California!!!!

We loved these trees that looked like giant pineapples.

Here is a picture of a beach we found in Laguna Beach which was very secluded and it was beautiful. My husband's photography skills are amazing, my white knobby knees are in all the pictures of this beach. Lovely.

This is the pool in Palm Springs where we stayed, but more importantly, look at the mountains in the background!!!!

We had a fantastic vacation. We really planned nothing the whole week, other than a hotel the first and last night that was close to the airport. On Sunday, we went to a church, and then decided to take a quick drive through the Hollywood area. The first exit we took drove us by the Pantages theatre and "Wicked" was playing. It was not even 11 in the morning but people were in front of it so we parked and went up. They were having a lottery for their 1 pm performance. I put our name in and we did not win. But everyone who entered then had the opportunity to buy tickets for half price. So we saw Wicked and it was great. I of course think the wicked witch of the west has FASD though.

The entire premise of the story is showing a different side to the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. It showed her mom having an affair with a man and this man giving her some green liquid to drink. She got pregnant and her baby came out green and faced a challenging childhood of being teased. Very interesting. But the music was great.

We spent the first 2 days in the LA area, then a day in Laguna Beach and then headed to San Diego. We stayed on Coronado Island and toured the USS Midway aircraft carrier and visited Old Town. Then we headed to the desert looking for some warmer weather and we found it. It was about 86 degrees in Palm Springs and the scenery was AWESOME!!!! We loved the desert. The trip went very smoothly and was very relaxing. Michael and I got along great and I feel so blessed to have had so much time together.

Things went pretty well at home. Emily may put it differently. Ha. All in all, it went well for her. I was nervous as the on the first day, during a tantrum, Akila put her foot through a glass pane on the french door to our bedroom. She thankfully got only a small cut and broke the glass. If I were Emily, this would have made me nervous for the whole week to come. But it went pretty well. I had Akila pretty scheduled with sleepovers, my friend Angie took her to dinner one night, and she went to my friend Margie's for dinner another night.

The most challenging day was the last one. Emily took the kids to an indoor playground, the Walker Art Center for a craft activity and then to a movie. Her fiance, Jesse, went along. I think it was just too much in one day for a little girl who had had a busy week. At the art center, Akila was biting, scratching and hitting Emily. The art center was videotaping the art project (they made a cool chair out of cardboard, that holds my weight even), and Akila was yelling "shut up" to Emily while being videotaped. I know too well the emotions Emily must have been having. On the car ride home, it sounds like things got really wild. I think Emily was very relieved when we got home.

When we got home, Emily had to leave right away for a family function (or so she said -- I would have made up something if I were her to get out of this house after a week!!!). The kids were super good and full of excitement to see us and get their little trinket gifts. All was going well until Akila discovered a puddle of water in our family room. After looking into it, we discovered the roof was leaking on the addition of our house. Pretty rapidly too. Obviously not fun, but even more annoying when you factor in how Akila handles such an event. She goes into over-reactive-hyper-nutty-loud mode. The rest of the evening, she was obsessed. It is hard to try to be dealing with a situation like this, being on a ladder, on the roof, wiping up puddles, etc., when a child is screaming wildly!!!!! But we got through it of course.

It is great to be home, we missed the kids terribly. The school nurse called again yesterday with Akila in the office with a headache and low grade temp, 99.3. She didn't need to come home of course but the nurse had me talk to Akila. She thinks Akila might just be a kid that runs a little higher on her temp, I think her thermometer is broken!!! This is the third time and she has never had a fever at home. But she is playing it up big time! She was fine all night last night, until bedtime, then she thought she had a fever. And it is not fun when she doesn't understand that if it is not 100 or above, it is not a fever. It said 97.7 and she thought she was going to die. It is hard when she does not grasp the concept of what is higher or lower than 100.

P.S. Sorry for the no space between the paragraphs. I don't know why it does this. When I am typing, I hit return between paragraphs, but every time I fix it, it still publishes like this. Any fellow bloggers know what the problem is???