his backside but he hit his head on either the window or the concrete side of the well when he fell.  He was really dizzy and couldn’t stand up.  We finally got him pulled out of the well and he was complaining about his ear hurting.  We took off his hood and hat and his ear was bleeding pretty bad!  We ran him ASAP to the emergency room in the hospital and after getting him calmed down with some pain medication, they took a scan and found out that he had a slight fracture on his skull right behind his ear, and he also had a concussion.  It could have been MUCH worse, and for that we are thankful!  He was so bundled up, his hat, hood, coat, and snow pants cushioned his fall.

The poor little guys was in a lot of pain but really was a trooper.  The doctors were a little concerned and wanted him to be watched overnight just to make sure everything was OK.  The problem is that at our hospital, they don’t have a pediatric neural unit so they transferred him by ambulance to Children’s Hospital in Aurora.  Ben was SO excited to go on the ambulance!  🙂  Angela rode with him up there.  He didn’t make it very far before he completely fell asleep.  🙂

They are up at the hospital right now and I’ll go get them tomorrow morning.  It sounds like Ben is doing well!

The frustrating thing is that the window well covers were the next major expense we had on the list after the back yard got done.  We hadn’t had time to get the quotes and get them installed.  Guess what each of the 4 kids at home are getting this year for Christmas?  Yep, a window well cover for each!  🙂

We’re praying for your quick recovery Ben!