Trip to California

At the end of April Diana’s dad had a lung transplant. So come the end of May Jason and I decided that it would be helpful to them if we went out to California and stayed with them for a couple of weeks to help them out. My parents are renting a small 1 bedroom/studio apartment in the LA area. So Jason and I got to sleep on an air mattress in the living. It wasn’t too bad except we kept sliding into each other during the night  We would also work full time during the day on Chicago hours. So come 5 am California time we would be up and logged onto our work. The bad part would be that we would go to bed at 11 California time if we were lucky. But it all worked out and we had a great time visiting and helping my parents.
Although the trip was designed to help out my parents we had a great time doing other stuff with them too. We went on a driving tour of Beverly Hills and saw Barbara Streisand’s home as well as a lot of other “stars”. Every day my dad is supposed to do some exercise and so we found some exciting things instead of walking around the apartment complex. Most of what we did was on my parents list of things they wanted to do before they left LA. So…. we went to the beach one afternoon and just watched the wave’s crash and played in the water a bit – Dad just watched on that one. We went up to the Air Force base and did some shopping.

Then we took a trip down to Long Beach and went to the Queen Mary Cruise Ship. The haunted part of the tour was a little hooky but the rest of it was pretty cool. The most amazing thing was watching my dad walk up and down the stairs on this cruise ship without any problems. Before the surgery it would take him almost 10 minutes to walk up a flight of stairs because he’d have to stop and catch his breath. Now he was going up multiple flights of stairs without an issue. He was tired by the end of the day but we all were. I was so proud of him and how well he did!
We also took a day trip to La Brea Tar Pits. I guess there used to be Tar Pits in Los Angeles and prehistoric animals would get stuck in them. Well the tar preserved them amazingly well and we can now see these animals in all their glory. It was a great museum. They also had a beautiful area with vegetation and some live excavating going on. It was great. Thanks for taking us mom and dad.

My favorite part of the trip though was just being able to see both my parents so happy! My mother is relieved that the surgery is over and they can start to live again and my father is happy because he can finally breathe again. Before the surgery it would take all his energy just to sit down to eat dinner. Immediately afterwards he would go lie down and recover. After his surgery we would sit down to dinner and then visit for 2 -3 hours or play games. It was amazing!
I am so thankful that we had the opportunity to go out and be with my parents – not only because it was beautiful, sunny California but because the reason we were there was so awesome! Oh yeah, and I had a wonderful trip with my wonderful hubby!