The excitement of it all.

 The flight attendant was wonderful on our flight to Philly. 

She let Gianna be the junior attendant and collect the trash down the aisles and....

 Say, "Thank you for flying with United. Have a nice evening."

The attendant introduced Gianna, and told the whole flight she was having surgery in the morning.

When we disembarked, she was a celebrity.

Everyone wished her well for the surgery.

 But before we got off, she was given one more surprise. She got to visit the cock pit.

As my friend said, this pilot looks young.

Like WAAAYYYY tooo young to be flying a plane.

It may be past his bedtime even.

 What a fun flight, all thanks to Katie the super-awesome attendant!

 Alas, all good things come to an end.

This may be the last Shriners photo for our girl.

More on that later.

 We have learned that a new DS game before surgery helps the pre-op jitters.

 She is not worried about surgery.

She has fairies to dress in cute outfits.

Judge if you must- it works for us.

 She is smiling now but after the 2nd cracker she said, 

"Is that all you're going to feed me is just CRACKERS?!?"

Ha!

She missed a meal people, she needs to get eatin'!

 Now THAT is more like it.

Daddy knows what I want.

And he orders it and sends it to me.

I love you Daddy!

That tiny tummy fit almost all of that cheese steak AND all the onion rings.

Oh yes, she did.

And a popcicle.

And pudding.

And 2 packs of graham crackers.

2 packs of saltines.

Oh, and Skittles.

And Combos.

And apple juice.

But that's all.

HA!

If you notice there are no photos from the flight home.

That is because:

A) Mommy got a GI bug and was visiting every bathroom in the concourse.

and

B) Mommy forgot to drink worrying about finding bathrooms with a post surgical child and all, so she got very dehydrated and had a wicked headache.

It was..... fun.

Gianna seemed to bounce back much slower this time.

Not sure why, but now that we are home, 

she has stopped all her narcotics, and is on motrin only for pain.

And we made the decision to visit with a local Dr. who does this surgery to see if we like him.

When we started this journey 3 years ago, Shriners was the only one doing the surgery because they created the device.

Now, everyone is doing it.

It is ridiculously hard on her to travel 24 hours post-op.

It is ridiculously expensive to do this twice a year.

If we can get the same care locally, we may have to go that route.

The VERY PLUS SIDE of local surgery is that she can be seen and determined if she really needs an expansion. With Shriners, unless she is in pain and needs a surgery earlier, it is scheduled whether she has grown enough to warrant an expansion or not.

If we are local, we can stretch out surgeries when she really doesn't need them.

So, we decided to take the leap, and explore our local options.