Happy Birthday Zoe!!!!

Can you believe it, Zoe is 8 years old!!!  The day was a memorable one for a few reasons...

 We had a big dumping of snow the night before.  Ailsa had fun "helping" daddy clear the car off so we could go visit Zoe.  Zoe was...

 in the hospital.  Unfortunately Zoe had a rough past couple of months with multiple hospital visits and 9 different courses of antibiotics!  We were managing her most recent illness at home until she started vomiting and having an increase in seizures.  So off to the hospital we went, on a Holiday Monday.  Of course it had to be a Holiday!  Luckily emergency was pretty quiet and since Zoe was very sick, we saw a doctor within minutes and we were transferred up to the inpatient floor within a couple of hours.  Turns out Zoe had bacteria in her blood.  Which is a first for us and pretty scary since it can be really serious.  Six days in to this hospital stay, Zoe had her birthday and so we celebrated in her room.  This was one of the few smiles I saw that day because Zoe was still having a lot of pain, very tired and still was not allowed to eat at this point.  She loved having everyone sing Happy Birthday to her.

 A few close people were able to stop by for the party.  Not pictured here- Alison and Lyn who also came.  Alison actually spent the night before with Zoe so Gavin and I could go home together for a night and have time Saturday morning to get all the birthday stuff ready.  When we came in Saturday morning, Alison looking tired said, "I don't know how you guys do this."  Thankfully, someone had gotten her a coffee and we immediately gave her a well deserved break!

Ailsa was so proud of Zoe, she told everyone, "It's Zoe's birthday!"  She misses Zoe but she did get to spend some time with her over the weekend and Monday after she went to her own appointment at the hospital.  Zoe will need IV antibiotics for another week, so we are trying to figure out if she needs to stay in hospital or if she could transfer to a respite centre that has nurses and is closer to home.  Gavin and I have a trip planned for next week- we are going away for 5 nights to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary!  The funny thing is that our anniversary is in November but Zoe has been in hospital the past six years in November and it is usually a bad month for her.  So we thought we would book March since she is usually good in March... ah well.  The best laid plans!  We are trying to see if between respite and Grandad we could still go.  If we don't go next week it won't happen any time soon.  The place we are going to had a great discount price for early March so the next discount period would be November....and I don't think we would take that chance.  We'll see.

Zoe is feeling so much better today.  We see more of the giggly, silly girl we know so well.  For a few months now, Zoe had not been her self.  It is a huge relief to see that smile again.  We missed Zoe!  Zoe is back to bossing us around and acting crazy- we love it!