Celebrate good times - come on!

Oh it is time to celebrate!

Jeff and Ann are home from their missions!

And Grandpa/Dad/Bob had three meals today! He is only having soft foods but he is thrilled to at least have some food.

He continues to make good progress but has moments where he feels like he is not working hard enough. That, of course, isn't true but it is understandable.

There were a couple of great moments today:

(1) He had asked for his trach tube to be 'buttoned-up' so that he could actually practice speaking today, and be able to speak to Ann when she got home. It was fantastic to hear his voice, albeit a little horse and deep, and to see him liven up when he was talking. He got to talk with Ann, bringing tears to everyone in the room and then immediately asked to talk with Grandma. He was more than glad to talk with both.

(2) At one point, while he had his trach tube buttoned, the room had the nurse (Justin), the speech therapist (Melanie), and the respiratory therapist were all in the room with Grandpa and I. The team started talking about his need for a new IV and what they were going to do. They had taken out his PICC line earlier and had trouble establishing a new vein for another line. He had lots of pokes and pricks to prove the trouble. Grandpa started calling Justin mean for all the pokes. The conversation then went like this:

Grandpa: "All you guys want is my blood. I think I should start charging. But there is a two time limit (referring to how many times someone gets to try and find a workable vein)."
Justin: "Well I only tried once. I wasn't trying to be mean."
Grandpa: "You are all being mean, poking me with the needles. I'm going to charge $100 a poke."
Justin: "I'm not the mean one. Melanie's mean. She mentioned the chocolate pudding and
then didn't let you have it."
Melanie: "Hey, I would have given him chocolate pudding but he wasn't ready."
Justin: "Right, but you told him about it and got his hopes up. You're the mean one. I'd have given it to him."
Grandpa: "I'm just going to let you two duke it out and see what I can get out of this."
Melanie: "Well I'll get you chocolate pudding now Bob."
Grandpa: "You're gonna have to do better than that now Melanie."

Everyone starts laughing. Grandpa smiles and tells them that he really wants ice cream so whoever will give him ice cream will be the nice one.

It was hilarious! And such a fun visit.