firsts and thirds.

Ruthe is one.  ONE!!  I can't believe it.  One just feels so big - and she is not so big.  She is tiny.  Teeny tiny.  And she's going to stay that way forever.  We've already talked about it and she's totally fine with never growing up.  I think, she just sort of stared at me the whole time.

Her first birthday was a BLAST!!  If you haven't already seen her priceless reaction to a Slurpee you're missing out!!  It's on Instagram somewhere... #rutheturnsone

John was able to take the weekend off and fly down to be with us.  He has to miss a lot, but his daughter's first birthday was a no-brainier!  She loves him - it kinds makes me jealous.

Her big birthday bash was the day after her actual birthday and it was so.much.fun!  We had a super fun pool party and my parents rented a big bouncy-house/water-slide!!  All the little cousins had plenty to do, so the grow-ups could enjoy the delicious tacos and desserts!

The next day at church we probably weren't as reverent as we should have been - but it's always so much fun to have the dad there with us!!

After John went home we had to start getting things ready for Ruthe's THIRD open-heart surgery!!  She had finally gotten to the point that it was better to do the surgery than wait any longer, and flu season was over, so it was really the perfect time to go.

This time she'd be having a modified Rastelli procedure, and they'd close her VSD.  If you look up that procedure it says it's a repair for double-outlet right ventricle hearts, but the way that Ruthe's heart has been set up from her last two surgeries was pretty close to what that would look like, and so it's really the perfect fit for her.  It will depend on how everything goes during surgery before we know whether she'll need a pace-maker now or possible a little later.  We're definitely hoping that she won't, but after talking to the surgeon about it we feel a lot more confident that having a pace-maker won't really affect her overall quality of life, or even the day-to-day.

Well, I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of details about her birthday and the days leading up to her surgery... But I'm lazy and I forgot to blog about it while everything was fresh in my mind!!  So here's a cute picture of Ruthe to make it up to you.