Christmas Recap

Alternatively titled: 12 days of Christmas--Martinez-style (and my attempt to be creative)

Now that the house is quiet, I thought I would take a quick minute to share about our Christmas vacation.

We are now back home after a 5 day vacation to West Texas to visit Randy's family. We left as soon as Randy finished up in the clinic on Tuesday, drove straight through, and 12 hours later we arrived at the house Randy grew up in. We LOVED being at home, visiting with everyone....all 17 of us, under one roof. Unfortunately, the baby got sick, making our vacation less than spectacular. In fact, we were so distracted with her illness and sleep deprivation that we have little-to-no pictures documenting this milestone--First Christmas--for her. *sniff, sniff*

I won't bore you with all of the details, but I'll leave you with a song (to sing in your head--trust me, you don't want to hear me sing), adjusted to provide a recap of what the Randy Martinez family experienced.

12 hour drive to Pecos
11 x 11 ft. room to sleep in (all 4 of us)
10 homemade tortillas
9 new toys
8 on-the-road DVDs
7 dozen cookies
6 bottles of medicine

5 pounds gained back

4 songs on SingStar
3 trips to Walmart
2 vomiting children (and car seats needing to be washed)

and

1 trip to the Emergency Room (for 105 fever, vomiting, dehydration, & to rule out RSV, flu, and ear infection)

And just in case you're wondering, the children are doing much better. We are now treating Josiah for fever, cough and congestion; and Laney will continue to receive her antibiotic treatment through Friday, but she is back to nursing and bottle feeding (although not fully back to "normal") without vomiting and is sleeping without being held (although she was insistent on sleeping next to me in the bed just as she had for the last 3 nights). We learned that we will NO LONGER leave on a trip without a medical kit containing the nebulizer, Xopenex, stethoscope, oto/ophthalmoscope, tylenol, motrin, baby vicks, and benedryl.

And because we didn't want to "push" the children, we decided to break up our trip and stop half-way, in San Antonio. During our lay-over, we drove to a suburb known for it's Christmas lights. It was awesome. Our most favorite home won 2nd Place in the Creative Lighting category (1 of 8 categories). They had synchronized a light show to music which you tuned into on your car radio. It was very similar to this.

Anyway, I suspect it'll be a while until things are back to "normal". But till then, I'm just trying to survive being without Randy 24/7, unpacking, washing vomit covered laundry, and finding storage for new toys.