The Whole Watermelon

We arrived in Mason late on Sunday, and spent the next day unpacking and cleaning the car, visiting with Mike's family, doing laundry (yes, after 2 1/2 days we had already generated a load and 1/2 of laundry), and packing for our mini-trip to Houghton Lake.

Mike's dad has a cabin on Houghton Lake, and we couldn't miss an opportunity to spend some time there, so Tuesday we made the two hour drive North, and stayed there through Friday morning.

Unfortunately it rained pretty much the entire time we were there, so we didn't get a chance to get out onto the lake, and all the fun things we could think of to do with the kids weren't open, but we managed to make due just fine. We had a fun day of shopping and leaf hunting, topped off with a visit to the doughnut shop. We had amazing food the whole time, both homemade and at the local pizza place. The kids had fun playing with the SmartCycle and other toys in the cabin. The adults enjoyed watching Season Two of The Office (American version) and playing Settlers of Catan. Unfortunately I wasn't taking any pictures of any of it. What was I thinking?

What would a trip to Houghton Lake be without a visit to the Urgent Care? Two years ago we went with Alex after he fractured his arm falling down the 2 steps in the cabin, and this time we made a visit after Andy broke out in a full body rash.

The first night he turned red:


And then the next morning these huge welts started appearing all over. They were everywhere - front, back, face, legs. He looked awful!


I was afraid that he had had an allergic reaction to something that he ate, and the doctor at the Urgent Care thought the same thing. They drew blood to send away to test for food allergies, (which Andy only cried at the very end of), and sent us on our way. We spent the rest of our vacation avoiding eggs and peanuts thinking one of the two might have triggered the reaction. The results from the blood test came back a week later (when we were still in Michigan), and were very weird. Urgent Care called to say that he was allergic to one or more of a list of 7 common allergy foods. Those results were not helpful, to say the least, so we continued to keep him off eggs and peanuts until we could get an allergy test done back in Utah. Luckily after calling around to several doctors we found one that could fit us in before Jan/Feb.

Since I'm writing this blog post after we've returned home, I can tell you that we did visit a doctor here the day after we got back, and the allergy prick test showed no food allergies to any of those food items the other blood test tested. The doctor said that the results from the other blood test were weird in that it's usually a very specific test, and they should have been able to tell me what specifically he was allergic to. His guess from the symptoms and how they showed was that Andy was probably reacting to a viral infection. He did another blood test just to make sure, but said that he was 95% sure that Andy didn't have a food allergy. We will find out the results from this 2nd blood test early next week. Andy didn't cry at all when his blood was drawn. All the nurses were stunned.

I will say that I have a lot more sympathy for those who deal with food allergies. After only a few weeks I've come to realize how hard it is to avoid some of these foods, and how stressful it is trying to come up with foods to eat that he will eat that are safe for him. He ate a lot of hot dogs, french fries, oatmeal, and pop tarts for the last part of the trip, just because I knew they were safe and he would eat them. It's was so sad to not let him eat something that he really wanted, because it had egg in it. Hopefully the tests will come back negative, but if not, I'll definitely be talking to those of you who have had more experience with this stuff.

That seems like a good place to end for today. Thanks Wayne and Carol for an awesome time at the cabin, even though the rain thwarted all of your best plans.

Part Three will be focus on our visit to Holland, Michigan for Mike's 10 year college reunion.

Brittany and Nicole (I think) tagged me by name, so I thought, what the heck, I'll do a couple of memes.

Passed on from Brittany:
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4 things I love about my husband:

1. I love hanging out with him. We get along together so well. He's a very easy person to live with, and truly a best friend.
2. I feel like I can tell him everything. And I do. Even those weird dreams that he probably doesn't even want to know about.
3. He loves our kids. It's so fun watching him interact with them.
4. I do not doubt that he loves me. He's always saying and doing things to show his love. He tells me all the time what I good mom and wife I am. He shows his love by doing things to help me, just because he knows I speak that love language. He likes to snuggle and watch movies, and is always begging for date nights. He is totally hot.

4 Movies I would watch more than once:

1. Harold and Maude
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. The Jerk
4. A Mighty Wind

4 TV shows I watch more than once:

1. The Office
2. Lost
3. Firefly
4. Buffy

4 Places I have been:

1. Europe
2. Maine
3. Alaska
4. I've driven to or through most states in the US

4 People who email me regularly:

1. Mike
2. My Mom
3. My brothers/sisters-in-law
4. Gosh, nobody, they just send me a message on Facebook. Stop making me feel like a loser :)

4 Favorite Foods:

1. Restaurant Morelia - My favorites are the chili verde burrito with cheese, the enchiladas, and the rice, but everything is so good!
2. Indian Food - Love the India House in Sandy, and the Bombay House
3. Chocolate Dipped Strawberries from Cummings Studio Chocolates (and any other high quality chocolate for that matter)
4. Homemade casseroles and nice warm comfort food.

4 Places I would like to visit:

1. Japan
2. Alaska (again!)
3. Hawaii
4. Maine (again!)

4 Things I am looking forward to this coming year:

1. We just paid off all our debt except our house, and I'm really looking forward to paying ourselves the money we used to pay other people.
2. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day. I love the holidays.
3. Spending time with my family and watching them grow.
4. Getting pregnant again. Kee Kee, just had to throw that in to see if Mike's paying attention :) We're currently undecided if we're going to stick with 3 or end with an even number. We need a few more months to clear our heads before we can think about it.

4 People I would like to tag:
1. Umm, I don't really know who reads my blog, and I have doubts that there are 4 people I could name, but if you like the questions, then, tag, you're it.


Passed on from Nicole:
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I was doing 10 years ago...
1. Having a total party time in the CS computer lab!
2. Not sleeping
3. I can't remember exactly when I got my internship with Unisys, so I was either working for them, or working at Restaurant Morelia and babysitting, possibly TAing as well. I was definitely working in the computer Mac lab in the Biology building. I did that most of my college career.
5. Hanging with and sometimes dating really cool people (hadn't officially met Mike yet though).

5 things on my to-do list today. (I'll say tomorrow since today is almost over)...
1. Continue to unpack/clean
2. Find a babysitter so Mike and I can have a much needed date night sometime soon.
3. Take Bruno (our dog) to get his haircut. (I'm glad I'm doing this meme, I almost forgot that I had to do that)
4. Exercise. For real. I'm thinking I might take the kids to my Mom and Dad's house and jog/walk on the treadmill. I had a routine of going over there before I had to get ready for the Michigan trip, and I'm ready to get back into it. (Thanks Mom and Dad for letting me use your house as a free gym!!)
5. Go to Wal-mart and get invitations for Autumn's upcoming birthday party. Also some face paint for Alex's spiderman costume. We also need to hit some 2nd hand stores to try and find some cowboy boots for Autumn's Hannah Montana costume.
6. Come to the realization that there is no way I'm getting all the above done in one day.

5 of my favorite snacks...
1. Hot cocoa (in the fall and winter)
2. Ice Cream
3. Popcorn - I usually do the Healthy Choice Kettle Corn now-a-days, but my mother-in-law got me hooked on the super buttery kind, so every once in a while I'll indulge in that too.
4. Lately we've been into the fruit smoothies - we usually do 2 cups of fruit and 1 can of diet pop. (I like to use diet 7-UP or raspberry Diet Rite), and sometimes I'll throw in some yogurt.
5. Banana Bread. Yum!

5 Jobs I've had...
1. Currently I'm a very very part time web developer and also the Grant Administrator for Citizens for a Safe future for Midvale
2. My first official job was at Burger King. I eventually became a Shift Supervisor.
3. One of my favorite jobs was working at a copy and print shop part time one summer.
4. I worked at Intel after I graduated from college for about a year and 1/2.
5. My least favorite job was selling Mary Kay makeup. I think I lasted the length of my pregnancy with Autumn. I love the product, and liked giving demos, but hated making phone calls and feeling like I had to move the product filling my office. I did like going to my weekly motivational meetings though. It definitely wasn't all bad.

5 things I would do with a million dollars...
1. Finish the Dave Ramsey baby steps.
2. Get new carpet
3. Get a new dishwasher
4. Get a Kitchen Aid mixer
5. Invest most of what's left, so it could generate some interest, baby!

5 things that made me laugh this week...
1. Autumn saying "Cheerio" to our neighbors when we left their house tonight.
2. Alex telling me, "I love you a billion and hate you 3... (pause)... that is not very much."
3. Andy's head bob dancing.
4. Mike driving the car and laughing out of control about something he heard on his IPod.
5. Bruno's beyond enthusiastic greetings after seeing me when we got home from our trip.

5 people I tag, to answer these same questions....
YOU!!

We are coming to the end of our 2 and 1/2 week trip to visit family in Michigan, and we have seen and done so much!

Part One of this blogging series is dedicated to the drive from West Jordan, Utah to Mason, Michigan. The drive took us two days, with an overnight stay in York, Nebraska.

The first day we left at 6 AM, and arrived in York, Nebraska thirteen hours later. The second day we were planning to leave the motel at about 7-8 AM, but due to some baby's (ours) inability to stay asleep, we ended up leaving at 6 AM. We took a few more stops this day, and ran into some road construction, so it was about thirteen and 1/2 hours later that we arrived in Mason, Michigan.

My kids are such amazing little travelers. As long as they had something to keep them occupied they were good natured the whole drive. Unfortunately with attention spans of about 10 minutes, I was constantly digging through and rotating activities. It was only for a brief moment when both boys were sleeping that I got a chance to rest and listen to my ipod.

I had the car packed with toys, books, and activities (thanks to some friends and http://www.momsminivan.com/toddlers.html for suggestions).

Here's me about 1/2 way through the drive, when all the activity stuff had migrated back to me, and I was squashed between a car seat and the mound of toys and activities.


New this year was a laminated map I made showing our route.



There are two maps, one for each day of traveling. The stars on the map were the cities where the kids could open a "surprise bag". The surprise bags were basically manila envelopes with a dollar store toy or two thrown in, decorated with stickers and the name of the city on the outside. Albertsons was also clearancing out some kids books right before we left, so a couple of the surprise bags had some cool books in them. Out of all the things I did for the drive, this was the best thing. Instead of only having our end destination to look forward to, we would count down miles until our next surprise bag city. And at each surprise bag city they would get something new to play with.

Here are the kids playing with some surprise bag items:



We also used a washable marker to keep track of where we were on the map. The kids could see our progress and how close we were to the next surprise bag city.



Anytime the kids asked how close we were, I'd just pull out the map and show them. It was nice to have a answer to that question.

We also had the luxury of portable DVD players and laptops. (Thanks Mom and Dad for letting us borrow players and movies!) For about 5 minutes while my laptop battery had juice we had 3 movies going at once.



I'm totally bummed that we didn't have this technology when I was growing up!

The boys also enjoyed a little synchronized sleeping:


We stopped at a cool rest stop just outside Joliet, Illinois. It had a neat little playground attached to it.







The highlight of the drive was an overnight stay in York, Nebraska. I made sure to book a hotel that had a pool, and the Holiday Inn there didn't disappoint.