Ethan Update

I know that I should have posted this sooner, but we have been busy bribing our kids with gifts out of guilt for not being able to make it to camp this year. :) Okay, in all seriousness, Ethan is doing much better. He did get released from the hospital on Sunday morning. We could have left and headed up to camp, but we would have had less than 24 hours there, and the weather up there was not good. We would have had to drive through some pretty bad storms to get there and we didn't want to risk the bad weather for such a short amount of time there. We chose to stay home instead and try to make the most of what was left of the weekend. We went to the new Splash Park near here and the kids had fun playing in it and the we went for ice cream after they played. The only restrictions that Ethan had on him from the doctor was that he couldn't be around smoke or campfires (he knew we were planning on heading up to camp).

On Monday we actually went to Waterville. This is the one place that the kids have been begging to go to for the past three years and we have never taken them there. Not only did we go to Waterville, we bought a family season pass for the summer. See what a little guilt will do when your children have to miss out on Family Camp because one has to be in the hospital? After talking about it, we decided that a family pass will come in very handy this summer for us. We used to use our boat almost every weekend during the summer months, but since we sold our boat, we thought this would be a great way to fill that void. The kids absolutely loved Waterville and it was everything they thought it would be. Ethan quickly got over his fear of water getting in his face and he was having the time of his life. Emily took a little while longer to warm up to the stuff, but she eventually was going down the slides and playing on the stuff, too. I can see where we will be spending a lot of time at Waterville this summer.

This week I got my military ID card and we have been able to do some shopping now on the Navy base. Ethan was so excited that he got his hair cut at the barber shop on base. He kept saying that he got his hair cut where all of the "soldiers" get their hair cut. Now that his daddy is back in the Army, he is very much into anything military related. He is having a hard time understanding the difference between the different branches, though, and I have given up trying to explain it all. And since we live near a Navy base, they don't have Army related items here. He can't understand it and it upsets him since we live here and his daddy is in the Army, not the Navy.

Emily had another bad headache episode yesterday. They are happening so much more frequently now. I have started documenting them and they are happening at least once a week now. That is not a good sign. I am in the process of calling the neurosurgeon to get an MRI scheduled. I just pray that her shunt isn't failing again.