Life After Recovery: "What do you mean it's purple?," and other observations from the road

We made it to South Carolina! But first...how we got here :)

Jason finished this round of KKI last Friday, and completely rocked his final evaluations. The main test the use to measure his trunk strength is what you see in the photo below. He has to stretch out (forward and side to side) and see how far out he can reach without losing balance.

In January, he could go about 1-3 inches in different directions (left side is the strong side, so he's always been able to go a bit further in that direction). On Friday, he could go 4-6.5 inches. In order to appreciate the magnitude of these gains, keep this in mind: most people regain an inch of strength/control per YEAR. Jason gained 3+ in 6 months! Once he makes it to 10 inches, he'll be considered "normal," and they'll move on to a new metric for him. We're hoping he can gain another few inches in the next year.

We began our southward journey on Saturday morning. We drove from Baltimore (or were driven by Jason's mom) to Fairfax, where we picked up the rental car. After lunch, we set out for Fayetteville, NC, thinking we should get there in about 4-5 hours. It took over 6. We hit majorly bad traffic on I-95 (which, we've decided is worse than California's I-5 in terms of sheer terribleness), and then once we got out of the traffic, the thunderstorms rolled in. Savannah was none too happy about these--they completely terrified her, and I wasn't much of a fan either, seeing as how for large parts of the drive, I could only see a few feet in front of the car. I'll take California sunniness, thank you. About 25 miles out from our hotel for the night, Jason decided to check the weather. He looked at me and said, "you know that terrible weather through Richmond? That was red on the weather map. We're about to go through a purple section." At which point I replied, "what do you mean it's purple? What does that even correspond to?" Turns out, purple means really, really nasty weather. It was a fun way to end the day.

The next day dawned sunnier (thankfully), and we set out for the last leg of the trip to SC. We promised Savannah, who had been a complete trooper, that she could go to the pool as soon as we got to the hotel. So, we checked in and Savannah and I got ready for the pool. We walked outside only to learn that the pool was closed for the afternoon. To compensate, I told Savannah she could swim in our tub in the room (it's a really big garden tub, so this worked), and that she could have grilled cheese for dinner, and ice cream for dessert. She enjoyed her tub swim and then off we went in search of dinner. We learned pretty quickly that the area around our hotel is terrible in terms of accessibility (the hotel itself is great)--very few cutouts from the sidewalk, uneven surfaces, etc etc. There is a sandwich shop near us, so we went there in search of Sav's grilled cheese. But they don't do hot sandwiches. Boo. So we returned to the hotel, where I thought I'd order room service for her (ice cream and grilled cheese both being on the menu). We were told the kitchen hadn't opened that day. Ugh. Then, she went to the hotel pantry area to get a popsicle, only to learn that someone had put all the ice cream in the refrigerator--it had all melted. I know that in the grand scheme of things, these are all very small problems, but, to a 3 year old who has spent the past two days in the car, they were pretty terrible.

Thankfully, everything has gone well since or rather inauspicious first day. We've been on a carriage ride, seen lots of family, celebrated my dad's birthday, gone swimming (the pool re-opened yesterday!), and played outside. We're here for another few days before we begin the trek back up north! Enjoy the picture below.

All my love,

Ashley

This was on the bed in our hotel in Fayetteville--it was good to know the sheets were clean, but I had kinda assumed they would be. Makes me wonder what they did before they started putting these notices everywhere in the hotel?