Vacation....Interruptus

4:30am - Circus, Circus Hotel Room, Las Vegas, Nevada:

"Hello" (spoken as gruffly as you can imagine due to second hand casino smoke and air conditioning)
"Kim, Bailey's been throwing up since 1am and I wanted to see if you think that we should take her to the hospital."

And that is how my day began. It is a parent's nightmare. Your child is really sick and you are many miles and a 2.5 hour flight away from her. Certainly I knew that Kristi and Gabe had the "parenting chops" to handle it. But, this is my baby. And, I know how she likes to have her back rubbed and what key she sings the theme song to Miss Spider's Sunnypatch Friends and exactly how she likes to be snuggled. And yet I'm not there to take her to the hospital where they may have to IV her to get fluids in her, or might have to admit.

So - we quickly call the airline, shower, pack, check out of the hotel, get a cab, and get to the airport. By the time that we got on the plane she had been able to keep a few teaspoons of apple juice down for about 20 minutes and was heading home with after care instructions. Thankfully it was minor, as far as emergencies go. But, no easier for us to handle.

In retrospect, could we have stayed in Vegas and "stimulated the economy" and enjoyed some shopping and entertainment? Probably. And, Bailey would have been just fine with Tree Tree and Uncle Dave (as she's now calling Gabe). But I wouldn't change our actions. I remember pondering whether we should head home or not and figured it was probably the flu (which it was/is). But, what if it had been rotovirus or worse? I think that one of the toughest things about parenting is that you constantly wonder if you've done good enough. If you've made the best choices. If you've disciplined appropriately. There's just so much pressure that we place on ourselves (often unnecessarily). Sometimes, we can't take the action to head home. Sometimes we HAVE to wait. But, when the opportunity exists to head home. Well, that's the right choice. So - we're experiencing vacation interruptus. And we're snuggling, and rubbing Bailey's back, and singing Miss Spider's Sunnypatch Friends, and enjoying our time together.

As for our 23 hours in Vegas - we had a great time! Adam had a little unexpected windfall - he was sitting at a slot machine as I sat down to cycle a little coinage through the machine and he saw what appeared to be credits on that machine. When he selected to cash out it printed a ticket for $25.80. So - he decided to play it by "betting the full amount". He hit a bonus and ended up winning $280 - Happy Birthday Honey!!

The "wall" for the Revolution bar in the Mirage - I'm sitting in the "U" - can U tell?

"All we need is love" - we saw this show - BRILLIANT!!

I purchased a glass of wine. I'd figured (when I saw the stadium beer cup) that they'd just fill it about 1/4 of the way. Nope!! Full cup of wine!

yeliaB - We NEVER find items with the name Bailey, so we were delighted to find this Piggy Bank with her name. Bailey' thinks its brilliant and would like some more coins (it's almost full as is - we had extra change from our trip).

This is where Bailey chose to snuggle. She pretty much stayed on the ground wrapped in her blankets from 1pm until 3pm. She didn't want to move to the couch when I asked her. Get well Princess!!