More Catching Up

I'm sitting in a hospital room at Primary Children's waiting for Ella to finally go to sleep for the night. I figure it's a great time to catch up on some blog posts. It's been a REALLY long 24 hours, so I hope I can think straight as I write.

This past week the Armstrongs lost a family member--Patches:( Patches was one of Ian's fish. He joined our family on Christmas morning 2009 thanks to a wonderful elf from up North by the name of "Claud". Even though he wasn't with us long, we really grew to love the ol' boy. Don't tell Copper, but Patches was our favorite because he had cool black spots and one of his eyes was black.
A few days before his passing, we noticed that Patches was swimming sideways and upside down and sometimes he just floated on his side. We could tell the end was near so we warned Ian. He was the first to find Patches, belly up, on Monday morning. We're just happy that he went quietly in his sleep...
Rob and Ian planned the service for that evening. Ian chose to sing his favorite primary song, "I Love to See the Temple" and he was the one who donned the blue rubber gloves to take Patches out of the tank and place him in the "porcelain casket" (aka the toilet).
Ian later recounted the experience by saying, "I just looked in his big blue eyes and I flushed him down the toilet."

RIP Patches--we'll sure miss you!