Christmas Week

Alright.  Raise your hands if you’ve been sick this week…  Yep, just as I suspected.  The Christmas Flu has conquered nearly every family I know!!  And it’s not even localized, it’s all over the country… I call that bizarre, but hey! At least we can all commiserate one with another!  If you’re reading this and feeling lousy, know that I feel your pain, and every time someone says “God Bless You!” to one of my sneezes, I am praying you will be blessed with restored health as well.

My being under the weather has been a bummer for the family this week, as we generally have a number of family activities we like to pursue while Paul is on vacation from work.  I missed the annual day-after-Christmas walkabout with the Grands, but Paul took the girls and they hiked around Old Town Scottsdale and took lots of pictures.  Especially Laurent, who was happily experimenting with her brand new camera (combined Christmas and 18th birthday gift).

I was feeling SO ill on Wednesday that I had to cancel a sleepover Megan had scheduled with a theater buddy; even worse than my being sick, however, was the shocking news, late in the evening, that Jeff was in ICU.  Of course I had not realized that the hospital had called my phone earlier in the day because I was sick myself, so we didn’t hear about it until he was able to call himself around 10pm.  Apparently he had a severe allergic reaction at his Naturepath’s office and went into anaphylactic shock.  Fortunately they are about 4 minutes from the hospital and he was stabilized and released by noon on Thursday.

Meanwhile by Thursday I felt a little better, so I thought at the very least I ought to honor Jacob’s hoped-for overnighter with HIS buddy Peter, since it was his 13th birthday!!  I stayed out of the way for the most part, and tried not to spread my germs.   When Jeff was discharged, he came over and spent the afternoon with us, resting up, and by evening he was determined to help Jacob celebrate his birthday properly, and thus he took us all out to see The Hobbit once again, this time in the highly anticipated High Frame Rate, 3D format.  We all declared it absolutely magical, breathtaking, and the best possible way to see the movie.

Today has been up and down health-wise.  After Peter went home, Paul took Jacob up to Arrowhead Mall to the Lego store so he could spend his Christmas gift cards.  I was foggy-headed, but determined to do something besides sit in my recliner watching the BBC Robin Hood all day (that was my Wednesday, btw.  Not the worst way to be sick, but still, one needs to move if only just a bit…).  I took the three girls and made it all the way through a trip to Desert Sky Mall to get Laurent a second piercing for her ears (a promise I’d made for her upcoming 18th BDay).  That took longer than planned (Claire’s was hopping)… and after that, I’d planned to go shopping at Costco, but discovered after we’d arrived and parked (good spot, too) that I had left my Costco card in my other purse.  Major forehead slap.  We ended up meeting Paul and Jacob at our neighborhood Safeway, buying brown rice, beans and veggies (Paul’s on a tear about eating less meat, and I’m all for it) and then headed home.  I got the rice and veggies cooking, and then we had a raucous supper round the table, at which my pathetic, flu-addled attempts to maintain order were greeted with great mirth.

We finished off our festive dinner with some birthday cake in celebration of Jacob – a delightful mint-chocolate layer cake we picked up at Safeway for $5, along with 3 flavors of Dreyer’s icecream (because it was a 3/$10 deal, and who can resist a deal!).  It was a day late, which was again due to my being sick, so that made it extra… surprising! 😀

I will say that my great accomplishment for the week has been assisting my brilliant husband, using what skills I’ve acquired during my years of blogging, in setting up his own WordPress site.  He insists it is NOT a blog, therefore I shall NOT call it a blog.  However, on occasion, he will blog there, and you can find him in my menu up top any time.

Tomorrow, as I have time, I will try to post a few pics from this week, though I have fallen woefully short of my usual prolific standards.  Hopefully, quality, if not quantity.