Calgary Zoo April 2010

For Easter/conference weekend we took a trip up to Canada to see Nathan's family. It was fun to see them again and have them see Xander again. The last time we traveled up was in September and the last time they came down was in January, so it'd been a while.

Michael, Andrew, Becca, Cathy, Nathan, Me, and Xander in the high chair. Chris is taking the picture. These pictures are from Becca's blog. Our camera was dead, otherwise we'd have more pictures from our trip posted.

While we were there, we went to the zoo! At the Calgary zoo they have a life size dinosaur exhibit with moving dinosaurs that roared. They were pretty cool, and apparently too lifelike....

This is SUCH a sad picture! Michael was totally and completely terrified! We tried explaining to him that the dinos weren't real, but then he'd say, "but they can move!" Finally Nathan told him that the ropes/gates will keep the dinos away from him and Michael relaxed a little. But he didn't get out of the stroller!

Amy: Michael, tell me about the zoo.

Michael: It was fun, with Mama and Papa Sunderland and Becca.

Amy: What'd you see?

Michael: Dinosaurs and other things. And the dinosaurs were scary. I was scared of the dinosaurs. I wanted them to die again. When are they going to die again, Mom?

We did see other animals (of course) but they obviously didn't make much an impression on him.

As is our luck, Xander got sick while we were visiting. For the week leading up to the trip, Nathan and Michael both had a really bad cough. I was hoping that Xander wouldn't get it, but Midnight, on the night we were leaving, Xander started coughing. I was hoping that it wouldn't escalate into anything worse, but by Tuesday morning we knew that he needed to see a doctor. The problem? We were in Canada, and Xander wasn't a resident of Canada. So even though he was a Canadian citizen, he didn't qualify for the health insurance. If we wanted to take him to the hospital it would cost over 500 dollars! Luckily it was MUCH cheaper to take him to a doctor office, so that's what we did.

At the office, they took his oxygen reading, and it registered at a low 83%. The nurse said they like to see in the mid 90's. When the doctor came in he said he would prefer to send us to the emergency room, but he didn't want us to have to pay an arm and a leg, so he prescribed an inhaler for Xander and gave us strict orders to go to the hospital if he didn't improve. Luckily, Xander did improve. Mind you he was still bad, but he was better. So we were able to leave the next day and then on Thursday we took him to our family doctor.

After taking some x-rays and blood and a nasty RSV test, the doctor said that Xander had an asthma attack! So we have a nebulizer and are doing breathing treatments, as well as giving him a few doses of steroids to see if we can get his breathing under control again. Now, this doesn't mean that he has asthma. Hopefully it was just an isolated incident, but if has repeated issues like this one than the diagnosis of asthma will come. I really hope it doesn't!

All in all, it was a nice trip to Canada. It was fun to see some family that we hadn't seen in a loooong time (Nathan's grandpa and aunt) and to talk and chat. It was definitely a MUCH needed vacation!