It's all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye with a straw

First I would like to start off by saying Ethan's eye is doing wonderfully. 1 hour after I rinsed the heck out of it (18 minutes and 18 hours worth according to Ethan) it was only slightly red. Once we got into the hotel Ethan really wanted to sleep with me so we could snuggle. He is always a great snuggler but last night he was more of a smotherer. I'm sure he needed some mama time!

This morning we were driving into St Joesph, Missouri and saw the signs for the Chief's training camp. We decided to try to see if we could see anything. Once we got to the University where they had training camp we found out they were taking a long lunch break due to the extreme heat. We then decided to find an Olive Garden for lunch. My mom has this handy GPS feature on her phone, it first finds where she is at (sometimes she needs help with this) and then she can pick where se wants directions too. This really has been a valuable too and I am convinced we may need GPS for in the Excursion We followed her directions and she said "make a U turn". When then drove a very long way and realized it was the wrong way and headed back the other direction. While driving (for a really long ways) up and down this road I was able to look at a lot of bilboards and stores we were passing. (This new knowledge becomes very valuable as the story unfolds). We then see where we made our u-turn and just a little ways up from that was the Olive Garden we searched so hard for.

We got right in and seated. Mason sat with me for a few minutes and we ordered drinks. He then decided to sit with Clint. He is a very determined boy and wanted to open his straw himself. Clint was leaning forward and Mason jabbed him right in the eye with the straw. Clint had immedate shooting pain in his eye, was barely able to open in and once I was able to see in it he had a very large streak of blood in it. He was adamant that he was okay so we ordered lunch and began eating. I was not loving the way his eye looked so I borrowed a phone book and searched for an eye doctor close by. I recognized an office by their whitty billboard that had a large pair of glasses on a person's face and said "do these glasses make my cheeks look big". I also recognized the address from our early tour of the city. I called and they were able to get us in but they wanted us there "right now".

We quickly paid our bill and loaded all of our hooligans in the Excursion and instructed them to be quite "cuz mama has to drive the beast". They were very good and I was able to get us there unharmed and even did a decent job of parking. My poor mom entertained the kids at random stores in the shopping complex while I filled out paperwork etc. When we finally got in we found out that Clint was very lucky because although it looked bad the cut was not in his central line of vision. He got a perscription for antibiotic drops and lubricating eye gel. The opthamalogist then gave me instructions on how to put in the drops and then our converstaion went like this:

Him: I'm writing this for bedtime and prn that means as needed. Now you get to play his nurse tonight.
Me: I am a nurse :)
Him: Yes you will get to play one (Very serious)
Me: No really I am a nurse.

Clint also recieved instructions on no driving for 24 hours.

Until today i have only driven the "new" Excursion one official time and a few times of pulling forward a tiny bit to get the camper hooked up/unhooked. What an adventure this was going to be! Yay for me! We were hoping to make it Mitchell SD, but we made it to the edge of Iowa. We didn't make it as many miles as we wanted, but I safely navigated us through lots of traffic and construction sites in our big beast of an Excursion. Yay!