Sometimes Patrick’s medical needs require sacrifices. For the week between Christmas and New Years’, Brian’s brother rented a beach house for the family in North Carolina. The idea was that the family could have a vacation together for a week, and then at the end of that week, Brian’s niece Emma would be baptized.
Well, for us there were two problems with the plan. 1) North Carolina is on the other side of the country and travelling there meant putting Patrick’s transplant listing on hold and make a whole heck of a lot of preparations to get through that long of a flight. 2) We’d already scheduled Patrick’s transplant checkup for January 4th, meaning two back to back weeks of travel for a kid who is usually sick to his stomach after just a few days away from home.
In the end, we sacrificed. Brian skipped the beach house and flew to NC just for the baptism and a few days with his brother. Patrick and I stayed home. Then, we all flew to Seattle for Patrick’s appointment.
So what do Patrick and I do when we are at home without Daddy for a few days, including a holiday? Well, first of all I made one big batch of a meal I can stand eating for a few days because eating is NOT high on Patrick’s priority list and it’s good to devote as little time as possible to that necessity.
Then, this time, we inflated Patrick’s new air mattress and put it in the living room so we could play and walk on it and generally get to love it before we needed it to travel.
We played with all of Patrick’s Christmas toys over and over again.
Then we cleaned up Christmas, decorations and all, so we could come home to a clean house.
We took Patrick’s cousins to the zoo. That a pretty fun adventure. Patrick loved having his cousin in his wagon with him. His cousin loved the snakes, which was a surprise to all of us, as she is usually such a girly girl.
We video chatted with Daddy most nights, which is made a little bit of extra fun because Patrick loves to strut and make faces and act silly when he can see himself on the computer screen.
We celebrated the New Year with my family.. grandma, mom, dad, aunts, sisters. They chose to have mexican for dinner, meaning Patrick got tortillas, and so he was happy. Then we went to bed late, even though it was only 10 p.m. And woke up early for church, which deserves it’s own post.
And then, when all was said and done, we called in reinforcements from my sister and did my best to clean and pack before it was time to fly to Seattle. Which also deserves it’s own post.
And that’s what we did while daddy was away to round off 2011.
Patrick Hoopes 