Indy Trip and Evan gets the news

Last weekend we left early on Thursday morning and took off for Indianapolis. We arrived at the zoo shortly after it opened and it was a beautiful day. The Indianapolis Zoo is amazing. We have a membership to the Louisville Zoo and we go there often but... WOW!!! We had so much fun seeing the sharks, sea lions, walrus' and the dolphin show was awesome. I felt like I was at the zoo part of the day and at Sea World for the other part. We had so much fun there. We got to our hotel right at checkin time and were at their indoor waterpark in no time. We stayed there until they were about to close. They had 5 seperate parts - a pool, a wading pool with a huge pirate ship, a lazy river, hot tubs and then of course some huge crazy waterslides. I was surprised that Evan passed the hight requirements to ride the slides. I asked him if he was interested in going down one with me on a double raft and expecting the answer to be no, he said yes. So up the flights of stairs we go and into the raft at the top - we start down this huge slide and I'm screaming and I hear Evan screaming and what I thought was crying. At the end we swoosh out and I jump off the raft to get him and he is laughing and screaming, "Let's do it again!" He is definately my child. Since the stairs going up to the slides were 4 flights - I limited our slide to one an hour but... Eric got it on video and I'll post that tonight. The next day we went to Indianapolis Childrens Museum and it is huge. Evan LOVED the dinosaurs and the dig site. He wanted to stay there all day and we even had to go back before we could leave. The rest of the museum was awesome to us but Evan seemed that either it was too small for him or over his head. We had a great weekend away.
Yesterday was our appointment with our beloved cardiologist who had offered to be the one to break the news to Evan. We went in and sat down and he sat across from Evan and began to draw a heart and explain to Evan what they did in his first surgery and why they did the cath and how the last cath didn't do it's job. Evan was listening and looking away and things in his office and then he said... Evan, you remember how you had the cath. and went to sleep, well... your going to have to go back to the hospital and go to sleep again and we are going to give you a super dooper valve and straw to make you strong... when you wake up your going to hurt and be sore but... I'm going to be with you and give you medicine to make it better and your Mommy and Daddy will be there... I will be with you in my pajamas so... don't be scared. Evan started telling him that he is strong, very strong. He told him that there are different types of strong - strong in that you can lift heavy things and then there is strong in you have courage and are brave. He told Evan that he would need to be brave. Evan said that he didn't like that and didn't want to. Evan told him that he needed to go in his shell and have a talk with himself (don't know where that came from.) and got back up and said, "No, we can't do this, not until I'm 5." He told him to talk to his shell again and tell it that he would need to be brave so Evan did this again with the same answer. He talked to Evan about how brave he has been in the past and that he could do it again and Evan said, "well... I need to talk to my shell again and this time I need you all to close your eyes and cover your ears." Dr. McOmber looked at us and shut his eyes and covered his ears and we did the same. You could hear Evan talking outloud to himself saying, "Yeah, uh huh, okay, no, I don't like this, okay, okay." He told us we could look up and we did and he said, "okay... we talked and we will be brave." He asked Evan if his shell was like him being scared and he said yes and he told him that, that is okay and that it is normal for him to be scared but that we would be there for him and help him. He then asked if we could leave and Dr. McOmber told him that yes we could leave but did he have any questions and he said no but he told him that if he did have any questions to call him or ask his Mommy and Daddy and that if we didn't know that we would call him. Evan went off to find the nurses and candy and stickers. We stuck back a minute and thanked him and he reminded us that there would be many emotions and that we would need to be patient and let him have those.
It was interesting to see how Evan reacted. So sweet and innocent and at the same time to see how he interpreted the information and spoke with himself.
So now we all know. We've got fun plans for the weekend - a pirate and princess party at our zoo and going to see Igor at the movies. Pray for us and that when/if questions are asked that we have the right words.