and....we're back!

...from our Michigan trip that is.

Why does it seem like we always come home with SO much more crap stuff???

I mean, seriously, we barely got everything in the van. I told my husband next time we take a road trip we're getting one of those things that hooks onto the luggage rack on the top of the van.

We had fun. But this trip was, by far, one of our more exhausting trips. First, the 15 hr drive to and from. That's a looong drive with 2 kids, 2 70+ pound dogs and a guinea pig. Oh yes, we even took the guinea pig ;)

Oh how I love this dog...she's such a nut.

Then we get to MI around 8:30pm Thursday night and find that my mom, once again, is having back pain. She'd been dealing with it for nearly 2 mos and the drs hadn't quite determined what was causing it. To make a long story short, they suspected she had a spinal infection (which she did end up having) but her idiot drs were taking their sweet time getting her treated. 

Listen, I've said this once and I'll say it again ~ if you are NOT getting the treatment that you deserve, you demand it from your drs or switch doctors. You don't just keep going along with what they say simply because they are a doctor. Plain and simple. I had a doctor years ago ~ a very good doctor from the UofM hospital mind you ~ who kept telling me I had acid reflux when I actually had a gall stone. I even asked her if it could be my gall bladder and she flat out dismissed me. I switched doctors and had my gall bladder out 3 months later. 

Back to my mom, she made several trips to the ER for pain relief, which is totally absurd to me that no one including the drs, my mom or the people who were around her helping her, demanded they find out the cause of her back pain. So because of this she ended up spending the majority of our time in MI in the hospital. Listen, if you need to take 5 trips to the ER for pain relief it's about time someone figure out what's causing it instead of giving you some morphine and sending you on your way. When I took her to the ER the next day I pretty much told them they had to admit her...which they did. Like I said, sometimes you need to TELL them what you expect and you get it.

And this old man almost had to take a trip to the emergency vet our last night in MI because he could barely walk and was breathing really heavy.

Not sure what was up with that other than maybe a sign of things to come. He seems ok right now.

We were also busy with my 20 yr class reunion, my cousin's wedding and traveling to Mackinac Island for a couple days. And there were several people I didn't even get a chance to call let alone see which is a real bummer since we only head up to MI every couple of years. And if we end up doing the whole IVF thing this fall who knows when we'll get a chance to head back up there. I was really hoping for a better trip since our trip in May was so awful. Don't get me wrong, we had fun. It just wasn't the trip I'd hoped for. But I'll share pics of all that stuff this week. I'll be picking a name for the camera strap cover giveaway tonight so if you haven't entered be sure and head over here to throw your name in :)

I'm also going to be working on some camera strap slipcovers this week with some Heather Bailey fabrics so the winner will be able to choose one of those, too :)

Btw, if you purchased something in my etsy shop while I was away, I'll be mailing those out first thing tomorrow morning!!