Long Weekend Friends

We are settling back into life as usual around here. I remembered to send the running shoes or the library book or the art shirt or whatever the “key of the day” was as Kate headed out to school each morning. I struggled a little with that last week. We have been to the dentist and the doctor and the ophthalmologist. We got back to gymnastics lessons and we have everything set to start up Jane’s preschool group again this week.

Josh is on a new project, sort of. He’s with the same client and mostly the same team but the project is much larger in scope now. At the beginning of the week he was in a meeting where they were learning about the changes to the project. They have already been on this project for several months, so they were checking with the team members to make sure they were interested in spending another six months with the same client. “I would ask Josh if he wants to stay, but he doesn’t have a choice. It turns out he has a gift for change management stuff.” Later in the week, Josh had prepared a slide deck on the communication strategy for the client. He was after Kevin, his Principle, to go through the deck with him all day but kept being put off. Finally they sat down to go through it, after the meeting when they could have presented it to the client, and Kevin was duly impressed. Impressing one’s boss is always a good way to end the week. Now we are just hoping that tomorrow, a National Holiday and paid vacation day at work, ends up being a vacation day indeed. We’ll see.

The LaPierres came to visit us this weekend. It took the kids about half a second to jump right into a pretend game and they happily entertained each other all weekend. Our time was short but we packed in as much as we could: several good meals, several bowls of ice cream, running, home repair projects, cooking lessons for the famous LaPierre Beans, outings to the park, picnic lunches, temple trips, and games. A very good time was had by all. We had to wrap things up early this morning with a family bawl. We are counting down to the next long weekend!

Jane is having surgery on her thumb tomorrow. She has a trigger thumb. The tendon sheath is too narrow, so over time the tendon frays from being forced over and over through the narrow sheath. Consequently, a nodule forms on the tendon which prevents it from moving through the sheath. Thus the bent thumb. If you force the tendon through it is very painful. Thus the cries of pain and unwillingness to move the thumb for days. It wasn’t critical that it be fixed immediately, so we were considering the advantages and disadvantages of taking care of it now or waiting until Jane is older. But, for a couple of reasons we decided to go ahead and get it done. She is young enough that if we get it fixed now she won’t even remember it. It won’t interfere with school or any other activities and it won’t become part of her identity. We have incredible insurance right now so it will cost us a total of $5. Almost like a sign, as I was debating the timing in my mind, Jane’s thumb “popped” at least once a day. I took her to the park and she wouldn’t play on the equipment or hold onto the swing because her thumb hurt. I called and scheduled the appointment as soon as we got home. The surgery is not supposed to be a big deal. It’s an outpatient surgery that should only take about 15 minutes. The biggest risk is the anesthesia. We would, however, appreciate prayers for little Jane tomorrow morning. The surgery is at 7:00. We are supposed to have her there at 5:30.