Settling in...

On Monday, August 12, Carla had her first Echo at UVA.  The boys stayed with Miss Lori, and Pastor Tim drove us to the hospital.  I remember that it seemed to take a long time to get to the hospital.  It is amazing how over time and multiple trips the distance shortened! ;)

At UVA, for the clinics you must go in and register.  These ladies are very nice and very efficient.  They make sure all the forms are filled out the "t's are crossed and the i's dotted".  Once through that step, we headed upstairs to the pediatric clinic.  When you get off of the elevators, you can either head to the cardio side or the normal pediatric side.  Our first visit was to the Cardio side.  We only had a few minutes wait and were called back, for her echo.  Tony and I have no understanding of the echo, but that being said, the hole in Carla's heart was obvious even to us.

After the echo, we headed back to pick up the boys.  During these days our contact cardiologist, who was Dr. Robert Battle, head of cardiology at UVA, was on vacation,  he had ordered the echo and he got the results and was even in contact with Pastor Tim, while on vacation!!  That impressed us.  That he cared enough to take time out of his vacation to think about Carla and her case.

Our girls had left  early Monday morning, and on Tuesday, my Mom and Dad arrived for a few days.  It was great to see them and the kids were very excited to have Grandma and Grandpa there.

These days were filled with settling in, and enjoying our time with Grandma and Grandpa.  We introduced Carla and Matthew to one of the great American culture treats... the buffet!  They were a little overwhelmed but loved it!  We also picked up some much needed clothes for the kids as we had been holding off on purchasing anything in Ecuador, and Teddy especially was down to very little clothes that actually fit him.  :)  We were very grateful for all the "back to school" sales that were going on!!

Here's a photo of the kids playing
with Grandpa.  We were really
enjoying having all this wide open
space!  I have to say that "country
life" definitely was agreeing with us.
:)  Although, I wasn't crazy about all
the "stink bugs" we had to deal with!
That was a first for me.

Another place we took the kids too, which actually became a favorite place to go for a treat, while we were in VA, was "Sweet Frogs" frozen yogurt.  Here is a photo of the kids on our very first visit.

Tony, Teddy and Grandpa went on a day trip to visit some of the Civil War Battlefields that were near our home.  Teddy had really enjoyed our study of the Civil War in 4th grade, and had been excited to learn that we would be living in the middle of some great battlefields.

Here's a photo of him and grandpa,  on this trip.

Teddy decided to go home with Grandpa and Grandma for a couple weeks.   It was the first time that he had ever had the opportunity to do this, and it was a great experience for him.  

Our first doctor's appointment wasn't scheduled until August 27th, so for these couple of weeks, we were just enjoying life and all the blessings that God had bestowed upon us.  It was a great time to rest a little and take a deep breath.  Pastor Tim had received a few messages from Dr. Battle, that indicated things were a little more complicated than first thought, BUT, we will still pretty much oblivious to all of that.  We were still thinking this was going to be a "simple" device procedure, requiring a day or 2 max in the hospital.  So thankful, that God gave us these days to rest, and to see his hand of grace on our lives in the form of such wonderful caring friends at MVC.