Houston Vacation: Kelly’s Thursday- An Old Friend, a Boardwalk, and an Ear Infection (10/21/10)

My good friend and old college roommate, Janet, lives in Austin. When I told her the dates of our Houston vacation, she took Thursday off work and we planned to have her come over and spend the day with me and Lily. I was so excited. I haven’t seen her since she visited Michigan when I was pregnant with Lily in the summer of 2008. Austin and Houston aren’t that close together so Janet had a three hour drive to meet us once she took her kids to school. She arrived while Lily was taking her nap so we first had lunch together with Jodi. Lily woke up very crabby but then finally settled down. She wasn’t her normal giggly, happy, chatty self, though, and instead seemed very subdued. Janet and I decided to head to the Kemah Boardwalk which is an amusement park and restaurant complex on Galveston Bay. We thought that it would be a good way to keep Lily entertained so that we could catch up. Lily did well on the hour ride down because she got to watch Dora on Janet’s in-car DVD player. We thought we would never get there because we had no idea where we were going and my Garmin kept malfunctioning. It would lose its signal at the most inopportune time such as right when we were supposed to be turning or merging onto a new highway or it would think that we were driving on side roads adjacent to the highways that we were actually on. One time it actually thought we were traveling on the train tracks! It was very frustrating but hysterical at the same time.
We finally found our way there! Here are Janet and Lily at the entrance to the boardwalk:

Lily and I waiting to ride the carousel:

We are ready:

Here we go! Lily loves carousel rides:

Lily and I on the train. Lily adores trains:

Cutie waiting for the train to take off:

Lily loved riding on this balloon wheel but I could barely fit in the tiny thing with her. Good thing I’m not any taller because my knees were barely contained in the compartment. Every time we came down she yelled, “Wheeeee”:

They were playing a lot of fun music so Lily and Janet started dancing around:

The Ferris wheel:

Lily on the carousel with Janet. As you can see, it is a cool double-decker design which I have never seen before:

An old police car:

The really neat Aquarium restaurant where we went for dessert so that we could take a break from the heat:

Lily saying hello to a grouper in the huge aquarium display by our seat:

Lily and I back on the train for one more ride before returning to Houston:

Three photos taken by the Kemah staff:

Lily seemed to have fun on the rides but was a bit quiet and, as previously mentioned, not quite herself. She fell asleep on the ride back to Houston but woke up shortly thereafter crying. We tried to go out to dinner but ended up having to take our food to go because Lily wouldn’t stop screaming. She felt really hot again but I forgot to bring the Motrin. Janet, being a nurse practitioner, assessed her and based on her symptoms and red ears, diagnosed her with an ear infection. I was thinking that was what she had too, as last time she had an ear infection, she had no symptoms other than the fever. Janet can prescribe medications but her iPhone battery was dead so she didn’t have her authorization number on her. We stopped at a Target to get a charger for Janet and Motrin for Lily. Janet then got the phone running and called in a prescription to a pharmacy further up the road. By the time we picked up the Amoxicillin and I gave Lily her first dose, she had settled down because her Motrin was kicking in. We headed back to Mike and Jodi’s house and finally ate our “to go” dinner. Lily was acting more like her jovial self when we finished eating. Poor Janet didn’t hit the road until 9pm which meant that she wouldn’t get home until around midnight and had to work the next day. It was great seeing her. I was sad that she didn’t get to meet Lily under the best of conditions but I was so grateful that she was there when Lily got sick and could write her a prescription. It saved me the time and trouble of having to call my insurance company then having to travel to some unknown urgent care. Being sick, Lily would only sleep in the bed with us again but she did sleep fairly well.

Houston Vacation: Paul’s Thursday- From the Mudflats to the ER (10/21/10)

On Thursday morning, Lily decided that she wanted to spend some time with her Uncle Mike and wanted him to take her for a walk outside:

Lily was in a good mood and didn’t seem to have a fever anymore but I gave her some Motrin just in case.
Paul and Mike left pretty early in the morning to head to the mudflats near Galveston to go bird watching. They took a ferry ride from Galveston to Bolivar and saw this lovely truck from Louisiana in line for the ferry:

They went to the North Jetty on the Bolivar Peninsula. Apparently, at low tide, tens of thousands of unique shorebirds, gulls, and terns feed and roost at the Bolivar Flats. Decomposing plant material derived from the salt marshland delivered by the coastal currents feeds millions of small worms, shrimp, and clams which live in the mud flats. The birds, along with small fish and crabs, hunt the shallows for these invertebrates.
A little blue heron at the mudflats:

A long-billed curlew wandering among some oyster shells, using its lengthy beak to dig in the mud for food:

A black-necked stilt wandering through the very shallow water:

A snowy egret hanging out on the rocks:

A collection of birds including royal terns and black skimmers, as viewed from the jetty:

Paul and Mike were risk-takers per the very beat up sign:

Snowy egrets on a log:

Pelicans and sandpipers:

Another long-billed curlew on the beach:

A very large, very old blue crab:

There were many cool varieties of sandpipers in the mudflats:

A snowy egret on the jetty:

A heron with some seriously messed up feathers:

Cormorants:

A crazy looking bridge on the drive home:

The Texas countryside:

Paul and Mike returned to Houston early in the afternoon to pick up the kids from school. After dinner, they all headed back to the baseball fields because Michael had another game. Lily and I weren’t home yet (our adventure will be on the next blog post) so we didn’t go. They should’ve known that the evening would not go well as these black vultures were ominously watching the game from the light post:

Michael practicing:

Michael up at bat:

Darn, a strike:

Another try:

Mike giving Michael some fatherly advice:

The following pictures are blurry due to the fact that they are taken at night and from far away so the flash was useless. And in baseball, everything moves so fast that even our very good camera couldn’t capture the images in such low light. However, it was an interesting sequence of events that I can’t believe Paul actually caught on camera. He was actually taking the pictures and talking to me on the phone when it all happened.
The pitch to Michael:

The pitch bounced right off poor Michael’s mouth. You can see the ball in the air behind him as a stick-like blur that the catcher is attempting to grab:

It knocked Michael clean to the ground as his trainer ran up to see if he was okay. Jodi is in the background in green, looking concerned:

Poor, bleeding Michael consulting with the trainers and coaches:

They decided to send Michael to the ER as it appeared that he would need some stitches. He was his normal stoic self and didn’t complain one bit. He was just worried that the hit knocked a tooth out which it did not, thank goodness. He ended up needing four stitches in the corner of his mouth and seemed proud about the fact that they told him it would probably leave a scar. Boys! And, of course, the first thing he wanted to do upon returning from the ER was to see the pictures that Paul caught of his injury in action.