Saturday, November 04, 2006

Our Trip to the Doctor

Our trip to the doctor in CA had a couple of detours along the way. One was intentional. We stopped in SLC for a few days to meet our new nephew, Reese. Isn't he a cutie? The first morning there, however, my sister and I received a call telling us our 93 year old grandpa had died. We were very close to Grandpa so we immediately started trying to figure out how to get to the funeral in South Dakota.




We all managed to take a break from our planning and packing to take the train to downtown SLC that night, Friday, the 13th, in which we went to a "The End" party at Barnes and Noble. For those of you in the dark, this was the release day of the last Lemony Snicket Beaudalaire series books.

Grandpa's picture is taken just a few weeks before he died. He's celebrating his 75th class reunion at the homecoming Alumni Banquet! Earlier in the summer he was honored to be the Grand Marshall of the parade celebrating our hometown's 125th birthday. Grandpa went out in style, I'd say. I already miss him, but am grateful that he is not battling old age any longer and is enjoying the streets of glory in Heaven.

Brady started being in a lot of pain while we were in S.D. and we actually cut that visit shorter than planned as well and got to the doctor in California. Thankfully, Brady felt relief soon after his treatment and Erin and I didn't need a treatment. Yahoo! We ended up being in California two full days longer than we needed to be (due to all of our crazy flight schedule changes) so we were able to get out a few afternoons for short jaunts.
We stayed with dh's Aunt Dorothy and she treated us to a couple of parks that were really close to her and didn't require an all day commitment: Legoland and the Wild Animal Park.



Legoland amazed us. In Miniatureland, USA, five cities were represented with buildings (all of Legos) 1/20th of the original buildings size.



Pictured here, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, and a life size elephant spouting water.






The paragliding was near my dh's cousin's gift shop.





At the Wild Animal Park, the baby elephant said "hi" to us, flapping his ears. He was born September 11th.

Part of the fun of being in California is seeing all the exotic plants. I just love "Birds of Paradise."






The surfers were at a beach near Aunt Dorothy's. My original picture turned out rather dark, as smoke had swept in from the bad fire near Palm Springs that afternoon. Brady to the rescue! Thanks to his creative abilities with Photoshop, this picture turned out quite cool!

Let us also give tribute to another highlight of our trip: following the Cardinals to and through the World Series. Gotta love those Cards, World Series Champions!

And one last highlight, go to Erin's blog to read about another fun event we went to in CA.

We were gone 17 days. That's a lot for three invalids! I can't give enough thanks to all of our relatives that helped us in so many ways on this trip - in Utah, South Dakota and California. We didn't eat out once, can you believe it? (Which is great, because right now, as you may know, with our allergies it isn't safe for us to.) Thanks a million for the grocery shopping, washing the dishes, the wonderful hospitality, the rides to and from airports, the entertainment treats, the cars, etc. Also thanks to friends back at home who prayed for us and "held down the fort." We were truly blessed by your faithful love in action.

6 comments:

Sherry said...

Thanks Erin for doing all the work with getting the photos on and straight for this post. M

Anonymous said...

Yes, getting to watch every game of the world series and the CARDs winning helped make my vacation/dr.visits more fun. We do have some great relatives!
Brent/Dad

Erin said...

I can't get over how cute Reese is. . . !

Thanks for the trip recap, Mom. Oh, and you're welcome. ;)

Acting Gal said...

WOW!!! That's an amazing account of your trip!!!

I'm so sorry about your grandfather. I know how it is to lose a loved one, very hard.

Reese.is.so.CUTE!!!!!
It's so cool that you guys went to Legoland! It was really fun talking to Erin and finding out that she had seen the same sights I had years ago, when I went...

GO CARDSS!!!! Mom really wanted them to win, after the dodgers got kicked out...

So glad that you all are back!!

Anonymous said...

:D that was me....

Dorothy Plaza BSN, RN, DPP Master Trainer said...

Glad that you got to do some "sight seeing" :). Congrats on the Cardinal's winning the WS! I would have loved to seen the games in TV.