Monday, December 24, 2007

CHRISTMAS EVE TRADITION

Kayla, Stevie and Kaleb getting ready to
load boxes into the paddy wagon
Kayla demonstrates her wrapping skills
Sergeant Sharon (she's the woman!), Becky
and my hubby Officer Orton
Dashi (Bob Young), Becky, Officer Orton, and Carl Young
make a fantastic team together
Stevie shows her enthusiasm
Sergeant Sharon (the one who makes this happen),
Santa and Officer Liza
Becky and Steve in the paddy wagon making deliveries
Even Ben went out to deliver gifts to the
needy children of Laconia

The Orton family tradition on Christmas Eve is to deliver presents to needy families in Laconia. Sgt. Sharon does the bulk of the work getting the names of the families, making a list of needs, shopping for all the toys and clothes and wrapping and organizing the presents into boxes. On Christmas Eve, Officer Orton (my husband), Santa Claus and all the little helpers travel by paddy wagon and deliver these boxes to all the families in need. We have such a blast and it is such a rewarding experience to see all the little children get so excited to see the Police officers and Santa coming to deliver their gifts.


UPDATE ON BENJAMIN

(...we left the hospital last night around 5pm after having to wait around for lots of decisions to be made. The big pain of the day was the "Infectious Disease" team. They decided that since Ben had two positive blood cultures that they wanted him to stay in the hospital until the susceptibilities grew back seeing that he was growing coag negative staph. If by chance they came back matching each other they would hold him for further testing and treatment - ugh. I really wanted to get home and had the full support of the PICU team behind me. We made the choice to go home, but since he was still on IV antibiotics, they needed to switch him over to an oral one. The problem with that is that he has lots of allergies and so they made me hang out for a couple of hours to make sure there were no reaction to this specific med. Thankfully he was fine and we were able to leave. The gamble with leaving is that depending on what the cultures grow they told me I might have to come back the next day. So...today we waited for the call and it came around noon time. We were told that the lab never even started the susceptibilities until this morning which means another day of waiting - ugh. They're killing me! We are supposed to get a call in the morning to know whether or not we have to go back. What a Christmas surprise! I'll keep you posted.... )

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i had no idea that you guys did this every year. great tradition. call rachael - she wants to talk about schedules (what's left of the holiday break).

Aaron