Young Grasshoppers: So, better get some coffee, this is going to be a long one

Well this post is going to be all over the place and I apologize. November was a hot mess of planning for Mason's birthday party and leaving for San Diego and then actually being in San Diego and then coming home and recovering from San Diego. Then I was trying to upload these pictures at home last night and it took forever because I have a dinosaur of a lap top. BONUS to me that I realized finally I can blog from my phone. So......that'll be happening from now on. Anyways. I digress.

San Diego. It was awesome and horrible and then just bittersweet. The trip was by far probably the least stressful times ever visiting. We did our thing and didn't feel pressured to make 10000 plans. We saw who we love and while we always will wish for more time with them; we were grateful for who we did see and when we did see them. Everything was great. We celebrated birthdays, had a wedding!!, went to Old Town, Balboa Park, Bates Nut Farm, I went to the movies and Andy got to golf - both Frisbee and regular......oh yeah and then took an ambulance ride and spent 2 days in the hospital with one of those being Thanksgiving. We had 2 kids in ER Thanksgiving morning and Ava's asthma again got the best of her except this time it was due to the fact that her and Mason got pneumonia somehow. Everyone's great now and we have learned her biggest trigger yet for attacks is chest colds. We now have an on hand bottle of steroids to begin to hold her off from more ambulance trips and hopefully give her time to stay safe till we can get her to the doctor. We'll see. It's a learning process with her asthma unfortunately. And sadly this time we all had to sit through Thanksgiving in a hospital room knowing the majority of the rest of our family was at home doing what we should have been doing. It makes you feel like such a failure of a parent seeing your kid in a hospital bed. Even though I know that we couldn't do anything different and it wasn't our fault it was just such a horrible helpless feeling knowing she was sucking it up and still enjoying her Thanksgiving and I was angry at myself for letting her get so bad we were in there in the first place. So yeah. That was the conclusion of our visit though we stayed an extra day and did a little more good old time with our families and collected our bearings before heading home. It was hard to leave all our people after sharing such a big experience with them. We love our lives up here and wouldn't trade it for anything but to have our family and friends in San Diego be there for such a hospital stay made us yearn for more time with them.

Old Town - already sick with pneumonia but trying to just power through - bad idea. and bad mom moment

And look! home and all better picking out Christmas trees!

My baby girl

Our Lampoon Christmas Vacation Tree!!

My Vancouver Family

All done up!

Andy thinking what did we do?

Mason at Mason Street School in Old Town San Diego

so cute

Loving the beach

Mason requested I make him a sand chair

Getting ready for his birthday party with a little In N Out

I made these as party favors!!

All partied out! Thank you to everyone who made his first real birthday party so much fun!!

Downtown Super Hero!

YAY! Getting some El Indio!

Everyone came to the occasion! Happy Birthday, Debbie!

On our way to Balboa Park

Ava when we left Vancouver said she was looking for some palm trees - and we found her them!

Wrestling time with Uncle Pat

I love this picture

Breakfast time at Aunt Michelle's

when they don't sell sand toys in November improvise and get Christmas buckets!

so gorgeous

Ice Cream time!

I loved this tree

Andddddddd then we crashed. But monkledoodle made everything better

So did Aunt Michelle and Uncle Mitchell who sat with us most the day and took care of a very sick Mason while we could be with Ava. Thanks Michelle for taking one for the team and being puked on. I owe you a lot for what you do for us. Like your kids can puke on me several times and I'll just smile through it. Also, everyone who took time out from their Thanksgiving weekends to see us. You have no idea how much it helped us get through being where we were knowing we had people who loved us around.

And then............we were better-ish! At least home and happy.

So Pop-pop brought us some ice cream to celebrate!

And then there was my pharmacy that I was walking around with for all of us.

We had 2nd Thanksgiving Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was really really fun!

Mt Shasta was so pretty coming home

And these two slept the whole 18 hour car ride. I dont' blame them - they were still recovering from that pneumonia

Aerospace Museum Sunday before Thanskgiving was super fun

nice to meet ya!

My mom's wedding. It was the perfect day! Perfect weather, calm and loving, good food, beautiful scenery. Everything and anything you would ever want. And we all looked pretty spiffy as well.