Hey everyone! I miss you all so much! My travels here went very well! Thank you for all your love and support! I am THRILLED to be with my son!!! He is such an amazing soul!

He is really going through a lot in order to donate his stem cells/bone marrow! They have given him some pills for the pain which is helping him! The shots make his bone marrow production increase, so his bones hurt a lot!!! Plus he has joint pain, loss of appetite, and a headache! Still he said tonight that he would do it again to save someone’s life! I  have my laptop with me, but the internet in the hotel room is super expensive and you have to pay by the day! So, you haven’t heard from me until now! I am in the lobby on a computer for guests to use! I just wanted to say howdy and tell you all how much you mean to me! I will get caught up with you all when I go home on Friday! I hope the travels home go as well! Take good care!

Okay, I started this once and accidentally clicked on something and it got  deleted!  I really want to share my photos, so I will start over again! Let’s talk about my trip to meet up with Jordan in California!  It was beyond AMAZING to see him and it really was a dream come true for more families than just mine!  I am going to start with travel and our beautiful hotel !

This is the only photo I took on the big planes!  I was on the aisle, which is nice for bathroom breaks! (:  I am notoriously known to be seated in the back of every plane, but not this time!  I could actually SEE first class!  I don’t know what kind of plane this was, but it had 3 seats on each side of the aisle and it held about 200 people!  Lucky for me (again) there was a bathroom in each zone!  In fact you can see it on the left hand side just before the curtain in this shot!  I am making much too big of a deal about the lavoratory!  I am a dork!!! Lets move on, shall we?  Due to turbulence we flew lower than usual and when we went over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I could see the peaks and they were breath taking!  I waved a hello to Jeff as I flew over, just as I had done to Breezy when I was over Nebraska! (:

These last 2 photos are the ones I took of the sunset as I was about to fly back to Pellston from Detroit!  I was on the window that one time!  I have to say a special thank you here to JJ!  I was very worried about flying and especially flying alone!  JJ said, don’t worry you make friends very easy!  Well she is right!  I made friends with everyone that I sat by on all of my flights! (:  People were so friendly and kind!

I have never stayed at a Hilton that wasn’t nice!  This was no exception!  It was very nice!  La Jolla is a suburb of San Diego, California!  For anyone who doesn’t know, Torrey Pines is a famous golf course where several majors have been played in the last decade!  It is breath taking and I will post another blog just about Torrey Pines!  It deserves it’s own post!

While I was waiting for Jordan to arrive, since I got there first, I went around and took photos!  This is the view from our balcony!  They need to trim the trees a bit! (:  The blue umbrellas are around the pool !

I took this shot from the window in the lobby!  You can see my reflection in the glass!   You can see the beautiful pool and hot tub!  You can also see one of the holes on Torrey Pines South!

Here is a better shot that I later took outside!  I really like how this one turned out!

This was our room!  I can’t tell you how comfy those pillows are!  I wish that I could have brought them home with me!

Even the bathroom was lovely ! (:

This is Jordan walking back into the hotel!  It was simple, but beautiful from the outside!  I love that south west style!

The hibiscus growing on the fence surrounding the front of the  hotel!

Next, are some random photos I took while we were exploring!  Some are silly, but so am I! (:

I have no idea what the white tables were set up for!  There wasn’t a single person around!

This is blurry because I didn’t have time to focus!  I had no idea he was going to do this, but I thought it was hilarious! (:

This is the inside of the awning where we would get dropped off and picked up!  We were waiting for our shuttle to take us to the hospital the morning of the procedure!

I am in love with this big square light that hung from the peak!

This is what greets you when you step into the lobby!  The bellman desk is to the left (I don’t really know what to call it?) and to the right is the concierge!  This decorative table holding a vase and a piece of wood were just beautiful !  I loved walking in and seeing it each time!

This is the same decoration from the inside and you can see it more clearly, but I actually like the other shadowy shot more!

This is a GORGEOUS Rolls Royce that was parked just outside the lobby in a “special” place where the staff could see it!  I was very impressed!  I have never seen a real live Rolls Royce before!  Jordan was a bit embarrassed, but I took photos of it anyways!

That concludes our hotel experience!  I hope this isn’t too long and that you will want to see my other blogs that I have planned about the trip!  I want to do the Torrey Pines blog, a food blog, and I will finish with the bone marrow transplant which was the reason for all of this luxury!

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THIS!!!

Let me know what you think!

Hey there!  Let’s move on with my California trip!  Next I am going to show you the famous Torrey Pines Golf Course!  I don’t play golf, and I never have!  However, my ex husband has a degree in Professional Golf Management from Ferris State University!  So when Trevor was only 8 months old, his grandpa cut down an antique wooden golf club to get him started young!  He had that golf club in his hands before he could even walk!  He cut his front teeth on the rubber grip! (:  He was on the golf course at 13 months old!  When Jordan came along he got his own club plus he had Trevor’s to play with!  He was first on the golf course at 18 months old!  It would have been sooner, but his birthday is in the winter when the courses are covered in snow!  This little trip down memory lane is to let you know how much being at Torrey Pines meant to my son!

Torrey Pines is a municipal golf course owned by the city of San Diego!  There are actually two courses, the north and the south!  I believe our hotel was on the south course, but I can’t tell you for sure! It is a famous US course because it has hosted many major tournaments, and is a favorite of celebrities!  Torrey Pines was host to the 2008 US Open that was won by Tiger Woods!  If it were a private club, we would never have been allowed to snoop around and see it in all of it’s glory!

Can you believe this???  It is a Rolex clock!!!!  I was super impressed by these!  I had no idea that Rolex makes clocks that aren’t wrist watches!  I loved it!

Displayed behind glass is Tiger Woods’ trophy from the 2008 US Open!  Again, I was impressed! (:

These are the only shots that I took inside the pro shop because they didn’t seem to keen on me doing it!  I didn’t want to embarrass Jordan! The fashion reminded me of Jacob!  It was Ralph Lauren from wall to wall! (:

These are just random shots that I took around the course:

You can see it is a really beautiful place!

I wish that I could have gotten closer to this fountain to get a better shot!  The path you see is the cart path and they are very strict about keeping people off the golf course unless you are actually playing a round!

Here is my main man posing on the course for me!  This was his 3rd day of shots, and I can see the pain on his face!

I was super impressed by this fence! I don’t know how they made it!  It is crooked bricks put together with big rocks and vines!  I want one at my house plz!

These were the shots that I took of the flowers, but they didn’t turn out very well!  They are overexposed !

There were adorable duckies looking for treats inside the cart barn! (:

The morning that we left Cali, we made a very early morning trip back to Torrey Pines so that Jordan could buy himself this jacket and a hat with the logo on it!  He also got Trevor and his dad a Torrey Pines ball marker that is really cool! Now I wish that I had a photo of it to show you!  He also bought me a matching t-shirt and hat, but I don’t want to just show you a photo of it!  When I wear it I will do an OOTD or something so that you can see it!

This was on our walk back to the hotel that morning!  It was a bit hazy, and it just created a mood of sorts!  It is one of my favorite shots from the whole trip!

I will leave you with this photo of us’ins!  This was right before we said our goodbyes and flew away!

I still have a few photos that I didn’t include here because this has gotten so long and they require some explanation!  I will post those individually at some point!

THANK YOU FOR TAKING TIME TO READ ALL THIS!

YOU ARE AMAZING!!!

Well I was adding my last photo to this blog earlier today and I derped and hit the back key and deleted the whole thing!   So, I am starting again because I feel it is important to show you these photos and this process since you were all so supportive when I had to travel alone and complimenting my precious son!

Let’s start again!

For anyone who doesn’t know what I am talking about, let me fill you in!  When my son, Jordan, entered the military several years ago, he was given the chance to go into the National Bone Marrow Donor Program data base!  He gladly took this chance!  Well, now several years later, he matched with a cancer patient who is in need of a bone marrow transplant!  So he and I met up in San Diego, California where he went through the process and donated bone marrow!

The donation happened a medical center by the name of Scripps!  It is a HUGE medical facility that two different universities teach from!  It was a BEAUTIFUL facility!  The fountains were gorgeous!  We don’t have a lot of fountains up here in Northern Michigan, so we were rather impressed!  The photo that is the part of the hospital where this all took place won’t post into this blog, so I gave you a bad shot of another part of the facility that we passed every day!

Here is Jordan on his first day!  He had to do volumes of paperwork and consents!  He had to do them for both the hospital’s records and a bunch for the Marine Corps!  He had to get special permission to be allowed to take pain medications during this process!  They drew viles and viles of blood!  I was a little surprised that he had any left to share! (:  He also got his first two injections on that first day!  The shots couldn’t go into his muscle, they had to be put into the subcutaneous tissue on the backs of his arms!  He had to get two of the injections every day of the process including the day of the procedure!  These injections made his bone marrow produce more stem cells!  In order to get his bone marrow to do this, they had to make him sick!  It caused some awful side effects!  It makes the bones ache and throb!  It makes you feel like you have a really bad flu!  I wish I had written down the name of the medication that did this, but in the month since I have forgotten it!

This is where they do the procedure!  The strange horror movie looking piece of equipment on the right is the machine that removes the stem cells that are being donated from his blood stream!

This was the day of the procedure, and he thankfully got his LAST two injections!  The nurse who did all this was a wonderful woman and I wish I had gotten her name so I could thank her and give her credit in this blog!

Right after he got those injections they again had to draw his blood!  Then we had an hour to wait while that blood was being processed in the lab!  He was exhausted because the bone pain kept him from sleeping!  On the third day they gave him pain medication to help with that, but he still couldn’t sleep well!  So they gave him some medication and brought him warm blankets!  He really appreciated that sofa at that point!

They finally got him cleared by the lab and into bed!  Then they took MORE blood!  The procedure itself consisted of taking his blood out of one arm and putting it through the machine that collects the stem cells!  Then putting his blood back into his other arm!

He never stops being a goofball ! (:

The actual procedure caused him a LOT of pain!  He was not doing well here!  I know he looks like he is asleep, but he just kind of went into himself to get through that pain!  I am so PROUD of him!

Here are all the machines and needles involved!  It makes me cringe to think back on what he went through!  That bag hanging on the machine that looks like tomato soup is his extracted stem cells!

The finshed precious product!  I really hope that bag saves someones life and gives them many more years with their family and friends!  Jordan said that day that if this person needed to do it again, he would be happy to help! (:

Here is Jordan later that day with the certificate and the t shirt the hospital gave him for donating!

The next day my precious son was on a plane headed back to Japan and his job in the Marine Corps!  I am so PROUD of my children!  I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to do this with Jordan!

It is my solumn prayer that the recipient achieves full remission!

THANK YOU JORDAN FOR YOUR SERVICE AND YOUR COMPASSION!!!

THANK YOU BUZZNET FAMILY FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ AND COMMENT ON ALL OF MY VERY LONG (SORRY) BLOGS!!!