Our mini vacation

We were supposed to leave for the Mayo clinic in Arizona on Tuesday.  Since my appointment was cancelled and I couldn't get an appointment in Minnesota, Stan and I decided we needed to get away for a few days.  He already had the time off from work and I had cancelled all of my appointments.  We decided we were going to go to Houston and visit some of the museums.  We hadn't been to any of the museums in Houston since Rachael was competing in dance.  Whenever we had dance competitions in Houston, we would always go to the museums there.  The kids loved the children's museum in Houston.    

Monday morning I had a few appointments.  Jeremy had a dentist appointment with a new dentist at 10, Stan had a chiropractor appointment at 9:40 and Lucky (our cat) had a vet appointment at 10:40.  I took Jeremy to the dentist, leaving Lucky in the van (don't worry, it was a good day for it, overcast with temps in the 60s).  The plan was for Stan to go to his appointment then to come pick up Lucky.  It didn't work out that way.  I left Jeremy there, took Lucky and Stan came to get him.  

Lucky's vet appointment went well.  He has had a rough time lately.  I'll have to tell you the story of how he got his name some time.  Lucky has a tumor on his ankle and the skin has been broken.  When I was in the hospital last, it got very infected with a resistant bacteria called Pseudomonas.  We have been doing daily dressing changes and giving him oral antibiotics for over a month now.  Cats are not easy to give medication to.  You can't hide it in food like you can with dogs, at least not with Lucky.  He his a picky eater.  The vet said to put it in yogurt but he won't eat dairy foods.  I've never seen a cat not like dairy.  His infection is finally cleared up.  We still have to do the dressing changes though.  Now we have to go to the surgeon to find out what the next step is.

Houston was fun.  I'm so glad I don't live there though.  Parking was a nightmare wherever we went and was expensive.  The museum was a lot of fun.  We went to the planetarium show.  Tom Hanks was the narrator for the show.  We had been to this museum before, but the last time was 15 years ago and we had 3 little kids with us then.  This was definitely a calmer visit.  

We also went to the butterfly center there.  It is so cool.  It is a huge greenhouse full of plants and trees with hundreds of butterflies flying around in it. They do all kinds of research on butterflies there too.  They had some cocoons set up for display.  There was a butterfly that had just emerged from  it's cocoon.  It's wings were still wet and limp.  I've never seen that in real life.

We went to a really cool restaurant for dinner.  It was called The Hobbit.  It was an old house converted into a restaurant.  It had mismatched wooden tables and chairs.  There was a very low to the ground chair made from logs with a fur covering on it.  There was art work on the walls from the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  It was a cool place.  The Lamb burger was delicious too.  I splurged a little bit and had some sweet potato fries.  We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.  I ate in plan for dinner, white fish with an olive oil/basil/sundried tomato topping, asparagus and cauliflower.  It was delicious and 100% keto friendly.  The cheesecake didn't even tempt me.  I haven't weighed since I got back, so I don't know if I gained any weight while we were on vacation.  I felt like I ate more than I usually did and I couldn't eat as many vegetables as usual.  I'm not stressed about it though.  Part of making this weight loss a permanent part of my life is learning how to navigate vacation and how to splurge a little bit when I am on vacation without letting it pack on the pounds and totally derail me.