We put the ER in ERie

One week in to our adventure and we already had a kid in the ER.  I've never had a kid in the ER before.  Never want to again.  It was NOT fun. Add that to the fact that she's 2 and it's a total fiasco.  She's old enough to cry and yell 'Ow', but too young to really vocalize anything.  Tough combo.  8 hours, , 1 Urgent Care visit, 1 ER stay, 1 catheter, 3 rectal temps, 2 x-rays and some blood work later we find out it's 'probably just a viral infection' and will go away on it's own.  Super.  Not that I want anything to be wrong with her.  Trust me.  I cried almost as much as she did.  I'm more angry at myself for putting her through all of that for nothing, but tomorrow is Easter and I was afraid the Urgent Care would be closed tomorrow (of course they were the ones that sent us to the ER...).  Sigh.  Poor thing.  She's doing better now though.  She's back into all of her old mischief which means she is feeling better.  If she's not up to trouble then something IS wrong, and she was as good as gold.  I'm glad her terrible 2's are back.  Her temp of 103+ seems to be staying down though her Ibuprofen should be about worn off by now, so hopefully it's just some 24 hour bug and the worst has passed.  Now we're just praying the other two don't get it.  The baby especially. :(

Mag's birthday was yesterday, which is when she came down with the fever.  We planned on going to Sara's Diner for a 'twist'  (we're already learning the local terminology), but no milk products with a fever, so no ice cream, candles or anything.  I gave birth to this child without ANY drugs.  It's as much as a celebration for myself as it is for her.  Of course it's HER day, but I felt cheated I couldn't celebrate it with her.  It was a great birth day, but THIS birthday wasn't awesome.  There will be more, but she'll only be 2 once (I certainly hope so...2 is tough).  The day after her birthday, with temp gone we put a candle in a milkshake ans sang to her.  It wasn't perfect, but singing makes everything better somehow.  Makes it more official.

So Erie isn't my favorite of all the places I've been.  Also, I have a recommendation for Garmin.  PLEASE add an 'avoid ghetto' option to your GPS's.  You'd think it would have taken me to the nicer, CLOSER Walmart, but no.  It actually worked harder to get me to drive through the seediest part of town with 3 small children.  An hour later as we're trying to check out of Walmart with all of our stuff we walked out empty handed.  I've never just walked out of a store and left my hard earned shopping behind before (3 small, whiny children in tow and one in desperate need of a pee).  They had 3 lines open and each line was 12+ customers deep.  I wish I were exaggerating.  We weren't going to wait it out, and I was NOT going to take my babies into that bathroom.  It just wasn't going to happen.  So, lots of firsts for me in Erie.  Not good firsts, but we're none the worse for wear so all is well.  Well, Poor Mags might be a little worse for the wear, but she'll forget it all soon enough.  They gave her a popsicle and Dora stickers at the ER.  She's already over it.   

We're staying at Sara's Campground, which is pretty nice, though we don't have much to compare it to. I think it would be a lot more enjoyable if we would break 50 degrees every now and then.  The sun helps, but it's just cold. 

So far this has not been the adventure we planned, but I'm sure things will look up.  They have to, right?  Actually aside from a few minor setbacks it's actually going pretty well.  We're adjusting to motorhome life pretty well.  The kids are all adjusted to sleeping in their bunks already and are actually sleeping better then they did at home.  Well, they are GOING to sleep easier then the did at home.  When one of them wakes and wants to come be snugglebuddies in the middle of the night then I sure do miss our king sized bed, since we're smaller then a queen now.  And I like my sleeping space.  We're rolling with the punches though.  

The past few nights Chad has been taking Emmy and Maggie over to the beach for sunset walks.  That's really nice. Both for them and myself, and I hear the sunsets are really beautiful, but let's face it....aren't pretty much ALL sunsets over large bodies of water beautiful?  I'm sure I'm missing out, but it's just so darn cold.  And I'm pretty sure the baby doesn't like cold.  She hasn't actually said that...I just get that from her.  We agree about things.  We're cool like that.  

On our way up to Erie we had a 2 night stay in Loudonville, OH.  Where, you ask?  Exactly.  It was off the beaten path in the middle of nowhere (no cell phones, internet, or even running water).  Oh.  Did I mention that on our first official full day on the road our plumbing to our toilet busted and started spraying EVERYWHERE, so we were without water (no toilet, sink, showers...).  And of course it was Sunday, because it wouldn't be right to have something like that break when there might actually be someplace around that sold the valve that we could replace it with.  So, we had a day without water.  The pit toilets there were, well, the pits.  Seriously. Nasty.  I taught Emmy to pee outside.  She liked it. A lot.  Well, Chad always wanted a son.  It's probably just not the same when you have someone squatting next to you to pee outside.  Kind of loses the freedom I would imagine.  On the plus side, we were right across from a supercool playground that the kids totally loved. And Chad.

So it wasn't all bad.  It was actually a really nice spot.  We had a whole little woodsy section in the back of our motorhome where Emmy got to explore.  The raccoons got into our trash the first night (of course they did!) and so Chad taught Emmy a lesson in cleaning up trash.  So for the rest of the time we were there she kept coming to us with nasty trash she kept finding (think dirty headbands and empty whisky and beer bottles, broken glass, bottle caps, etc.).  Nice.  We then had to re-teach her how to leave litter where it lays.  Yuck.  

So all that in our first full week.  I think that's enough.  All in all, I'd still say it was a GOOD week.  And it was.  We're happy on the road.  We all agree that we don't miss our home.  I can clean the entire place in 30 minutes.  This is how we roll.

The only thing I really miss is long hot showers.  I can't say I'll miss PA though.  We'll come back later, but not to ERie.  No offense.  It just didn't work out for us.  I'm sure it has a really nice personality though.  

So, from our family to yours, Happy Easter and God Bless!