Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Snowboarding!!!

I was sitting in the rocking chair here in my apartment thinking about how I should probably update my blog, especially since it had been so long when I realized that I should probably call Amy and see what she was planning on doing the rest of the day.

It was still quite icy outside but hey going to Amy's sounded like a lot of fun and I was not afraid to face the roads :) We had gotten about 5 inches of snow in the past few hours and so there would be a nice layer of powder on the hills. Just perfect for snowboarding! Amy and I had talked the other day about how much fun it would be for the two of us to try and snowboard down their hill, and today was going to be the day until the ice decided to cover everything, but now that we had snow, snowboarding was on our minds. Everyone over there thought it would be great for me to come over and have some fun. They seriously have the sweetest family (yes I know you might be reading this, but it's so true) they have welcomed me into their family and are such a blessing to me.) But anyways, it took me seriously 30 minutes to scrape the 1/2 inch thick ice off of the car and I barely made it out of the driveway. The roads were horrible and at one point the buggies were going faster than I was. In this weather is when it's easier to be in one of those than a car. Right after I was thinking that I turned the corner and had to go about 15 mph behind a buggy until it turned off the road, oh well, the reasoning worked for a few minutes. I got to their house and they were all ready for me.

A delivery?? Here, now?? No way, I was so excited!! It was even breach!! I thought I was coming over for snowboarding, little did I know I'd be able to help with a delivery. They thought we had about 45 minutes so Amy and I decided to take a few runs before it was time to go help with the birth. Amy decided to let me try the hills first...

Well, getting it on was pretty easy. Standing up was a bit harder. Being in control with both feet strapped to the board and not knowing how to turn, that was even harder. I don't think I did that bad being it was my first time. I fell backwards a few times on the nice soft snow. Then I went a bit faster and faster and tried to turn, whoops, wrong thing to do... boom, I was falling on my face, but caught myself as I fell to the ground. Hmmm.... what was I to do now?? Oh, I had seen this really cool thing where they flip themselves over, so that's what I did. Everyone watching was really getting quite some entertainment from this. I finally made it down the hill, yea!!!

Now to get these things off... hmmm.... I'm stuck... ok, lets see how well I can hop my way up the hill... nope, that's not going to work... think, think think... oh! I got it!!!


Now I just had to climb up the hill... the first time the hill didn't seem that big, but the second, third, fourth, fifth time... it just got longer and longer and longer. Great exercise and tons of fun.









I finally got the hang of it, well kinda... the third time I went down I started out really well, then I fell. No problem, I thought, I'll just get back up. Well who knows what the problem was but I stood part way up and then fell back down at least 6-8 times before successfully staying up. Everyone up top was finding this quite amusing. Amy was getting her camera out to record this entertaining sight and just as she got it on I finally got up and started moving again.

Then they had a dog-sled so we took a few runs with that.






The birth was still in the back of my mind so I asked Amy if we should go check to see how it was going. She made a call and they thought it would be another 30 minutes or so. If it didn't come by that we would have to pull it out. How exciting!! So we took some more runs, put everything away and then headed to see how the laboring mom was doing.

I carefully tip-toed into where she was: it was quite a different birth experience for me, not the normal calm, quite, peaceful atmosphere. There were tons of others around, being quite noisy and hustling around all seeming to want to get in on what was going on. As I walked up Amy's sister plowed a path for me so I could walk to where she was. I ended up going to change my boots. I walked to where she was, hm... the gloves were made ready, a bucket of water, and something for the baby to lay on after it was born. Being it was breach, well legs first, we didn't want it to stay in for too long or I was told that it would probably die and paralyze the mom. So in order to get it out a couple chains were taken out of the bucket to go in and tie around the feet so that we could pull it out. Wow, they told me I could help. I ran and grabbed the chain, after it was securely fastened, and started to pull, her brother had to help me. Well after some other measures the baby finally came out. It was a boy and born at 4:02pm. After he was born we took the chains off his legs and drug him closer to his mom so she could lick him clean. He was a bit lethargic but after a good licking became more alert. Wow, what a great first breach delivery!

After the excitement was over we put the cows all back into their pen and all walked back into the house to get cleaned up.

We had a nice time watching the guys play ping-pong. Then someone spilled their drink upstairs and it started dripping down on the guys while they were playing!! I uploaded some more pictures (the birth pictures will come after Amy sends them to me, we've now worked with two deliveries together), and then started getting into a great theological discussion. Ring, ring ring (for once my phone was not on vibrate) it was Freida, someone was in labor yet it wasn't time to go yet. So off towards home I drove. Now I'm happily sitting on my bed, waiting waiting waiting for the phone call to go to the delivery.

I'll see how much time I get to backtrack and finish writing out previous days... but for now... farewell and I pray that the Lord is blessing each and every one of your lives as He is mine! ~

4 comments:

  1. I was reading that in horror - chains?! People everywhere? And not only were you helping, but it took two of you to pull hard enough?

    I was so relieved when I read that the mom licked the baby clean! You had me going up to that point! :)

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  2. Hey Laura! I really enjoyed the pictures - snowboarding looks like so much fun!! :-) Oh that was pretty funny about the breach birth, I thought it sounded like the strangest thing I had ever heard of! [grin] Thanks for keeping us all updated! You're in our prayers. Love, Ashley

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  3. I too thought you were talking about a human baby and then realized it was a cow!!! Maybe you should have said that from the beginning!!

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  4. Great story Laura! We just got done reading it aloud and laughing hysterically. I loved it! And the other comments you have are quite entertaining. When you fell down though it was more like 15 times you know not 7-8!! :)What a blast that was, so be sure to come again.:)

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