A Shaky First Week of Summer

It is so cliche to say that times flies...everyone knows that. It goes even faster with your kids as you watch how quickly they grow up right in front of your eyes.
So going with that cliche statement, I can not believe Eli just finished Kindergarten and is now officially a 1st grader.  It was a great year.

We had to get used to a new school, new teachers and friends....a totally new routine for the whole family. He made new friends, learned new things, lost a tooth, gained confidence, and a new fashion sense about what is cool to wear--only soccer shorts are cool, oh, and long socks.  Getting dressed every morning was such a chore to find something we both agreed on.

First Day

Last Day

My friend Marisa and I decided to celebrate the end of the school year together since Blaine was working and her husband was out that night as well. We decided to go to the pool together and spend the whole afternoon there together, order dinner and eat poolside.  Her son Ty is one of Eli's best friends (they were in preschool together) and they just moved in our neighborhood and will be coming to Kiker next year, which I am beyond thrilled about! We had a great time all evening until......

It was about 8 o'clock and they were about to blow the whistle to close the pool.  We had all been playing in the little pool, and I saw Marisa go to the big pool to grab her pool toys and unbeknownst to her, her daughter Savannah, who is 3, followed her back to the big pool.  We had been going back and forth all day between the big and little pool, we never took our eyes off our kids the whole day, and Savannah knew that she was not allowed in the big pool unless she had her puddle jumper on.

Marisa reached down to get her toys, talked to a little girl sitting on the steps for a second, and then stood back up to find Savannah and Ty--but she couldn't find Savannah.  She and Ty started looking around for her and couldn't find her, then Marisa heard some commotion and a splash behind her and turned around to see the lifeguard jumping in to get Savannah's limp body out from under the water.
I had been at a picnic table where we had been camping out with our stuff getting the boys ready to go (the last pic above is actually when it happened) when I saw Marisa laying on the ground next to the pool.  I was thinking she slipped and fell so I ran down there to find her in shock, holding Savannah who was conscious at the time but acting erratic/terrified and constantly vomiting. The head lifeguard was already on the phone with 911 and I stayed with Ty to make sure he was OK until the ambulance came and he came home with us while they went to Dell.

What we now know from the video footage is that Savannah was sitting on the steps of the pool when she decided to get in the water and no one saw her.  Her bathing suit was the same color as the tiles of the steps so no one saw her struggling under the water, a few adults even walked right past her. It was not until she moved away from the steps that the lifeguard spotted her and jumped in.  They think she was under the water about 1 minute.  They took her to Dell to monitor her for a few hours to watch for secondary drowning after spending some time in the ambulance making sure she was OK. Thank God she is.  They called the incident a non-fatal drowning and it was beyond terrifying.

It can happen to anyone.  Even those of us who are so aware that we never take our eyes off of our children in the pool. So please be careful this summer and hug your kids tight.

It was hard to shake that off, I am still shaken by it especially as it came on the heels of hearing of Laura McComb and her two beautiful children and their heart-wrenching passing.
I really don't even know where to start with that tragedy.  I still can not wrap my mind around what they must have been through and the pain their families are left to bear with. I am continuing to pray for her, her children, Jonathan and all of their families. I feel honored to have been a little part of her life and to have known her beautiful soul for a short period of time.

Our first weekend of Summer, we spent our Friday night having dinner with all of my cousins. We try to all get together often but it is hard with every ones schedules, so only some of us were there, but its always fun to be with my cousins and their kids.

Saturday I woke up and went for a long run, came home, got everyone and we headed to Gourhough's on south 1st for the first time.  It did not disappoint, and it was such a fun change from the places we usually frequent.

After that we packed up and drove to Elgin to spend the day with my childhood friend Jayme and her mom.  Jayme and I have been friends since we were in first grade.  Almost all of my memories growing up involve her.  We grew apart some at the end of high school and in college we almost totally lost touch.  We went in two totally different directions and our lives did not really mesh.  A couple of years ago, we got back in touch, and Jayme was on a better path. I feel so completely thankful that we are back together. It is like we never missed a beat, and we just picked right back up.

We played outside on her mother's property, went swimming, and visited a neighbor who had baby chickens, donkeys, cows and goats!

That night, Cash got sick, threw up, and was complaining of having a stomach ache, it came out of no where.
We had been keeping Frankie because my parents were in New York for a wedding and we went to return her on Sunday when they got back into town.  Cash stayed on the couch the entire day, intermittently complaining that his stomach hurt.  By the time we were leaving, he was really hurting so the boys and I went to Walgreen's to try some different medicines for him.  I could tell on his face that Cash wasn't feeling well, but thankfully he waited until we got out of the store to throw up again--this time I had just put him in his car seat, saw the look on his face, flung him out of the car, and leaned him over, I thought it was going to be a clean get-a-way until I look down and saw the car was clean, however, I was not--at all.

We were in this pattern for 14 days straight--crazy, intense pain, vomiting, lethargy during the hours of pain. It was a hard, challenging and emotional week.  I waited until Tuesday to take him in to the doctor because the vomiting had stopped, but the stomach pain persisted.  When I took him in, he was in a bad place--in pain, very lethargic.  The doctor couldn't find anything from his exam and took a CBC panel to check his blood.  He didn't even budge when they pricked his finger and was yanking on it to try and get blood out.  He was so dehydrated they couldn't get enough and had to prick another finger with a bigger needle, didn't even budge.
The doctor was concerned that he had intussusception and sent us to Dell right away.  Blaine was at the pool with Eli and Owen and didn't take his phone, so I frantically called my moms office, asked the receptionist to pull her out of her meeting and meet me outside.
We made it to Dell, did some x-rays and a sonogram and did not find anything except him being a little backed up.

We left that night and the pattern persisted.  I was back and forth to the doctors office, and spoke with the nurse daily-they were even calling me every evening to see how Cash was doing.  It was really scary, and as a parent its hard to not think the worst. On day 13 we were referred to a pediatric GI doctor.  We did more x-rays, blood tests, urine and stool samples...it was a long day, and I basically walked  away with a list of things it could potentially be, all requiring surgery.

And then....it just stopped, our of no where.  He has had a few more episodes of pain and vomiting in the last week, but all minor compared to where we were last week. He is on some medicine to help clean out his small bowel (where we think the pain was coming from).  If it continues, we will be back at the specialist office to do more digging to figure out what is going on---fingers crossed this is totally behind us.

In between these horrible episodes, we did get in a few fun times....
Eli and Owen did two weeks of swim lessons. They did awesome, and Cash loved playing on the tables while they did thier lessons.

 And we sat on the sidelines and waited for them to finish up se we could all go swimming afterwards.

It just so happened that Eli and Owen were in a class with Owen's buddy Will

Eli and Owen enjoyed the mud all the rain brought...

We got to see some of our favorite buddies--the Goss and Haegelin kids...

So our summer started off a little shaky....but its all on the upswing from here.....

Vegas Baby!

I am so behind in all that has happened these past few weeks! I have felt so busy and so overwhelmed by everything that has been happening I can hardly keep up with e-mails!

I'll start with Cash and my's adventure we took together last weekend!

Every year since I was about 12 or 13 we made a family trip out of my dad's business trip to Vegas for the JCK Jewelry Show.  The last time Blaine and I went was when I was pregnant with Eli. I hate Vegas, it is just not my scene--at all.  Even before I had kids, when we would go, I was in bed early and up early to go run. I am too cheap to feel like gambling is fun. BUT it was always a trip where we were all together for a few days, would go to fancy dinners and just be able to all be together without "real life" in the way.  My dad has stayed at Bally's since he started going to the JCK show years and years ago, so that is where we always stay during the show and this trip is always very predictable because we do close to the same thing every year.

I had missed the last 6 years and every year when they were all there I would feel so sad and wish so badly I was there with them.  We tired to make it work for all 5 of us to go this year, but the cost and the fact that is was Vegas, not the most kid-friendly place:) kept us from doing that this year.
We decided that the next best thing was for me to go, and take Cash with me.  I was a little nervous about taking a child to Vegas, but I was beyond shocked at how many kids were there, all over the place, and how much there was to do for kids.   I was going merely to be with my family and the place didn't really matter to me as long as we were with them.

The plan was to leave at 5:35am on Friday morning, so we could get there at 7:30am and have the entire day on Friday.  So we woke everyone up at 4:15am and headed to the airport.  We said good-bye and Blaine and the boys left us in line to check our bags.  By the time we got up to the desk, we were told that our flight was flat-out cancelled.  It is 5am now, and Blaine has already made his way back home.  The next flight we could get on to get us there was 5 hours from now.  This new flight/route would take us to fly 4 hours to California, 2 hour layover, and fly an hour and a half to Vegas---that is 6 hours in the air, with a layover compared to the direct 2 1/2 hour flight we were supposed to have putting us into Vegas around 5pm.  I was tired and frustrated, and maybe cried just a little bit to the guy at our gate.  But Blaine drove back to the airport with Eli and Owen, picked us up, we took Eli to school and then went to Torchys's for breakfast before he took us back to the airport.  It was an awfully long travel day, but Cash was the best travel companion I could have asked for.

He just let me cry, didn't try to talk sense into me, or tell me to get over it,  just looked at me and smiled and gave me a hug, he didn't have an opinion about where to eat, where to sit, or my bad attitude.  He just went with the flow, did not fuss a single time, and was happy the entire day.

We finally boarded the flight (the first one was also delayed an hour) around 11:30, we were off.  We sat next to the cutest college girl and got a new babysitter out of our flight--looking for a silver lining.
Cash just moved from one thing to the next the entire flight.  He fell asleep about 20 min before we boarded which totally ruined my plan to have him sleep the whole flight.

But after 14 hours we finally made it and I have never been happier to be in Vegas! And Cash was never happier to see Ethan. We had 3 adjoining rooms, so we were able to go between our rooms the whole weekend which was so fun.

They had all spent the day at the jewelry show and were ready to lay low until dinner, so that is just what we did until we headed out to a seafood restaurant.  With Cash being a vegetarian, and not eating normal things that kids usually enjoy, bread, being one of those things (or cheese, rice, any meat or seafood, any thing with any kind of sauce), I ordered him a bowl of noodles--he went to TOWN! Perhaps because it was the first "real" food we had eaten all day.

We were up early Saturday morning so we headed downstairs to get some coffee and milk and wait for everyone else to wake up before we were going to breakfast at 9 together, and then everyone was headed to the jewelry show while Cash and I headed to the pool.

There is SO much stimulation in Vegas, that after breakfast and swimming, Cash passed out for a good 3 hour nap!
That afternoon we walked around, explored, and walked to another hotel for an early dinner with my Dad's longtime friend Ernie and his daughter.  My dad met Ernie on his 21st birthday and traveled the world with him. We spent some time going info different stores and walking around that evening.  We even ran into some very cool people....

Yes, Cash looks terrified in this picture. And yes, that is my dad also acting like a super-hero in the back!
But we had seen Spiderman the night before on our walk home and he would not stop talking about him and wanted to see him so badly, so when we saw him Saturday night, I was not going to let the opportunity pass us by without taking a picture.  Yes, Cash was clawing at me as tight as he possibly could and yes, his legs have never been tighter around my waist, but he loved it. I promise, he really did.  He spent the rest of the trip saying "Spiderman, right der (there)!"

On Sunday morning we woke up early.....and woke up Loli.

Did the buffet breakfast at Paris, ate too much, walked around, went to the pool and then we headed out again to walk down to Cesar's Palace to see the talking statue show and shop a little bit.

He was thrilled about throwing his pennies in the fountain!

While there was so much we wanted to do there, the trip was just too short to fit it in and Cash had such a good time just being there, and with everyone that it wasn't worth the effort (taxis, carrying around a car seat--taxi drivers are against car seats by the way, the cost, and fighting crowds).

The statue show was a little bit of a let-down. I remember it being so different from when I was a kid, but it was fun to see anyway.  After all the walking we headed back to the hotel, and watched a movie.

And then we headed back out to Ceasars to the buffet that apparently is verrrry popular! Had we known how long we would have been waiting to get in, we probably would have gone somewhere else but we were too invested when we realized it so we stayed and waited.  My dad's back was acting up so he found a place to sit and Cash kept him company in-between running around with the other kids in line playing hide and seek around a large pillar.

We stopped to watch the fountain show on the way back to the hotel, and some great street dancers.  But by Sunday night we were all pooped and ready to head back home.  Cash and I were on a flight with my parents back to Austin, so Monday morning we packed up and headed home--thankfully on our scheduled non-stop flight!

I love any opportunity to spend time with any of my boys one-on-one so this was SUCH a treat for me!  He was such a fun, easy little travel companion and I will cherish the time I got to have with him all to myself!  Not to mention being there with my family was so wonderful. I had really missed being there with them every year. With everything going on, I feel even more connected to the idea to never miss an opportunity to be with them and those I love.