Sneaky Bug

I enjoyed Valentine's Day with my loved ones. It was a somewhat relaxing, peaceful day.

Erik at a little playgroup Valentine's Party. There are mostly boys his age at church right now- lucky him!

Austin's 100-day celebration hat and photo bomber.

Sweet-tooth Karissa.

Victoria with her card and candy loot. 

My favorite Valentine!

We've just had the best weather... not!

The week after Valentine's Day is always midwinter break around here. Every year I wonder why we have such a break. Last year we'd had 5 or 6 snow days between winter break and midwinter break! While we've only had two so far, I still wonder. Yet, every year I realize why: this is when everyone gets sick! I'm telling you, it's the real reason for this unnecessary break! I actually don't think any of us were sick the last two years (plenty of our friends were, though). This year, it just snuck up on us and hit us like we were dominoes.

Around midnight on Saturday, Victoria was the first knocked down. I barely fell asleep after throwing her bedding in the wash and settling her on the lower bunk before Karissa was up, luckily she had made it to the trash can so I didn't have any bedding clean-up. Not long after, Jason was up for himself. We thought it was food poisoning, but it wasn't. I took the boys to church, but didn't feel great the whole day. Just ate simply and tried to care for the 3 sick ones (Jason was pretty bad.) I finally got sick Sunday night. The blessing: that was the only time I threw-up, which is an unusually low number for me in that situation. Jason and the girls outdid me, but I still felt awful and my headaches were bad enough to wake me up multiple times a night, for two nights. The other blessing: four of us were sick at the same time, instead of dragging it over the course of three weeks! Jason took two sick days and the kids were already off, so we just rested and ate nothing together! (Unfortunately, Austin hasn't gotten it yet. I did get him some food, mostly snacks, though, to his delight.) I think Erik had it last week. There was a day he spit up and he didn't eat much for two days.

We've slowly gained our strength back and I'm beginning to think that Austin may not get it. My biggest fear was that he was going to get sick yesterday or today and take out the rest of our vacation days, keeping us cooped up at home again.

We're all healthy and ready for school next week!