California, Here We Come!

Last week we went to California. Mom and Dad have a time share at Carlsbad, outside San Diego, and Phil, Janice and Cousin Zach live in Poway, also outside San Diego. We flew to Los Angeles, and drove down to Carlsbad. It would be a fun place to live, but oh my goodness, to drive in that traffic would be unbelievable. One time during our visit we know there was some kind of wreck that interrupted traffic, but the rest of the time, it was just traffic. Simply awful. But that aside, we had a great time.

Well, mostly great time. We got there on a Wednesday afternoon. That morning Carson had a little cough and seemed to feel a bit off. By evening, he was starting to wheeze. Called his pediatrician, and Sandy and I were at a 24 hour Rite Aid getting Albuterol at 10:30 at night. But by morning, he was much better, and by the next day it was mostly gone.

The pool at Carlsbad was closed, which turned out to be a good thing for Carson, cause it forced him to the beach. He had so much fun! Running in and out of the edge of the water, building sand castles, getting buried, basically acting crazy. Zach is 18 months younger, and was it ever Monkey See, Monkey Do. Zach would always do just what Carson did. Sandy said it was just like watching Steve and Phil. Same size, same hair. Carson is so funny - he'll talk about Zach to us, but I don't think I hardly saw him talking *to* Zach! But they sure played together.

We went to the San Diego Zoo on Friday, and got to see the pandas. They were really cool. Absolutely looked like someone in a bear suit. It's a great zoo, and one nice thing is a tram that crosses the zoo. We rode that back to meet Mom and Dad and leave. Saturday Carson, Steve and I headed downtown for a while. We parked right close to the water, and wandered around there a while. Carson got to sword fight with a pirate. We went to Little Italy (still don't quite get it) for lunch, then drove to Phil's for supper. Sunday we met to play in a park then eat lunch, then were heading to Los Angeles to spend the night. When we went in to eat, I saw that Carson's face was breaking out and he was rubbing his eye. It didn't take long to start swelling like crazy. We gave him a benadryl, and called the allergist. He said to give him another benadryl, then one every four hours till he was okay, and to go immediately to be seen if he started having respiratory problems. Just great. Poor little guy was hanging in there. We looked at the trains there, then headed to LA. He fell asleep almost immediately. We hoped when he woke up the eye would be much better, but it was almost swollen shut still. Looked like a boxer. But he was feeling pretty good.

We stayed at Santa Monica Beach, and headed to Santa Monica pier to ride the rides. Carson loved the bumper cars best. They had a "Kids Cove" with rides just for the little ones. We mostly stayed there, except for the Ferris Wheel and the Sea Dragon. This was his first ride on a ferris wheel, and he really liked it. The Sea Dragon is one of those rides that looks like a ship, and it swings back and forth, getting progressively higher. At some point Steve poked me - he was almost in tears! That little lip was shaking. It was pretty scary, but he made it without crying. He also did NOT want to ride it again.

After several hours, we found some dinner at a really good Italian place, then headed to bed. The next day we spent some time on the beach before heading to the airport. The beach there was so deep! I don't think I'd ever been on a beach that deep. It was neat being out there with almost no one else. Carson's eye was still swollen a bit, but at least he didn't look like a prize fighter any more.





So our traveling was really smooth this time. Carson slept on both flights, and slept on both long car rides. So a super time had by all.

And a big congratulations to our pregnant Janice! We can't wait till November!