California... Vacation?

We spent the last week in California for my brother, Jeff's wedding. Here's a photo taken of the 3 of us with Jeff, his then fiance/now wife Julia, and my adorable niece, Rhianna:

The wedding was absolutely beautiful... picture-perfect on the beach in La Jolla, CA. I hear the reception was nice, too, but we weren't there to see it. We spent the evening with Chase in the emergency room instead.

Yes, after he spent the entire wedding with his head buried into my shoulder, completely unresponsive to everyone and everything, we took him back to our hotel room, took his temperature, and called our doctor. She said to take him to the ER so that's what we did. When we got there his fever had risen to 103.7 and they rushed us right in.

Our poor baby had to have an IV put in, which took them three attempts while Brian pinned him down and I cried in the corner. He then had X-rays taken (to check for pneumonia) and blood drawn. They pumped him with antibiotics and fluids, and by the end of the night he was looking and acting much better:

The next day we had to go back for a follow-up visit (since we obviously couldn't follow up with his regular doctor!) and blood test results. The tests looked pretty normal and just indicated some sort of viral infection. So we've been drugging him with Motrin and Tylenol every 2 hours since to keep the fever down.

He had a rough couple days, on top of being exhausted from all the activity and the time change. By Friday he was doing much better so we took him to the beach just long enough for me to be able to snap a few photos of his first experience at the ocean:

I have to say, though, that my kid is one heck of a trooper. His strength through it all seriously amazed us. But now that we're home... Brian and I need a vacation!!!!

My photos are posted in our Photo Album, but since my parents were also in CA with their cameras (and are even more trigger-happy than I am), I didn't really bother taking pictures at any event where they were present. As soon as I get their photos, plus the ones the wedding photographer took, I will post those as well.