Where we've been

Liam is finally back to normal. The poor little guy was miserable for more than a week. His first day even remotely back to normal was last Thursday, but even then he had a few bouts of tummy soreness and didn't go to his swimming lesson because he was still too fatigued from the illness.
As luck would have it, we had planned a mini-vacation of sorts for last week. We were set to leave for the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, OH on Monday, and despite the trip to the ER on Sunday, we decided to go ahead with the trip. There was nothing we could do for him at home so we decided the best thing for him would be to go someplace fun where he could keep his mind off of it. So (after checking on our international health coverage, just in case), off we set.
Kalahari is no further for us than Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls and we decided that it was time for a change of scenery. Chad took care of all of the arrangements and I mostly stayed out of the planning, and I was pleasantly surprised by pretty much everything. We had a huge suite that included a full kitchen and the price was really reasonable. (Of course, our trip was mid-week and off-season, which helps immensely.) The main benefit to Kalahari over GWL is that there is more to do outside of the water park. Kalahari has a whole zoo on premises as well as more play spaces for the kids to burn off some steam once they are out of their swimsuits. There is also a larger area for very little kids to play, and Mallory really enjoyed this. (We had trouble even coaxing her into the kiddie pool at GWL, so this was a plus.)
Our trip did not start off well when our GPS got tempermental and crapped out on us while we were on the road. That's the bane of becoming dependent on technology, I guess - when you don't have it, you are SOL. We vaguely knew that we were trying to head south and east but we wound up heading west on Telegraph Road and eventually stopped at a store to pick up a new GPS - after we tried stopping a couple of places to buy a map, which they apparently do not sell anymore. Note to prospective GPS customers: it's impossible to find a GPS with Canadian maps when you are shopping in an American store. They all come loaded with Puerto Rico as the only international destination instead. The GPS was later returned, but not before it helped us find our way to Ohio.
The first 24 hours of our trip were pretty much a write-off for Liam, who was still very unwell at that point. He would enjoy himself for ten minutes and then suffer stomach pains for equally as long. We did manage to visit the zoo and hit the water park for less than an hour, but we felt really bad for him and so spent a lot of time in our suite. The next morning I called the doctor's office back home and the nurse OK'd us to give him some Advil, so we ran out to pick some up, and with that Liam's condition improved remarkably and we could get on with our vacation.
Definitely one of the highlights of the trip was visiting the zoo, and we paid a ridiculous amount of money to buy some animal feed so the kids could interact with the animals. It turned out to be well worth it because we are still talking about the kids feeding the animals now nearly a week later.
Since it was off-season, we did miss the camels and giraffes, who have moved to their winter quarters already. We also weren't able to use the outdoor waterpark features or adventure activities (zip lines, rock climbing walls, etc.) but we had enough to do in our time there without those features. We came home on Thursday and Liam was well enough to head back to school on Friday and to hockey on Saturday, so I think I can safely say that this little episode is behind us. Thankfully none of the rest of us got sick, either, though Mallory was being testy today and my first thought turned to: is she coming down with something?

Tomorrow it's back to work, school, and Cindy's house, though Liam was at school on Friday and Chad and I have been on constant check-in with the office for the past week, so really the only return worth mentioning is Mallorys' return to Cindy's. Cindy was planning to spend her week off last week renovating her family room and Mallory is itching to see the progress. It'll be nice to have some incentive to help get her out the door tomorrow morning.