Welcome back from Florida, an unplanned clinic visit, and a few days in Carlsbad!

Coming home from Florida was really hard, it was like we were immediately thrust back into reality!  Brock went to football the morning after we got home and hurt his foot again, not the foot that needs surgery, his other foot!!  So, I took him to a sport's medicine doctor and he was told to stay off of it for at least 2 weeks, then we go back and see when he'll be able to start playing again.  What a bummer, he's been walking around with a boot on his foot ever since.  We will know more on Tuesday, he could really use some good news.  Also, the day after we got back, Abby got sick.  She had no energy and couldn't keep anything in her, it was all coming right out the other end!  She had a little incident at Costco that scared me to death.  We were paying, and all of a sudden she went completely pale, starting shaking and having a cold sweat, and said she had to sit down or she was going to pass out.  Her skin was all clammy and she looked awful.  We sat down at the tables for about 20 minutes, I was certain she was going to pass out or something, it was really scary.  I finally convinced her to make it to the car, when we got there she couldn't even stay sitting up.  I considered taking her to the ER on the way home, we had to drive right by it, but I decided I'd just get her home and watch her for a while.  As soon as we got home I called the transplant team, I had already talked to them the day before discussing with them Abby's symptoms.  Abby slept for the rest of the day and then woke up feeling a little better.  The transplant team called me back and said they wanted to see us the next day, so we hopped in the car and headed up to Salt Lake.  After looking at her echo, an EKG, and doing multiple labs, they sent us home and said they call us with results.  Everything came back negative, they decided Abby just had the stomach flu, like a normal kid!  I'm still not sure what happened in Costco, but I hope it never happens again!

We had been planning a little vacation to Carlsbad to spend some time at the beach, and as soon as we got the good news from PCMC, we decided it was a go!  It actually worked to our advantage that Brock was injured, because he was able to come with us and didn't have to stay home to play football!  We had planned on him staying home, but the day before we left, after having a mini-tornado blow through our neighborhood, our trampoline ended up in our next door neighbor's yard, who also happens to be Brock's football coach.  When we went to retrieve our tramp poles from his roof, I asked him about Brock coming with us to California and he decided it was okay!  Thanks Coach Franke, we loved having Brock there with us!  So, for the past 4 days, we've been playing paddle ball, boogie boarding, playing in the waves, and relaxing on the beach!  I love the beach, it's my favorite place, I'm pretty sure that in another life I will be a beach bum, I could do it, in fact, I would love it!  We all had the greatest time and we were able to spend some time with my parents and my sister and her family.

On Friday, we were at the beach all day.  Abby played in the waves and dug in the sand for hours and hours.  We were continually covering her with sunscreen and making her cover up, because her risk for skin cancer is so high, but I just wanted her to enjoy it too.  After spending the whole day in the water, we went out to dinner and then out for dessert at Coldstone.  Abby ordered blue cotton candy ice cream, and it really was flourescent blue!  Well, later that night, just as we had gotten to sleep, Abby started getting sick, and it came on fast......really, really fast.  Before any of us knew what was going on, Abby threw up, not just regular throw up, but bright blue throw up and she didn't make it to the bathroom, it was too fast.  And then she threw up again, and again.  It was everywhere, and unfortunately, our hotel was brand new.  I started trying to clean it up, but I have a real problem with throw up, if I smell it, I throw up too, and I did!  I can't help it, I was really trying to hold it in, but I couldn't do it.  Luckily, Britt, the recent CNA, came to the rescue and helped with cleanup.  I felt so bad for the housekeeping ladies at the hotel, I'm sure they were completely grossed out too!  We went back to sleep, and luckily the rest of the night was uneventful.  The next morning Abby woke up still not feeling great, she felt bad enough that she didn't even want to go to the beach, so I sent the rest of them, and Abby and I stayed in our puke-smelling hotel room.  After sleeping all morning, she perked up enough for us to go spend a couple of hours with the rest of the family, it was our last day in California and we didn't want to miss the beach completely!  By that night she was feeling even better and today she has almost been back to normal.  At first I thought that maybe her prograff level was high, but maybe she just got a little dehydrated and had too much sun that day.  I don't really know, but it made me start to wonder if she'll always get sick when we go on vacation, or maybe we'll just have to pace ourselves a little more, maybe she just can't tolerate non-stop action.  In the last 21 days, we've spent 7 days in Florida, 5 days in California, and 2 days in Salt Lake, and we go back to Salt Lake for another clinic day this week.  It might be time for some downtime before school starts. 

I loved our little mini-vacation, it was just what I needed.  It gave me some time to relax and refocus, which I need because I have to go back to school in 2 weeks.  We saw some beautiful sunsets and I enjoyed just sitting and watching the waves, when I wasn't boogie boarding anyway!  I didn't take very many pictures because it seemed like I was always wet and sandy, but I got a few.  We go to Salt Lake on Wednesday for clinic on Thursday, I hope everything looks okay still, it seems like Abby has had lots of stomach issues in the past couple of weeks, and I'm a little worried about that.  While we are there we are going to get to visit our 3 heart friends that are all still waiting for their hearts.  They are really sick and need to get their hearts fast, all 3 of them are now sick enough to have to wait at Primary Children's.  Please pray for them and send them positive thoughts whenever you can, they really need it.

Our tramp in our neighbors yard, luckily it worked to our advantage and Brock got to come to Carlsbad with us!

I'm not sure about this face, but doesnt' the beach look beautiful?

The kids with my mom and dad, thanks for the trip dad!

Britt with our hotel in the background

This is taken from our hotel pool

This is one thing I love about the beach!

Abby and my niece Leah looking tough with their boogie boards! 

Lots of sand castles and digging in the sand!

Sometimes Abby gets really cold, it seems like her body doesn't regulate temperature very well anymore.  We told her she looked like an old woman just missing her rocker!

Wish Trip Day 6 - Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom (again)

     Our final day in DisneyWorld!  We still had so much to do, but to be honest with you, we were a little worn out.  We wanted to go to Animal Kingdom because we had heard that they had a few really good rides and we had never been there before.  It was totally funny, we started walking out to the shuttles, which leave about every 20 minutes.  We were about 500 yards away from the stop and Abby saw the shuttle we needed.  All of a sudden she took off, sprinting as fast as she could for the shuttle!  The rest of us just started laughing because it was like she was crazy, she did not want to miss that shuttle.  She got on and told them the rest of her family was coming.  It was awesome.
     When we got to the Animal Kingdom, we realized we hadn't eaten anything yet and it was lunch time and so we decided to splurge and eat at the Rain Forest Cafe, and it was worth it!! We've eaten in the one in Disneyland, and this one was about the same.  The only problem, I couldn't stop calling it the Rainbow Cafe, like in PCMC.  I called it that probably 10 times, my kids thought I was a freak, but I couldn't stop anyway.  We spent the rest of the day hanging out at the park.  There were a few fun rides there and we went on a jeep safari through an African jungle.  It didn't have fake animals in it either, like the Jungle Cruise ride in Disneyland, it was the real thing, and it was cool, it felt like we really were in Africa.  We liked it at the Animal Kingdom, but there wasn't as much for us to do.  But, it's never hard for us to have fun.
    After going back to the hotel for a quick break, we decided to head back to Magic Kingdom for our final night.  We even rode the train that goes around the outside of DisneyWorld, that's something that I had never done before.  Our final ride was Space Mountain, and it was just as much fun the last time we rode it as it was the first.  We decided to take a boat ride back to our hotel rather than the monorail again.  I liked that and was wishing we would have done it more often, it just took a little bit longer, but it was nice to be outside.  We got back to the hotel, packed up and thought we were going to have a good night sleep to get us ready for our big travel day, but we were wrong.
     At about 1:30 am, Abby sat up in bed and yelled, "Now what was the name of Britt's friend again, it starts with D R, dr....., dr........, dre........, oh, I can't remember, maybe Dress???"   By this time, Britt and I are just cracking up, Brock is still sleeping.  I told Abby just to go back to sleep, and her response, "Oh, hahaha, I was just trying to think of Draco!"   What the heck???  Britt's friend named Dress, no really Draco?  We couldn't stop laughing and we thought Abby was awake now too because she was laughing with us, but we knew she was still sleeping when she said, "Okay, so what are those people called that go alone to Disneyland and just ride all the rides by themselves, all day long?"  I didn't even know how to respond to this question, plus I was laughing so hard I was crying, so I just told her to go to sleep.  Britt and I stayed up laughing for another hour, Brock missed the whole thing because he was sound asleep, and Abby couldn't really remember any of it in the morning!  Pretty funny.

Okay, I didn't take this picture, the photographer in the park did, but wow, Tinkerbell, right there on Abby's hand!

Even Britt and Abby were surprised!

This is a fun ride, until a giant T-rex jumps out at you!  Britt was a little scared :)

We were a little wet from the Kali River Rapids ride!

I had to add a couple of pictures from our safari, there were many more, but I didn't want to bore everyone.

The tree in the background was really pretty cool, it had animals carved in it!

Riding the DisneyWorld train

Ha, Russel from the movie "Up!"  We took this picture for our dog Rebel, Up is his favorite movie, really, he sits and watches the whole movie when we turn it on. 

I really wanted to go to It's tough to be a bug, I loved the one in DisneyLand

Buy, my kids refused!  They said they were scarred for life when I forced them to see it in Disneyland, and it was only a few years ago!  What a bunch of babies!!! hahahaha

I'm not sure about this picture, I know I didn't take it.

Rainbow, I mean Rain Forest Cafe

This is outside of our hotel room, our part of the hotel was the Tuvalu building

I just wanted to get a good picture of the kids on our boat ride.......

But, sometimes that can be really hard.......

Really, really hard

Finally, they took me seriously

But, I like this one the best

The girls lovin' their Disney lollipops