the best Christmas gift of all time

Fact:  All Staples girls are Daddy's girls.

We all love spending time with him any way we can.

In 2008 my Dad and I ran 6 marathons (4 of those together -Arizona Rock-n-Roll, Ogden, St. George, and NYC).  My Dad is a CHAMP!

 In 2009 we ran the St. George together once again (my 6th, his TENTH!)

But something didn't seem quite right this time... he is usually the one pushing me to run harder.  This time it was me pushing him.  I didn't think much of it until a few weeks later when he called to tell me he had some weird stuff going on with his heart.

What!?! 

My Dad is a machine.  He has run 20-something marathons.  He eats all the vitamins, rabbit food, and berries my Mom feeds him.  He can't possibly have heart problems.  

Sadly, it seems no matter how hard you push, sometimes you just can't outrun genetics.  Bummer.

After trying to fix his arrhythmia with a cardiac ablation they found out my Dad actually needed a triple bypass AND a Maze procedure.  

They scheduled him for surgery the week before Christmas.

As Scott and I were already planning to spend the holiday in St. George, I just took a little more vacation time and went home early.  Scott had patients booked all week, so he had to stay behind and drive down later in the week.

The night before surgery we all hung out with my Dad in his room.  James surprised Karly by driving to St. George before catching his flight home to Virginia.

 The next morning, the Staples crew took over the entire ICU waiting room while we were waiting for my Dad to get out of surgery.  We had 7 laptops, 9 cell phones, and a partridge in a pear tree.  I'm sure the I.T. department at Dixie Regional wondered why they suddenly experienced such a huge drain on their WiFi network.

The Staples family:  We're a pretty big deal.  

Those of us who couldn't be in St. George joined remotely via Skype and phone.  In the picture below I had Scott on my phone and Sharisa on my laptop, my mom had Derek and Mary on her laptop, and Karly had James on her phone and Tiffany on her laptop.  

I heart technology. 

Thanks to the amazing Dr. Millar and his team, we were given the best Christmas gift any of us could imagine:  More time with our Dad!  We are an extremely lucky family to have our Dad pull through such a sticky situation.  He still has a long recovery ahead of him, but things look promising enough for us to have him around for many Christmas' to come.