A Week With the Flu

That's right, folks. As the title so perfectly states, I have not kept up on the blog for a week due to a visit with our favorite winter friend, the stomach flu. Luke started us out with a bang when he awoke early on Monday morning covered from head to toe in the previous night's dinner. Load #1 of laundry.

I actually was treated to an entire day of Christmas shopping in Provo by myself, thanks to the very loving offer of Jared to stay at home and watch all of the kids on Monday.

And no, I did not take pictures. I had a limited amount of time to get some rare shopping done. Just picture lots of traffic, overpriced kids' clothes, and more toys than one world could possibly know what to do with. Toys'R'Us kind of intimidates me. Halfway through the day, I stopped and called Jared and told him that he was in charge of the fun stuff and I'd take on the clothes. That made the rest of the day a piece of cake.

Tuesday on the other hand? Well, let's just say we awoke to laundry load #2-4.

Wednesday? Luke had 5 changes of outfit due to blowouts, so I stopped counting the number of wash cycles we'd gone through, and that was by 10:30 a.m. After a busy day of therapy appointments for Layne, preschool and discipline issues with one particularly overactive four-year-old, and bathtime times 4, Layne decided to join in on the fun and lose her lunch ... and dinner ... and her bedtime bottle.

Like I said, I lost track of the laundry count.

Thursday morning welcomed me to the party. Maybe because I wasn't feeling so great myself, I wisely didn't eat too much the night before and only suffered the effects of the flu from one end of the spectrum. I'll let you figure that one out. Jared saved the day again and took off work to stay at home to take care of things here. He did the same for most of the day again on Friday. What a lifesaver. I couldn't have done it without him. I think I realized just how heavy Luke and Layne have become after trying to lift them on Thursday.

The good news? I didn't document the scenes visually for all of you to see. I'm not that crazy. I have many vivid pictures of the day from the last week in my head though.

Trust me -- you don't want any part of that.

I did manage to take a few from the highlights, so here's what we have to show for the week. To save time (and energy), I'll just post all of them on this entry.

This is from today, Sunday, November 14. I finally got around to printing up some photos of the kids that I'd taken near the end of summer. I just edited them all into sepia tone and put them in our frames. Tomorrow I'll get around to hanging up the other two. I don't hammer on Sundays.

And yeah, that's my bag of Doritos in the mirror reflection, and the computer upon which I'm currently updating the blog. I'm definitely feeling better.

We decided to get the season started off by bringing in all of the Christmas decorations, and I know that there are many of you out there who hold to the theory that you need to enjoy Thanksgiving first, but let me tell ya, we enjoy Thanksgiving every bit as much with Christmas deco up as anybody else. Makes the holidays seem that much more enjoyed in our household. While Jared attended the Worldwide Leadership Training yesterday, Koria, Kimball and I worked on the tree. This is after some help from the Momster. There were about five ornaments to every limb within a one-foot section of the tree before I stepped in with a little help and advice.

It was nice enough yesterday afternoon that we all loaded up in the car, drove to Price to the Dinosaur Adventure Park, and Jared and I took turns playing with K&K as L&L hung out with either of us in the car. Still too early for the youngens to venture out into the elements. We decided to play hide-and-seek around the playground and this is a picture of K&K being surprised by me at the end of one of the slides.

Friday night I still had no energy, Layne was loosing everything we put down her, and Luke wasn't much farther ahead. The older set of twins suffered no loss of energy and no flu bug, so we decided that a dance competition was just the right thing for the night. Here's some of their moves.

You know, I don't think I've ever had that much energy -- not even when I'm fully fed and rested. I'm still holding to the theory that they get their energy by sucking it out of me. That would explain a lot.

Oh, I forgot to mention that on Tuesday afternoon we had to get Luke and Layne their immunization shots. 5 to be exact.

Send the sympathy pains this way.

That's right, keep 'em coming.