Eden turned 17 months on May 12. She is very busy these days. She recently got a swing for the porch and loves to relax outside. She is now tall enough to reach objects on the counter (yikes!) and is getting very good at feeding herself. She wants to be included in everything and likes to stand on chairs to watch me cook, do my make-up or give Andy a bath. She recently experienced the deliciousness of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as well as goldfish crackers. Today she decided that she is in love with Elmo. We already made a trip to the library to get an Elmo video. We uploaded some recent pictures of Eden and we hope you enjoy them!

Thanks for all of your prayers! Andy was in surgery for about 45 minutes and then the doctor came to see us in the waiting room and said that everything went well. We had to wait another 45 minutes to go see him in the recovery room but when we got there he was awake and taking fluids. He finished the bottle in a hurry and then had brunch. 🙂
Andy has been very sleepy this afternoon but otherwise seems just fine. For the next few days he gets a tub soak each time he has a dirty diaper and then he gets 3 soaks a day for 10-14 days. The doctor said everything should heal up by then and we have a follow up visit at the end of May.

Andy is having a little surgery tomorrow on his bottom. He has a fistula and the doctors tell us it is an easy surgery. We have to be at the hospital at 7:30am and his surgery is at 9am. He will be out for about 30 minutes but the surgery should only last about 10 minutes. Please pray that the surgery goes well, that the doctors are well rested and alert and that he tolerates the anesthesia well. We will post an update when we get home from Riley Hospital.

I’ve updated our photo gallery to have a few new features:

1. You can now “download” any of the full size images. There is a download link in the upper right near the close button.
2. You can now upload your own amazingly cute photos of Ben…or if you have some of Eden, Andy, or Meghan we’ll take those too! There is an upload box near the bottom of the photos page.

For the three of you that are technically minded and actually care: the picture gallery is powered by a great jquery plugin called yoxview.

Tonight we gathered our courage and set out for a night of baseball. We packed Eden dinner and picked up Jimmy John’s on the way for us. The weather turned cloudy just as we arrived at the field but we were prepared and had packed layers! We met Matt Mindrum there and we all sat on blankets in the grass, ate dinner, and then took turns chasing Eden. We probably watched a total of 5 minutes of the game, but enjoyed being outside and letting Eden get some exercise. We had to leave the game early to put the kids to bed. We changed them both into pj’s in the trunk of the car before we left and they both fell asleep on the drive home. All in all we count it a success and I think we are all looking forward to future baseball games!