San Diego 2011

Powell Family Vacation 2011 - Destination San Diego was a blast! We enjoyed watching orcas dance, feeding dolphins, shark fishing, sitting in the warm sun and sand, exploring tide pools and eating a lot of amazing food.

Where do I begin? I guess the beginning is a good place to start!

SATURDAY: After dropping off our dogs in Missoula and totally inconveniencing my dad and Dave & Em with their care for the week we drove to Scott & Jackie's house in Spokane. Addi loves her Gingras Boys and they had a blast playing and baking together.

SUNDAY: Jackie generously drove us to the airport in the morning. We flew from Spokane to Portland, boarded a new plane and flew into San Diego at around 1 pm. Addi loved the airport experience. She looked like a seasoned traveler dragging her Hello Kitty carry on behind her!

After checking into our hotel, The Bahia Resort on Mission Bay, we jumped in our rental car and started exploring. We quickly found the beautiful area of La Jolla where we ended up spending a lot of time. For a mere couple million we too could own a bit of this paradise! It sure was beautiful. Full of fancy shops, restaurants and tan, exercising locals!

We went on a evening river-boat tour of Mission Bay.

MONDAY: Addi will be talking about this day for a really long time!!! She was in love with Sea World and would have moved into the Orca Pool! The day started out cloudy, gloomy and rainy but ended up being partly cloudy and warm. The rain clouds kept the crowds and sweat away, it ended up being perfect Sea World weather! We got there as the front gates opened and didn't leave until closing time. As we waited for all the exhibits to open we rode up the super tall, blue tower to get a bird's eye view of the park. The space ship-like orb we rode in rotated as it took us hundreds of feet into the air. As Addi caught her first glimpse of her beloved orcas from 200 hundred feet in the air, she gasped, mumbled "orcas" under her breath and put two hands over her heart. She was literally speechless with the sight of these magnificent animals. It was amazing!

Throughout the day we watched the sea lion, dolphin, pet, and orca shows. All were very impressive and very entertaining. We petted Melbourne, a baby red kangaroo! You would not believe how soft he was. Addi loved the ocean princess story that was the dolphin show. For the rest of the trip she pretended she too was an ocean princess and it was OK to get her skirt wet because of her status as ocean princess!
Addi was able to touch and feed her very own dolphin, Coco! It was an hysterical sight when the dolphin blew air out of his blow hole. Addi and the dolphin were at a perfect angle to each other that the force of the air blew Addi backwards and took her breath away! Addi cried when she had to leave her dolphin. She (and I) would have stayed there all day if the trainer would have let her.
Addi chose a very special orca stuffed animal as a reminder of her day and she hasn't let it out of her sight since we left the park!
It was a very special day for all of us. It made me so proud to watch Addison so engaged and interested in the amazing animals! She was truly touched by this experience. We possibly witnessed a life changing day for her. It was magical.

TUESDAY: We spent a lazy day on Coronado Island sitting on the beach. We enjoyed getting fried in the wonderful sun, collected sea shells, built sand castles and walked around the cute little town.
We had dinner at Joe's Crab Shack and watched the sunset over La Jolla. Addi thought it was hilarious when the waiter brought daddy a bib and that he wore it the whole meal!

WEDNESDAY: I loved this day! We had no plan and found a sign saying "Sunset Cliff Park" and drove there! We ended up in Point Loma. A wonderful hidden area that is protected by huge red cliffs. Dylan started talking with a man about his huge lab, a local man. When Dylan asked him where he was from he said, "Well, here, Point Loma. Where are you from?" When Dylan replied Montana the man's face got all distorted and he asked us how we found this place? He said it was a local place that most tourists don't know about! That made us feel good! That is the way we like to travel, off the beaten path, where the locals go! Dylan laughed because he asks the same thing of "out-of-staters" who invade his special "local" spots - who told you, how did you get here!!!

We spent hours exploring the huge expanse of amazing tide pools. Tide pools are one of my favorite ecosystems, I just love exploring them. I know, Dylan thinks it weird too that I have a favorite ecosystem, but they are amazing. We found a dead crab and fed it to an anemone and watch as it closed its tentacles around it to allow the digestive juices get to work breaking down the crab! A giant science experiment - gotta love nature! Addi was concerned with all the little hermit crabs that were out of the water. Every time she would find one all closed up in its shell, hanging on to a rock waiting for the water to return she would pick it up and drop into a pool of water! She would say, "Oh, poor crab, I will help you!" Gotta love my little nature-girl!

We were exploring the cliffs and there was a section of cliff that I told Dylan and Addi to stand. The tide was starting to come in and there was a wave splashing up against the cliff. I thought it would make an awesome picture. Well, Dylan and Addi were standing there and instead of a little wave splashing against the cliff a huge wave totally engulfed Addison! It was so funny. We were thankful Addison was holding daddy's hand. The next picture of the series is Addi literally climbing Dylan! It scared her, but she recovered quickly. She finally believed me that ocean water is salty.

We ate lunch at the apparently famous In-N-Out Burger. It was really good and baby has been craving it ever since!!

We spent the late afternoon playing in the children's cove in La Jolla. It is a peaceful beach with small waves. The protective rocks are covered with barking sea lions and a large colony of pelicans (AKA Toucans!!) and other sea birds.
We sat out on a rocky point and watched the waves crash on the rocks and watched the sun set in La Jolla. Simply beautiful. Peaceful.


We drove closer to our hotel and ate and the New Zealand Bareback Bar & Grill. The food was great and they proudly served the best burger in San Diego. Dylan agreed! It was really loud as the "younger" crowd was mingling and enjoying happy hour. Addi would cup her hands over her mouth and literally shout as loud as she could, "Mamma, can you hear me?!" and then crack up! It was really funny. She enjoyed the busy atmosphere. Addi tried fried calamari and almost immediately spit it right back out!

We literally were the first people to leave the hotel in the morning and the last to get in. We usually had to search for a parking spot. We all know how Addi feels about swimming pools and even after a long, busy day she was ready to swim at 9:30 at night. We did allow her to do it a couple nights, but by this time of night the pool/hot tub area was always full of partying, loud, cussing, crazies so we didn't spend much time there.

THURSDAY: Dylan's big day of shark fishing...on a fly rod! Dylan was a very happy boy to have hooked a 100 plus pound blue shark on a fly rod. His big 'ol grin did not leave his face for days after this! It sounds like an amazing experience and I was happy he actually landed a shark. After he reeled the shark into the side of the boat the guide released the shark to be free! As a bonus he also saw three blue whales, one dead baby humpback whale (that had huge great-white shark bites taken out of it), and hundreds of white-sided porpoises who were racing the little fishing boat. He raved about his guide, Dave with On The Fly Fishing and I know he is eager to take his BFF David back with him to do it again!

Addi and I spent the day in La Jolla, shopping and playing on the beach.

We let Addi choose the restaurant for our last night out. She wanted to be "fancy" and get all dressed up - that is Addi's style! She choose a very fancy place called the Crab Catcher in La Jolla. WOW. The food and atmosphere were amazing. She has great taste or should I say expensive taste! We ate out on the heated balcony overlooking the ocean. I ordered, of course, the king crab legs. Addi ordered spaghetti and Dylan ordered the halibut. The food was beautifully presented. Simply stated, it was delicious. A wonderful ending to a great week.
FRIDAY: We had hoped to spend our last morning in San Diego on the beach, but the weather did not cooperate. Even by Montana standards it was freezing. After checking out of our hotel, we snapped one last picture on the beach.

Addison and I had never been to Chuck E. Cheese. We decided to spend our last couple hours in San Diego eating lunch and playing there. I now know one thing, you do not go to Chuck E. Cheese for the food. Oh it was terrible, but Addi eventually enjoyed the games once she figured out what that crazy place was all about.



We were all just so exhausted and a little crabby. We had a heck of a time locating a gas station to fill up the rental car. In the all the commotion Dylan broke the trunk and we had to tie it closed! We were relieved when the rental car return-airport check-in-airport security fiasco was over and we were sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off. Addi almost instantly fell asleep, as did I. We both slept all the way to Seattle.

It was a great vacation. We had a great time. We all really needed some time away with each other. Some time away of the never-ending Helena winter! We wanted to give Addi a special trip before the new baby is born. She kept saying we will have to bring the baby back!

Baby Update

We saw Dr. Key in Great Falls yesterday. I must first say Dr. Key and his entire staff lived up to their reputation. They are so caring, kind, honest, patient, compassionate and brillant. I feel so lucky to have these people helping us and our baby.

Our baby has fluid in the abdominal cavity, a lot of fluid. What this means we still don’t know. Dr. Key did another ultrasound, an amniocentesis and more blood tests. We are trying to rule out any viruses that me or the baby may have and also rule out any chromosomal defects that may have caused the fluid. For now that is really all we know.

Our baby could die any day, baby could be born with a huge list of very serious problems, or I could deliver normally and the baby could be completely normal. Because we don’t know what caused or is causing the fluid we can’t predict an outcome.

Besides the fluid, baby looks developmentally normal. All baby’s other parts are normal and functioning normally. There is no fluid around the heart or in the brain which is really positive.

We will have some preliminary results from the amnio on Friday.

I will be spending a day every few weeks in Great Falls getting an ultrasound and monitoring the fluid and any changes in baby. It will be a slow process as we try to rule out possible causes and hopefully find a reason for the fluid and what we can do to fix it.

For now all we can do is pray. We can't fix anything at this point. There is no medication or treatment that we can do to help. We can just hope baby remains strong and what ever is causing the fluid fixes itself.

Ultrasound Scare

Any time we get to peer into the world of our unborn baby it is a happy, special day. It is truly special having this amazing technology that allows us access into his world. We are able to count his fingers and toes, watch him yawn, roll and move. During our forty minute ultrasound last week we got to see a lot of baby - more than I cared to know. Ignorance is in fact bliss. We asked to not find out the sex of baby (yahoo, I was strong) but I have a pretty strong feeling that he is a he! The ultrasound pictures are just too clear even for the untrained eye! Or it could be me making stuff up!! We will know in a few months!

As as I laid back gazing at my baby, Dylan had the task of wrangling our little monster. Addi was not into watching baby pictures this time and was bouncing off the walls. She was almost impossible to control - nap time, a small enclosure and an empty belly will do that do a 3 year old pretty quickly.

The ultrasound tech seemed really great. She talked us though what we were seeing and even tried engaging Addison. Something didn't seem quite right though. She would go silent and then scan back to the baby's brain and abdomen, re-measure and then move on to another part of baby only to return to the brain and abdomen. When she made up a lame excuse to leave the room I just knew she saw something she didn't like. She assured us the radiologist and our doctor would review the pictures and call us with the results. I hadn't been back at work for 10 minutes when I got a phone call from my midwife. My heart sank and I just knew there was something wrong. I tried to keep it together as she explained they had found extra abdominal fluid in the baby. What it meant she couldn't tell me. She asked me to come back into the office for blood work to rule out any viruses that I may have transmitted to our baby. We met with the doctor and he tried explaining to us what abdominal fluid in the baby meant, what causes it and how do we fix it. Because we don't know for sure the extent of the problem we were left hanging without much information. It could be viral related, a chromosome defect, rH blood related, heart related or a hand full of other things. The waiting game is torture. I hate not knowing.

They took several large viles of blood and tested it for herpes, parvovirus, rubella and several other rare viruses. They also checked my antibodies for anything abnormal. These blood tests have since come back negative. I am not sure if that is good or not. As Dylan said, "Anytime they can rule something out that is a positive."

It is hard not to panic. We just don't know anything yet. It could be very serious for our baby or it could turn out to be nothing. We just don't know. Our next move is this Wednesday. We have an appointment to meet with Dr. Keys, a perinatalogist specialist in Great Falls. He will be doing a level two ultrasound and we will go from there. It is possible I would need an amniocentesis for further testing. I am not even going to go into what I found on Google. It is too scary and I am trying to remain hopeful that the first ultrasound was a fluke and this next ultrasound will find nothing. We will know more on Wednesday.

Twenty Down, 20 To Go

My pregnancy is half way done already. In 20 short weeks we will be holding our baby in our arms!



What is mamma up to?
On Sunday, while I was in the tub, I was able to see for the first time the baby moving. Dylan was also able to see baby moving! Addi was upset because she did not get to see it. She was too impatient to stare at the belly long enough! Baby is moving regularly and movements are stronger and feel more deliberate.

When I am not infected with whatever bug Dylan and Addi bring home, I feel great. I have extra energy and I am able to stay awake past 8 pm! This week I have come down with a terrible cough and my chest and lungs hurt really bad. Addi is back on antibiotics for a ear infection. Poor girl had a rough weekend being sick, coughing and feeling crummy.

I am starting to get really uncomfortable--already. I have gained 17 pounds and at my belly button I am 35 inches round! Getting out of bed and putting on socks and shoes is noticeably more difficult now.

We are trying to come up with a baby boy name. We are pretty set on a girl name, but boy's names are hard for us! Addi and I regularly read through the baby name book and I will ask her what names she likes. She says, "I don't like any boy names, only girl names." For a girl, Addi likes Angel and Alexis and of course, Addison Jo!

I don't have a feeling as to what the sex of the baby is. I always felt that Addi would be a girl. I don't know if that was mamma's intuition or if it was wishful thinking, I really wanted her to be a girl! On Easter Granny guessed it is a boy, based on the way I am carrying it! She said I am carrying high, which to Granny means boy. I feel like I am carrying the same as with Addi. Only time will tell!

Our exciting 20 week ultrasound is this morning! I am so excited to see baby's little face! We could find out the sex of the baby if we wanted to. I am standing firm with not wanting to find out. Dylan still wants to. We haven't made a final decision yet. Not knowing is driving Papa and Auntie Sara crazy! That is part of my motivation to not find out! Just to make them wait!!

What is baby up to?
Baby's length is about 10 inches, from head to toes. About the length of a banana.


Baby's main duty right now is to fatten up! Baby is busy growing hair on her head, eyelashes and eyebrows, swallowing and moving. Baby startles to loud noices and can hear us when we talk or read to baby. Addi enjoys including baby during bed time story!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Holding on tight to my 20s! One more year before I cross over to the "other side"! Eeek...30 sounds so scary! It seems impossible to be thinking I have one more year before I am 30...wowza!

My day was great, even the 9 hours at work! My work friends decorated my cubey with birthday signs, accompanied me for birthday nachos and treated me to a birthday cookie at the bakery!

Dylan was able to get off work at 5 pm. Addi and Dylan gave me the sun hat I wanted!! I was so surprised because Dylan told me he hadn't ordered it in time! They also surprised me with a new T.V for our bedroom!

We took our celebration to the Silver Star Restaurant for an amazing meal. I, of course, had crab legs! Whenever we are out to splurge that is what I order. There are no words to describe how delicious they were! Dylan had an amazing tenderloin and Addi had the mac n' cheese! I was given a birthday brownie sundae by our waitress! Addi about killed Dylan and I with one of her little jokes! We have an inside family joke about food and sharing it! We are Powell's and eating in our house is a competitive sport. Addi was sitting on Dylan's lap eating the brownie and Dylan said, "Give me some." Addi stopped eating, looked up at Dylan and very sarcastically said, "Addi doesn't share cake!" Addi delivered it flawlessly. It was the funniest thing I have heard in a long time!! She was very proud of herself!!

I had a wonderful evening and I feel very blessed.

How Sweet She Is

Addison was in the bath tub the other night. Some days she just insists on doing it all by herself! I came in to check her progress and she said, "I am done. I washed my hair, my body and my privates all by myself." I said, "Ok, great. I guess you don't need your mamma anymore!" She looked at me kind of funny. I winked at her and said, "Is there anything you still need your mamma for?" She looked up at me after thinking for a while and said, "I need you to wrap towels around me and I need you to make me happy."





There are not words poweful enough to express how much I love this girl!





My friend Elizabeth was in town we had gone out to eat and then went to Maurices. Addi and I were sitting outside a dressing room waiting for Elizabeth to model for us. I asked Addi if she ate enough at dinner. She asked me to check by poking her tummy. Every since she was tiny I would poke her belly to check if she was full. She has always thought it is so hysterical! I said, "Look at my belly. I think I am full, full of baby!" She poked my belly and said, "Yah, you are full. You eat too much!"

Addison's Tragedy

Addison was excitedly wearing shorts and flip flops yesterday - the first spring-like day we've had in Helena. The three of us we were sitting outside soaking up the sun. She had gone inside to get something and came bounding back outside only to trip on her flip flop and fall off the bottom step, sliding to a stop on the concrete - flat on her belly, scrapping her hands and knees. All we could do was watch it happen. Poor thing was in so much pain. I remember the trauma from childhood skinned knees and many softball skinned knees how bad they sting. They get almost immediatley stiff and sore. BUT OH MY GOODNESS!! By her reaction you would have thought someone was chopping off her legs or her world was literally ending. Yes, it looked painful and seeing blood on her knees was, I am sure, scary. But the kid sent herself into the most dramatic outpouring of emotion I have ever seen. We comforted her for a long, long time and still she carried on and on! Through her blubbering she swore off wearing shorts ever again! We tried to distract her by "walking it off". Not even taking her to see go see her favorite neighborhood dog helped, she had to be carried the whole way. She refused to walk! She stood up all bent over like an elderly person and starting bawling, saying she couldn't walk! We took her inside and turned on one of her favorite shows to calm her down. We tried talking her into putting a cool rag on it or some Neosporin to make her knees feel better. She wouldn't have it! A half and hour later we talked her into finally getting off the chair to eat dinner and to get ready for swim lessons. She waddled around the house all bent over like an elderly person with hip problems! She walked like that all night!! At bath time I had to wash her body and hair while keeping all water and soap off her knees! It was quite the venture!!

And then first thing this morning she said, "Oh, my owies are still there. They probably will be there until vacation! But my hands are ok now." Try to picture a classic movie actress, all distraught with the back of her hand pressed against her forehead -- that is my Addi! She definitely wins the Academy Award with this episode!! She got dressed in capris, that had to be rolled up so the cuffs were not touching her knees! I think it has very little to do with the pants rubbing on her knees and everything to do with Addi wanting sympathy from her teacher and friends at school!!

We went out for frozen yogurt to help ease the trauma!

If she ever recovers from her double skinned knees I will be sure to blog about it!