California family vacation! (Day two)

Jack remembered from our last visit that, because of the temperate climate, you can often find lizards, snails and some other creatures we're not used to seeing in the Midwest. He was fascinated by this snail that was on the front porch Sunday morning.

Unlike our house, Lance & Felicia have a full flight of stairs for Landon to climb. Sir Edmund Hillary is his idol.

It was Father's Day, so we guys went out fishing on Lance's boat. A 34-foot sport fishing boat, docked at the Oceanside harbor. It's nice. And the entire place is so laid back, it feels like you're living in a Jimmy Buffett song.

Except Jack wasn't feeling well at all. In fact, he hadn't been feeling well ever since we got off the plane. (Note that he's not in any of the pictures from the night before.) So despite how excited he was to go out on Uncle Lance's boat and "catch a Great White," he actually stayed home and in bed. Except when he was throwing up and laying on the bathroom floor.

* * *

When we got back to shore, Lance saw that he had 10 missed calls on his cell phone: Jack was so sick that Leslie had taken him to the local urgent care place. They thought it might be appendicitis and sent him to the hospital emergency room. I went straight there.

Jack kept throwing up and was completely lethargic. He didn't even cry when they put in the IV. And as dehydrated as he had to be, he took an entire bag of IV fluid without going pee.

As reluctant as the doctors are to do it, especially on young children, they did a CAT scan on him to examine his appendix. Then after waiting for the results and for the doctor to come meet with us ... they couldn't find his appendix.

So they took him by ambulance down to Rady Children's Hospital, 45 minutes away in San Diego; Leslie rode inside and I followed closely behind in our rental vehicle. We arrived at the emergency room at 9 p.m. and Jack was admitted as a patient in the middle of the night.

We were completely exhausted, didn't have any answers and just wanted him to get better — soon.