Ants and Hamdogs

It seems that today is picnic themed. Ants and ham dogs... One bad, one really funny looking! The ants story first. Get the so sad, really bad out of the way first. After swimming lessons today, as we got ready to go home, I noticed that Jaden was stinky. So I opened all the doors on the oven on wheels (aka "the van") and laid Jaden on the floor of the back seat to change him. I let the other 3 stay on the side walk right by me as the neighborhood we are in is very quiet and no cars to worry about. A really pretty cat came right up to the kids and they asked if they could pet it. I told them I would rather they didn't. The girl that owns the cat stuck her head out of the door and told me that the cat was extremely gentle and friendly, so I told them to go ahead and pet her. They petted her for a minute or so, when Kaylee says, "mom there are ants all over the cat" I said, "oh, well then you guys better not pet her". I wasn't too worried about the ants as most of the ants around here are little black ones that are harmless, but no sooner than I said that and Jake starts screaming at the top of his lungs. I look back at him and he is covered in ants and they are biting. I started swatting them off of him. Several of the ants took 2 or 3 swats to get them off because you could see them hanging on with their jaws. I finally got what I thought was all of them, carried him around to the other side of the van where his car seat is and set him up in it. I got one arm into the strap and he starts screaming again. There is one big black ant on his stomach and it is just biting away. It took a second to get it off and get him back out of his seat to check for more. That one ant had bit him 7 times on the tummy. He had bites all over his body, I had several one my hands, and Kaylee had 2 on her ankle. Ethan it seems, is either too tough or too sour for the ants to bite. I got them all in and headed for home. Home is less then 2 minutes driving time, but by the time we got there, Jacobs bites had more then doubled their size. Each one was the size of a pencil eraser. The bites on Kaylee's leg and my hands were still small. I doused the bites with Benedryl spray and then called his pediatrician. Since he wasn't having trouble breathing he said to give him Dimetapp (he couldn't have oral benedryl cause I had used the spray on him already). It took about 30 minutes for the antihistamines to work and the bites to go down. Tonight, they are little red spots. Jake and I counted them earlier when I was checking them to make sure they were going away. I quit counting at 37. He is paranoid about ants now. This afternoon he started screaming and pointing to my arm. He thought that there were ants on me (there wasn't, they were only freckles.) The good part of the day was dinner. Ethan and Jake helped me make it. I bought the wrong buns from the store. I thought I got hamburger buns, but I got hot dog buns. So we made hamburgers to fit the buns! The kids thought our Ham dogs were GREAT! I thought they were a very unappetizing shape. Grandpa called them "poo burgers" when the kids weren't around.