Daniel's Surgery

Well, some of you may have seen Daniel hobbling around on crutches. This is for good reasons - he just had knee surgery. He found out about a month ago that he had a torn meniscus (this is a cushion area in your knee). Not sure how it got torn, but it would have continued to get worse. So he opted to get surgery during his school break. We decided to head up to Vegas to have our friends dad perform the surgery - Jeff Grondell. What an awesome family. We met them a couple of months ago and just really love them. They were so kind to let us stay in the "Grondell Hotel" while Daniel was recovering.
So this is Daniel on day 1, right after the surgery. He's pretty drugged up. How else could he be smiling?
This is Daniel on day 3, when his bandages came off. The surgery required three small incisions: one for the fluid, one for the camera, and one for the tools. Since we don't live there, the Dr. taped the incisions. Pretty cool, huh?





On our way home, we got stuck in some crazy traffic. The Hoover dam is always slow, but this time it was ridiculous. The dam itself is looking pretty cool. They are constructing a new bridge and it is crazy looking.

Well, after the dam, the traffic picked up and we thought we were well on our way. Boy were we fooled.
There ended up being an accident a mile up the road and we were stuck waiting for another 2 hours. I took pictures as proof. We filled up the tank before leaving about 12:00 noon. This is the milage (17.7 miles) and this is the time the road started moving again (3:16 pm)!



And this is what Daniel looked like, sitting in the back seat during this lovely wait.



We finally made it home about 8:00 pm safely! We were happy to come home to our sweet pets and Daniel's parents and grandma were here waiting to greet us. They had cleaned up the entire house (inside and out), concerned that we wouldn't be able to. It sure is nice to have parents (in-laws) here, I must admit.

Tula and Bath Time

Garden "Firsts"

We've been enjoying many of our "Firsts" from our garden...


Our First Roma Tomatoes!






Our First Strawberry...





Our first zucchinis...








And tons of herbs...

Daniel is working on getting some sun coverings due to the fun "scorching" heat we enjoy here in AZ. Looks like it will work out well. He's got the Brazilian "Jeitinho" - I love it.
Hope you all can get excited about gardens too. We are really learning a lot and have suggestions of what we'd do differently for anyone interested. And if anyone wants some basil or green onions, (and soon - tomatoes) let us know... We have lot's to share :)