A Rough Start to a Beautiful Month

This blog can start off with a huge praise - Sam's second hypospadias surgery was today. This is surgery # 4 for our litle guy, and he had one more almost definite in the pipe - so we went to Kaiser this morning with a "halfway done!" attitude and trying to remain positive.

Today went so smoothly - the admitting nurses were amazing to Sam, he was flirting it up with them, and he hit it off so well with his anesthesiologist that they didn't even wheel him away in a hospital crib - he just carried Sam in like they were old buddies. It was nice to feel such confidence in those who were going to be in the operating room.

The 3-4 hour surgery went by more quickly than expected, and Dr. Huang (hero!) came out with the GREAT news that Sam won't need any more surgeries! Wahoo!

So today, we are praising God for that big time. Thank you so much to everyone who prayed for him this morning. He is pretty uncomfortable right now - sitting like a stoned sack of potatoes in front of an Elmo DVD - but I know it won't do any harm for him to watch excessive TV for a few days while he recovers, poor guy!

Yesterday at church a few of us put together a dance for missions emphasis month. I am in love with how it turned out. It was more "artsy" than we usually do - most people at church loved it, and I just loved the freedom in the choreography and wonderful Maureen and Rachael sang for us. Lame that they didn't make it into the video :(



Halloween week was super fun. I made Frank and Sam some spooky foods.


Skeleton cupcakes


Not so scary monster cupcakes


Pile of bones breadsticks


Candy corn pizza - which looked like regular pizza because even though I had a piece of candy corn RIGHT next to me, I still did the white cheese on the wrong end. Ah well.


Sweet potato filled "pumpkins"

For Halloween, Sam was the world's happiest scarecrow


We went to our church's harvest festival and saw lots of people we love. Sam also loved his reflection in the empty dance studio mirror.


Then this morning it was off to surgery.

We are so comfortable and laid back at Kaiser by now, that we usually spend some time singing, playing make believe, and chatting it up with the nurses.



The nurses brought Sam a lot of toys which were MUCH more fun than his regular toys and they even brought him an ELMO toy ftw!



We had naptime too...and this picture was taken right before they WOKE HIM UP to give him a SEDATIVE, which caused him to wake up fully, start climbing all over the hospital crib, and help the anesthesiologist type things into his chart.



All of these pictures and words to say that we had a blessed October and have a wonderful November planned as well. Thanksgiving is my all time favorite holiday and I am so looking forward to really spending all of November in true gratefulness.

I'm going to be spending time writing real thank you cards to those who have well beyond earned them, I'm throwing a special brunch for my best friends, and then there is ice skating with the church, and a Thanksgiving feast in Santa Clara.

I am a happy girl <3