Hockey!

While I don't intend to post about bathtime, I had to throw in this picture of my two boys in the tub. Isaac is getting to where he loves playing with Levi and Daisy. He is nine months old and very busy.

We found out about $5 night for the Utah Grizzlies hockey team. Since we'd never been to a hockey game before, we decided to go and take the kids. I had a fair board meeting near the arena the next day, so we got a hotel room and made a weekend of it. Here is Daisy waiting for her first hockey game to start.

By this point in the game Jeff and I had realized a few things: we know nothing about hockey, hockey players are intense athletes, hockey fans are a rough crowd, and we are getting old (all the hockey players appeared to be very young.)

This is Levi's tough hockey face. By this point in the game Levi still had not realized that concessions food at the hockey game was grossly overpriced and no, we were not buying him anything else.

And this is how Jeff bathed Isaac after swimming since there was no bathtub in our hotel room. Isaac thought it was a great plan.

The hotel we stayed at had a fab pool. We went early so we could swim before the hockey game started. Jeff was studying and I was poolside with Isaac on my lap. Daisy and Levi were swimming with their cousins. Suddenly we looked across the pool and saw a girl that was about 6 or 7 years old beginning to receive CPR. She had drowned. We watched as they worked and worked to revive her. I was shocked at the feeling of panic and fear that overcame me. I gathered the children around me and watched as they moved from chest compressions to breathing and back to chest compressions again and the girl just lay there motionless. A mother who had been watching her children swim, just like I had been doing, came over to get a towel off the rack that was behind me. She had seen the girl on the bottom of the pool. When the mom realized that the stranger was not moving, she jumped in the pool fully dressed to rescue her. A man from the front desk ran in and grabbed a defibrillator. When the paramedics arrived they started an IV and put her on oxygen. While we obviously don't know the details, it seems like the girl did not die, but she was certainly without oxygen for a very long time. The whole experience was a little traumatic. I keep thinking about it over and over again. I think about the mom who jumped in, the parents of the little girl standing there crying, the man doing CPR, the paramedics, the ambulance, the defibrillator on her chest, my kids seeing it all. She drowned in less than four feet of water.

I have taken three things from this experience. One, it really can happen anytime in any amount of water. I think this was good for my kids to understand. Two, one of my goals for the year is to become certified in CPR. I never want to be helpless in a situation like that. Three, I am more sincere in my prayers for safety and my expression of gratitude after a reminder of just how fragile my life, and the lives of my children are.