This year we had the opportunity to go to Tennessee for Christmas to spend time with my family. It has been four years since we have been home for Christmas - before Gavin was born, so well overdue. It has been so wonderful to relax and spend time with family over the holidays (and also get a small dose of winter weather). The boys have both enjoyed being spoiled by Mamaw and Papaw and Uncle Stephen and Mark and I have enjoyed having extra hands to take care of them ;)
The flight here was as easy as can be with two kids. They both slept for most of all our legs - the flights from HI to East Coast are usually red eyes. Gavin has always done great on flights and his little brother certainly did amazing as well!
However, when we got here, Dylan got sick. Not having our pediatrician available certainly makes me appreciate him! We called their office on Monday (our first day here) and told them Dylan had a fever, had runny nose and eyes and was coughing. They advised us to take him to a doctor. (Easier said than done - most doctors don't just take drop ins). As the night went on, his fever wasn't going down so we decided to take him to the ER.
After spending nearly 4 hours (12 am to 4 am) in the ER and probably hundreds of dollars we were told Dylan has a cold. The kicker is that they did chest X-rays, drew blood, did urine analysis, and swabbed his nose for the flu - all to rule out every possible infection and after all of that they didn't even treat him! Their exact words were: "He needs tylenol to reduce the fever but we have a 300% mark up so you can give him some when you get home" I certainly appreciate their honesty and have to admit that I was glad that they checked him so thoroughly to rule out everything....but man, what an expensive trip to the doctor! Mark and I kept saying, "Dr. Ogawa (our pediatrician) would have taken about 5 minutes and told us he had a cold and the bill would be about $30". Oh well.....
Here are some pictures of the better moments of the trip (by the way, Dylan got much better each day and basically just has a stuffy nose now).
Gavin and Uncle Stephen baking cookies from scratch. They did a great job making them, forgot about them in the oven and Gavin quickly learned a new vocabulary word: Crunchy.
Gavin playing Wii bowling with Uncle Stephen and Jennifer. Gavin LOVED Jennifer- he woke up every day asking where she was and spent the entire day talking her ears off!
Dylan is getting to be such a big boy- playing in the walker. He only got to sit in here when his big brother wasn't in here pretending to drive around the house.
Mark and I also took advantage of having Grandparents here and had a date night. We planned on seeing "Little Fockers" after dinner, but halfway through dinner we realized we would need to rush to make the movie so we opted to enjoy our dinner and miss the movie. It was so nice to have a dinner where we could talk to each other and take our time! Thanks Mom and Dad!
Since we missed the movie on our date night, the whole family loaded up to go to a movie the day after Christmas. My parents, Stephen, and Gavin went to see Yogi Bear while Mark, Dylan, and I got to see Little Fockers. Well worth it - funny movie!
My parents bought Gavin a pair of snow boots a few days earlier because he kept playing with my boots around the house, so he had boots to play in. He didn't, however, have gloves. The smallest we could find were some of Stephen's from when he was about 12. Gavin didn't seem to mind, though ;)
