Cleft lip surgery day!!!

The day I have waited for since January has arrived!!! His surgery was delayed about 1.5 hours because Dr. Howell had an emergency surgery before Rydon. He was extra mad to not be eating since shortly after we got to the hospital at 5:30 am. The cute nurses took him and played with him for a little while so we could relax and take a short nap before they got too busy. Finally about 8:20 they came to take us to the surgery prep area. Rydon screamed for a good while because he was just hungry. We both felt so bad for him. We could do nothing for him except hold him while he screamed. It was not my favorite thing. They took him back to the OR a little before 9am. He was in for about three hours. When he woke up from anesthesia he screamed and screamed and screamed....for three hours straight. He was throwing his body around so much that he kicked out his IV's in both legs and bled all over my pants. It was horrible. They kept telling us he wasn't in pain because the anesthesia would keep him numb for about four hours after waking up. I think he really didn't like the numb feeling or something. In any case, that experience was horrible. Finally at 3:30 we were able to leave the hospital and make our way through gross traffic to Torrance (however, we had a dead battery and had to wait for the hospital engineer to come jump us. That was a fun, unexpected thing). While it only took us 35 minutes to drive into LA, the drive to Torrance was over an hour because we didn't get onto the freeway until almost 4:30.....the crappiest time to travel in the LA area. The rest of our kids had a fabulous day playing with ShaeLee's kids. They jumped and rode cars and played all day long. I am so thankful ShaeLee volunteered a while ago to watch our kids so we could be a little less stressed at the hospital. It worked out so well. We stayed there again Tuesday night because of the dead battery situation. Wednesday we tried to get on the road home at 11:30am, but the van wouldn't start again, nor would the battery charge enough by the jumper cables. It was such a frustrating time. At about 12 we finally got it going and headed to Costco for a new battery....which we found out they didn't carry in stock. So we had to get jumped again by their tech guy and then find a Pep Boys close by. When we got there it took them an hour to hook up the van to their diagnostic machine, find the battery we needed, and put it in. But then after that warning lights were still going off on the dash so we had to have it tested again. We were there over an hour!! Finally, about 2:30pm we got on the road headed home. The van did fine the whole trip...for which I am so thankful. After spending 5 days in California, I will do my best to not complain about bad traffic or high cost of living here in Vegas because CA is so much worse!!!! It is a nice place to visit, but I am sure I would never want to live there.

 Last photo before going back for surgery.

 Playing at the May's

 This does not even come close to showing the bumper to bumper traffic for miles on the freeway.