One crazy trip, and now we're heading back to Elko.

This trip started off with the intent of Natalie, Lexie, and myself staying here in Vegas for the next 3 months while I underwent breast reconstruction surgery (again!) - so in other words having a tissue expander inserted in my chest, saline injections almost weekly, then about 3 months later when the expander has stretched my skin to the right size, they will replace it with a silicone breast, and do a breast lift on my other breast. BUT my plastic surgeon says that after the last surgery mishap I am not quite ready yet. While here, I had also hoped on spending some time with my mother - she's going through liver failure, and I would like to spend as much time with her as possible incase they can't or don't find her a liver donor and these are her last dying days. But for now we're looking at about another 3 to 6 months before I can TRY having surgery again. Ugh! And at this point, I'm not even sure if my mom will still be here in Vegas or if she will have returned to their home in Ajijic Mexico. I had really hoped to put all this cancer/mastectomy stuff behind me and go on with my life. I also really looked forward to the idea of not being lop-sided anymore and having two breast - and one that's NOT fake! But let me say this..... I am very thankful about being in remission for one full year now, yeah!

Since Natalie just graduated kindergarten, we took off Sunday and headed to Disney for a few days. At the end of our stay we decided at the spur of the moment, to take off to San Diego so Ruben could meet up with his cousin and catch a Dodger game against the Padres. The next day - as if we hadn't already walked around enough, or had spent enough money on every thing (cause we went ALL out on this trip, and managed to spend about $1700 in 3 days & that was just at Disney alone!) we headed to San Diego Zoo. We found a hotel and checked in just in time for Ruben to leave for the baseball game. While he was at the game, Natalie and I just chilled out in the room and relaxed. The next morning, we arrived at the zoo at 9 am just as it opened and we didn't leave the park till it closed around 4 pm - yet we still did not see all the animals! Some weren't on display as the cages were being cleaned, others we couldn't find or just didn't have enough time. Afterwards, we drove to LA to see his cousins, ate dinner, chatted for a bit then turned around and left about 10 pm to drive back to Vegas - we didn't get home till around 3 am! I know it all sounds so crazy!

The whole trip kind of started off bad with Ruben hitting a concrete post at Smith's, and ruining the paint on the bumper of my brand new, fully paid for Durango. To which angered him so much, he slammed the door so hard, he not only knocked the window off the track, but he broke it as well! However, luckily when he went to Dodge, he got the window replaced for free under a factory recall - now I just have to tint it to match the others. I don't even want to think about re-painting the bumper, so I am looking for a rather large Dodger bumper sticker to put on it, since my Durango looks kinda like Dodger blue. But even after a beginning like that, our vacation still turned out to be a pretty good one. I spent a ton of money on scrapbooking supplies, I also bought nearly every Grumpy shirt I could find at Disney. Natalie on the other hand got a bounty of toys that only a spoiled rotten single child would or could get. I don't think I could have ever afforded to spend that much money on two kids, no matter how badly I had wanted another one.

As we both had our new digital cameras with us, we have around 230 pictures of the trip to go through and have printed. Fun! I will get some up and posted as soon as possible and the rest on Flickr, so you may all enjoy our trip, as well. Hope your week was as magical as ours - minus all the bumps and broken windows.