thank you

[This post has been languishing in my drafts folder for over a month. I've just now had time to finish and post it. Yikes! Hope you're all well.]

Thanks to everyone who offered supportive comments and advice on how to deal with L's ski trip. Especially Reyna, Meri, FeltFinland and Kim, who sent me detailed instructions on how she dealt with altitude change. But everyone's comments helped me feel more confident about the trip, which turned out quite well for everyone involved.

We stayed in the same hotel as the kids and the general manager checked us in about a half hour before L's bus got there. When they arrived, the GM called our room and just said, "They're here. Don't come to the lobby!" and hung up. I felt like we were in a spy movie. John and I had joked with L about getting disguises and exaggeratedly tiptoeing between potted plants and shrubbery as she had breakfast in the lobby, but we always slept in way later than the kids did anyway.

The chaperon acting as the nurse kept in close contact with us throughout the trip, texting us every time L tested her BG (every 2 hours while exercising, and before meals, natch). The two scenarios we were most worried about were her going low while skiing/water parking and having a delayed low overnight.

Luckily she didn't have any lows on the slopes or in the water park, though on the second day during her ski lesson, she did feel low and treated it accordingly. Basically she handled everything on the trip by herself exactly as we would have had we been with her. Which made us tremendously proud.

But of course she had to sleep. And then all bets were off. Since we check her overnight at home, and she has slept through alarms she has set at sleepovers, we decided we would need a plan with several backup plans. It turns out we used them all!

1. She set her phone alarm to wake her up 3 hours after her last test, at bedtime. It didn't wake her up.
2. We set our alarm to wake us up 3 hours after her last test, in case we didn't hear from her. We didn't.
3. We call her cell phone to wake her up. It doesn't.
4. We call her on the room phone to wake up up. It doesn't.
5. We hope that the ringing of the room phone wakes up one of her 3 roommates so they can wake her up. It doesn't.
6. The next step was to call her chaperon on her cell phone to get her to go into L's room and wake her up, but we never had to do this, because the ringing of L's room phone was so long and loud it woke her chaperon up in the next room and she entered and woke L up while we were still calling on her room phone. Crazy!

Luckily she didn't have any overnight lows and the whole trip went off without a hitch. We didn't see her at all until she got off the bus back at school on Sunday night, along with the rest of the kids. A fantastic experience for us and her. Thanks again for all your help.

L is on spring break right now so my computer time is more limited than usual, but I hope to get caught up on my blog reading once she goes back to school, at the end of the month. Until then, Happy Spring, ya'll!


Photo from a snow day back in January