Ellie's Emergency Room Experience

So today we experienced a first for our family - Ellie took a ride in an ambulance, as a patient! Thankfully she is fine but she absolutely gave me a fright. She and I were walking down to pick up the big girls at the pool and she decided to run down the wheelchair ramp, as she often does. Sadly this time she tripped at full speed and landed on her face without breaking the fall with her hands at all. She ended up with a pretty deep cut on the inside of her upper lip and her face had skid marks all over it. I wasn't that worried though - she wasn't crying, she was just subdued and seemed a teensy bit disoriented. I went into the pool and got ice from the staff and held it on her lip while she just lay in may arms but then she told me she needed to throw-up. When I took her into the bathroom to the toilet she full-on collapsed on the floor, at which point my concern began to escalate. I took her out of the bathroom and conferred with some of my mommy friends (thank God for mommy friends!) who suggested I check if the pool staff had anyone medically trained who could help us, meanwhile Ellie barely had her eyes open and was limp in my arms. The staff decide to call 111, lay her on her side and administer oxygen. Her little pupils were just pin-pricks, she was clammy and not really very responsive and I was getting more and more nervous as it was getting harder to keep her awake. Some man I've never met before came and talked to both of us to try and help keep Ellie awake and the pool staff were fantastic. Finally the ambulance arrived and their mere presence calmed me down considerably. They decided she needed to be taken in for observation, that she probably had a slight concussion. Off we went through rush hour traffic to the hospital where we stayed for the next four and a half hours, but at long last we are home and Ellie is fine. Poor Dugald was in Auckland today so he landed at the airport to texts from me saying that Ellie had been hurt and we were on the way to the hospital. Thankfully though by the time he got the messages we knew she was going to be ok. I'm so grateful to my sweet, sweet friends who all pitched in to help by taking my girls, going to my house and turning off the oven and calling and texting. I was only scared for a short while but it wasn't fun while it lasted!

By the end of the ambulance ride she was already a lot perkier.

My little bruiser.

Final check before being discharged - you'd never know anything had happened. Well, except for the scratches and whatnot. By this time she was LOVING all the attention.

Thank you friends for helping us, thank you God our girl is ok. What a day!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Today is Hugh's 89th!! Happy, happy birthday Grandpa, we love you!

We went to Palmerston North yesterday to celebrate because today is the Christmas parade and Meggie, Katie and Dugald are participating. It was lovely to see M & H looking so well and we all enjoyed our time there.

On the way we stopped by a fruit stand and saw this pukeko, adorable.

We had a delicious roast meal and the girls got to ride their bikes all around the driveway and back garden. Margaret and Hugh's roses are simply stunning and Margaret clipped a bouquet for me to take home with me - along with an enormous bag of lemons and some plums.

Please turn the sound down before viewing this, not sure why I was singing! The girls made some specially decorated cupcakes for Grandpa and of course sang the birthday song.

The ride home was relatively uneventful but the little girls did burst into a fit of giggles that was pretty cute, unfortunately by the time I fished my phone out of my purse things were winding down.

I'm off to town now to try and find a place to park so we can see the parade. Lots of love to all!! xx

Thank You Veterans - and other news.

I'm a day late here in New Zealand as it's actually the 12th, but it's the 11th of November in America and I want to say thank you to all who have served and who do serve us in the military. We appreciate your sacrifice and dedication to preserving our freedom.

Perhaps one day this will be the girl putting the wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier - we got her this t-shirt in D.C. because she totally has the personality to one day be Commander-in-Chief!

Lastly, we have had an incredible few days of sunshine! We've re-stocked the sunscreen and started doing some of our school work on the back patio to take full advantage of it.

Random Act of Culture

Read all about this here. Awesome.

Happy Halloween

For two years the girls have been begging me to let them trick-or-treat, but I was worried about letting them because it's not a generally accepted tradition here. We have seen the occasional trick-or-treater in years past, but my guess is most houses would be unprepared to have children knocking on their doors and asking for candy. My solution to the problem this year was to see if we could rope a few friends into joining us and then only go to each other's houses, ending here with some drinks and snacks for all. So that's what we did!

Josie the witch with her black cat, Katie.

I also told the girls they needed to forage for costumes in their closets, their sisters' closets and the dress-up box. Ellie, the angel, actually wore the flower girl dress that Chelsea wore in our wedding 13 years ago!

Meggie was an absolutely precious Anne of Green Gables.

One of the first houses the girls went to with their friends served up these tasty shortbread body parts - yum!!

We had a pretty large group which made it all the more fun!

The Sheppards had the kids try to eat chocolate fish dangling from string without using their hands, the girls loved it!

Richard was pretty scary when they arrived at the Hogg household - can't you see the fear in their eyes?

Finally all arrived here, I had made some snacks and planned to have them bob for apples but it was way too cold for that so instead the Wii proved to be adequate entertainment.

All in all it was a great night and we all had a ball - I think a Morrison Family Halloween tradition has been born! Hope you had a festive evening. xoxo

Orphan Sunday

This Sunday many churches in America will participate in what they call "Orphan Sunday". I don't really know a lot about it, but I do know that my heart aches for the plight of orphans around the world. As many of you already know I have investigated the possibility of our family adopting a child in need of a home and I continue to do so, but right now, in New Zealand, it is proving to be very difficult. There is only one agency in the country that works with international adoptions and they do a very limited number per year, and there are very, very few domestic adoptions. We went to a meeting about it and there were far more people there who were interested in starting a family through adoption than the agency even facilitates in a year. So, for now, while we continue to wait and see if God opens any other doors for us, I am in the process of learning more about the foster care program here. In the meantime though, I wanted to share this video about Orphan Sunday and then a link to a powerful, powerful post that resonated so deeply with me.

Creation Groans from Christian Alliance for Orphans on Vimeo.

Here is the link to the post by Missy entitled "I don't want my children to be happy". Good stuff.

And one more video -

"Sometimes I would like to ask God, why He allows poverty, famine and injustice in the world when He could do something about it . . . but I'm afraid He might ask me the same question." Anonymous

Countdown to Christmas

It's November - time to get out the Christmas music! I love, love, love, LOVE Christmas music. Today Paige posted this on her blog and the girls and I have listened to it over and over, I hope you enjoy it. xoxo

Little Drummer Boy from gfc.tv Videos on Vimeo.