The Harrer Happenings: Santa Barbara, Susie, and surgery

Ellie has had a full and exciting two and a half weeks. It all started when we took her up to Santa Barbara for a week of Safety Town. Now, Safety Town holds a special place in my heart. Not only did I attend the day camp where pre-k kids learn all about safety in a setting that includes little buildings, roads, and bikes with seat belts, but I was a counselor from the time I was in seventh grade till I was a senior in high school (Susie did too by the way). So I was so excited for Ellie to wear the yellow shirt and get her Safety Town on. (Photos below are me at Safety Town).

So Safety Town started and Ellie spent a week there. She learned a lot, loves riding the bikes/cars, and we think had a great time. But she refused to ride the city bus because she didn't know the driver (of course they had the police come and talk about stranger danger right before they did the city bus ride). She is still singing songs she learned and when we are crossing streets she tells me I have to stop, look, listen, and wait. She would get worn out at Safety Town but still had fun going to Yogurtland and visiting her great grand parentals up in Santa Barbara.

The weekend after Safety Town she came down to Pasadena as we had a kindergarten play date with fellow incoming kindergarteners and their parents. She was shy but met some kids. At a minimum there will be familiar faces come the first day of school.

After her regularly scheduled ballet class on Sunday, we headed up to Camarillo to pass her off to her grandparents who took her back up to Santa Barbara. She spent another week up in SB, this time attending camp at the SB Natural History Museum. She did this camp last summer and had a blast. She was super excited about this years camp as well. She loves the museum and their creek for water play, the special exhibits (this year it was an environmentalist/ Smokey theme), and everything else. Camp has everything plus arts and crafts, little hikes, geodes, songs, and other things she loves. I have to say that if we lived in SB, we would be at that museum everyday and she would spend every week in the summer at camp at the museum.

But this second week in SB was amazing for another reason. She got to spend time with Aunt Susu and Big Cousin Jimmy. Both came to SB to visit family.

Susie then came down to Pasadena to spend some quality time with us down here. We got pedicures (Ellie included!), had a fancy crepe breakfast, went hiking, went to dinner, made gnocchi, she went to Ellies ballet class, Yogurtland, all sorts of fun things! Ellie was so excited to show off her awesome upper body strength at the playground, doing flips off the bar and doing the monkey bars over and over...

(Oh! A cameo by Cal!)

All the fun summer activities ended yesterday when Ellie had oral surgery. Ellie is five and has had two different surgeries. She had an extra tooth. Shaped like a fang and about 3/8" long the tooth was located behind her front left tooth. If left the extra tooth could have travelled upward into her nasal cavity (worst case scenario) or blocked her adult teeth from coming in (not good). We could have waited and seen what happened (with the almost eventual likelihood of removal of the tooth), but we opted to get rid of the extra tooth and just before she started school. Ellie did great. She had some nitrous oxide and novacane and some versed. She claims she was awake and saw what was going on including the three shots of novacane into the roof of her mouth. She took the versed at 8:35am, was in surgery at 9:00am, and we were home by 10:00am. After a little nap, Frozen, Tylenol, Mulan, and some jello she was almost back to normal by the afternoon. She put the fang-like extra tooth under her pillow and got a visit from the tooth fairy who brought a couple of Playmobil characters. She was brave and a real trooper yesterday. The doctor and nurses said she was an ideal patient.