Thank goodness we're through Puke City.

Just when I was starting to feel good about the whole keeping up on the blog thing, this happened.

 

 

You could pretty much have taken this picture and inserted any one of the faces who reside in this house (except me).  Somehow over the past week, everyone except me and Toby have managed to contract some death of a stomach virus that had all of my people flat laid out and miserable.  Mara started it last week for her birthday, and I ridiculously felt like we had managed to escape rounds 2 and 3 when, by Friday no one else was revisiting their meals from the past 24 hours.  But Lauren proved us all wrong early on Sunday morning, and Joshua hates to be left out, so he jumped in on Sunday night through Monday.  Just for extra fun, Jason went down Monday morning and literally stayed in bed from 10 am until this morning at 7:00.  I have washed more sheets, disinfected more yuck buckets, and snuggled more kids who smell like puke than I care to for a long time.  On a positive note, I think we're through it.  

Today, everyone was back to school and Joshua could finally do his presentation on Ulysses S. Grant.  I cannot even begin to recount the number of hours that child spent on this project to complete the written report (about 10 pages worth of paragraphs he had to write in cursive after doing research on specific areas of Grant's life), a shoebox diorama (seriously), and a Powerpoint for his oral presentation.  Goodness am I glad that's over with.  Thankfully he doesn't seem to be a procrastinator about things like that, but he is high strung about it and very particular.  No one could say that I did it for him because he had an opinion about the placement of every comma, capital letter and Civil War army figure in the diorama.  My job was to squirt the hot glue gun, cover the shoebox in brown package wrapping paper, and make sure it was sturdy enough to make the trek to Meadowbrook. 

 

These are just a few pictures I have on the camera from today.  The first with Lauren at the office for lunch today.  I was completely bummed that a special day that Emily and I had planned together had to be rearranged due to the impending winter weather that, as yet, has not materialized.  However, we both decided that our Richard blood would not let us be risk takers on this one because the stress of worrying about whether it might actually snow would negate the effects of what we were planning to do together.  And so, instead, I ended up picking Lauren up at school today and was thrilled that she decided to come back to the office with me.  Not only did it save me an extra 45 minutes of driving back to Turbotville, but it gave me some company for the afternoon.  She wanted to use one of her Book It coupons to get a pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch, so we did that, and picked up some Subway for me. 

 

 



And now, we're home for the afternoon.  Me with a pile of work stuff that I need to get done, and the kids with heads full of ideas of what to do since I'm home a bit early.  We need to rush supper to get out to basketball for Josh, so I'll count the little bit of extra time as a blessing to be able to breathe instead of rush around tonight. 

On the other side of Puke City, just about any day would be a good day.  But this one has turned out to be a pretty happy one.