Trauma: Life in the Hayes Kitchen ER

Soo.. on Thursday, my brother-in-law Will and I decided it would be fun to make homemade pasta for the family for dinner. We planned the menu and around 6:00 p.m., I started prepping. I made my 5 ingredient pasta sauce (yum, ask me for the recipe..simple and delicious!) and started to get other stuff ready. I was using some of my parents old kitchen knives to chop the fresh herbs with. Then my dad brought out the knife my mom had given him for their anniversary (which I actually helped pick out.. ironic) and told me I could use it. How fun! If you know me at all, you know that I am probably the only person who has thoroughly used every kitchen gadget I got for a wedding gift, and I still ask for more gadgets and will use them! Moving on... I was getting ready to chop the oregano to add as the last ingredient to the pasta sauce. Like Rachel Ray taught me, I bundled all of the leaves together and got the knife into position. After a mere slice, I caught the edge of my middle finger and made a small paper cut on the tip. Ouch.. but no biggie. I washed it with water, put a bandaid on it and got back to chopping. No more than 2 chops later, the thing which I never thought I would do, happened. It was surreal. I had to look to make sure what I think happened, did. Then I began screaming, crying, jumping up and down and grabbing for paper towels for pressure. I didn't know how bad it was, but I knew some of my finger that was previously on my finger was now on the knife and cutting board. OH MY GOSH.. pain like I have never experienced! My whole family ran into the kitchen, also screaming, then some ran back to the bathroom since the babies were unattended in the bathtub (way to go Katie!). That's when it got worse. I was losing blood, everyone was freaking out and I was getting weaker and weaker. Oh yea, and Caleb was gone for the evening with friends, perfect.

Here's where the kitchen turned into the ER. My dad grabbed my finger (the one still attached) and looked to see how much I chopped, then told me to sit down. Think: I'm screaming and crying through all this. He made Erin put pressure on my hand, then grabbed ice because I was apparently trying to pass out (I kept saying "I need to sleep"). Then he told Erin to make sure I stayed awake and slap my face if I didn't..which she had to slap me, then I apparently slapped her back. Then I had to lay down to get all the blood to my head because I was ghostly looking. During this time, Megan and Will came home from the store and started freaking out too, how fun! I don't know how much time elapsed, but after a while, I guess the bleeding stopped and my dad told me that I would just have to let the finger regenerate itself because it wasn't enough to re-attach. Super. Then he asked me if I wanted to save the severed finger (what?!?!).. that was a big fat no.

So here I am almost 3 days later and my finger still hurts like words I cannot say. And, after going to the doctor (who was freaked out that I asked her to look at it... what kind of doctor is that??!!?), she told me that most of the finger should regenerate itself because it's in the nailbed, and there is only some of it I should be concerned with. But she didn't tell me what to do about the part that may not regenerate... hum. So I am just using Neosporin + Pain, gauze, tape, maximum doses of Advil and A LOT of prayer to heal my finger. And no, you may not look at it unless you are so lucky as to be here when I am redressing it.. and NO, there are no pictures, sorry. If you feel so inclined, I'd love some prayer for my finger to completely regenerate, and quickly!

Next post will be much more fluffy and warm and fun!

The process to our *almost* home!

We are thrilled about God's provision in this.. His had has been so evident in the process from the beginning. When we started the process of "browsing"(...I say browsing because we weren't totally serious, just really considering buying the house and allowing God to begin leading us through the process at His pace...) we talked about what we wanted and what we knew we could afford. That led us to a darling neighborhood in Richardson, where lots of young couples are coming in and fixing up homes that have mostly been 1 or 2 owner homes since they were built in the 50s and 60s. We knew we wanted to fix something up, and we knew the specific pockets of this neighborhood we were interested in. We fell in love with a home that needed lots of work just from looking at pictures, but God didn't want us to have that house.. hence the reason why we could never get a key to actually go look inside the home! So we continued, just checking the internet and talking to our wonderful friend and realtor Lindsay about just kinda feeling out the availability in the area. Well, Lindsay happened upon this one HUD home that was up for auction to Hurricane Katrina evacuees and we all loved the home... but were afraid it would be snatched up. In fact, we couldn't even go look at the house until the auction was up. Well the auction came and went, then we got to go see the house. It was instant love! We saw so much potential, but knew we would have to get some people out to look at the house even before we put a bid in... yes I said bid. I'll explain in a minute. Well, we had a foundation guy come out since there were lots of interior and exterior cracks, and learned that there were NO problems, just typical movement in a pier and beam home. Then we had Caleb's step-dad, Geary, come out since he is a general contractor so we could get a ball-park for how much we would need to invest in the home to get it up to liveable conditions. Once that was done, we really just began to pray about the number we should bid on the home. You see, buying a HUD home is not a traditional process. You have a deadline in which to place an online, blind bid on the home. This means that anyone can bid on the home at any price and you have no idea what anyone else is doing until the auction is over. The only gauge you have is the list price HUD put on the home based on a very unthorough, inaccurate appraisal. Soo.. we really began seeking the Lord as to what we should do, should we place a bid and if so, for how much. We sought wise council, prayed and just really began to trust the Lord that no matter what, God was in control of the process. The day before the bidding ended, we met with our precious friends Ryan and Lindsay (mortgage banker/broker and realtor husband-wife team), prayed together and put in a bid on the home. It was so amazing for Caleb and I in the process, because it was one of those times as a couple that we experienced so clearly absolute peace with one another and the Lord that we had made the right decision. So now the waiting game began... we knew we would find out sometime on Monday (it was Saturday..). Well Monday finally arrived and we got the news.. we had been outbid. It was a tough pill to swallow, but we had to continue to trust that God was in control, and that there was a reason we did not get the house. We were so thankful to Lindsay who just continued to remind us that God has a reason and we needed to just trust that. SO.. after that rollercoaster experience, we started looking again that day, and through the next 4-5 days we were just so disappointed. We did not see anything on the market that we liked and met our needs, so we really didn't know what to do. It was the Thanksgiving break, so we just focused on family and took a break. Over the weekend we just talked about how we really didn't see anything at the time and thought we would just have to wait until spring whenever the market picked up, but were willing to keep our eyes peeled in case something happened to come up. So, Monday began a new week for us. I made an appointment to meet up with Lindsay to pick up the earnest money check so I could redeposit it. Then around 1:30 I noticed I had 3-4 missed phone calls from Lindsay and was worried so I called her back immediately. She answered my call and the first words out of her mouth were, "Katie, You got the house. You got the house. Oh my gosh, Katie, you got the house!" I froze.. didn't know how to re-act, I was processing and I made her tell me again like 5 times. Then, in true Katie form, I got excited and started being silly, doing cheerleader jumps and acting like I was 10. I told Lindsay I had to let her go because I needed to call Caleb and more importantly, I had a student waiting on me.. SO, I called Caleb, out of breath and so excited I could barely get the words out, but I kept saying "I am not joking, believe me, please. We got the house. Caleb, I'm serious." He probably believed me the first time, but I didn't want him to think I was kidding because this had been such a rollercoaster ride. Then I proceeded to tell him I had to let him go because I had a student and made him process that all on his own. Poor guy... Well, he knew he married a very happy and often overly emotional woman... So once the excitement settled, we had to jump through about a billion hoops, sign a million addendums and make sure it was all correct because I didn't want to lose the house because of a mistake. And here we are now.. just over a week from closing on our first home and ready to see God work in our home and in the budget of this project. I hope you have fun journeying with us through this process... it is going to be a true labor of love and of the Lord.

And I promise my future posts will NOT be this long again. It was painful even for me! Pictures to come soon...

Soo we caved..

Here we are... joining the newest of fads, Blogging. We've run the gamut of hip online web-sharing sites, from Facebook to Myspace, and have decided to follow the crowd once again! Usually people get these things when something exciting is happening in life, like having a baby... Well we've got news! No baby yet, but the Morris family is getting a HOUSE! We are excited about travelling down this road and thought this would be a great way to journal our journey. Now this is going to be no ordinary process, in true Morris Family fashion. We tend to go down the road less travelled, so why stop now?!?! We are in the process of purchasing a home from HUD (Housing and Urban Development), which means we are buying a dump! But a cute dump, none the less! The outside is darling, quite deceiving of the inside condition.. It's a 1950's cottage that needs LOTS of TLC. We are starting literally from the ground up, redoing all of the plumbing and electrical, then moving on to refinishing the hardwoods (yay!) and replacing all the *beautiful* pink and teal tile in the bathrooms, then redoing the kitchen and bathrooms completely, painting walls, replacing windows, and really the list goes on and on. So, in-otherwords, we have quite a project on our hands!

Stay tuned... the road to where we are today is coming up next!