July 3, 2015

The boys did swimming lessons for 2 weeks this summer and Tayden had several fair projects.  A breeding heifer, 3 market lambs, 3 breeding ewes, a cow/calf pair, and some projects in the 4-H building.  We have worked on them hard and daily since summer school was out the 12 of June.  He is all boy and loves to be outside.  Tucker, Tayden and I would get up, chore and start our daily routine, well the 2 weeks of summer school we had to be left by 7:15 or 7:45!  thanks to aunt Lindsay our mornings were a little later some days.  We also had the smith girls as helpers in the morning and then transported them to swimming lessons and back to Denny's!!! 
July 3 was the last day and we had a little work to do before going to the pool with Aunt Lindsay and kiddos!  I was trying to finish 20 minutes of brush cutting and take the tractor back to dad!  I get started and about 5 minutes into the task both kids are running over the hill at me waving their arms!  I didn't panic instead though, "they are stuck/" great now what? 
WRONG
Tayden climbs the tractor steps as I am shutting it off to hear the problem and he starts in "I flipped the ranger and it is on its side, i am ok, but the ranger is going to be hurt, i will pay for it mom i am so sorry!  Mom I am sorry and hurt and oh my neck hurts a little and mommy what are we going to do and hugging me and mommy i am sorry and....  I calm him and ask Tucker if he is okay and he says yep but now what?  I calming say....we need to walk to the Ranger and see what happened.  I call my mom and dad because I know they are home and tell them the situation and ask for them to come help.  They show up and we get to the ranger, the neighbor has seen the ranger and called Brandon, well Brandon called me... he knew what was going on and knew kids were on ranger. 
Mom, Dad, neighbor and I flip the ranger back over and decide whether Tayden is hurt or not a few scrapes, scratches and says his neck hurts..... so at 1:00 we go to the doctor and drop Tucker off at the pool thinking we will be done about 2:00 and will pick him up.  WRONG... a CT scan at 4:30 shows a broken C6, and C7 in his vertebrae and a punctured lung!  We decide on Des Moines and we rode in the ambulance about 7:30 to Des Moines.