We arrived home from our San Diego/cruise vacation yesterday in a whirlwind. Linda had to leave for the airport before we arrived home so she dropped the girls off at Burnham’s for a couple of hours. We thought that we would be home to pick them up by 5:30, but thunderstorms over Colorado delayed our flight by half an hour. Linda met our plane and we quickly walked with her to the train so that she could go and catch her plane home. She had a wonderful time with the girls and they, likewise, had a great time with her. After some directional difficulties at the airport, we finally picked up the Maxima and loaded our luggage. Chris drove me to the Pikes Peak parking lot where Linda had left the van, and I drove that home. Chris took the toll road, I went the long road home.
Since we were so late in getting home, Burnhams were going to drop the girls off at the school for their Spring Concert. Taking the toll road would have been the better route for me to take because Chris was able to pick up the girls, help them change into their new “Mexico” dresses, and get them to the school in time. I arrived just as the performance begun. As I walked past Misha’s room, there she was waiting to go into the gym dressed in her cute red, green and white dress. I gave her a quick hug and went into the gym. I was pretty homesick for my girls and was so excited to see them.
As I got nearer to where Chris and Kristen were sitting, Chris saw me, but Kristen hadn’t yet. He said, “There’s Mommy.” She started looking for me, but the room was crowded and she didn’t find me until I was able to pick her up and hold her. So good to be home. Amy was a couple of rows back on the “stage” (not really a stage in the gym, but they made due). I think she looked around for me during the performance, but never really found where I was sitting. She looked pretty cute in her pink dress. She had called me from Burnhams rather concerned that she wasn’t dressed appropriately in her school uniform. After remembering about the dresses, I told her that I would see what I could do about getting her something to wear. You could tell that she didn’t miss me too much during the week because after the concert was over, we had to go looking for her over by the snack table.
We didn’t stick around long at the school. It had been a long day and Chris and I still needed to eat. He and Kristen stopped by Wendy’s on the way home to pick up some hamburgers. Amy and Misha and I headed home. There was so much to do once we arrived home and were able to begin unpacking. Linda had done some laundry, but it needed to be put away. The girls needed to be hugged a lot and then put to bed. We ate and finally by 9 pm we were so worn out we lay on the couch and watched tv. What a long day.
So, I’ll rewind about two weeks to cover the fun before we left for our vacation and then all the fun we had on our vacation.
Rich Flanagan finished our basement on the 8th. We passed inspection without any problem on the 7th. Woohoo. Chris and I began the process of moving furniture. We purchased a new living room leather set-couch, love seat, and chair-and moved our older furniture to the basement. We moved toys out of the guest room and the girls’ rooms to the toy room in the basement. I finished cleaning and reorganizing the storage room. I had to wipe every can, box, and bottle off to remove the layers of dust from construction. That took hours. In the midst of this, we were getting ready for a garage sale on Saturday, Chris’ parents were arriving Saturday, Amy wasn’t feeling great, and preparing for our week away.
On Tuesday, May 8th, Amy began complaining about more pain. She ran out of her pain medication on Monday, so I called the hospital and had them call in another prescription. The medication helped a bit, but the pain persisted. I called again on Friday morning to the Children’s Hospital and talked with a nurse in Dr. Allshouse’s office. She recommended that we go to a local doctor and have them check Amy out before making a trip down to the hospital. So I was able to get Amy in to see Dr. Leonard that afternoon. Amazing how telling them my daughter is recovering from surgery makes a difference in how fast they can get her in to see the doctor.
Because Amy was experiencing a lot of pain when she peed, the doctor ordered a urinalysis. It came back positive for white blood cells. So eerily similar to the first time we went to the doctor when she had the ruptured appendix. Since it couldn’t be appendicitis again, we picked up the prescription and headed home. The pain from peeing began to go away, but Amy still had abdominal pain.
Saturday morning dawned early for the garage sale. I had high hopes of getting rid of so much stuff, but the day was pretty much a flop. We sold a few things, but not nearly enough to empty out the garage and basement. By the time we decided to call it quits, Chris was returning from the airport with his parents. Linda helped to pack things up. I boxed a few things up for the Disabled Veterans Association who would come by on the following Tuesday to pick up the boxes.
I made lunch for everybody. Hmmmmm. What’s wrong with that picture? Kristen had a nap after lunch and Linda, Misha, Amy, and I drove to Nails Care Plus for manicures and pedicures. One of the guys who worked at the salon seems to have latched on to me, but I don’t really care for the work that he does. I’ll have to start going somewhere else now. I took longer than everyone else, so Linda took the girls to King Soopers and bought them balls.
Later that evening we went in to Longmont for dinner at Applebees followed by a dessert treat at Dairy Queen. It was getting late so we shuttled the girls home to bed, and missed their baths to boot.
I woke up around 5:30 Sunday morning and went to check on the girls and make sure they were covered. Amy was crying when I walked in to her bedroom and in a lot of pain. I took her downstairs to the couch, made sure she didn’t feel like throwing up (on my new couch no less), and took her temperature. She was at 101 degrees. She was groaning and writhing in pain. I woke up Chris and called the hospital. We weren’t taking any chances this time. Dr. Karrer was the doctor on call. I put on my makeup while I was waiting for his call anticipating that he would say bring her in. He did, and I asked if he would let the ER know that we were on our way.
We woke Linda and Larry up to let them know what was going on and to have them watch the girls and take them to church. Chris and Larry gave Amy a blessing and then we were off.
I was trying not to think that Chris and I were supposed to leave for vacation on Monday morning. Obviously Amy was more important. Amy’s temperature was 102 when we arrived at the ER and they quickly moved us into a more permanent room—number 12 this time (last time it was 11). Our nurse, Jodi, came in to take a history and find out what the problem was. Dr. Brian Valiskin (sp?) also came into find out what Amy’s issues were. It was decided that she would need a CT scan which also meant an IV. They were thinking that it was perhaps an abscess that was causing so much pain for her. So after hours of being in the ER, an IV, a CT scan-it was discovered that Amy was constipated. Hooray for that. They gave her an enema. She pooped and felt better.
Dr. Valiskin talked with us about how to keep Amy more regular, especially with all of the medication she has been on lately, and prescribed a lot of laxatives and stool softeners. But she was good to go after that and really we felt relieved that it was nothing more serious. We left for home around noon. Amy fell asleep on the way, and I decided to stay home with her. Chris dropped us off, went to pick up prescriptions and then went to church. He returned after 2 to bring Kristen home for a nap. I did three loads of laundry to be ready for the next week. What a day! And, it was Mother’s Day. We had pizza for dinner. Chris bought me a beautiful anklet and necklace—so thoughtful of him.
Chris and I finished packing for our trip Sunday evening. Linda reassured us that everything would be fine with Amy next week and that she would be vigilant in making sure Amy took her medicine.
All of the girls were awake by 6:30 on Monday morning. I was glad of that because I wanted to hug them good bye before we left. Not so fun for Linda who would have a long day of kids. We left for the airport at 6:40 for our 8:30 am flight on Frontier. We landed two hours later, though 9:30 am local time, at Lindbergh field in San Diego.
We were taken by shuttle to the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Grand is right. Such a beautiful hotel in a fabulous location on the bay. We were assigned to room 2422 and dropped our carry-on bags off before heading back down to the 2nd floor to check in for the conference. At check-in, we received a large canvas tote bag filled with 2 hats, a disposable camera, sunscreen and a photo album. The hotel staff was setting up lunch as we were checking in, but it wasn’t available until noon. So we headed back up to our room, to get settled, check out the view, and relax for awhile.
We had lunch in the Quiet Zone, a place for IBM conference attendees to hang out, eat snacks, play games, etc. and then decided to explore down by the bay. We had the afternoon to ourselves to enjoy. We snapped lots of pictures—it is so rare that I am in so many pictures since I am usually the one taking the pictures—we browsed through a few of the tourist shops, and walked over to the USS Midway. It is a retired US Navy aircraft carrier that is open to tour (after paying $15 of course). It is also docked across the bay from USS Ronald Reagan, the large aircraft carrier in the world that had just returned from active service and was being painted and readied for service again. Chris was definitely intrigued.
We walked around the down town area to what is called the Gaslamp district. It was breezy but pleasant. We found an open air mall that was a couple of stories high with shops, restaurants and a movie theater. Chris had forgotten to pack his belt, so we tried to find him a new one. I was also trying to find appropriate water shoes for our kayaking excursion on Tuesday, but neither of us was successful. Amy was home from school so we called to talk to all of the girls. Grandma was working with Amy trying to get the medicine under control, though Amy had one accident at school. They were excited to talk to us and were going to go miniature golfing at the mall. Or maybe they were more excited about the miniature golfing than talking to us. They were good and happy which in turn made us happy and able to relax. We walked back to our hotel in a much shorter route and both fell asleep for a couple of hours. With the stress of the past couple of days, weeks, and months, it was nice to finally de-stress for awhile.
We watched as the hotel workers set up for our party by the pool. The brightly colored red, yellow and blue table cloths dotted the pool side. It was definitely much cooler as the sun went down but I tried to stay warm, though I should have gone back up to our room to put on a sweater or jacket. Okay, really I was freezing and tried to stay warm at our table by wrapping the table cloth around my legs. It was minimally helpful. There were 450 to 500 people in attendance at the conference from all over the world—Norway, Sweden, UK, Japan, Belgium, France, Canada, India, Australia. It was fun to meet so many people. The food was delicious and we were able to meet some fun people that we continued to run into throughout the remainder of the conference. Nice to have a bit of connection with others.
Tuesday morning I got up early to exercise (though not so early as normal as we were an hour behind). As I got back to the room, Chris was talking to the girls as they were getting ready to head out the door to school. We got ready for the day and headed downstairs for breakfast—more delicious food. We then headed over to the Quiet Zone and grabbed some bottled water and power bars for later in the day after kayaking. Our first meeting of the morning was at 9 am and lasted until 11:30. Eileen Collins, the first female commander of a shuttle mission, spoke. Quite interesting. And then IBM began their first of two presentation of the honorees. Chris had received an Outstanding Technical Award as had many of the attendees. A few others received awards for excellence along with checks for $30,000 to $40,000. I told Chris he needed to do something else wonderful so that we could come back next year and get one of those awards! We guesstimated that IBM handed out close to $3 million in awards alone within that one hour. Amazing.
We had initially planned to go back up to our room to change for our afternoon activity, but the elevators were so backed with 400 other conference attendees that had the same idea that instead we decided to go for lunch. Good choice. We were among the first to eat and then easily made our way up to the 24th floor without a half an hour wait. We returned to the hotel lobby just before 1 pm for our kayaking excursion. When Chris received the initial invitation to the conference, they sent information on a variety of activities that we could participate in. Sadly we could only choose two: kayaking and American’s cup sailboat racing. But, some of the other choices were golf lessons, Sea World, spa treatments (I’ll do that next time), walking tours, cooking classes, painting lessons, and the San Diego zoo (though that isn’t the complete list).
We decided that we wanted to choose activities that we wouldn’t normally choose. So Tuesday afternoon we boarded a bus to La Jolla (pronounce hoya) and traveled to a small business called Hike Bike and Kayak to pick up our wet suits, paddles, kayaks and instructors. Turned out I didn’t really need the water shoes that Chris and I had shopped for Monday afternoon. I just went barefoot. Chris and I choose to go tandem which proved to be an excellent idea. I know I couldn’t have paddled so well on my own. I almost turned back as I walked into the freezing cold water of the ocean. Thank heavens for a wet suit. We paddles through the breaker waves successfully, though I did manage to swallow a mouthful of salty seawater. I think we were on the water for a couple of hours and were able to see lots of kelp (edible if you wanted to try it), large orange fish, sea lions, seals and even a dolphin. I thought that was pretty exciting. It was a fun afternoon. Both Chris and I were glad to have the power bars to eat on the trip back to the hotel. We arrived back around 4:30.
For dinner that evening, IBM gave us $180 and gave us the option of about 20 restaurants to choose from for dinner on our own. We chose a restaurant in the Gaslamp district called Ole Madrid. The service was slow and the portions too large. We had dinner a couple of days later in Old Town at a little Mexican restaurant that was much cheaper and so much tastier. It was fun though. We checked movie times but weren’t at all impressed with the choices of movies being shown so we walked leisurely back to the hotel.
Wednesday morning’s routine was pretty similar to Tuesday. I got up to exercise, came back in time to talk to the girls, got showered and dressed, had breakfast and then attended another morning meeting. The speakers for this meeting included Jean Michel Cousteau, a Nobel prizewinner, and a performance by the 5 Browns. They are an LDS family of 5 children in their 20s who play classical music together. Very impressive.
Our activity for the day included racing America’s Cup sailing boats. Our group of about 45 people boarded a rather large sailing boat called the America which transported us out to the bay. Our group was divided into groups of 11 or 12, so 22 of raced on the boats for the first hour while the rest of the group watched from the America and then we switched off. I think I enjoyed the kayaking more and probably would have loved a spa treatment even more, but it was okay. Something we’ll likely not have the chance to do again.
We arrived back at the hotel in time to relax a bit and then to get ready for a formal reception and dinner. We both had new outfits for the occasion (Chris’ cost about 10 times what mine did). We posed for three different cameramen, mingled with some of the friends we had made in the past two days and met up with one of the Vice Presidents that Chris had met on a previous trip-Lauren- and her husband Ken. We were seated with a couple from Sweden that we met on Monday night as well as three or four other couples. After the dinner we adjourned to another large conference room for music and dancing. Chris and I stuck around for awhile, but the music (by the Gypsy Kings) wasn’t really our style at all, and we were both tired. We left around 10:15 pm.
Thursday was the last day of the conference, but there wasn’t much more than breakfast. Most people were focused on catching a shuttle and getting to the airport. Chris and I had originally planned on going to Sea World, but we weren’t able to get any discount tickets, the weather wasn’t so hot, and we decided just to take it easy for the day. He went and toured the USS Midway and I stayed at the hotel and relaxed. I did a little catching up on the girls’ journal (writing about Amy’s hospital stay), reading and snoozing. Kind of a nice break.
We picked up our piece of junk rental car. Since we got such a good deal on the rate, Enterprise drove a low end car to the hotel for us to have. Oh well. We first went out to Coronado Island and found some cute t-shirts for the girls. Our next stop was Old Town where we walked around a bit and spent time browsing through tourist shops. Chris had been to Old Town ten years ago before we were married and remembered a Mormon Battalion historical site. We decided to check it out and watched a movie about the battalion.
We hadn’t really had regular meals and were beginning to be rather hungry. However, we were meeting Joanie McKenna (a family friend of Chris’) for dinner at 7 and didn’t want to completely spoil our appetites. Old Town had a few Mexican restaurants so we picked one and had a few tacos. Yum. We had a little time to kill before meeting Joanie at 6 pm and decided to drive around San Diego, ending up by Sea World and the San Diego zoo. She called to give us directions to her home and said to just come on over. Our evening with her was so nice. What a sweet lady. She took us out to dinner where her son, Mike and his wife, Marlene, met us. As we drove Joanie back to her house, she invited us to come up. I was so tired and Chris could see me struggling to keep my eyes open. We stayed for a short time, thanked Joanie for a lovely evening, and drove back to the hotel.
The next morning we were up for the fun adventure of our cruise. We packed up our stuff, did a once over on the hotel room and checked out. Our cruise on royal Caribbean “Monarch of the Seas” sailed out of San Pedro which is close to Los Angeles so we had about a two-hour drive ahead of us. We drove through La Jolla and all of a sudden, there was the temple on the right hand side of the free way. So beautiful and large. Neither of us had expected it. We decided to stop and walk around the grounds, take pictures and pick up a few pairs of garments. (All in an effort to not have to do laundry). The flowers and landscaping on the grounds were beautiful.
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We arrived at the port around 1:30 pm. Chris had to return the rental car, so we dropped off our luggage and then me to wait for him to come back—on foot. Our first stop was to check in and present our passports. Having already checked-in on-line, this process was fairly smooth. We picked up our Sea Pass (ID card linked to our credit card while on the cruise) and boarded. Our room number was 5924. Our room was so SMALL! I don’t know what I expected, but really, it was definitely something bigger. There was only a tiny walk space between the wall and the bed—on one side and very little room for all of our luggage. No wonder they suggest that you pack lightly. We would have if we hadn’t come from the previous conference. We were pretty squished, but then so were most of the rest of the people on the ship. We did have a porthole with an unobstructed view though which was nice to be able to see the ocean, the weather and just have some outside light.
Lunch was being served in the Windjammer Café on the 11th level deck and we were hungry. Perfect combination. Mostly it was hamburgers and hot dogs, but we weren’t complaining. After lunch we wandered around the ship checking things out and watching the people who were already in the party cruise mode. Yes, party cruise as we quickly learned. A short weekend cruise to Mexico for lots of drinking and more drinking and smoking. We were just grateful we weren’t handing our Sea Passes over quite so much. We didn’t actually leave the harbor until after 4 that afternoon. We were well into the open seas by dinner time. Suddenly the people seated next to the windows in the dining room were exciting pointing out the windows. We had to go and see. Dolphins were racing the ship, jumping in and out of the water in the crest of the waves. So cool. I tried to get a picture of it, but only got the tail end of one dolphin. The girls would have loved that.
Dinner on the cruise was a fun experience. We sat with the same couple for the three nights of our cruise—Nina and Stan—who were originally from the Philippines. Our waiter was from the Philippines and Christopher was thrilled to speak with them, especially to see the shock on their faces to know that he could speak their language.
Tuesday morning I got up before 7 am local time to exercise in the fitness center on level 7. I watched as we docked in Ensenada. The landscaping didn’t look so much different from California so it was amazing to believe we were in Mexico. Chris and I decided to have breakfast in the dining room. We were seated at a larger table and again with people from the Philippines. More fun for Chris. The breakfast was nice but it took way too long. We decided to have breakfast in the Windjammer Café from now on. It was buffet with all of the same choices.
We left the ship at 10 am and walked into Ensenada. I wore my sweatshirt and was quite comfortable, though disappointed that the weather wasn’t a little warmer. Along the way, we passed mostly women, children and grandmothers begging or trying to sell us candy or trinkets. So sad to see children in such an environment. We shopped in the tourist section of town for a couple of hours. Our goal was to find some Mexican dresses for the girls. Misha and Kristen were easy to find sizes for, Amy’s size was a little harder, but by the end of the day, we were successful. We had also found a belt for Chris since was feeling a little naked without one. I had seen plenty of things that were nice, but nothing that really caught my attention that I just had to have. We used the money left over from our Tuesday night dinner sponsored by IBM, so it was a pretty inexpensive day.
We had lunch in a sit down restaurant-Mexican of course-and had enjoyable meal. The service was slow but the food was good. As we were leaving, I found a pink stone necklace and bracelet for myself. Having made all of our purchases for the day, we walked around the pier and snapped a few pictures of the local seals. We arrived back at the ship around 3 pm and headed up to the Windjammer for a little snack. We found a spot somewhat secluded from the wind and read for awhile.
Dinner on Saturday evening was a classy dress up affair. The service was wonderful and amazingly most people were sober. Or maybe they just hid it well. Following dinner was a reception with the captain in the Sound of Music lounge. While people were dancing at the front, a lady collapsed. We were too far back to see what was happening, but the waiters did absolutely nothing. People were trying to get help, but the staff onboard were clueless. Finally, after at least 5 minutes, professional help arrived. The lady was taken away on a stretcher but we later learned she was most likely drunk.
There was a comedien at 10:15, but I just couldn’t stay awake. Chris stayed while I came back to the cabin to go to bed. Sunday was a rather leisure day at sea. Though I felt the motion of the boat a lot more as we just seemed to bob along with the waves. Though I don’t normally exercise on Sunday, I did this day just to make the day go by with some kind of activity. And with all of the food we were eating and being served, I need to continue doing something to counteract it.
I attended a presentation in the Fitness Center at 10:30 on how to increase your metabolism but it proved to more of an “Amway” scheme. Purchase our body scan and we’ll tell you what and how much of our body detoxification system you need to buy. I left and found Chris walking on the outdoor walking track.
The rest of the afternoon was spent leisurely relaxing. I saw a whale and that was soooo cool. It swam around the front of the boat for awhile, surfacing every so often. We had a casual dinner at 6 pm and a farewell musical production at 9 pm called “Fast Forward”.
Monday morning we had a smooth ride back in to the San Pedro harbor and docked at 6 am. We hadn’t talked to the girls since Friday afternoon and I was excited to call Monday morning just before they left for school. Amy wouldn’t see Grandma Ball again so there was some sadness going on in the house. Grandma was a bit teary as she has a tendency to be. I was excited that we were on our way home. Being away was good, but I sure missed my girls.
We had a fairly early breakfast and then began the disembarking process. We had to have all or our luggage except carry-on items set outside our room the night before so most of our packing was already taken care of. It took awhile for them to call our color for disembarking. Once we finally got off the ship and through customs, we were directed to a bus that would take us to the Los Angeles airport where of course we had more waiting. We used up some of that time on an expensive, not-so-good lunch at the airport, but our choices were limited.
We boarded our flight around 12:45 and we were off. Unfortunately as we got closer to Colorado, the weather became a little more dicey with huge thunder clouds and bad weather. We were delayed a half an hour in the air but were finally able to land. I knew that the girls had their Spring concert at the school, and I was hoping that we would be able to make it there in time to see them. Linda had dropped the girls off at Burnham’s since she needed to leave for the airport around 2:30. Amy’s carpool ride dropped her off there as well. Linda greeted us as we walked off the plane ,and we quickly walked her to her section of the airport to board her plane. She had a wonderful time with the girls. Good, ‘cause maybe she’ll do it for us again sometime.
We caught the wrong shuttle to the wrong side of the airport and that delayed us at least another half an hour. Amy had already talked to us and was sad because she was still wearing her uniform and wanted to be wearing a dress. I told her not to worry about it, but that didn’t do too much good. I told her I would try to do something about it. Luckily I was thinking of the Mexican dresses we had purchased in Ensenada.
Chris dropped me off at the van in the Pikes Peak parking lot where Linda had left it. He then took off and not knowing if he took the toll road or the long way home, I opted for the long way home. Fortunately he took the toll road and was able to make it to Burnham’s in time to get the girls changed and drive them to the school. I arrived at the school with seconds to spare before the concert began. I walked past Misha’s classroom and there she was standing at the head of the line looking so cute in her red, green and white dress. I quickly gave her hug--it was so wonderful to see her—and then headed in to the gymnasium. As I got closer to where Chris and Kristen were sitting I could see Chris telling Kristen, “There’s Mommy.” She looked around for me but there were so many people sitting and standing that she didn’t see me until I was right beside her. And that pretty much takes me back to where I started with a little bit of duplication.
