San Antonio

Craig and I were able to get away for a quick weekend to San Antonio.  We have had a trip planned to San Antonio a couple of different times, but something had always come up.  This time we were actually able to make it happen.  We flew out Thursday afternoon, Nov. 2nd and after our easy flights we just headed to our hotel downtown.  Friday morning after a workout and quick breakfast we headed to check out the Alamo.  We took an audio tour and it was fun to learn more about the history of the place and battle.  After the Alamo we walked over and down to the River Walk.  We grabbed some yummy Tex Mex and then explored the river walk.  It is such a beautiful little get away just in the heart of the city.  We then headed back to the hotel for a quick nap and then back out to the river walk to grab some bbq for dinner.  When we got back to the hotel room that evening Craig went to go turn on the bedside lamp and somehow that completely blew a fuse in our hotel room.  Maintenance had already gone home for the night, they offered to let us change rooms, but we didn't really feel like switching.  So we spent the rest evening reading with the flashlight from our phones.  Luckily the bathroom was on a different fuse so at least that light worked and so did the air conditioning.  

Saturday morning after breakfast we got ready to drive to Austin to go to the University of Texas football game.  Craig has always been a fan of Texas and we had been to a Texas vs. Ole Miss game back when we lived in Memphis.  Luckily we left early enough and already had parking set up, because the traffic into Austin was terrible.  I guess that is what happens when you have over 100,000 people all trying to get to one stadium. The stadium was huge compared to what we are used to at Boise State.  There were so many box suites around the entire stadium.  Luckily the weather was great, about the mid 70's. It got a little warm towards the end, but it definitely could have been worse.  Matthew McConaughey was in attendance, he watched the game from the field and the whole stadium even sang him Happy Birthday.  The atmosphere there was just electric.  Everyone in the stadium was standing the entire time.  It was loud and everyone was cheering and high fiving.  Luckily for us it was a great game, Texas won in overtime.  After the game we walked back to the parking garage and then sat in the car without being able to move for an hour.  We eventually made it out of the parking garage and slowly made our way to a restaurant that was recommended only for there to be a ridiculously long line so we just kept driving and at some point pulled of the interstate to grab some dinner.  We also had to make a pit stop at Buc-ee's.  We had heard many a things about Buc-ee's and they were all true.  It was the biggest convenience store I have ever seen.  We eventually made our way back to the hotel and our lights were working again in our room.  I headed to the gym for a quick workout to try to get rid of a headache and luckily it helped.

Sunday morning we were able to sleep in, which means like 7:30 for us.  We eventually went out to grab an early lunch before getting ready to go to the Spurs game.  I think we had PTSD from the parking and traffic situation from the day before so we wanted to try to avoid having to drive to the stadium.  We had seen a lot of the electric scooters around downtown so we thought that since the stadium was just a 3.5 mile straight shot from our hotel that we could just hop on a couple of those and ride them to the stadium.  Well it turns out that those scooters have a radius that we were unaware of.  We got just over 1.5 miles from our hotel and then they just gradually slowed down until they stopped.  Craig was able to pull up on the app that we were outside of the riding radius and so we had to push them back up a hill so that we could park them within the radius.  We then went on to walk almost 2 miles to the stadium through a fairly shady part of town.  It was a little bit warmer that day, so I was definitely sweating as we walked and of course there was not much traffic and there were a ton of cheap parking lots really close to the stadium.  We obviously didn't think about how many fewer people would be at the NBA game.  We made it to the stadium and cooled down and got to watch another great overtime game.  The Spurs lost, but it was still a lot of fun.  After the game we thought we would just have and Uber come pick us up.   We figured we would walk outside the stadium to like a gas station or something so it would be easier for them to pick us up.  Well, the price for the Uber kept getting higher the closer we walked to the hotel.  We eventually made it back to where we had left our scooters.  Luckily they were still there, so we hopped back on and made our way back to the hotel.  It was was quite the adventure.  Luckily we made it back before it got dark.  Once we got back we headed to the River Walk one last time for dinner.

Monday it was time for us to head back home.  Our flight wasn't until midday so we were able to get a workout in and get packed up without being rushed.  We had easy flights back home.  We both finished the books we were reading.  It was good to get back to the kids.  They had a great time with Craig's parents.  So glad to have family that is willing to hangout with our kiddos while we are gone and go above and beyond to make them feel loved and safe.  The kids love spending the night at their grandparents.  It was fun to finally get this trip in.  I love when we stay places that we can walk to almost everywhere we want to go.  We always got all our steps in.  It was a fun city and it was very clean.  Fun to go, but always great to get back home!

McKay's Surgery

 McKay has been snoring for quite a while (like enough so that no one wants to share a room with him) and we decided to get it checked out, knowing that if he needed to get his tonsils removed now would be a good time.  We went into the ENT on Oct. 11th and they did a scope up through his nose, which he was not a fan of, but they were able to get a good look at his tonsils and adenoids.  They were both definitely bigger than usual so they decided to get him scheduled for surgery.  I also had them look at his nose because he gets so many bloody noses.  They told me they don't usually cauterize kids noses that young, but after she took a look she said he had a huge blood vessel on each side and that they would go ahead and get it taken care of during surgery.  They were able to schedule him for surgery just 8 days later on Oct. 19th.  I wasn't expecting it to be so soon, but it was nice to just get it done with.  I definitely had a little anxiety since neither of our kids had ever even been to urgent care or the hospital.  

Wednesday afternoon they called to let me know that he was to show up to the surgery center at 11:00am.  He wasn't supposed to eat anything after midnight and in the morning he could only drink water and gatorade and eat jello until 9:00am.  He did surprising well with that.  He didn't whine or complain at all about being hungry.  We drove downtown to the surgery center and got all checked in.  They got us back to the pre-op room and a bunch of people came in and out to tell us about everything that was going to happen, everyone was great with McKay and he was very calm about it all.  They had him change into a gown and even had him decorate the mask that he was going to use to put him to sleep.  They had coloring stuff for him, we played card games and just hung out until they were ready for him.  He did not seem nervous at all when they rolled him off, he even told them a joke about butt cracks as they took him back.

The surgery was super quick, only about 30 minutes.  The doctor came to let me know that everything went well and then they came to get me once McKay was starting to wake up.  When I got back to the post-op room with him he was pretty out of it and was not wanting to wake up.  The nurse finally got him to wake up enough to take a drink of apple juice.  It took him another 20 minutes or so to finally wake up.  As he was waking up the nurse gave me all the instructions about his post-op care and they brought me all of his prescriptions.  Once he had drank enough, they took out his IV and we were able to get him dressed and they wheeled him out to the parking garage.  He was still fairly out of it and slept most of the way home.  I had a bowl in the car just in case he needed to throw up.  I wasn't sure how he would handle the anesthesia and was prepared for him to throw up.  Once we got home he finally woke up and was wide awake the rest of the day.  I thought he would be totally drowsy and kinda out of it, but he was totally awake and was completely bored with just sitting around all evening.  Grandma came to visit and drop off popsicles and smoothies.  His throat got a little more sore once the big medications started to wear off, but he was doing really really well.  I was instructed to alternate giving him tylenol and IB profen every 3 hours.  He was not a fan of me waking him up in the night, but we got it done. 

We gave him his steroid meds Friday and Saturday morning and kept up with the tylenol and IB profen.  He was doing so amazingly well, it was like nothing had even happened.  Friday he was so bored with me, luckily Nana stopped by for a visit.  Saturday we went out to Brooklyn's soccer game and it was hard to keep him from running around.  He was instructed to not run around and get breathing hard for 14 days after surgery, which I figured would be the hardest part of recovery.  Sunday morning he woke up a little more sore, but still came to church with us.  Sunday evening he was wanting to get back to school, so I had emailed his teacher that he would be into school in the afternoon, well Monday morning he woke up in tears.  This was the first time he had cried or even complained about anything.  His throat was so sore, he didn't want to eat or talk, so I did my best to just get him to drink.  The next few days continued like this.  The only thing I could really get him to eat was plain bread and he would wake up a time or two in the night really sore, it felt like I had a newborn again.  Thursday morning he was starting to feel a little better and I was able to get him to eat a little more.  I dropped him off at school for the afternoon.  He was a little nervous, but I assumed having the distraction of school would actually be good for him.  He came home and said it went pretty well and so on Friday we sent him to school for a full day.  That evening he even went to a Halloween party with his friends.  He was still sore for a few more days, but was finally sleeping better and eating more. I think we were both happy to have him back at school, I don't think I can play another game of Go Fish for quite some time.   At about the 2 week mark he was feeling pretty much back to normal and he was so excited to run around again and be active.  He was such a great patient and really his complaining was very minimal.  I am so glad that it is all behind us now and that he is totally back to normal.  He is so happy to be eating normally again and able to run around and be his active self.  I am so glad that everything went smoothly and grateful to know that he handles general anesthesia well.  Fingers crossed we won't have any more surgeries/hospital outings anywhere in the near future.