Thanksgiving: to travel or not to travel?

 We almost didn't get to go.  In the week leading up to our planned trip to New York to spend Thanksgiving with my family Ethan came down with a case of the dreaded Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease which he picked up in the church nursery.  If you know anything about HFMD, you know it's incredibly contagious.  The problem is, it's most contagious before you know you've got it.  As soon as we knew what we were dealing with we sent Addison away to Grandma and Grandpa Gafford's house to try to limit her exposure.  We thought just maybe we could get away without her catching it.  But then we got the call on Saturday night that she'd gotten sick and was running a fever.  Oh great, here we go.  At this point, we didn't really need to worry about Ethan sharing HFMD with his cousins over Thanksgiving, but if Addison was getting it, maybe we were going to need to cancel our trip.  On Sunday she continued feeling ill and running a fever all day but still hadn't broken out in any blisters.  Shortly before bedtime however, her fever broke and she was returning to her normal perky chatty self.  And still no blisters.  Hmmm....  What are the odds that she got sick exactly 3 days after Ethan with something different than what he had.  Surely the blisters were on their way still.  We had been planning on leaving on Tuesday morning.  There's no way we should still make this trip and risk infecting the cousins with this virus.

All the while at the same time we were (and still are) having issues with our dog Allie.  She can not seem to satisfy her thirst for water and consequently is needing to go out at least hourly.  After a urinalysis and bloodwork last Saturday, the vet had no explanation for her behavior.  Our plan had been for her to stay at our house and have some friends come let her out periodically.  That's not really going to be a practical solution for a dog that needs to go out HOURLY.   Neither is making a 9.5 hour roadtrip with the dog.  What to do?

Monday morning I stepped out of bed into a puddle of dog pee.  Great, Allie had an accident in the night. Ugh.  I cleaned up the mess with our trusty Spot Bot and while dumping out the dirty water some of it spilled on my pants and shoe.  Gross.  I then went up to get Ethan out of bed and he had completely soaked through his diaper and pajamas.  Great, more pee.  Addison woke up still fever and blister free and with an interest in eating (which she hadn't had in about 36 hours).  Unfortunately after 3 bites of Rice Krispies she threw up all over the kitchen floor.  Come on!  It's not even 9:00!  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Addison was dealing with.  Aside from the complete lack of blisters, her symptoms had been just like Ethan's.  But where are the blasted blisters?!?   And why is my dog peeing so much?!  I just want to spend Thanksgiving with my family, why on Earth does it feel like we're just not supposed to go?

Tuesday morning I finally got to talk to a nurse on the phone about Addison and she convinced me that it was highly unlikely that Addison had the same thing as Ethan and she must have just had some other bug.  She'd been fever free since Sunday night and her appetite was back and she'd been keeping food down.  David's parents (bless their hearts!) volunteered to take on the burden of Allie so that we could go.  Unbelievable.  After all of that, we were actually going to be able to make it to my parents' house!

So we left bright and early Wednesday morning and drove ALL DAY until we pulled into my parents' driveway around 5:30, just in time for dinner.  The kids were amazing the whole way.  I seriously can't believe how well Ethan did riding in the car for so long.  What a good boy!

We had such a great time.  David asked me along the way what I was looking forward to the most and my answer was: laughing.  I really, really just needed to laugh.  I got to do a lot of that this weekend.  It felt so good.

I didn't take very many pictures since I was too busy laughing, but here are just a few...

For some reason Addison was determined to be able to eat her turkey off the bone.  So we obliged.  In the end she determined it was just too hot that way so we pulled it off the bone anyway. :)

Ethan snuggled up with Uncle Matt to read a book.

We were able to sneak in a super quick visit with Addison's birth parents Josh and Nicole (and future brother Caleb!).  It's always fun to see them; just wish Addison hadn't been so exhausted from all the fun she'd been having with her cousins. :)

It was a fabulous break away from reality for a few days.  The only thing that could have made it better is if my older brother Mike and kids could have joined us as well.  They were missed indeed!