the good news and the bad news

Because I've always liked to get the bad news out of the way first so I can focus on the positive ... I'll start this off by writing about last Saturday, as Charlie and I were packing up our house and getting ready to pull out of town for a 10-day trip.  Carolyn and Henry were upstairs in their rooms, while William and Elizabeth were happily playing in our basement. At some point, the idea struck them to take their little razor scooters out of our garage and up to the very top of our road. Although they have been told countless times to never leave our property without one of their parents in tow, and they've also been told the danger of razor scootering on this particular stretch of road - their decision made perfectly good sense to them at that point in time. So when the little girl who lives up the road from us was ringing our doorbell and gasping that Elizabeth had been REALLY hurt, I was confused. 

How could she be hurt? 

She was playing in the basement!

Surely she would never have left our yard without my knowledge? 

As that thought was rattling around my cerebrum, I saw the little girl's father, carrying a torn and bloodied Elizabeth home.  She and her brother had decided that they wanted to race their scooters down the steep hill and that idea was going swell until the moment she hit a pothole and front-ended over her scooter on to the asphalt. Fortunately, she was wearing a helmet and didn't hurt her head. Unfortunately, she wasn't encapsulated in a protective bubble because she ripped through her favorite new clothes and deeply skinned her knee, hands, hip and elbow.  It could have been so much worse - she might have landed differently and broken bones. She might have landed on her face. She might have been hit by a car....

My mind instantly wanders off in to all of the dark, horrible scenarios that could have occurred and I wouldn't have even known. A week later, I'm still perplexed that she actually left the yard without my knowledge?! For all the Stranger Danger talks that we've had and The Fear of God that I thought I had sufficiently placed in to my children's hearts about the world beyond our property boundary ... I'm traumatized.  I'm also thinking that when the company comes to put in an electric invisible fence for the dog, I might see if he can fit our children with collars, too. 

Now, the good news is that the night before Elizabeth's colossal fall, her brother happened to notice that there was something perched on a tree limb in our yard.  Something that resembled a wet and soggy BUNNY.   The misery around our house has been severe for the past few weeks, so we discreetly dried Bunny off and stuck him on Elizabeth's pillow as a surprise for when she went to bed that night. When she finally went to bed, she went insane. She grabbed Bunny and wrapped her arms around him and smothered kisses on top of his Bunny head. She then promptly held him out at an arm's length and said, "PE-EWWW! HE STINKS!!" Which was appropriate seeing as he'd been outside dangling in a tree for more than 10 days.  Charlie, Captain of the Laundry Ship in our home, washed Bunny three times before adding bleach to the fourth and final wash.  

By the time the sanitizing was complete ... 

A warm, cozy and fragrant smelling Bunny went straight in to Elizabeth's arms - which is precisely where he was needed most of all.  

(Thank you to those who had sent me notes inquiring on Elizabeth's condition after her Bunny loss and for those who had added Bunny to your prayer circles. The thought of Bunny in a prayer circle both warms and cracks me up.  He is indeed a very loved little Bunny!)