ROAD TRIP!

Quality Grandma time

Hannah walking with Grandpa around the nurses station

Rodney and Hannah became the best of friends this week!

All of us in the hospital the night before Dad got to come home. What a week!

I accidentally put this one on twice, can't figure out how to remove it without starting over, sorry. And I haven't quite got the formatting with pictures down to a science. But you get the idea anyway. Long post, be prepared!

Dad was scheduled for surgery on his hip. I get a phone call from Amy saying that she is coming to town and asked me if I wanted to go to Utah with her to help Mom and Dad with whatever we could. I said, HECK YES! so we did. Thanks for the idea Gary!!

We fit Amy, Hannah, Rodney and I in our little Civic and left at 5 a.m. to get to Utah by about 2. The kiddos did great! It was a great week that was spent taking care of Grandma McFadden, helping run caters at the restaurant, doing a session at the Timpanogos Temple (can I say GORGEOUS!!!), visiting Grandpa in the Hospital, and quality sister time! This has been such a week that I will never forget. I am always excited when I get to see Amy, but everytime I do I love her more and more even though I never think it would be possible. What I would do without my sisters I hope I never have to find out!

We also got to hang out with Jeff and Stephaney and had a blast. Sleep is always limited when I go to Utah because I just don't want to sleep my play time away! So all week I got an average of 6 hours a night. Jeff and Stephaney wouldn't get off of work until about 10 and then we would stay up talking/playing for a few hours and wouldn't go to bed until at least midnight. And then up at about 7. My new absolute favorite ice cream joint is Iceberg (sorry Stephaney) with their Snickers shake...oh my gosh! with an order of their fries. It just doesn't get any better or any higher of a caloric/fat content. Oh well.

What are the odds that we would be in town for not one but two bridal showers! Our cousin Kelsey and our best friend Chelsey both just happened to be having the showers the week we were there! It was so fun to be there and I am so excited for both of them and their new lives to come. It just seems that so many things just fell into place for us to go and so many things just worked out this week. It was definately meant to be!

Rodney loved all of the family he would just be a smiling mess whenever they would say hello, but his favorite was Great Grandma McFadden. He would be all smiles and so happy if I would just lay him down by Grandma in her chair. She has one of the mechanical chairs that raises and she would raise it up so she could just look down at him at her feet and he would smile for an hour pretty much just at her feet. She, of course, ate it up! The cutest thing was right as we were leaving at like 4:30 Rodney was asleep in my arms as we were saying goodbye to everybody and he woke up just in time to see Great Grandma one more time and as soon as he saw her he hammed it up. Grandma just melted. It made me tear up. She is looking more and more frail every time we go to visit, however as stubborn as she is I think she will be around for a while still.

Dad's surgery went really well, the anesthesia however made Dad quite the comedian. He was very agitated as far as the nurses saw to the point where it was taking 4 of them to hold him to the bed. Then they gave him morphine to keep him calm until the rest of the medications wore off, but it had the opposite effect and made it worse. They brought Mom back into the recovery room to help calm him down which they never do. He did some funny things that were making the nurses laugh but then he would get sensitive to the fact that people were laughing at him. Dad hasn't ever had anything done that would require general anesthesia before so it was interesting to see all of that. He was up and walking that afternoon, 1 time around the nurses station and 24 hours after that he walked around 10 times! Hannah dutifully walked right behind him the whole time.

He came home on Saturday afternoon and we made him a yummy dinner of Veggie Lasagna, asparagus, and artichoke. It was really good, we tried a new recipe. Dad is still doing pretty well, he is now taking pain medication but on a modified schedule so it isn't as much. He is feeling relatively pain free, but I am thinking that anything is going to be pain free compared to what he was feeling before.

I will always remember this week and treasure it like you wouldn't believe. A once in a lifetime experience for sure!