Joshua Day

I had promised Joshua another day at the zoo, and he has been such a trooper to hang out at the hospital as much as he has and to even help with Jacob's therapies, that I thought he deserved a "Joshua day".    We heard it was going to be a beautiful day, so we decided it would be the perfect day to go.  We had our breakfast and got our map from the RM house and my Mom stayed at the hospital with Jacob, while Joshua and I made our way to the zoo.  We got there about 10:30 am or so, and found that everyone else had the same idea for the day.  The line was incredibly long, but I had remembered when I renewed my Zoo Boise membership that there was something in it about getting into the zoo in Seattle, so we skipped the line and went looking for someone to ask.  We found the smaller membership line and waited a minute or two before I began to think that maybe that was just for buying a membership, so I asked someone in line.  She told be that it was and if we had a membership to just show it at the front gate, so I did.  First the girl asked me what city Zoo Boise was in, and then I told her Boise, and she then said "Oh, of course"  and told me we did get in free.  Yea!  So Josh and I skipped the huge line and walked right in the gates. 

We had a great time seeing a lot of animals, and walking around the zoo.  We started the day by riding the carousel, we then saw the Kangaroos and Emus, and made our way around the zoo.  At about 12:45 we realized we better get some lunch, and by that time had not even made it around even a quarter of the zoo.  We ate (outside even) and continued on.  Our next goal was to send a photo of Josh to Rick with the Gorillas.  We couldn't get them to look at us, and Josh wanted them to beat their chests, which they also would not do, but we got the photo.   We saw many, many animals and we felt like we had walked a few miles, but before we realized it we had spent the whole day there.  We almost got to see everything, but we heard the announcement that the Zoo was closing just as we had started into the Northern Trail animals (and we figured we could see those in Idaho), so we turned back to head to towards the gate.  Josh wanted to visit the gift shop before they closed and pick out a small gift for Jacob since he could not come with us, so we wanted to make sure we got there in time.  Joshua picked out a cute little snow leopard wearing a woodland park zoo vest for Jacob, and we found a little arctic fox for a little girl who was one of Jacob's roommates for a couple of days (who is going home on Friday and had really taken a liking to Jacob), and he even picked out an alligator (as seen in the boat photo) that he said he really could not live without.  I am beginning to think alligators/crocodiles are his favorite animal since he now has 3 of them.  All in all, it was a good day made just for Joshua. 

In Jacob news, he had a good day of therapies and I am told even kneeled for about 15 seconds and then stood up with very little help from the therapists for a short time. He is progressing well and hopefully will be back to using that right side before we know it.  He sure tuckered himself out though, and even went to bed early.

Tomorrow marks his first week of therapy and we have a team meeting with his doctors and therapists to talk about his goals for the next week and about how he is doing.  It should be interesting to hear.  He also has a big therapy day and he has a two week wound check (it is hard to believe it has been that long already).  I also found that with the insurance, it is not uncommon for them to approve only a week at a time, so I guess I can stop worrying about that, it is not something that is in my hands anyway, so why even sweat it.