Weekend Wrap Up

We spent a good amount of time at home with Eric recovering from his surgery.  He is doing great!  He gets tired, but overall he's eating well, not experiencing pain, and is in the best of spirits.  I am so impressed with his attitude.  Right now, he's on an all clear liquid diet.  Basically, he is eating strained chicken noodle soup and G2.  He's soooooo ready for some food with substance, but he is being patient and diligent about his diet.

 For this wrap up, I'm backing up to Wednesday, because that is when my weekend sort of started.  I taught algebra early in the morning, and then left to come home to take Eric to the hospital for surgery.  Here we are in the waiting room waiting for him to go into pre-op.  He was being sooooo cooperative with my wanting a photo!

By the way, I plan to resume with my Wednesday series of being the wife on the sidelines as my husband ungoes gastric sleeve surgery.  Since the surgery is so recent in my mind, I'll probably "skip" a few steps and recap the surgery experience this week, and then go back and write more about some of the steps it took to get to the surgery.

 We got to the hospital at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Eric's surgery was at 5:30, he was out before 7, in his room by 8, and he was taking a walk down the hallway by 11:45.  After a somewhat restful night of sleep, we were both up at the crack of dawn (thanks blood draw guy), and the nurse said Eric could get dressed and ready to go home around 11!  Hard to believe in the photo above that he had surgery the night before!

 Friday was VIP day at school.  I told the boys that I'd be there for the lunch, and Eric wanted to come as well.  The boys were really worried while he was in the hospital, especially Evan, so they were happy to have their daddy with them.

 Nina came to eat lunch with them as well.  (Jacqui is Hudson's godmother, but in Spanish, a godmother is called Nina.)

 Hudson's soccer team had a game on Saturday, so we all went out to watch.

 They won.

 I realized how "not pretty" I was looking on Saturday morning, and I told Eric he was super lucky to be married to "all this!"  I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me, but I was WIPED out from Eric's surgery.  Between the actual physical hours of being awake with him, sleeping on a weird little chair at the hospital, dealing with the kids and regular life, I was done with being awake!  I took several naps this weekend, and I'm not much of a nap taker!

 With Eric being on a restricted diet, I have committed to feeding the rest of us as healthy as possible.  Obviously, we won't be on a liquid diet, but after Eric is healed, he has to avoid things like rice, crackers, and bread for six months.  I plan to avoid most of these items as well.  The hardest one will be rice and tortillas.  We eat a lot of that.  I made chipotle flavored steak salad for dinner on Saturday and chicken and salad on Sunday.  I need to start getting creative.  Once Eric is back to regular foods, I need to flavor some of this stuff up!

 Evan had a soccer game in town on Sunday morning, and Hudson had a game in Madera.  Eric stayed with Evan and I took Hudson to his game.  Both teams lost.  After playing, I asked Hudson what he wanted for lunch.  Subway.  Awesome.  Our boys have a love affair with this place.  I do not share that love.

 Hudson ate flatbread with ham toasted.  And nothing else goes on his sandwich.  The sandwich makers have a hard time with that, even though I said bread and ham and nothing else.  She asked what kind of cheese.  Um, none.  Bread and ham.  She asked if he wanted mayo and mustard.  No, bread and ham.  What veggies?  BREAD AND HAM!

 When we got home, Evan had to whip out his science fair project.  As a teacher, these projects are great.  As a parent, I HATE them.

 Evan wanted to see what melts ice the fastest: salt, sugar, sand, or nothing.  He chose this project because it looked "cool."  We had to come up with a slightly more technical reason for this idea.

 He placed ice in four bowls and sprinkled the sugar, salt and sand over the ice.

 Then he put the bowls in the refrigerator and waited an hour.

 We pulled the bowls out to see which had melted the most.  Salt won.

 Then we measured the liquid from each bowl for an accurate comparison.

Evan spent the rest of the evening gluing pieces to his board.  We had to take a small break in there to go out to the soccer fields and pick up trash.  It was our team's turn to do it, but we were notified at the last minute.  Only us and one other family showed up.  The seven of us wandered the field with trash bags and picked up a bit of trash.  Luckily, the fields weren't too littered.   

After we got home, I cooked while Evan finished his project.  The glue got the best of him and he almost ended up in tears, but it all worked out.  Science fair is on Thursday, so I have to get that ready (since I'm in charge of it).

I'm not quite ready to jump back into the regular routine of school and soccer and life, but Monday is here.  Eric will be home for three weeks.  He is healing well, but is going to need time to fully recover and figure out his food.  It's always weird to head off to school when he's home.