Off to Peoria

For the past few days we visited friends in the Peoria area. Sunday night we hung out with Mark and Amity and got to eat Monical's pizza - awesome. It was great catching up with them and Addison had fun wrestling their black lab - Stella. The next morning went to our consultation with Dr. Reid, the pediatric urologist, who was going to do Harrison's circumcision on Tuesday.  The weather was absolutely frigid and it was so much work to jump around from office to office to get ready for his surgery.  I was so thankful that I don't have to tote kids around in that kind of weather for the next couple of years.

Monday night we went to the Hopkins' - these two cats got married shortly after we left the States and it is so fun to see them together and now they have a kitten which Addison befriended quite quickly. We had a short night since we had to be at the hospital by 6AM the next morning.

On Tuesday morning both kids were great sports about being in the hospital. I was so nervous about handing over my little baby, but Dr. Reid, the anesthesiologist, and all the nurses were really nice. Harrison look so cute in his little hospital gown. I couldn't help but sit there and wonder what all these other little children were going to have done to them while my little guy was getting what my dad called "getting his pencil sharpened." They actually put Harrison under anesthetic and gave him a breathing tube to keep him from exerting too much energy during the surgery. It seemed like a lot to do but it was very humane to do it that way. The whole process lasted about 45 minutes. On my way down to recovery, I was so nervous about the thought of seeing my little baby laying on a hospital bed with tubes coming out of him, but to my happy surprise the nurse was actually holding him when I got back there and they let me sit in a rocking chair and feed him when he woke. They showed me how things looked which looked pretty bad and I felt horrible about making him go through this. I have to say though that my son is so laid back and easy going because he never fussed at all.


The rest of the day we spent it at my friend Tara Scrivner's house and had a play date with Kelly and Carol. It was wonderful and great getting caught up with them. All their kids have grown up so much and I was worried they wouldn't remember us because they were so young when we left, but they keep up on the blog and watch the videos of Addison.

Tuesday night left a whole ton of snow and ice on the ground and that got me really nervous to drive down to Bloomington to see Stacey, so we ended up staying in P-town. I at least got to have a great visit with her on the phone. Love you Stacey.  Both kids were pretty warn out after some pretty long days so they laid down for naps. After about 2 1/2 hours of sleeping they finally woke up and we could leave the hotel for lunch. I thought I was confined to my house in England at times, but a hotel room with subzero temps outside is kind of tough with two kids. We did end up venturing out to the new TGI Friday's in East Peoria for lunch...yummy! While we were waiting for our food, an interesting looking fella dressed in a Santa hat had gotten up from his seat, left and came back right up to our table. He pulled out a $10 bill and said to me "Santa thinks you should have a little something to enjoy for Christmas"...I told him we couldn't accept the money but he insisted. It totally creeped me out and we waited a long while before we left. That night my dad met us in the Quad Cities to take me and the kids back to their house for the next few days.