Sunday morning came and we went to church with Diane and Rob.  They attend a local mega-church of 6000 members.  The service is broadcast over the local cable channel and the 2nd grade room had foos-ball tables (Max appreciated the “soccer in a box”).  The message was very good.

Aaron had developed a stomach issue but he was a trooper and went to church and to the Perez house for the family pictures.  It is theorized that he brought his own sickness with him, separate from what Max had, because he had almost no contact with Max.

After a rousing game of touch football we all piled into many cars for a Christmas (not holiday) lights display at a horse race track followed by a petting zoo and a miniature train display.  We had wanted to leave at 4:45p, but didn’t get out of the house until 5:05p.  We were a caravan of four and about 500 yards out of the driveway, one of the cars pulls into the clubhouse parking lot and Max and Toby race out of the car.  After Max had pee’d, we started again.  About a mile after this, one of the other drivers says that she needs to stop for gas.  At this time it is raining steadily.  We pull into a gas station and Lucy says ‘I gotta poop, dad’.  By the time we left the gas station, it was 5:40p and raining hard.  As the caravan pulls onto the freeway, I hear some barking from the back seat.  I turn around and Lucy is pulled as far forward as her 5 point harness will hold her and is barfing into her lap.  Rob is accelerating to freeway speed.  Lucy looks at me and says ‘I got barfs, dad’.  We pull over to the shoulder of the freeway.  The rain is beating down as we work to sort-of clean up Lucy and work to get Calvin and his car seat out from next to Lucy and into a non-sick car.

Rob and I head back to the Perez house with Lucy.  I ask her if her tummy hurts, and she says.  ‘Not anymore, I got out all my barfs.’  3 minutes later she is retching again.  Now Rob is driving home as quick as he can because the rain is sheeting down and we can’t roll down the windows.  Lucy’s barf stinks.  She is trying to convince us that she can still go see the Christmas lights as she barfs yet again into her lap.

You will have to ask Toby how her trip to the Christmas lights went.  I was home cleaning up barf.

I had originally thought that the Pizza was to blame for Max’s upheaval.  But he quickly developed a fever of 100.5 degrees and kept it for many hours.  Luckily, so we thought, the Perez home has a finished basement and we could keep Max segregated from the rest of the kids.  He stayed down there sleeping all day and had just bits of bread and water (he couldn’t stand the grape Pedialyte).

Friday was the main day that the other members of the clan arrived.  In all, there were 28 Carswell relations * at the Perez house.  This included 9 kids (5 under 4).  We didn’t see many of them until Saturday.  Friday was spent recovering for both Max and me.

On Saturday, Max was feeling good enough that he and I went with Sam and Rob to Sam’s horseback riding lesson.  It is Kentucky, after all, it is almost a requirement that one know how to ride a horse.  The instructor had arranged to have a horse available for Max to ride.  Unfortunately, because of his illness, we had not told him about the horse ride until the last minute.  We did not have a chance to prepare him and build it up.  He ended up just watching.  Sam looked soooo tiny up on the gigantic horse that she was riding.

Saturday night, we had reserved a back room at a local ‘Kentucky style’ dining establishment.  They had a hot brown on the menu.  I enjoy by bi-annual hot brown sandwich.  It is a turkey and ham sandwich covered in melted cheese with tomatoes (not for me, though).  It has some sort of cheese sauce in the middle that is just decadent.  Rob calls it a ‘heart-attack on a plate’. 

* – including one boyfriend – the asterisk.

We arrived safe and sound through rainstorms into Louisville, Kentucky (or in Lucy speak, ‘Tucky).  When the folks in KY heard that we were going through Chicago, they were convinced that we were going to be spending the night because there was a snow storm forecasted.  But it missed the airport and we made our flight.

Uncle Rob was very gracious in picking us up at the Louisville airport, which is about 1.25 hours from Lexington.  He drove through very heavy rain to get to us.  We got to Casa De Perez at about 11pm, and that was OK, because we didn’t have any plans until lunch on Thursday.

Thanksgiving lunch was at a local restaurant that served up main dishes of turkey, ham, chicken, etc, and then had a buffet bar for all the rest.  Very tasty.  In addition to the Perez clan of Rob, Diane, Samantha and Calvin, Laura and Francie Wasson participated in our festivities.  (Uncle Jesse was travelling).

Diane had layed out a feast of desserts for us when we returned.  We had some lunch leftovers for dinner and the kids had some leftover pizza.  Max and Lucy went to bed about 9p and Toby and I followed about 10:30p.  At 10:35p we heard some barking from where the kids were sleeping.  I say ‘were’ sleeping because Max was sitting up on his air-mattress in a pool of his own vomit.  He had projectile- vomited all over himself, the wall, the pillows and the floor.

We cleaned him up and cleaned up the mess as best as possible (the air-mattress and a pillow stayed outside for the whole weekend).  It took about 45 minutes.  Max had complained about his tummy right after the pizza, so I thought it was the food.  At the point where we were ready to get back to bed, Max had another incident.  But we were ready this time.   We had a bucket close at hand and he successfully used it.  This pattern of barfing every hour went on until about 7 am.  He had nothing left in him after the first couple of heaves.  I stayed up with him all night, and we both felt miserable the next day.

Toby came and picked me up in Camarillo. I found out that she had discovered our Rat Terrier is not a “mouse” terrier. Apparently, the mouse jumped out of the sink and when she put Petey up on the counter to chase the mouse, he freaked out and just stood there cowering. The mouse ran behind the stove. Ugh. We made it to Grandma Jo’s house in good time. She had graciously offered to watch Petey and Ginger while we are in Kentucky. After fixing a couple of things on her computer, we left for the LAX motel. When we got to our room, we found a place for the kids to sleep. We spread out their sleeping bags on the floor of the closet. Shhhh! we told them it was a tunnel room for kids. We got to bed at a decent hour. But, our room was right at the top of the stairs and so for about 3 hours we could hear everyone walking by, dragging, rolling their luggage and talking on their cell phones. Also, the motel was strangely laid out, and we had 3 exterior walls that let in a lot of road noise from Century and Aviation boulevards. So, we did not have a good night sleep. Additionally, the parking lot at the motel was really small. We had been under the impression that we could leave our van at the motel while we were traveling and take advantage of the motel airport shuttle. No dice. So it was off to parking lot B. We found a good spot and got good seats on the bus to the airport. When we did the self check in at the Northwest kiosk, we found out that the first leg of our flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. The plane was broken in Las Vegas. God was looking out for us, in that the person who was putting the routing tags on our luggage decided to help us right at the kiosk rather than send us over to the line where all the other stranded passengers were being sent. While Toby worked with the ticketing agent, I moved the kids and the luggage away from the kiosks so that other passengers could find out their flights were delayed. I entertained Max and Lucy with thumb-wrestling and such. One thing they were doing was pushing on the very heavy (50 pounds exactly, good job Toby) luggage. This pushing of the luggage turned into pushing me, and in an effort to keep them distracted I pushed them back, very gently, of course. Well, Lucy got more and more dramatic as my pushes got lighter and lighter and after taking 5 or 6 steps backward with a “Whoa, Whoa” she tripped on her feet. Instead of falling on her bottom, she fell flat on her back and smacked her head on the tile floor. Screaming 3 year old. After about 45 minutes the Northwest ticketing agent was able to get us tickets on United into Louisville, KY. We decided going to Louisville was better than overnighting somewhere and hoping to get onto a flight to Lexington. At LAX, the Northwest terminal is number 2 and the United terminal is number 7. We had quite a trip to make and we had no assigned seats and the plane left in an hour. Most other airports I have been in recently have great trains or trams or something to send passengers between terminals. Not so with LAX. We got back onto a bus to fight our through traffic over to terminal 7. At this point, Max and Lucy were really ready to get on the plane. After waiting in line to talk to a United ticketing agent, we found out that she could not assign us seats on the plane. We had seats, but since it was a full flight, the boarding gate agent would be assigning our seats. We thought that Toby should go ahead to get to the gate and I would bring the kids at a more leisurely pace. Then we hit TSA. We had our boarding passes and IDs ready and handed everything to the agent in front of the security queue. We got to the metal detectors and the next agent asked for boarding passes. What? Toby had put the boarding passes in her back pack since we had just shown them to the agent 4 feet behind us. The TSA guy says “He is a blue shirt, I am a white shirt.” Meanwhile our bags have gone through the screening machine. We have 4 backpacks and are trying to yell at a different TSA agent to describe which back pack. It is the last one he picks up, of course. Then we try to describe what pocket the passes are in. Finally, he gives up and takes my suggestion to bring the bag back to us so we can get the boarding passes out. Then when the first TSA agent looks at our boarding passes, he says that our entire family has been selected by United to receive special screening. What fun it was to watch Lucy get frisked. Eventually we made it through TSA and Toby sped off toward our gate. By the time we caught up to her, she had already spoken to the gate agent and found out that we had 4 single middle seats across 6 rows. Toby got the impression from the gate agent that nothing was going to be done about that. We decided to get a sandwhich for the flight from a restaurant. Lucy had started off rolling along her own little roller suitcase, but had given up because her hand was tired, so I was carrying the suitcase for her. In line at Ruby’s she took a step towards me at the same time I shifted the suitcase and I clonked her on the top of her head with the corner of the suitcase. Now we have a screaming 3 year old, again. I got Lucy settled down and we went to wait at the gate. They called Toby’s name and when Toby came back, she was smiling. The gate agent had really come through. We had 3 seats in a row and 1 seat 2 rows up in an exit row. Toby is sitting with the kids (man, they are loud) and I am in the middle seat of the exit row, with the extra 5 inches of leg room. We are flying into Chicago O’Hare and need to go through the whole ordeal of getting seats together for the leg from Chicago to Louisville. But we are moving forward.