Welcome Home!

Leaving the hospital and seeing the sun for the first time in weeks!
(I'm including the time she was sick at home before the hospital and didn't go outside)

It seems like an eternity ago that Anellah and I began our adventure with two kind paramedics that led to getting to know more caring health professionals than we ever wanted to know! Yesterday we were finally able to free Anellah from the confines of her isolation room and reintroduce her to the outside world. As I had expected, we didn't leave "first thing in the morning" as we'd been promised but we were out of the hospital around 1:00pm so that wasn't so bad.

Beautiful weather for a welcome home orange juice party.
Anellah and I squeezed it out of fresh oranges from my aunt in California!

 I wish I had a video of the moment Evelyn first saw her and how excited she was, it was incredibly sweet.

Last night began a process of helping Anellah get back to "normal" life. She slept in bed with me (Daniel was demoted to the couch) because we knew she would be waking up in the night. She had gotten in the habit of being woken up so frequently at night that eventually she would just stay awake for a few hours rather than going back to sleep. Last night there weren't any doctors or nurses around to "bother" her (her word choice) but she still woke up around 2:00am and had a hard time getting back to sleep until around 4:30am. But the fact that she stayed in bed and didn't get to watch TV was a change. I DID still allow a midnight snack though.

She ended up sleeping in until around 8:30 which is great!! When she got up I made her a special breakfast of green waffles (her color choice), fruit, syrup, and whipped cream. She devoured it and asked for more. She is getting so much closer to being "herself" now!

Sun on her shoulders

After breakfast Daniel took Capper to our property to do a little work, I let Anellah sit in the sun and play LeapPad, and Evelyn went down for a nap. In the silence I looked around and tried to figure out what I should do first- laundry, clean up breakfast mess, unpack hospital stuff, organize new medications, get dressed, plan the week, check on the animals...and I just stopped. I took a deep breath, I realized I was focusing on all the little immediate things when the big picture is this:

We are HOME!

Anellah is doing WELL!

We are BLESSED!