Join us in the adventures of our family, with our Belarussian Prince, Guatemalan Princessa and Ukrainian Princesses!


Monday, February 29, 2016

February catch-up!

pick up after school - she loves when the dog comes with me :)

beautiful day in February! time to bike!

then it snowed! :)

Reilly made a snow heart!

a snowman!
 we then did a family art night!
Reilly and Victoria were partnered together

Dan and Gerri were partners

Danny and I were partners!


this is Danny and my creation :)
 Then it was Reilly's first birthday with us!!
pretty cake! she was shocked!

we rented a space at Wegman's and she did not know what to do with all the attention!

she opened up gift after gift and did not know what to do  :)
Being the center of attention was very hard, but she did great :)
:)

Ash Wednesday!

got a mani/pedi for her birthday :) she LOVED it!

doing school work, yeh, that's it!

small birthday party just us at home :)
she loved it! :)

Then it was February school vacation and we unexpectedly had surgery for Gerri's left leg.
She had been complaining about leg pain and we thought there was a bone cyst.
We got a call on Wednesday before vacation that we could come in the following week for a quick surgery.  then on the Friday before vacation they called to say that surgery slots had opened up because of the flu and we could (if we wanted) have Gerri;s big surgery done! (we had been waiting two years for a surgery slot) I said yes then had to run around and get stuff done asap so we could head out. thankfully the orthodontist fit her in to have her palate expander removed. then I ran to her school to let them know what was going on so they could plan for once she got back since we knew it would be in a wheelchair. Gerri was only told that she was having the quick surgery for the cyst.
car ride down :)

so very thankful for ronald mcdonald house!
The morning of surgery I explained to Gerri that the surgery was going to be more than the quick in and out. That she would finally have a straight left leg and probably come out in a cast. We had already been talking about the cast so she was not surprised about it.

waiting on the silly juice!
 had a nice talk with dr vb about the surgery and we decided he would do as much as he could while in there. so she will have her left leg derotated (her bones were curving and causing her knee to face to the left and her foot to curl up. He also said he would reposition the head of her femur so she could sit upright again! yah! I mentioned about her rocking side to side when she walked and I thought her legs were growing differently so he quickly measured and said, yes you are right. The left leg is quite a bit shorter again. (two years ago we had to do a fixator on her femur to grow 2 inches) so I told him to do whatever he felt necessary :)
silly juice on board! dr vb gave her the marking pen once he was done :)

all done! no cast! but a fixator on for leg length!
the good thing about the fixator is that it is NOT a cast :) so she could shower and it is much easier for her to live with. and being on the tibia instead of the femur is easier to sit and move around.
It was SO weird to see her knee pointing up to the ceiling!

in her room, all settled in! my comfy bed on the right :)

feeling a bit better!

finally eating a cracker!

upright!

got her to play :)
she kept scoring on herself!

back at ronald mcdonald house! relaxing for one night before the long drive home

home sweet home!

Reilly was very happy when I got home!
She kept asking when we would be home.
so we did a facial mask to celebrate!