GCV Part 2: San Diego Zoo

The second day of vacation we decided to head to the San Diego Zoo. I wasn't super excited about the Zoo, for two reasons. One, you know how I feel about animals (and HERE, and HERE). And two, even with my compromised sense of smell (and HERE), zoos are still not the place for a super sniffer. Surprisingly enough the zoo was one of my favorite places of the entire vacation! It was clean and not as smelly as most zoos. It was easy to navigate, and even though it is HUGE (100 acres with over 3,700 animals) we were able to see most of it - at least everything we wanted to see. The park had a LOT of people in it, but it is set up in such a way that we very rarely felt over crowded or rushed. I think the key to enjoying our day was that we had a game plan of what we wanted to see most, and planned out a very efficient route to fit in everyone's interests. I took a bazillion pictures, and here are my favorites.

seriously, this picture doesn't do it justice, but the polar bear's foot is HUGE, way bigger than my whole head. It was incredible!

They had a really cool sky tram that gave you a great view of the whole park, and even the city in the distance. These are a couple of pictures that I took while we rode it.

Near the Zoo, Balboa Park, there are tons of museums to go to. I really wanted to go there, but sadly, we just ran out of time. Next time I would really like to spend a day there. I think my kids would love it.

The dangers of inhaling

This is Adia, drugged out in the ER. Yes, that's how we were lucky enough to spend our Memorial Day. No fun BBQ for us, just some good drugs and a million dollar cup of hospital apple juice. Because everything in our life lately makes for a good story, I'll share this one with you.
Adia was outside playing with some friends for a while, and when she came in she informed me that she had swallowed a little stick and it got stuck in her throat. She had tried to puke it up, but had only managed to render one of the playground slides un-usable. She could breathe and swallow, and after asking some questions I found out that it wasn't really a stick, but more a piece of a weed. I figured that it wasn't a huge deal, so I told her to eat some bread thinking it would force it down. After eating several pieces she started complaining that it wasn't helping, so I thought we better do a little bit of investigating and planning. I asked her to show me the weed and it turns out is was a piece of wheat, like this:

I don't know if you have experience with this type of plant or not, but there are spiky green shoots coming out of the kernels. (they are called a "beard"- little known fact - thank you Dr. Fisher, and google who backed him up on the info.) These little spikes are strange, if you run your finger up them one direction it is smooth, but if you run it in the other direction it is stickery-real word in the Blanding ER- thanks again Dr. Fisher. So in other words, if she swallowed it in one direction it would pass strait through, but if she swallowed it in the other direction it would be stuck there. That got me a little more concerned, so I decided to call the ER and see what they recommended. They said we should try to flush it down with liquids, but if that didn't work, or if it started to hurt, bring her in. So we tried it, and soon it started to hurt any time she took a deep breath or swallowed anything - so off to the ER we went.

Everyone there was super nice, and helpful. Adia has Dr. Anxiety from an unfortunate trip to the dentist several years ago, so she was worried and upset. All of the staff worked really hard to put her at ease, and make her comfortable. And the nurse caught on really quickly that she's not a "baby me" girl, she's a "give it to me straight" girl, and was very open and honest with her, which we both really appreciated. And despite the kid in the room next to us who was screaming and wailing for about 20 minutes, Adia calmed right down. (according to the nurse it was "get foreign objects stuck in your nose, ear, or throat day" which could explain the neighbor's mood.)

Finally the doctor came in and took a look. He could see it right at the back of her throat, and told her he was going to get a tool to pull it out. He came back in with this little fella, and all bets were off.

She refused to open her mouth, and we suddenly felt less annoyed by the guy next door. They tried to bribe her with a gift bag full of goodies like a teddy bear, coloring book, stickers, and five bazillion crayons, which I haven't seen the itemized bill for yet, but I bet they are going to cost a pretty penny - right up there with the juice. She accepted the gift happily, with her mouth still clamped shut.  

Finally they decided that it was time to sedate her. They gave her some stuff mixed with the million dollar carton of apple juice and in about 20 minutes she was full blown LOOPY. When a girl who loves to talk as much as my girl gets on medication that disconnects the thought process from the mouth process, you never know what you're going to get. She loved EVERYBODY, she sang interesting songs, she told some juicy secrets, and she kept pulling my face down close to her's and saying "your eyes are pretty!" But the worst part is that the doctor kept saying "inhaled" rather than "swallowed" so she started telling everyone she saw, "I inhaled, the weed." which kind of makes it sound like I gave her pot or something. And the way she was acting wasn't helping convince anyone otherwise. And of course we saw just about every person we know in town, because the ER on a Monday night is the place to be, apparently? I'm pretty sure my credibility at work is ruined - I mean, who is going to trust me to keep kids safe when my own 8 year old is seen in the ER acting like she's been smokin' the dope? (She also kept getting dizzy and saying "Uh, Oh, I'm tippin'" which sounds uncomfortably like "trippin'"... Thanks babe.)

Anyway, after a while she was lovin' life enough that the doctor told her to open up, and he reached those giant tweezers back there and grabbed the sucker. It was about two inches long, and bent over a little (disapproving look in my direction from the doctor for forcing her to eat half a loaf of bread, which he assumed caused the bend and made the pain worse) It was covered in blood and gore and other grossness which the doctor said meant it was beginning to embed itself at the back of her throat. They waited for her drugs to wear off a little and forced another box of million dollar juice down her throat. With yet another warning to me to not let my kids put anything in their mouth that isn't food - because I am obviously the kind of mom who says "hey kids chew on this weed for a while, you might like it - let's just see." they wheeled my drug baby out to the car and we were on our way. She is fine, and slept super well all night - I wonder if they could sell me some of that stuff to give to Ethan on occasion... I am super grateful that it wasn't worse, and equally grateful that I now have outstanding insurance because I don't know if I could have afforded the second carton of juice on my own.

And that's the story.

*** UPDATE***

Because it has been brought to my attention, I feel the need to say that I only bring up the cost of the apple juice as a joke. I don't even know what the apple juice costs at this point. Of course the well being of my daughter was foremost in my mind and I was only able to joke about it after I first was certain that she was fine. I honestly would pay a million dollars for a box of juice without complaint if it meant helping my little girl - geez people!

Graduation Celebration Vacation Part 1: Getting there.

About a year ago I had a fabulous idea. I decided that we needed a vacation. For real. We hadn't been on an actual vacation, one that didn't revolve around taking someone's pictures, or attending a mission farewell, or making up for a dad-let-down, in years. All three of us had been so busy working and sacrificing for me to go to school, we hadn't had time, or frankly, the funds for a REAL vacation. So I talked to my kids about the possibilities, and the "Graduation, Celebration, Vacation" was born. They were instantly on board, and brain stormed all the possibilities. Some were good - a cruise to the Bahamas. Some were not so good - a trip to the moon. Finally we narrowed down the possibilities, invited some friends (and my parents who both enthusiastically declined) and started planning. In the end we hit a bit of an impass. We wanted to spend a week on the beach. Our friends wanted to spend a week at Disneyland. Luckily for us we found something fantastic, which made the choice for us. It was the CityPass. While searching for cheap tickets, our friend Cassie found the Southern California City Pass. It included tickets for three park hopper tickets to Disney, including one magic morning, a day at Universal Studios, a Day at the San Diego Zoo, and a day at Sea World. And as an added bonus it included little extras like discounts on food, discounts on shows in the parks, and free rides on the sky tram at the zoo. We searched an searched for discounted ticket prices, and in the end the City Pass saved us a couple of hundred dollars over the best deal we could find. And there's a City Pass for a lot of different places, so if you're planning a trip check them out HERE, and see if they have some deals for your location. So we decided to rent a house on the beach in San Diego for a few days, (to appease me) while we hit the attractions there, and then head up to Anahiem for the rest of the vacation to go to Disney and Universal. It was the greatest! We had so much fun! The next several posts will be full of pictures, details, trip tips, and adventures. I realize that not all of you care much about our vacation- it's really more for my own records than anything, so if you are one of those, come back in a couple of weeks and I will be back to blogging about our every day life. There's your warning.

So DAY #1
We met in Moab at 6AM ready to hit the road. We were so excited! So we set out, and drove... and drove... and drove some more.  (Don't judge the quality of these pictures, they were taken with my phone while driving down the freeway - I'm thinking I need a co-pilot next time)

Through the nothingness of Utah...

And briefly, the nothingness of Arizona...

Followed by the nothingness of Nevada... (We did have a bit of excitement just outside of Vegas. I was on the phone for a meeting for work, I had a car sick girl who I had just forced to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken because I told her she was just hungry and greasy, crispy chicken would make her feel better...  SO NOT TRUE... and then Levi, who I was trying to follow kept flipping U turns in the middle of freeway on-ramps and then leaving me behind not knowing where he was going with my GPS yelling at me to turn around... not the best few moments of the trip...)

But we figured it out and drove a few more hours through the nothingness of California, which looked quite like the nothingness of Nevada until all of a sudden IT DIDN'T! It looked like wall to wall traffic in the middle of rush hour! (No pictures, for obvious reasons)

But we made it through that mess only getting lost a couple of times, and ended up on a beautiful drive into San Diego. It was spectacular. I wouldn't mind living there, at all. 

We found our darling beach house tucked in tightly with a bunch of other beach houses. It was crowded without much parking, and the house wasn't much  to look at, but just as promised, it was just steps away from the beach, and the view was phenomenal. We shopped around a lot when looking for a house on the beach and there were two sites we found that were reliable, and helpful - Vacation Rentals By Owner and Home Away they are both sites by the same company, but they have different listings and prices, so check them both out - They have listings everywhere, not just Southern California.

See, cute, with tons of character. Where I'm standing to take this picture, I'm literally on the sand of the beach. It was an unbelievable location. 

And tune in soon for part two of the Graduation Celebration Vacation, which I promise will be more fun, and less business, with much better pictures.