Pack, Party, Repeat

Oh. My. Gosh.

What a couple of weeks we have had.

Packing, playing, organizing, swimming, moving, drinking, shopping, and visiting.

We are exhausted.

It is flattering that everyone is trying to get a little Haver Love before we move. In the past two weeks we have sold a home, bought a home, packed for Venezuela, packed for Galveston, and unpacked the Galveston Evia house.

Bob came to visit first. He helped me cook and prepare for our going away party. We went to Schlitterbahn (Madeline was in heaven), and entertained some of my friends. Randy came in over the weekend - just in time for our farewell extravaganza (note pictures). After they left on Sunday, my best friend from high school - Carolyn arrived with her niece Sara Mary. I remember when SM was born like it was yesterday - now she is 19 and VA VA VOOM - does that make me officially old???? It was just in time for the College World Series and to watch her nephew Mikie Mahtook do so well for LSU. My parents surprised me with a visit on Wednesday - just happened to drive in? Madeline was thrilled. Shortly after, my brother and sister-in-law arrived with my gorgeous nephew. They bought Chris' CRV and were driving it back to California - but stayed for a couple of days to visit.

It was all fabulous - and very worth it.

Not to underplay our party - our beautiful Galveston friends threw a farewell party for us - complete with Gus the Bus and a video highlighting our time here over the past four years. (Thank you Darren) ENJOY, and a tribute from MB.

I am a little bored today. No one is here from out of town, everything is unpacked, and if I have anymore champagne I will have to go into rehab.

Tomorrow I go and pick up Katherine! I am so excited to see her beautiful face! After we leave camp, we are driving up to Frisco, Texas to hang out with my Landry cousins for a couple of days - then off to Park City.

Since we dropped off Katherine last Thursday we have gotten 7 letters from her, and 5 of them were yesterday.

One was a homesick letter, and the rest were cute, newsy, and happy. Every night, her camp posts a letter detailing the camp activities for the day and anything special that may have happened that day. Then they post pictures from the day. At least 200 pictures, yesterday there were over 400 pictures. I am like a crackhead every night scrolling through looking for pictures of her.
We came up with a secret "thumbs up" symbol for her to tell us she is happy and doing OK and yesterday I scrolled through all of those pictures to get 2 thumbs up/huge smiles from her. I was jumping up and down, crying and screaming! My precious baby was OK. She looks happy and well fed and is in the process of learning how do do her own hair. I am able to write her emails and I send her at least one every day. We have sent her a care package from camp with her new tribe memorabilia, and she forgot a pair of shoes, so she got another picture with shoes and a few goodies. We realized she was running out of stationary FAST so instead of discouraging her to write, we sent a third package with stationary.

Her letters are hilarious! She is taking tennis, golf, swimming, something about nature crafts, dance, and drama. I heard today from one of my kids at Camp Invention who's sister in in Katherine's cabin that the found a dead scorpion in their cabin. I have not heard about it yet from Katherine but I am sure that I will soon.

Please write to her if you can:

Katherine Haver

Bubble Inn

Camp Mystic

2689 Highway 39

Hunt, Texas 78024-3412

I decided that my resume did not have enough job titles, so I agreed to teach Camp Invention - an inventors camp for kids held here in Galveston at my kids school. It is a really cool curriculum and I am having a blast. However, I have one serious observation. Teachers are overworked and underpaid. I wonder how they have time to instruct between drying tears, refereeing fights, dealing with outbursts, etc... We have made boats out of aluminum foil, parachutes, polymers, they have learned about lift and drag, chemistry, vikings, and superheros. It is over on Friday and I am already happily exhausted.

The moving people have come to inventory our house. I have to decide what is going to Venezuela immediately, what is going on the boat, and what we will carry with us. I also have to decide what I will leave in our NEW HOUSE in Galveston. Yes, we bought a house here. A small one (for us). It is 1500 square feet and is in Evia

http://www.eviagalveston.com/bungalowrow.htm

Mine is the super cute red on on the end. I think you can click on it and check it out. It will be our home for the holidays and the summer and we will potentially rent it out as a vacation rental.

Duty is calling - will write more later.

Kisses

Mary Claire

Half-Hearted

I brought Katherine to Camp Mystic on Thursday.

That was NOT the plan. She was scheduled to take the bus on Thursday morning from Houston with her friends. Her nausea and vomiting was not going away as quickly as I had hoped. She was still pretty sick Wednesday morning and I was getting nervous.

We had hotel reservations in Houston at the Hilton/Post Oak which was right next to the drop off location for the busses. I decided to risk it and we drove up Wednesday afternoon to Houston. She was weak and tired and had no appetite. I kept reassuring her that if she felt bad, I could drive her another day. God bless that little girl, but she kept wanting to try.

We ordered movies and dinner in the room. She tried to eat but could only manage a couple of small bites of mashed potatoes (all of the food she had eaten for the day).

The next morning she did not want to wake up she felt so bad. She dragged herself out of bed and we went down to the buffet at the hotel. She could not eat anything and could hardly sit up strait. There were other kids there obviously leaving for camp and she tried hard to smile. My heart was breaking in two for her. There was NO WAY I was putting her on a bus.

I offered to drive her to Kerville and get a hotel there and if she felt better, bring her to camp on Friday for a late check-in. She reluctantly agreed. I had packed extra clothes for Madeline and myself just in case. We went to the bus drop-off to tell them she was sick and I would drive her myself. She could barely look up from her seat in the car.

We left for the Hill Country at 0730. She slept for the first couple of hours and Madeline watched a Barbie movie. Just outside of San Antonio she woke up and said she was hungry. I whipped it into McDonald's and she wanted a biscuit and a sprite. She ate half of the biscuit and gave Madeline the other half. She then told me it was OK to bring her to camp. I told her if she got there and felt bad I could get a hotel and let her sleep and she said OK.

My fabulous husband had bought me a Garmin for the car and it brought us safely to Camp Mystic by noon. There were teenaged girls screaming and cheering for us as we drove up. They opened the door and screamed welcome and gathered up Katherine immediately. She had a HUGE smile on her face. I wondered if this was the same child I had nursed for the past three days.

We went to her cabin and made up her bed and organized her little space. She kept wandering off to meet more little girls. It was as if she had never been sick. We beat the Houston bus she was supposed to ride - I found out later it had BROKE DOWN on the trip up there. After about 45 minutes, Madeline and I said goodbye. There were no tears, and only a brief hug. My heart cleaved in two and I left half of it in Hunt, Texas.

Madeline and I drove home and arrived in Galveston at about 6 pm. Katherine's illness never gave me any time to think about her being away for so long. I did not want to cry in front of Madeline.

Camp Mystic has a website and they post HUNDREDS of photos from camp every day. I scroll through them each night looking for pictures of Katherine. It makes me feel like I am there too. In EVERY picture she has a HUGE smile. It seems like she is having a wonderful time and I am so happy that Chris and I could do this for her.

On Saturday we got 4 letters from her. Each only had about 1 or 2 sentences and said that she missed us. I have already sent her three care packages! I send her emails every day through her camp. Madeline is making her art projects and drawing her pictures.

Madeline is happy as a pig in mud having Chris and I all to herself. I will try to make the best of it for her.

Saying Goodbye

I have said a lot of farewells lately.

My last day in the office was last week. I had been saying goodbye to patients for months which was very hard. I know they are in great hands with my partners so I was not worried about their care, but I had gotten to be friends with so many of them. I fought back tears nearly every day, just so I could get through the day. I took my office out for happy hour on my last Friday. We had margartias and snacks and told stories for hours. It was a great time and I will miss all of them very much. Rhonda and Terri were the two women I worked closest with over the years and each of them became very good friends.

On Monday night last week, it was my LAST call night ever. Katherine, Madeline and I had planned to make it a slumber party at the hospital. We packed our bags and off we went to Clear Lake. I had a couple of babies to deliver, but was done by about 2 pm. We had a great lunch at Fudrucker's next to the hospital, then went to see Up (which was great). We snuggled up on the couch in the call room and watched TV then went to bed.

Around 2 am I heard Katherine coughing in the next room. I jumped out of bed and realized she was throwing up all over her clothes and sleeping bag. I gathered her up and tried to get her to the bathroom. Madeline heard us and started crying because she was scared. I got Katherine cleaned up and realized she was burning up. Her teeth were chattering and she was crying. I decided to take them home and risk being away from the hospital for a couple of hours.

I got the rooms cleaned up, got plastic bags for the soiled stuff and brought everything down to the car. I moved the car to the ER bay so I could have it right next to the door in case Katherine got sick again. My engine had a little trouble turning over when I moved it. I went back upstairs to Labor and Delivery and got the girls. I had to carry Katherine, which made Madeline pretty upset. I got them downstairs and into the car. I jumped into the driver's seat and called Chris to let him know we were heading home. My car was DEAD. The engine went 'click' and would not turn over. WHAT ARE THE CHANCES??????

I took a deep breath and told the kids to hang on for a minute. Chris said he was heading up to us. It was now about 3am. I was right next to the ER so I ran in there. I know everyone there pretty well, but it did not help that I was in my PJ's with running shoes and no bra at the time. I must have looked a little frantic when I asked for jumper cables because half of the male ER nursing staff came out to help me. BTW, NONE of the male physicians came to help. One of the ladies thought she might have cables and pulled up her huge Excursion. She did not have cables, but one of the guys did.

At this point, Katherine started throwing up again. One of the ladies ran inside and got emesis (vomit) bags for us and stole some Zofran (chemotherapy grade nausea medicine) for Katherine. She finally stopped throwing up, my care was jumped and started, we waved goodbye to everyone and took off for Galveston. Chris met us about half way and followed us home to Firestone where we left my car.

We made it home by about 4 am. I decided not to go back to the hospital and risk an emergency and to stay with Katherine who was miserable. How is THAT for a last day at work. Thankfully, luck was on my side and no one needed a physician for the rest of my shift.