Ellie's Surgery

On May 19th Ellie had surgery to remove a tumor from the left temporal lobe of her brain. We were very nervous about the surgery, because there was a chance that she could have permanent damage to her speech, memory, and eyesight.
Leading up to the surgery, our family and Ward fasted & Pierce gave her a beautiful blessing.
At 6:00 we arrived at Children's Hospital in Knoxville. We were surprised by bloodwork to start the morning, which did not give Ellie a very good first impression ;-). After we got to a room, Ellie was given "happy juice." It's medicine that gives her a sense of uphoria so she doesn't care that they are wheeling her away or putting her to sleep. Then the surgery began-right at 9:00. The nurse called every hour, just to let us know that everything was fine, & give us a progress update. The surgery lasted 6 hours. We had several visitors while we waited that helped the time pass. Jennifer Plott, Connie Lyles, Pop, Grammy, Pete, Uncle Jason, Aunt Carol, Melana, Grandpa, & Liz and Austin Jones all came.
After surgery, Dr. Harris spent 30 minutes talking to us about what they found. Unfortunately they weren't sure what it was :-\. What they took out was a mass of extra brain cells that had clumped together with an area of these extra cells, in a smaller amount, surrounding it. After the Pathologist looked at it the next day, he said he thinks it is a very low grade tumor known as a Pilocytic Astrocytoma. He then sent samples to Memphis for genetic testing to hopefully confirm his diagnosis. We won't have their findings back for another week.
Ellie's recovery has been awesome! When Pierce & I went in to see her, the first thing she did was wipe off his kiss (typical ;-))! The next day, she sang 2 verses of "Let It Go!" We had expected her to lay around the first few days home, but we are having to slow her down instead.
We will go to get her stitches out on Tuesday, & hope to hear from Memphis by Friday.
Heavenly Father has blessed us so much. Ellie's recovery has been fantastic, we have been able to keep ourselves together, our family has been such a support, & our trust & love for Him has increased.

Boys Will Be Boys!

Two days after we got home from Ellie being in the hospital, April 12th, Brody broke his ankle! We had gone to our friend, Bryan's house for a relaxing cookout. Before dinner the kids were playing on a really cool swing set that they have in their backyard, when Brody said to his brothers, "Hey, watch this!" He proceeded to swing as high & fast as he could in his attempt to jump over the rail ties that border the playground. He did a really cool jump from the swing...and landed right on the rail tie! He ankle swelled so much & so quickly that by the time I looked at it, I knew immediately that he needed to go to the hospital.
So, Grammy and I made another trip to the hospital to have x-rays & a temporary cast put on his left ankle. It turned out that he had broken it right in the growth plate.
Lucky for us, we have a couple of friends from church who are doctors at Knoxville Orthopaedic Clinic! We were able to see Dr. Becker & Ben Morganegg on Monday to get a permanent cast put on. He wore that for 2 weeks, and is now in a removable aircast for another 4 weeks. He's such a trooper though; he runs around as best he can and gets everyone to play catch with him :-).
When asked if he would try it again, he said, "Yeah, probably!"