Melissa, Andy and the kids' Blog

1/1 - Melissa celebrated the New Year by going out to lunch with Grandma Jack.  Her birthday is December 30th, so a lunch date to celebrate was in order. They went to Subway and enjoyed a good chat.  1/2 - Another celebration!  Goodbye gallbladder!  Melissa had off and on again pain from her gallbladder for a year and didn't want to wait for it to become an emergency. She scheduled the surgery and I scheduled a week off of work.  Before the surgery we were told it would be about 45 minutes.  An hour and a half after she was wheeled back I was sitting in the waiting area telling myself, "If there was a serious complication, someone would have told me."  Then a few minutes later, the surgeon walked past me (heading back in to the OR area from the MedSurge floor) and said, "you're still out here?  We've been done for a while!"   Surgery started around 9 AM, and we didn't get home until almost 5.  Melissa didn't want to wake up and the ...

December 4 - Melissa, kids and friends went to Blanding 4th reservoir to explore for the morning.  Everyone came home muddy and happy.   That evening was the 7th ward Christmas party.  The kids participated as shepherd (Finn) and the traditional manger animals, pig (Hannah) and kitten (Lilian). They seemed to have fun and the party was a fun chance to talk to some ward members we don't chat with very often.  12/5 - Emily and Kendall Laws' neighbor gift was a poem/scavenger hunt to find Christmas light displays around Blanding.  We spent almost an hour walking around our neighborhood the first evening, the kids loved it.  When we reached a block with no lights (Christmas or porch) the kids complained about the lack, so I told them to look up.  The sky was completely clear and thy were in awe.  Lilian even pointed out a star in the Orion constellation and said it was probably Jesus' birth star (imagine Orion's knee cap a star cluster called M43...