First (and last) time out with Big Red

Carter had his follow-up appointment with his orthopedist today. It is the first time that I have attempted to leave the house with him by myself. I managed to get him some pants altered. They are in the picture. Don't mind the crazy chocolate covered face. This was from the fitting session. Anyways, I'm thinking it can't be that bad, right? Wrong. First off, we started out running behind, then it took longer than I thought to get him all strapped into his special vest. It's just a big fat pain to lift him into the car, get the wheelchair in the car and then do the whole thing over. I think that will be the last time he leaves the house for a while. At least until we have back up. I don't think my back can take anymore outings. I was thinking that maybe I would take him into school for Valentine's Day and then maybe Thursdays after that. I'm not thinking that anymore.

His leg is healing well, though. It still looks really broken to me in the X-rays, but the doctor assured me that all is well. We will be going back in 3 weeks, and then 3 more weeks. Hopefully we will get the cast off that last week, which puts us at the second week of March. I am pretty sure that puts us at 7 1/2 weeks in the cast, but who's counting? Carter was hilarious with the doctor. He was telling the doctor about how his leg was starting to itch inside the cast. The doctor told him that when his casted leg itches to scratch the free leg. Carter just laughed and told him that wouldn't work - there's no way the scratch could reach the itch on the other leg. The doctor laughed and said that Carter is the first person to ever question him on the scratching theory. He went on to tell the doctor about how his bones just needed to slide back together and that he should just take another look at the X-ray. Overall, he's had a great attitude and I am really proud of my little guy.

Mike leaves tomorrow super early for his mom's funeral in Rexburg. I am sad that I can't be there for the funeral and to support him, but as I mentioned before, Carter doesn't travel well. We are actually doing pretty well with everything. I think the shock of his mom dying was the worst, and I am sure the funeral will be hard, but we did know this was coming and we have had a long time to prepare ourselves. That along with our faith in our Heavenly Father's plan has made dealing with her death a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. Mike will be back Sunday morning. We are going to have some friends over for the Superbowl that evening. I think we all need something to show that our lives aren't competely turned upside down and regain some sense of normalcy. Now if I can just survive this weekend...