Papa's Surgery, and then Home

Most of our family know now that Papa had a very invasive back surgery on Monday the 28th. Back in September of 2005 Papa had 6 screws and 2 steel rods put in his back to fuse his spine. Well that surgery never took, so for four years he has been in intense pain. Recently upon discovering the the failure of the first fusion, the Dr and Papa decided to re due it. So this time they did the largest back fusion possible. Some of the screws where so loose they just came out! and holes had to be redrilled and larger screws had to be used! Gram's blog has much more details. Papa's surgery was on Monday and he was released today. Mommy spent Monday and Tuesday going back and forth from the hospital and Wednesday and Thursday taking care of Sam and Ella and preparing Grams and Pop's house for Papa's return.

Though this week has meant a lot of early mornings for Mommy and Johnny, Johnny has LOVED getting to spend so much time with his cousins.

Giving Sam kisses! He can't help himself when it comes to Sam, he RUNS to her every time he sees her and hugs her and kisses her and brings her a binky when she cries.

Isn't she a big girl? Three months old now, where does the time go?

Johnny thought Sam needed shoes, and what better shoes then Cinderella dress up slippers...he was her prince :)

The following pictures are from today as me and the kids prepared for Papa to come home!!!

Johnny and Ella did this A LOT!! Sitting close next to each other to read or watch TV. Actually every morning Ella would bring Johnny up to her room to read books on her bed, very cute!

We wanted Papa to know how much we missed him and how much we love him, so we made him some signs to come home to.

Johnny is finally getting into coloring and went crazy here! A beautiful work of art!

I think they turned out pretty good :)

It was such a relief to have Papa home! We all spent the last 4 days on the edge of our seats, needing to know Papa was going to be okay and praying that his pain would finally go away! He still has a whole lot of healing to do, but the Dr has been very informative and very positive so far! He will be unable to pick up Johnny (or even Sam) for a couple months, and we know that Papa will miss that, but after he is all healing up he will be able to do a lot more that he couldn't before and feel a lot less pain!


When Papa walked in the door leaning on the walker, Johnny ran toward him not understanding that Papa wasn't able to pick him up or anything, but Johnny was just so happy to see him that nothing else mattered!