(photo via Bruce's cousins, Jess & Dwayne McCarroll, of one of their gorgeous sons, Colin)
Bruce and I headed to Nashville to celebrate my brother, Mark's, graduation from Belmont University with his BSN in nursing (one step closer to his goal of becoming a nurse anesthetist!)
We flew out on the night of Wednesday, December 16th in order to make it to the pinning ceremony scheduled for Thursday night, but we had some horrible luck with our flight and ended up stranded in Denver for the night. There was only one seat available on the flight on Thursday that would get us to Nashville on time, so I was able to fly on it stand-by and make it to the pinning ceremony, but Bruce had to catch the later flight and ended up hanging out at the airport bar until we could pick him up after the ceremony.
Aunt Kathy and Uncle Roger were able to make it, and Griffin had a ball hanging out with Kathy...
We were so proud when Mark received the Florence Nightingale Award (awarded to one graduating senior and chosen by the Nursing School faculty in conjunction with the Baptist Hospital Ladies Auxillary.)
Kathy is an RN (and Mark's godmother!) and she did the honors of pinning Mark.
Afterward, Griffin wanted to announce to everyone how proud he was of his Daddy.
The next day, December 18th, was Mark's actual graduation from Belmont and Dad, Mom, Billy, and Amber, and Jackie's mother and grandmother all made the trip up from Huntsville to be there. One of Mark's good friends and roommates from his FSU days, Josh, made the trip down from Michigan, as well.
We're so very proud of Mark for all of his hard work and his fantastic accomplishment!
Bruce and I spent the rest of the weekend with Mark, Jackie, and Griffin, then headed down to Huntsville to hang out with Dad, Mom, Billy, Amber, and Ethan. It was the first time Bruce and I had a chance to meet Ethan, and I can't believe how much he's grown in just five months! We'd been living vicariously through the pictures Billy and Amber would send us, but I'll tell you: nothing compares to the real thing! :-)
Bruce and I finally got home to Salt Lake City on Christmas Day afternoon after another disastrous airport experience (I'll spare you the details, but the bottom line is that we ended up calling Bru's cousin, Dave, and had him buy us one-way tickets home on the computer on Southwest because Frontier was going to strand us in Denver AGAIN. At this point we'd been awake for more than 24 hours and were NOT in a very patient mood...)
We had a relaxing weekend just hanging out before having to head in to the hospital for Bruce's ankle surgery on Tuesday (the 28th.)
The surgery itself went just fine (when the doc came out of the OR to give me the status report, he said that he had never seen such extensive damage in an ankle before!), but Bruce had a few issues with pain management in the first 36 hours and he ended up having to be admitted overnight. Once he did finally get home and got on a pain medication schedule, he's been doing really well. He's staked out his spot on the couch and is keeping his day busy with naps, football, movies, video games, and more football. Now it's just a waiting game to see if the surgery was as successful as we hope it to be. His surgeon is fantastic and we've been really impressed with him, his professionalism, and his competence (if you're ever in need of major ankle surgery, Dr. Nikisch at University of Utah Hospital is your man!) Bruce will be non-weight bearing on that foot for at least the next six weeks (torture for him!) and will have about six months of recovery ahead of him.
Whew! I'm so ready for life to start slowing down around here...at least for a little while, anyway! :-)
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