Family Mellmann

We Mellmanns enjoy a good adventure, a little thrill now and then, and some good ol' excitement, but life with a teenager (boy no less) is keeping this mom hopping. Last week, as we were wrapping up the last day of school before winter break (which is this week), Patrick slammed his finger in a door at school.  Over the next couple of days, he developed this nice bruise under his nail.  We started to speculate on what would happen (lose the nail or not), but figured the best course of action was going to be to let nature takes its course and let the body do the healing. We would later learn that this type of injury is what medical professionals refer to as a "crush injury", and the resulting nail color is called "subungual hematoma".  As the weekend progressed and the bruise continued to develop, so did the pressure, swelling, and pain. By Sunday words like "doctor", "drain", and "don't wait" were being used. So, first

Almost every year, for the first several years, that we've lived here, the snow plows would destroy our mailbox. Usually it was as simple as the weight of the snow being so great that it just "blew" the box off the post, leaving a nicely intact post. I remember one year, they snow plow took that mailbox down a half dozen times or so. When we built the new house, we joked that the mailbox is the only thing we didn't replace...until one year we did. We replaced the mailbox with an expensive, heavy duty box that seemed nearly bulletproof. And the post was well-made and sturdy. For nearly seven years it has been un-bothered by heavy snow, flying snow, or racing snow plows...until today. As I was walking back into the house, after snow plowing the driveway, I saw the snow plow come down my road. Before I could get my coat and boots off, he had come back up the road and wiped out my until-today solid mailbox. Not only did it shred the post and bend up the nearly bulle