four thousand miles, four thousand photos

Remember when Kaylie got pink eye right after Liliana was born and how fun it was keeping her away from the baby and keeping everything sanitary so that it didn’t spread like wild fire? REMEMBER HOW FUN THAT WAS? Well, we did that again this week. HOLY ANXIETY, BATMAN. Kaylie came out of her room on Sunday morning with a bright red eye. We took her to the clinic, got the pink eye diagnosis, and quarantined her for the next four days. I’ve been disinfecting door knobs, bathroom faucets, light switches, toilet flushers, ANYTHING I CAN THINK OF. It’s almost gone. And then I can stop the anxious DON’T TOUCH THAT, DON’T TOUCH THAT EITHER, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! shaking.

Also in the middle of her pink eye, I had a couple super-fun attacks. Morphine, FTW! I’m having an ERCP on Friday, and hopefully I’ll finally have my cholecystectomy very shortly after that. (I don’t know why it has to be done in two procedures, I just want it OVER WITH.)

In other, more fun news, I (finally) edited photos from the last month – our lake trip and our BC trip. I know, right? IT’S ABOUT TIME. (SORRY FOR THE ALL CAPS.) (IT’S JUST BEEN THAT KIND OF WEEK MONTH.)

The week before we went to BC, my friend Lisa invited a bunch of us out to her cabin for a couple nights. The drive out there was under two hours, a perfect distance for my three goobers.

Before we left, I laid out the ground rules for the trip, one of them being that the girls had to be kind to each other in the car. Liliana replied, “Aren’t we taking the van?”

On our second beach day, Lisa brought the boat out on the water and the girls got to go tubing for the first time. I wasn’t sure how Liliana, the girl who is terrified of running bath water, would handle it. She LOVED it. Tubing with my girls was probably the most fun I’ve ever had with them. Seeing so much joy on their faces totally made my week. As we were flying across the water, Liliana says to me, “Remember that Barbie song, Mama? Queen of the Waves?”

It was a full, loud, incredibly fun couple days. Liliana loves the lake so much. She could play in the sand for hours and hours and hours.

We ate, we played in the sand, we swam in the lake, we played lots of games, and we watched movies late into the night.

We left after lunch on Thursday, as Noah’s sister Talitha was flying in that night and we were really looking forward to seeing her and introducing her to Preston.

But, then my dad called with the news about my Opa and I wanted to get to BC as soon as I could. Noah and I worked out all sorts of scenarios, changed our minds a couple times, and finally Kaylie, Preston, and I took off about 48 hours later.

Our first stop was Alberta, to visit friends we hadn’t seen in about eight years.

Carmen and Bobbie have a daughter Kaylie’s age, and both girls were stoked to play with each other. Most of the friends of C & B and Noah & I have little kids, so Kaylie and Zoe were excited to have someone their own age to hang out with.

Kaylie’s biological dad lives in the same city, so she got to hang out with him as well. He took both girls to a movie and to see Kaylie’s cousin she hadn’t seen in a couple years.

Before the movie, Kaylie and Zoe raced down the slip ‘n slide and had a water fight. It was so, so hot, the cold water was the perfect cure.

I’ve had a lot of women take an instant liking to my baby, but it’s rare to have a guy do it. Carmen snatched up Preston and my arms welcomed the break.

The last time K & Z saw each other, it was 2003 and they were this big:

They’ve grown a bit since then:

Our first day of traveling was a mere six or so hours. The next day, we went all the way to my Opa’s house – a 16-hour trek. I’m an efficient traveler, but we had to stop every two or so hours to feed Preston or get gas or to stop for Kaylie to use the washroom EVEN THOUGH SHE JUST WENT.

My family is huge. Both my parents come from Dutch families of eight. It may look like there are a lot of people in the above shot, but we were still missing at least 10 family members. It was great to see everyone again, even if it was under less-than-ideal circumstances.

On the Tuesday morning, we went up to the cemetery to lay my Opa to rest. Everything was done by the family, with no funeral home involved at all. I’d never seen it done like that before, but it was peaceful and intimate.

I don’t do well with grief or people grieving around me. I guess I don’t know anyone who does do well with it, but it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I don’t know what to do, how to act, or how to react. I was glad I had Preston with me so I at least had something to focus on. We laid our names in Scrabble tiles on my Opa’s casket before it was lowered into the ground.

I hated driving away. I didn’t like the idea of leaving him there, all by himself. I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn’t there anymore, and that he was in a place so much better than this earth – singing bass in the heavenly choir, cancer-free.

The comic relief was when someone would say something about Tom & Jerry (Opa’s friend and Opa’s nephew) and they’d have to switch to saying Jerry and Tom.

We went down to the cafe for lunch and then across the street to the church for my Opa’s memorial service. It was packed. He’d lived more than 50 years in a small town and he was loved by everyone. There was standing room only. As I stood there, singing hymns and listening to the voices around me, I’d forgotten what a church full of people singing hymns with all their strength sounded like. It was incredibly beautiful and powerful.

I was surprised to see some Terrace people there, who had come to support my mom. It was comforting to see familiar faces, though, in a crowd of people I didn’t know (besides my family members).

My uncle and cousin from my dad’s side came as well.

The cousins spent a lot of time playing Opa games – games he’d taught us and played with us.

And, of course, we (they, not I) played soccer.

We had a bonfire both nights we were there.

What’s that you got there, Erica? The biggest, most gigantic bottle of super-sweet juice-tasting wine I ever did see/taste?

We spent the day after the memorial cleaning out everything from Opa’s house, choosing what we wanted and giving the rest away. It was weird and unsettling. I felt like a greedy vulture. I justified it by telling myself that (a) Opa wasn’t going to need any of his stuff anymore, (b) he didn’t want anything thrown out, and (c) nobody else wanted the things I took home. I’d be perfectly happy if I never had to do anything like that ever again.

When we were done all that needed to be done, I followed my dad to Terrace and stayed there a couple nights.

I was feeling very anti-social and went there primarily to see my grandma.

I also got to see Ann

and Tamara, though,

and Kaylie got to see her friends Kendra (we forgot to take a photo with her),

Michaela,

and Kessa.

I also randomly ran into Debbie and got to chat with her for 2.3 seconds. I wish I’d had more time (and will) to visit with more friends there, but I just didn’t. As soon as the memorial service was over, I just wanted to go home, but I knew I’d regret not making the extra 4-hour round trip to see my Grandma, and I’m so glad I got to see her. She’s an amazing lady and I wish I lived closer to her so I could visit her more often.

I decided to break up the trip home into three instead of two. That 16-hour day was much too long, and I figured that three 8-ish-hour days were much better. I wanted to make the trip as fun for Kaylie as I could, so we spent the first night in a hotel so that she could play in the pool(s).

To make it as cheap as possible, we got a room with just one queen sized bed. It was … squishy. Kaylie had a lot of fun, though, and inserted herself into a game of piggy in the middle as soon as she got into the pool. Introverted my kids are not.

The next morning we had breakfast with our friends Rob, Jodi, Reece, and Morgan. Kaylie and Reece are only weeks apart in age and Jodi babysat Kaylie for the first couple years of her life. She was the most incredible caregiver I could have imagined. It was so good to catch up with them.

We traveled to Edmonton that day and stayed with my Aunt Daisy and Uncle Roy. We had dinner with them and Aunt Yvonne and my cousins Brett and Darcy, Kaylie played a bunch of Wii, and we had grilled cheese and mango for breakfast.

We finally came to the day we were to go home, but before we left, we hung out and had lunch with my friend Jackie. We hadn’t seen each other since before her oldest (7-year-old) son was born.

Apparently I did a lot of catching up with people on this trip. It was nice to have a lot of fun on a trip that also contained a lot of sorrow.

I’d wanted to quickly hit up Ikea, but Kaylie desperately wanted to go on some rides at West Edmonton Mall, so I caved and let her fit as many rides into two hours as she could.

The Edmonton –> Saskatoon trek was the hardest of the entire trip. We stopped at least every hour to feed or soothe Preston. He cried so much, Kaylie and I were so stressed. But, I wanted to get home before it was dark, so we had to just let him cry sometimes, doing our best to soothe him. We got home just as the sun went down. Noah had cleaned the entire house while we’d been gone. It looked incredible … until I unpacked the van and turned it into a disaster.

In all, we traveled about 4,000k (I forgot to reset the odometer until we were half an hour outside the city). It was a bittersweet trip, but I’m glad we took it because I would have really regretted not going. I couldn’t have not gone.

So, that was July.
Good and bad and ugly and beautiful.

Filed under: Kaylie, Liliana, Preston, crazyness, family, friends, life, traveling