Gall Bladder Surgery and the Christmas Holiday

We celebrated Christmas a couple of weeks early this year. (Will post pictures here soon).  Well about 2 weeks ago, we got the results from Tess' HIDA scan that proved that she would need to have her gall bladder removed.  Knowing this well ahead of time, we decided to have Christmas before her surgery.   So on this past Thursday, I took her to the hospital to have this malfunctioning organ removed.  Surprisingly, this was a pretty quick procedure.  Within an hour, she was out of surgery and in recovery.  Today she's still in good spirits, but feeling more of the pain than in the two previous days.  Hopefully, she'll be feeling better on Christmas day.

I already had the week of Christmas scheduled off from my job.  I went ahead and scheduled the week of New Year's off as well.  Since the Boss is out of commission, I'll be taking on the full duties of at home mom and nurse.  If you remember, back in 2010, she had to take care of me after my super crazy back surgery.  Funny thing is, Handful was about the same age as Gumz is now.  

Another thing that I'm doing, that I haven't really done before, take a 100% vacation from work.  In the past, I've probably pulled open the laptop about 20 to 50% of my vacation.  If you take a look at the picture above, you can already tell that I'm passing on my workaholism to my son.  I work hard like I do, not because I'm uber-ambitious or feel the need to be important by working long hours, I do it because in a way, I feel like I have to.   In my role, people are relying on me to keep things organized, on task and for timely communication.  And when you're managing multiple projects, there's never a good time to take a 2 week vacation.  This is even moreso the case during the holidays as people are in and out of the office and dates can slip if you aren't keeping up with who's in or out of the office.  

But this year, the premium is on my family.  My wife is recovering and my children refuse to be ignored.  I'd like to finally honor them with my undivided attention.  We say it all the time, work will be there when you get back.  That's true, but you also have to be prepared for people's attitudes if something really important comes up while you're out and you willfully don't respond as you've created a plan to respect your own time.  I guess that just comes with the territory.  

In the meantime, I'm kinda giddy that we've already celebrated Christmas early and the actual is still left to come.  Even though we would have had all the hoopla out of the way, I still can't wait for the day to get here as Jesus continues to make himself Bigger in our lives.