Upcoming surgery, zoo trip

If you want to read about lumbar disk issues, here is a link I found helpful. Jason's issue is that his L5 disk has ruptured (because of degenerative disc disease), and is pushing on the nerves running to his right leg. He has a lot of pain and some numbness down that leg. His surgery will be to remove whatever part of the disk is pressing against the nerve. His surgery will be this Tuesday at 11:30. His recovery time is 3 weeks with no bending, lifting, stretching, etc., and then another 5 weeks or so of slowly adding activities. He will be out of work for at least 8 weeks, which will put him at the beginning of September for going back to work. For the first 3 weeks, he will also not be allowed to sit for more than 20 minutes at a time, which will limit where we can go for that time.

Since we will not be able to take any "long" trips for a while, we decided to go to the zoo yesterday to take advantage of the family pass I bought several weeks ago. We wanted to do something fun with the kids because this week will probably not be a lot of fun for them (once they're home from spending the night and visiting). Jason wanted to have some pictures to play around with in photo shop during his recovery time, and he did get plenty. It was hard on him, but he made a point to sit down every 5 minutes or so, and we got through all of the Africa side of the zoo. (And just so everyone knows - it was not my idea to take a picture of each child on each sculpture - Julian actually asked to have his picture taken on everything. )