Birthday weekend

Hello again blog world. I'm still alive, just busy with the end of the semester and wedding plans. All of the big stuff for the wedding is done. I'll be doing a few things next week when I go home for Christmas, but it's all coming together really well.

Anyway, after the weekend we've had I thought it might be worth a blog post (and J actually suggested it). 

Friday was my birthday. I knew it was going to be a busy day at work, and I didn't even have time to go to lunch with coworkers. But it was also one of those bad news days. Most of the time the news of the day rolls off of me, but there were three fatal accidents overnight Thursday that we were reporting on. It was actually the fourth one this week, and it made for a tough day of work.

But J came over after work and gave me a beautiful watch for my birthday. 

It was his office holiday party, so we went to the Billiards Club for that. We had fun with his coworkers and playing pool. We ended the night by going out for dessert.

I've had a Groupon to go ice skating for a while, and I told J I wanted to go this weekend. The only public session was Sunday afternoon. So after lunch with church friends, we drove to the state capital to skate.

J was pretty shaky and fell a few times in the beginning, but he changed skates and was feeling more confident. After the break to resurface the ice, we went back out. On our second trip around, J lost his footing and fell hard, face first. He hit his head hard enough on the ice to knock him out. We are laughing about it now, but it scared me to death when he didn't move.

There were some great people that came to his rescue (because I totally froze), and the ice rink called 911. 

There was a pretty funny story about the guy that was the most helpful — he is actually a first responder in another county. He was trying to check J's cognitive abilities and asked J to remember his name — Ryan — and two other things. A few seconds later, Ryan asked J if he remembered his name. J looked at him, and said, "Charlie." It turns out this guy looked just like our friend Charlie who just got his EMT certification as part of his police academy training. J thought Charlie had come to his rescue, but really he just managed to make the guy helping him question his injury.

Anyway, J doesn't remember anything about the fall or the few minutes after, but he was back to himself soon enough. But he went ahead and took the ambulance ride, and we spent an hour and a half in the ER just to make sure he was OK. Everything came back clear — no broken bones and just a mild concussion. He did get stitched up and is wearing a brace for a sprained wrist. Here's the picture in the hospital after the stitches but before they cleaned up the blood on his face.

And back at his parents' house all cleaned up.

We're very glad it wasn't anything more serious, and hopefully, he doesn't wake up with too bad of a headache. But I don't think he'll be game for ice skating again anytime soon!