Sadness to Happiness

Well a lot has gone on with our family in the past month. My grandfather John passed away a week before christmas. Then my husbands grandmother passed in the middle of January and then our beloved dog Joey injured his knee and had surgery but sadly he is no longer with us because he died suddenly unrelated to the surgery. As you can see there has been a lot of heartache and sadness in our lives this past month. Tyler has taken almost all the news well. He knows grandma May and great grandpa John are in heaven with Jesus and God but their body remains here on earth. Now with the dog passing so suddenly this hit him much harder. He didn't believe me at first when I shared the news with him, then he was angry because he thought we put him to sleep (he was thinking of what happened a year earlier to our dog Daisy who had cancer & was suffering in pain) and he cried. It has only been a week and he seems to be ok and understands most of it. Our home and hearts are empty missing our loved ones.

We had planned to go on a cruise months prior to all the sadness and I wasn't sure if it was ok to go just after all this happened. We decided since the kids were looking forward to this mini vacay that we should just go ahead and go for it. We flew down to Los Angeles and then got aboard the Disney Wonder Cruise ship. It was a short 2 day weekend cruise called "The Cruise to Nowhere". It did just that sailed away in the ocean for a day and then went back to the port. It was a perfect way for us 1st timers.

Tyler did ok on the boat. I am not sure if it was the stress from before or that he is recovering from a cold but he didn't want to do much of anything and was really grumpy. They have a fantastic kids program with all kinds of hands on activities planned and they said it was ok that Andy stayed with Tyler but Tyler refused to stay. He just wanted to be with us the entire time. He did enjoy the pool and he played table tennis with Andy. Their game of table tennis looked more like Andy served the ball and Tyler go fetch it and serve it back. We played bingo but it was very crowded and noisy in there and Tyler had his hands over his ears most of the time. One thing Tyler did really enjoy was the live theater shows. I am not sure cruising is the thing for Tyler maybe we might try again when he is much older. It made me realize how much he still has issues with his sensory processing disorder. He still has some anxiety around crowds and noisy situations and often wants to retreat to the room for some quiet.

On our way back we decided to pass the time at Venice beach. Lots of people walking dogs and that was also very hard for Tyler but he did well. The beach was a great place for Tyler. He enjoyed playing in the sand, running from the waves and what he calls "surfing". He definitely felt more relaxed at the beach than he had been all weekend. Next vacation will definitely include some beach time.

To see some pictures of out trip follow this link http://picasaweb.google.com/AJBerchielli/DisneyWonderTrip?authkey=Gv1sRgCMeKr_-DxraQPQ&feat=directlink