Post-Christmas Holidays

We got home from Ohio and everyone was sick.  So we spent most of the next week looking like this:

And this:

It was delightful, as I'm sure you can imagine.  Kleenex and cough drop wrappers everywhere.  Everyone constantly hacking.  I'm pretty sure all the kids did was lay around and watch TV.  (Which was all they would have wanted to do even if they'd been healthy, so really they got their wish!  I wouldn't have let that happen if they'd been healthy!)

It seemed like as soon as one kid would feel better, another would drop.  Or one that had been sick and recovered would suddenly have a 24-hour fever.  It was ridiculous.

Craig kicked it into overdrive and got TONS of stuff done.  He bought himself a new suit.  He set up a great little charging station for me in the kitchen.  He hung up this cool swing thing that Colton got for Christmas:

I like that it matches his walls!

Colton, sweet boy that he is, promptly let Ryder and Camille enjoy a turn, too:

I woke up one morning to find that Colton had gotten his new paints out and was already blossoming into an artist!  I was very relieved to see that he hadn't spilled a drop.  But we had a nice chat about how paints are only to be used at the basement table, not in our bedrooms!

And Ryder used his new Spider-man glove that can shoot water and/or silly string:

And we attended the neighborhood tree burn:

Our poor tree-- Craig had taken it down and put it outside and then it suddenly rained for a good thirty minutes!  Just enough to get it good and drenched.  So our tree was VERY smokey, but it still burned just fine!

But mostly everyone laid around being sick.

So as you can imagine, I was just as happy for the break to end and to send them all back to school.  I like my routine and was anxious to get back to it!

So naturally, they had one day in school (which Ryder came home early from, because he had a sinus headache), and then it snowed, giving us two snow days and a 2-hour delay.  So much for my routine!  And, to really make it all worse, the first snow day I had someone coming out to tune my piano!  So I wanted it quiet!  Do you know how NOT quiet five kids tromping in and out of the snow are???  Not quiet.  Not quiet at all...

Colton finds THE weirdest way to wear this hat...

So the kids had a great time and I'm glad they got some days where they were healthy and could play!  We also managed to do some shopping at Barnes and Noble (yay for my kids getting some fun gift cards!) and Old Navy (my big kids REALLY needed new pants), so that was good to get done.  I hate to spend a Saturday shopping, so it was nice to get those things checked off the list.

But really, I will be so happy to get back to normal life.

Also-- it occurred to me that I am so lucky that I like my "normal life" so much!  What a blessing to actually enjoy an average day in one's own life and not only live for the weekends!