T-Minus 13 hours, 9 minutes and 23 seconds

We're just over 13 hours away from saying goodbye to our fiberglass foe for good!  It's Christmas Eve in our house tonight...Ryan and I both are like anxious little kids tonight.  I'm celebrating the last night of the cast by posting Molly's school pictures that we got back today.  Here's our pretty preschool princess (for the record, it's not my habit to call M a princess but I can't pass up the alliteration opportunity.  Three p-r words are priceless:).
My favorite:

 I love this one cause you can see her cast and the blister on her big toe:

 I love how her hands are resting on her bar here:

I can't go without mentioning the drama that is the Lucas household this week.  A quick recap:

Molly woke with a fever in the middle of the night Saturday (right after we'd been around all those precious babies...I was thinking, oh no they're all gonna be sick from our child!).  Ryan took her to a pediatrician clinic on Sunday to see what was up and she had a UTI of course (good news for the precious babies from the night before!).  They had to cath her twice because they couldn't get any urine the first time around.  Ryan stayed home with her Monday morning and I rearranged classes and came home at lunch so he could get some work done.  We called her urologist and they said to keep giving her meds and that if her temp kept spiking over 101.5 to take her to the ER.  That night she woke up at 1 a.m. with a temp of 104.  We were in the ER by 2 a.m. where they cathed her again, took blood and gave her these horribly painful shots of Rocephin in her legs.  We were out of the ER by 7 a.m. Tuesday, home in time for me to throw on a shirt and drive to work.  Ryan stayed home with her again.  Today, Ryan took her to her pediatrician for another round of shots and they ended up giving her an oral treatment instead (praise God) and then I came home at lunch to take over her care and sneak in an unbelievable and crutial 2.5 hour nap.  Her temp today has been anywhere from 96.7-99.8 so things are sooo much better and she'll be able to go to school with me tomorrow.  But only for half a day....CAUSE SHE'S GETTING HER CAST OFF!!! 

What does all this UTI business mean?  Well, the surgery on her ureters is more urgent now.  You may remember it was supposed to happen when she turned one back in September but that was before all the cast silliness.  Then they said it could probably wait til January but that was before these last two UTI's she's had over the course of a month.  So now the plan is to get her a VCUG (in short: ultrasound to show state of kidney/bladder situation in question) which can only be obtained after she's been without infection for 10 full days and then it's on to surgery ASAP after that.  We're kind of in limbo at this point but God's not.  He's got it all figured out and we're on a need to know basis and I'm okay with that.

So off to bed I go.  I'm so excited I won't be able to sleep.  Wait a minute...I totally will.  Tomorrow.  12:45.  Yay.