Happy 9th Birthday and surgery #10 scheduled

Nine years old, I can't believe it has gone this fast! She is seriously one of the funniest kids you'll ever meet, makes us laugh every day.  Still hard to believe that this journey started 9 years ago.  It has been one of the most tiring, emotional, frustrating, and yet amazing journeys we've ever had.  But totally worth it to see her thrive and live life to the fullest! She still loves dinosaurs, Elsa, fishing, snowmobiling, and everything about her tablet.  

This past year she has started participating in Special Olympics.  She did swimming in the spring and her swimming has improved so much! She had a virtual state swim meet back in May and she rocked it!  We just found out that she ended up getting a fourth place,2 third place, and a second place in all of her events!!  We are just so proud!  She had so much fun and can't wait to pick it back up.  This summer she has started golfing and cycling.  She is a little obsessed with golf at the moment.  Nothing slows her down and even though she can't do things the way other kids do, she still figures it out and has a blast.  

On to the not so fun stuff.  Braylee will be having her 10th surgery on October 21, 2021.  She will be having a frontal orbital advancement (FOA) and filling in the holes in her skull.  We couldn't do her midface advancement this summer because she has holes  in her skull where the screws need to go to attach the halo device to her head.  The FOA will be bringing her forehead out to give her brain room and to also fix the indent that she has.  We could have had these fixed years ago if we had been with her new surgeon then but we are with him now and moving in the right direction.  This is a still a very risky surgery being that they have to take part of  her skull off, break it and piece it back together like a puzzle with plates and screws just like when she was 6 months old.  She will be in the hospital for 3-4 days following and then home bound for another week.  Surprisingly her surgeon said she could be ready to go back to school 10 days after surgery barring everything goes as planned.  We of course will take that one day at a time after surgery and make sure she is 100% before sending her back.

We will be selling shirts this time around  that everyone can wear on surgery day to help boost her spirits.  I will post a link when it comes time for those.  

Until then we will keep living life, enjoying the rest of our summer and trying not to worry about the things coming in the near future.