St George

We decided to go visit my grandparents in St. George before all the holiday visitors started coming and before the weather got iffy enough that we might hit a storm driving down. I went back and forth at the end trying to decide if we should go or not. Here's the story.

My friend, Jamie, and I are playing indoor soccer and I got hit really hard with a ball on Monday night. In general I'm pretty tough physically so when I say hard, I mean REALLY FREAKING HARD!! She was maybe 5 feet away from me and had a killer kick. I think she meant it to go over me, but it hit me right in the face. Not the head, the face. I honestly thought I had broken my nose and it was probably gushing blood. I couldn't feel my lips for 20 minutes. I kid you not, they were completely numb. It's never happened to me before, but it was strange. I pulled myself together and played the rest of the game, but I was for sure feeling it. The rest of the week I had a headache that would not stop.

Thursday when I still had a horrible headache, I actually went into the doctor. He said it was a pretty common side affect of a head injury and just told me to keep taking motrin and not to play until the headaches stopped since a compound head injury is really bad. I had all but decided to postpone the trip until after the holidays when the cards didn't seem so stacked against me. But then my grandma called and was seeing which day we would be coming and I talked to my mom, who said I should be fine and a vacation would be good for me...so I talked myself back into the trip. Bad idea.

We left Friday morning-ish and I was not feeling great. I thought it was medicine and caffeine on a relatively empty stomach. We stopped at a rest stop and I threw up...but it was mainly my drink so no big deal. I thought that would solve the problem and was cursing myself for not taking better care of myself physically. We grabbed subway for lunch and headed down the road. NOPE! We had to pull over a couple towns later, where I lost my entire lunch and then some. Not pretty. The baby was fussy, we lost her binkie somewhere along the way, the kids were whining about who knows what. Um, yeah, we should have turned around at that point and called it a day. But no. We carried on, assuming I really was just car sick and reacting to all the weird factors. But I felt like crap. And mommy not feeling well when the kids are off their routine and extra needy is not a good thing.

Saturday we got up and went hiking, Marcos took the kids to the tennis court while I took a nap with the baby and then we went to see Megamind at the theatre. Marissa screamed for grandma (another overly tired incident) and Preston was antsy and wiggly at the movie. Stupid expensive 3D movie! It was good, but not worth $30 for a matinee with a wiggly 3 year old. I should have stayed home with Preston and just sent Marcos and Dylan. Not great, but overall a decent day...

And then night hit. Dylan threw up all his dinner. We pulled off all the sheets, cleaned it up and started over. Thankfully I had the presence of mind to ask grandma for a bowl because he was up every hour that night throwing up. One of those horrible bugs where you throw up even when there's nothing left in your stomach. He finally was so sick of it that he went and laid on the ground in the bathroom and asked me to bring him a pillow and blanket. So sad. He was so sweet though. He kept looking up at me and thanking me for coming in to help him while he was sick. Makes it worth it somehow. :) So I was up twice with the baby and seven times with Dylan that night. Nice!

We almost left Dylan home to watch a movie with grandpa at home and took the rest of the family to church, but I had a feeling... Instead I left Marcos at home with the boys and took Marissa with me and grandma. Thank goodness I did because Preston lost his breakfast soon after we left. That would have been a DISASTER in the chapel! I did thoroughly enjoy a very quiet three hours at church, although I was exhausted from basically not sleeping the night before. Luckily it was easy to get a nap in with sick kids sleeping all over the house. YIKES!

Poor grandma! She is such a good hostess. She's really good at having people over and can cook like there's no tomorrow. And very few of us could eat much of anything. Plus she's very clean so having people throw up all over her house was probably not her favorite thing either. I felt so bad. I wanted to just leave, but having kids throw up driving home didn't sound great either.

Monday we were all feeling better for the most part. We packed up and headed out around 11, but ended up stopping to see the dinosaur tracks they discovered down there since we hadn't done too much during our trip. It was actually pretty cool. And we stopped at a little restaurant in Nephi on the way home that had these cool trains throughout the restaurant. The kids really liked that too. Not our best trip, but what to do you do? I'm just hoping grandma and grandpa don't catch our stomach bug.

The first night we set a trap to catch a raccoon. We caught one a couple trips ago and Dylan loved it. Nope, just the stray cat that wanders through their yard. :) At least I captured a cute picture of grandma and Marissa!

Hiking. Probably the highlight of my trip. I LOVE hiking and so do the kids. And it's much easier with Marcos there to keep track of Preston when we're close to a cliff. I still felt a little gross, but not bad. Oh, and Preston LOVED this little fishing pole and fish my grandparents had. It's the one thing that saved us while he was sick. We'd just distract him with something about catching fish and he'd go back to doing that instead of begging for food when he couldn't eat anything.

Sunday night Dylan was feeling better so he and Marcos hiked up a little trail close by and waved down at us. They took a good picture of the temple too. But pretty much most of the pictures looked like the other three...lots of crazy hair, sleeping, red cheeks from fevers and pajamas. Oh, except Preston LOVED the chalk board in my grandparents spare bedroom too. One day he would run out and tell me what letter he drew, then run back and draw another. That kept him busy for quite awhile...all in a diaper just in case he threw up again.

Dinosaur tracks and such at the Johnson farm. Kind of cool to see. We only spent about 45minutes there since we were on our way out of town, but it was fun.

Trains at JC Mickelson's in Nephi

The food was nothing to write home about, but it was a fun atmosphere and we had the restaurant to ourselves which was awesome. We could let the boys kind of wander and see the trains without worrying about bothering anyone.