Vacation, Kidney Stones, and other stuff

We got home from vacation late Thursday night. It was SO nice to get away.
We went to Preston, Idaho (yes, home of Napoleon Dynamite) to visit my family. It was a LOOONNNNGGG drive! We decided to go the entire way in ONE day. We left our house at about 4:30am and didn't get there until nearly 11:00pm. With two kids, I was expecting the worst. But they were actually very well behaved. Thank goodness for portable DVD players!
But, I was sure that the kids would sleep for a lot of the trip. But they didn't. In fact, each of them only slept for about an hour the entire way! At different times, of course - to make my life a little more difficult.
I managed to catch a picture of Zander during his nap, using his AWESOME travel pillow I got from GoldToneDesigns. I got one for Ady too, but never managed to catch a picture of her using it.

Zander used to always wake up with a kink in his neck when he fell asleep in the car. He doesn't get that with this pillow! I like them so much, I might have to get one for myself!

Anyway, it was so much fun to spend time with family.
The kids with Grandma and Grandpa
Playing in the sand with some cousins (and other kids) at a church party



















And, I went to my 10 year high school reunion. It's amazing how much some people have changed.... And others, haven't.

---

It was VERY hard to come back home to the heat. I was worried that I'd have terrible morning sickness with traveling. Thankfully, I didn't! But, as soon as we got back to Phoenix, and I stepped out into the heat - ICK! It is NO fun to be pregnant when it's 115°.

Then, after we'd been home a couple days, and when we thought things were getting back to normal... My husband started having a terrible pain in his side. He has Crohn's Disease, and he's had kidney stones before, but he said this didn't feel anything like that. And his urine had turned an unnatural, deep red. So, I rushed him to the Emergency Room. (I'm so thankful for wonderful friends who were willing to take care of my children for me so I could go without worrying about them!)
After a few tests, it was determined that Brandon did in fact have a kidney stone. But, unlike the one's he'd had in the past, this one was 9mm (HUGE), and not going anywhere. There was nothing more they could do for us in the ER, so he was sent home with lots of pain killers and told to call a urologist.
He went to the urologist this morning, and found out that he will have to have surgery sometime next week to have it removed. Yippee. In the meantime, he is living on Vicoden and just trying to survive.