We're Back!!

How do I explain a trip that feels weeks long, but was actually only 4 days? Let's first start with the morning we leave. We left much later than planned and hit the road around 10am. We ended up stopping for a late lunch in Barstow CA at a small 50s style diner. Gavin having been in the motor home for a few hours was not ready to sit down for lunch. I ended up chasing him around for an hour while the rest of the family had a nice sit down meal... I had thought after my husband or MIL had finished eating they would switch off and let me eat, but for some reason no one thought to come help me. In the end they got my burger and Gavin's nuggets to go and we ate on the road.

The heat as we got near Las Vegas was unbearable. The motor home has AC as long as we turn the generator on for the extra power. Well after about 20 minutes of nice AC the generator started failing and shutting off. So while driving through death valley it got to a nice roasting 120 degrees in the motor home. We all layed around half comatose and poured cold water on ourselves to survive. The heat finally let up around 9:30pm at night. Another issue we hadn't realized was that in the motor home going up the grapevine as well as other steep mountainous areas we had to go as slow as 30 miles an hour. Even going on straight aways and down hill we can't get much faster than 55mph, SOO this added an extra few hours on our trip. Instead of 4-5 hours to Las Vegas it took us almost 8 hours. By 10 or 11pm we were just hitting Utah and all very sick and tired of being stuck in the overheated boat. We all just wanted to get to Provo and get a break from the motion sickness. Finally we arrived at Jon's Aunt's home around 2am Thursday morning. Gavin who had slept most of the trip due to the constant shaking and motion of the motor home woke up bright and early at 6am so I may have gotten around 3 hours of sleep that night. Everyone else slept right on through the morning.

Thursday around 2pm we meet up the whole Degn clan. Let me explain just a little about my husband's family. We had driven to visit Susan, his father's sister (Jon's Aunt). She had 12 kids, but 2 passed away so Jon has 10 cousins, just from that one aunt! His family IS HUGE! Probably due to the fact that they are Mormon, but who knows for sure. Anyway out of those 10 cousins they have 34 kids. Sooo Gavin got to meet tons of his 3rd cousins? However they are all related there were a lot of kids to play with. We met up with about half of the clan at a Provo Waterpark and spent the afternoon there. I would like to say it was a blast but with all of us tired and Gavin being too young to enjoy the water slides it wasn't as fun as it could have been. We went inner tubing a few times and got to chat with the family so all in all it went well.

I should probably do a better job at making this story shorter so I'll try and jump through the details. Gavin starting getting a fever and didn't eat much at all on the drive up (we assumed because of motion sickness on the drive). By Friday night we had a very very high temperature and now had not eaten for almost 3 days. We took him to the ER. This was at midnight from a campground site in the mountains on the 4th of July. We had no idea where the nearest ER was located and had to deal with thousands of people leaving after the fireworks and a Hannah Montana concert were over. After stopping at two gas stations to ask for directions and driving about 45 minutes we found an ER and Gavin got seen right away. He was given medicine for strep throat since his throat was red and swollen and his fever was so high. We went home around 3am and Gavin started vomiting. Again everyone went to sleep and Mommy was left to stay up with her sick son all morning. His fever was down due to the Tylenol and Motrin but the vomiting was non-stop for 4 hours. By 7am I woke up my In-Laws and decided to take Gavin back to the ER for fluids and the reaction he had to the antibiotic they had given him. They gave him some anti-vomiting medicine and told us to stop the amoxiclian. In the end they decided it was not strep throat but a flu virus that needed to run its course. So Friday night I may have gotten about an hour of sleep, and was covered in vomit. Gavin spent another day not eating and even now that we are home has only had one bite of an apple. He is drinking fluids but I hate that he hasn't eaten for so many days. I see his ribs and pale face and it really worries me. Anyway he does seem to be slightly better today (Sunday) so I hope he is on the mend.

Saturday due to his sickness and our lack of sleep we decide to leave town early. Susan's 70th Birthday party was that night but there was no way we could enjoy a huge reunion type party with a sick baby and ourselves being so sleep deprived. We hit the road at 11am Sat. and ended up back in San Diego by 3am Sun. This time the ride was much worse since we were all tired before we left and the generator again wasn't working. I started getting sick and throwing up (which is not fun in a tiny port-a-potty style bathroom). The water pump wasn't working either so I had to pour bottled water down the toilet to try and flush things down. Gavin again slept most of the way and his fever was slightly lower than before. Thank God he didn't continue throwing up so at least he drank water and juice periodically on the trip home.

I loved meeting the cousins and family. They are all such nice friendly people and their children were so great with Gavin. The childrens ages ranged from as young as a 7 week old newborn to the oldest , 16, I think. Jon's cousins were older than us (30s and 40s) but we all got along very well. I loved the mountains and the peaceful beauty of Utah. I just wish Gavin hadn't gotten sick and we had not gone in the motor home. Next time we fly and get a nice hotel room to stay at. I have never had so little sleep (besides when Gavin was first born). Hopefully the next few days we can all feel better and get some rest from our Vacation from Hell.