Our Vacation

The night before we were supposed to leave for Vegas, we checked on the status of the flights. Remember, we were flying stand-by... so we wanted to see how good the chances were to actually get on. Well... 100% of the flights were oversold with a list of other stand-by passengers in line to get on (and our priority as grand kids of a retired employee is pretty low). The return flights were in even worse shape.

We stayed up until about 2 in the morning looking into buying a ticket to Vegas, or seeing where else in the world we could go. We even looked into cruises. Needless to say, there weren't many options for us that were available in the few hours until we wanted to leave.

So we rented a car, and drove down to the coast. We stayed in Galveston for two nights... and then we drove to Shreveport to get in some of the gambling we were set on doing :-)

It wasn't what was planned, but it was a perfect vacation! Except for the five hours spent in the emergency room.

On our second night in Galveston, I used the restroom at the Aquarium and noticed a great deal of bright red blood. I pulled up my pants, and ran out of the bathroom bawling into Jarrod's arms. Thank the good Lord for GPS... we plugged in the closest hospital and rushed over there. I was positive... 100% sure that I was losing the baby.

I was bawling and thinking things like "this is why we couldn't go to Vegas," "I wonder if swimming in the rough waves last night hurt the baby," "Of course this would happen the day after I broke down and bought some maternity clothes," "I shouldn't have had that Dr. Pepper yesterday," and a myriad of other lies and hurtful things that I was being spoonfed.

I texted my best friend, Jennifer, and my mom to tell them what was happening. My sweet friend said that she could be there in four hours if I needed her there. What a lucky girl I am. My mom was so reassuring. She kept sending me messages about all the women that she knew that had the same thing happen and their baby turned out fine (I was one of those babies :-)

That actually made me feel a lot better. That three hours waiting in the waiting room, was torture. I really wasn't sure what was happening. The bleeding wasn't getting worse, and I wasn't cramping, and with all that my mom was saying - I actually felt a little hope.

Five hours later, after meeting with the ER doc, (who happened to be an OBGYN on loan to the ER that week!!!!!!) I got to see my healthy hiccuping baby on a monitor. We got to see the baby in stunning detail. You could see all the features of it's little face. It put it's little hand up to it's face, and it was moving around quite a bit. PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All is fine!

So all in all, it was a great time. We spent some time swimming (well, standing for me) in the ocean, watching the rather large waves, looking for shells, looking at the stars, walking along the beach, visiting the aquarium, eating at the rainforest cafe, having some YUMMY crab legs, watching a funny movie, and overall enjoying each other.

Then it was on to Shreveport, where we stayed at the former Isle of Capri Casino, now the Diamond Jacks Casino. It was so disgustingly tropical that it was funny. The curtains, wallpaper, and bed linens were covered with bright colors and - of course - Toucans. The best thing about the hotel was the bathroom. It had a HUGE soaking jetted tub and a TV! We played a few games that first night, but I didn't feel good about being in a room with a lot of people smoking, so I went back to the hotel to enjoy a LONG bath and went to bed. This gave Jarrod the opportunity to play some poker. He got to the table with $100, and left a 4 in the morning with $240. Not too bad! I'm glad that we didn't end up going to Vegas though, because I didn't even consider the amount of smoke that would be in the Casinos. I just felt like such a bad mother being in the rooms. We played some Roulette the next day before the Casino's got too crowded and smokey. I LOVE ROULETTE!!!!!! I wanted to get a picture of me playing Roulette, but I lost all my money before Jarrod took one. So he gave me $5 (the minimum bet) just for a photo op, and then I turned it into $60. It was fun. We ended up coming back with over half the money that we were planning on losing at the Casinos.