What a WEEK!

Happy belated Thanksgiving! Typically, the week of Thanksgiving is one of relaxation, food and family. I purposely avoid the grocery store by getting everything I need the week before, my mom and mother-in-law have every detail planned out weeks in advanced and the holiday goes quite smoothly. Not this year! Don't get me wrong, we DID have a great time with our families, everything worked out well in the end, and we all had a good laugh over all that happened. However, much happened before that big laugh to try and mess with our holiday plans. Mom was sick over the weekend and came home from work early with a fever on Monday. They also put an offer in on a great model home. We were all on pins and needles waiting to hear Monday night and all day Tuesday. A few minutes before it was to expire on Tuesday, they got a counter-offer. In the meantime, my stomach pain that started 6 weeks ago was getting so bad that I could no longer eat anything without severe pain. If we'd had a babysitter in town (in-laws at camp) that was fever-free (my parents), Scott would've taken me to the ER Tuesday night. Since we didn't, I managed until Weds. AM when I called Dr. Agnihotri's office and he would see me at 2pm. I called my mom to see if she could babysit (fever and all), as I would need Scott to drive me to my appt. She and dad were signing papers for the house at the time, but told me she probably couldn't, as my brother was at the ER. Wait, WHAT? Sure enough, Rob was also having abdominal pain and his wife convinced him to go to the ER. Long story short, both of us had abdominal CT scans that showed nothing. He had surgery to remove scar tissue from a 20 year old surgery and to check out his gall bladder b/c they thought one of those was the problem. He had some scar tissue, but not enough to cause that amount of pain so we are praying that it takes care of the pain. I was put on Nexium and by Friday night my pain started getting better. At one point on Wednesday, our family was bouncing around to most of the city's hospitals. Fun, fun! Rob spent the night in the hospital, but was able to come home Thursday morning. He was doing well enough to join us for Thanksgiving dinner at our parents' house, the final event at the old house. It wasn't easy keeping six kids entertained in a nearly empty house, but we all had a nice time together and have so very much to be thankful for!

Most of you know that my parents were planning on moving on Friday and Scott and I were planning on going to Indy for the weekend Fri-Sun to relax. Everyone thought that would be fine, as mom and dad only had a few large items left to move on Friday and we weren't going to leave until noon or so. Without Rob's help (you know, surgery and all), it was a little more difficult. The builder was kind enough to allow ma and pa to move some of their furniture into the garage at the new house, instead of hauling it up to the lake. What a time saver! While mom, dad, Scott and Jim (good friend) loaded up the moving truck, I was having a near panic attack as I realized I booked the hotel for the wrong weekend. I went online to get the phone number for my inlaws in case anything happened with the kids and realized what happened. Since I named my own price on priceline.com, it was nonrefundable and unchangeable. Yikes! We really didn't have the extra money to do that in the first place but it was something we needed so we splurged. I knew there was no way I could justify taking the money out of savings twice. I called priceline and sure enough, there was nothing they could do even though I was crying hysterically (does that tell you how much I needed to get away???). I decided to try calling the Marriott as well, I had nothing to lose. I composed myself as much as I could, then spoke with the front desk manager, Ashley. I explained what had happened and why it was that we booked the trip in the first place, etc. She offered to call priceline on my behalf. I didn't think it would do any good but I said, "sure." A few minutes later, Ashley called to tell me that priceline will be issuing a full refund. Woo hoo! I am so thankful she helped us out. She had every right to stick to the policy, but she didn't, and I am so grateful to her. I jumped on hotwire.com and booked another hotel right away. It wasn't the Marriott downtown, but at least we were able to get away and relax and that was what we needed.