Momma Said There’d Be Days Like This…

This weekend we went to Gainesville to visit Chris and Stephanie. We left on Friday and went straight there, and then stayed over night. We were hoping that Steph would finally pop, but instead we got to play with their other new baby. We basically spent all Friday night playing Wii Sports and Mario Party 8. Saturday, we went to the Botanical Gardens in Gainesville, and we really enjoyed ourselves. We were not able to stay all day however since Sha’Vonne was performing with the Orlando Gay Chorus in a production called Don We Now Our Gay Apparel.
The show was not completely what I expected, and while it had its silly parts, it was a very traditional show. We enjoyed it.

After the show, on the way to Sha’Vonne’s party for Jay, we get a call that Chris and Stephanie were checking in to the hospital, but they weren’t sure what was going to happen, so we continued to the party. A little while later, we get a call that she is dilated 5 cm, so we get ready to go. We needed to pick up clothes so we head back to the house. We also learned that Pepper had flown away. (Ya, dad took her outside without a leash, scared her, and there you go…)

Now this situation isn’t as bad as it sounds. After all, Fanny flew off some years back, and she just stayed up in the tree until the morning until she was cold and hungry, and came back to my mom after about 30 minutes. Mom stressed out, but that is what she does. The problem comes in when we got home we saw how upset mom was, and we decided that we would stay until the morning and help get Pepper back, then go up to Gainesville (and call out of work).

Ya… So, we got up at 5:30 to be out before the sun came out, and we stood there with her staring at us, and making noise for like an hour. Finally, she decides to fly, but she is not used to being up that high, and got freaked out when she started going down, and wound up in another tree. We tried several ideas to get her down, including dad calling some of his contacts at the Fire Department (who couldn’t help) and found of someone that had a cherry picker.

It was pretty funny so see dad go up in that thing, since he was about to pass out from being up that high. Despite that though, the thing just didn’t go up high enough. So we then went to put my plan in action: The Slingshot. Ya. A freakin’ slingshot. I’m a pretty good shot, so I was pretty confident that I could control my shot enough to scare her without truly hurting her. So that is what we did. We chased her from tree to tree shooting hickory nuts and acorns at her once mom got tired of calling to her with no reaction. The whole time we are all getting more and more tired. Finally, at around 3:30 p.m., the 12th or so tree, and about 20 direct hits with a hickory nut, and 2 hits with a water hose, she was so exhausted that she couldn’t fly up again, and she was brought down and nabbed by Heather (who had to jump two fences to do it).

While all of this was happening, Chris and Stephanie welcomed to the world Linnea. 20 inches, 7 lbs., 10 ozs, and beautiful.

I’m beat. The whole family is beat. I’m sure that the Nielsens are too.

Oh, and thankfully, Pepper appears to not be injured.

Damn, I’m good.