Ella’s new ride, the Discovery Place and a trip to the ER

Wow, we have been so busy!  Wednesday my Father in law and his girlfriend came into town.  The last time Ella was around Gerry was her birthday last year.  She wasn’t really shy around him this time but she didn’t really want to give him a hug or get too close.  She seemed to really take to his girlfriend Terri.  Thursday while Jeff and I were at work, they took Ella on a mini shopping spree.  You should see all of the stuff that kid came home with.  I think she cleaned Sanrio’s Surprises out!  That night we went out to eat at Carrabba’s .  I love that place!  That was the first time we have taken Ella there.  They give kids pizza dough to play with.  Everything was cool at first but next thing you know she is rubbing it back and forth in between her hands and they were so sticky and covered in dough, it was a huge mess!  It was hard to get it off of her and the server brought us a beverage napkin to wipe it off.  Uh, okay… are you kidding lady?  Anyway after that we went to Toy’s R Us.  Ella got a early birthday present from her Paw paw  Check out her new car!  She loves it!  And someone else does too!  This morning we went out to breakfast at the Cracker Barrel.  When we walked in Ella noticed this animal/ball thing rolling around all over the place.  It was a weasel ball .  Ella kept talking about it while we were eating and I told her she could have one.  She said it was going to be her 3rd pet and that she would sleep with it.  It was so cute, she held it in the truck the whole way to the Discovery Place.  There really isn’t that much to look at there.  I mean it is big and all and there is quite a bit that kids can be involved in but I just thought there would be more to it.  Here is Ella playing with a tornado!    And then here she is in front of a dinosaur!  She looks thrilled, huh?  We were going to watch one of the Imax films but they didn’t have much to choose from and I didn’t think any of them would be appropriate for Ella to watch.   And then last but not least, Ella got in the “Air chair”, you just sit in it and maybe go up 10 feet in the air… but in order to go up you have to press these buttons to lift you off the ground.  Finally it was time for her turn and she barely got up off the ground, she stopped pressing the buttons and started floating back down.  I am not sure if she got scared or what.  Jeff said she was set to go up, paused for a minute and started pressing them again to keep going up but by that time she was on her way back down.   We were all ready to go, so Ella and I stopped in the gift shop, picked up some space ice cream.  Gerry was having a hard time breathing.  We didn’t really know what was going on.  We went back home, took a rest for a while and then grilled out.  Terri had to drive back to Raleigh tonight.  Shortly after she left I went to the grocery store and Jeff called my cell phone and said that Gerry needed to go to Urgent Care.  Okay, why are there not any 24 hour Urgent Care’s our area?  So, we went to the emergency room.   Jeff had a few beers with dinner so he stayed home with Ella.   Lucikly the hospital took him in right away.  Turns out his asthma was bothering him.  They gave him a breathing treatment and some steroids.  We were there till right around 1am.  His breathing somewhat better the next day but it was still giving him a hard time… he did stop wheezing so the hospital visit did help.