Our Family Trip (its a long one)

I'm losing sleep over this so feel lucky! Its on my to-do list & since this week is so crazy, I figured I'd better get it down before the details are gone!!
Thursday even Joey, Grant, and I drove to Pendleton for 3 hours (about half way to our destination), in hopes that it would help break up the drive and kind of give us an extra night and day of vacation. I didn't give Grant a nap that day in hopes he'd sleep in the car since we planned to leave shortly after nap time anyway. Well... he didn't sleep a wink! He just talked, played, and whined the whole way. It made me pretty nervous for the rest of the trip. His grandparents bought him a dvd player for the road and it seemed to help here and there, but he was more interested in how it worked and kept pushing all the buttons! lol Right before we got there, I found the "hold" button. Awesome. Atleast it wasn't when we got home though, right? Anyway, we got to our hotel and I was pretty taken back. I booked it online and the pictures were so deceiving. They made it look pretty decent and their pool looked like it was inside. I planned to be able to take Grant swimming to wear him out before bed, but the pool was outside and it was too cold. Double awesome. We got in our room and it was literally the size of Grant's bedroom plus a tiny bathroom and dark shower. It smelled like a whole bottle of old lady perfume/air freshener stuff and the bed was so stiff. We tried to cancel our reservation, but our card had already been charged, thanks to stupid expedia.com. We decided to go get ice cream then came home to go to bed. Bedtime was quite the challenge. Grant doesn't sleep anywhere, but his crib. Even when he's sick, he prefers to be in his crib. He never falls asleep anywhere else except sometimes in the car if he's totally wiped out. We brought the pack and play, a sheet, and some tacs (thinking we'd maybe try to section off part of the room). Well that was out of the question as soon as we saw the room, but we tried to lay him in the pack and play anyway. I knew it wouldn't work and it didn't so we let him get in our bed and that didn't work either. We told him to pick where he wanted to sleep, but either way it was bedtime and he went back and forth a bunch. Finally, after crying in our bed for about an hour, he fell asleep. At 330 he was wide awake and ready to get up. Joey finally figured out he was scared that we were going to put him in the pack n play when he fell asleep so he had to take it down and put it away before Grant would go back to sleep. We were able to get a few more hours before it was time to get up. We stopped for breakfast and met up with Pop pop & Grammy (Joey's parents) then hit the road head towards Salem.
It was a 4 1/2 hour drive to Salem. Grant did really good and fell asleep a couple hours into it. He slept over an hour and when he woke up we stopped for gas and a potty break. He decided to ride with Grammy & Pop pop the rest of the way (the last 40 minutes). We went to Enchanted Forest Theme Park and Grant loved it! It was a really neat, fun place for kids. It had alot of different animation of different nursery rhymes including the full house or castle the story talked about and the characters acting out inside of it. Its hard to explain. There was alot of tunnels to climb through, rides, and shows. The pictures on my facebook help show what it was like. His favorite part was probably when he got to "drive" a train around and his own bumper boat. Grant loved it and we spent most of the day there then headed to our hotel in Vancouver.
Luckily, I did a way better job picking that hotel and it seemed like some luxury hotel compared to the other (not really luxury though lol). We went out for pizza then ice cream and came back to go to bed. We didn't even bother with the pack n play at all. Grant took a little while to finally go to sleep, but once he did, he slept a good 9 hours in our bed.
The next day was his 2nd birthday and we got up bright and early to go to the Motocross National in Washougal. Grant seemed really sleepy on the drive and I wasn't quite sure how he would do, but figured he was just tired for the last couple days. Right as we were pulling into the track, he threw up all over himself! I felt so bad for him and was so afraid he was sick and we'd have to leave! Luckily, he shaped right up and we had a change of clothes for him. We cleaned up the carseat the best we could with wipes and headed into the race. He acted fine all day so I'm thinking it was a combination of excitement, lack of sleep, nothing but milk on his stomach, and maybe a little car sickness. We had alot of fun watching the races and Grant was in heaven. It worked out perfect that it was on his birthday. He told every stranger that he could that he was two and wanted them to sing to him. It was hilarious! Part way into the race we realized we were standing right next to Ryan Dungey's mom and girlfriend. Pretty cool, especially since he won! By the end, Grant was pretty sleep and actually fell asleep in his stroller. That seriously NEVER happens! He slept all the way back to the car and the whole drive back to the hotel. As soon as we got to our room and tried to lay him down he started to look around and got up. He had the funniest expression and started saying "Bye bye" with his hands up and it took me a minute to figure out that he was asking when in the world we went bye bye from the motorcycles and how we got back to the hotel! lol He had puked on his dotey (his little blanket w/ tags that he doesn't go anywhere without) so luckily they had an expensive onsite laundry mat and we were able to wash it. We cleaned up and went to Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner since spaghettie is his favorite food. We had an amazing dinner and Grant just loved being sang to and especially blowing out his candle. :) We headed back to the hotel and were all just exhausted. Luckily, Grant was too (or had gotten used to things) and went to bed with us like a champ! We slept in a little longer the next morning then headed for the Portland Zoo. We had to ride a shuttle in since it was so busy. I knew that meant it must be good and it was! It made the Boise Zoo seem pretty lame, really. They had three different kinds of bear including Polar Bear and had alot of them. They had sea otters, crocodiles, hippos, lions, tigers, cheetah, elephants, owls, eagles, pigs, giraffes, zebra, deer, tons of different monkeys, frogs and turtles, and many more I'm forgetting. They also had a dino walk with huge animated dinosaurs and Grant thought it was pretty cool! The whole thing was just really neat and I think we all enjoyed it as much as Grant did.
After a full day there, we headed home. Grant slept the first half of the drive so that made it much easier and did really well the second half. He got fussy and impatient the last hour or so, but that was kind of expected. We didn't get home until after 11 and we were all so tired. We unloaded the car and left everything to unpack for the next day. I was worried Grant would want to sleep with us, but he went to bed no problem. I think he missed his crib. Joey, luckily, took Monday off to be able to recover.
I still think we are trying to recover though! It was such a busy weekend and now a busy week! I have finals for both my summer classes and they are pretty time consuming. On top of that, I need to clean and get the rest of the Grants party stuff ready for Saturday and theres a million other to-dos too! I also have to baby showers to go to this weekend. I'm excited for all of that! Next week I'm working full-time to fill in for someone then I'm really looking forward to my two weeks off before Fall semester starts. Ughhh.

Here I go... :/

I went in to do the "hire process" at my new job today. I will be doing CNA work doing prn until they can get my regular shifts. It will be 15 or less hours a week which is enough for me to handle. Between that & school, I guess I can no longer call myself a "stay-at-home" mom. :( That makes me really sad! I have to take this job so that my license doesn't expire for my RN application this Spring & the work experience is extra points. Its going to be really hard for me to leave my baby so much more, but I know he is in good hands. Between my mom, MIL, & Joey, he still won't be in daycare which is such a blessing since we cannot afford that unless I work full-time. Now its going to be all about time management. How am I going to juggle everything? Just finding the time for class, homework & studying while being a mom, wife, & homemaker was stressful enough & now I throw work into it. I see alot of thrown together meals or Joey learning to cook in the near future!!! I hope its not too hard on Grant & that we come up with something pretty consistent for him so he's not being juggled around. I hope I don't wear his grandmas out too bad. I also hope Joey can manage the evenings or nights without me. He works on average 60 hours a week so the evenings are usually pretty laid back until now! I'm just stressing. I know it will all work out fine. I am excited to be back in the work place a little & to get alot of different experience. Oh & of course to find cute scrubs to wear! :)
More than anything, I feel so blessed to have spent the first two years of my sons life at home with him (besides school of course). That is time I will never regret or forget & it was worth every stressful situation I will have to face. I am so lucky to have had the oppurtunity to spend that time raising our baby & focusing on school. I have my husband to thank for working his butt off so that I could do that. Money is tight, but again... it is more than worth it! I also have to thank my MIL & mom who have helped with Grant while I go to school. What a blessed life this is!!!

Dad's surgery

My dad was finally able to have his surgery on Thursday. For those who don't know (& mostly for documentation), my dad has suffered from diverticulits for a long time. Over the last couple years, it had gotten bad enough that it was causing "holes" in his colon. Every month or so, he have some pretty serious stomach pain and could kind of control it with medicine that he would take for about a week. Last year over Labor Day Weekend, him & my mom were in Brownley camping with friends when he all of a sudden was in horrible pain & had my mom take him to the ER. They admitted him because he was fighting some serious infection in his gut because of the holes in his colon. He spent about two weeks to overcome all that & when he left, he was told that as soon as the infection was gone, he needed to have a good chunk of his colon removed (the part with the holes). A month or so later he went in to have the surgery, but instead the doctor came running out of the OR to get my mom & tell her to meet them in the ER because they thought my dad was having a heart attack. It turned out to be something called an aeortic flutter & after meetings with a cardiologist, he was able to control it with medicine, but the told him his heart just wasn't strong enough for surgery yet. He finally was given the go ahead for surgery, but in the meantime he had another huge flare up & they had to wait until that cleared up to operate. The surgery was only supposed to take 3 hours & it took 7! The doctor said he had alot more work than he expected. The first couple hours was spent cutting through scar tissue due to his appendix rupture 7 years ago were they had to rush to get him open (leaving him with a vertical scar from his belly button down). He said he was just long overdue for this surgery & his colon was litterally like cutting cement so that was part of the extra time too. We all waited in his room for him to come out of recovery & when he did, it was hard to see. He was in ALOT of pain & sounded like he was giving birth (that part was a little funny). They gave him double & half pain meds & he was finally able to go to sleep... after about 30 minutes of chewing out the nurses. He consistantly got better & was able to come home yesterday & celebrate the 4th with us. He is still in some pretty bad pain & cannot wait to have a real meal... he's gone back & forth between soft & liquid diets for the last month! We are just happy it is down with & now he is finally on the road to recovery!!!