Sickness, birthday party and pumpkin patch

Click here to see our pictures from the pumpkin patch.

Click here to see our pictures from the birthday party.

So, it has been a crazy week. I'll start at the beginning, and bear with me, Will's illness takes up a good chunk of the story.

Thursday morning, Will got the stomach flu. He spent most of the day throwing up. By Thursday evening, he started coughing. Friday morning, he was still throwing up and coughing a lot. I started him on albuterol and upped his dose of the steroids. Friday evening he was better, so the kids went ahead and went with my parents to a farm for my mom's school party. They got home late that night and started coughing so hard he threw up. Saturday morning, same thing, coughing so hard he was throwing up. So, to the doctor we went. She (the PA) decided that he was recovering from the stomach flu, but that his coughing was so violent that he was making himself throw up. So, onto oral steroids he went to help reduce the tightness in his lungs. It didn't really start helping until Monday (he threw up once on Sunday). We got hime up twice on Sunday night for albuterol treatments, he was coughing a lot! (I had decided to take him to the asthma doctor Monday morning, but when he woke up, he was doing better so I didn't.) Until Sunday, we had cancelled everything we were supposed to do on Thursday and Friday. But, since he was on the mend, we went ahead and went to church and to Hannah and Haylea's birthday party at the zoo.

We had to wake the kids up early from nap (not a good idea when they were behind on sleep already), but we got to the zoo at 3 for the party. The kids had a good time. They ate ice cream and cupcakes and watched the girls open their presents. Their mom, Emalea, bought train rides for everyone. I think that makes her Xander's favorite person on earth. He loves the train! We looked at animals a little bit after that, then came hom (with one exhaused Mommy. I was starting to get sick at that point.) We stuck close to home on Monday, but Tuesday we had a big outing to Roca Berry Farm with Hannah and Haylea, their mom, and little sister Lauren. We had a nice time, despite the cool temperatures and muddy conditions. The kids ran around pretty much anywhere they wanted to go, there weren't many other people there. We ate kettle corn and hot dogs for lunch (very healthy, I know!) They had a great nap Tues afternoon, and we went to family story night at the library after dinner. Brian had never been to story time with us before, so that was a nice treat. This morning, we stuck close to home, I am still recovering from being sick and because it was such a crazy week, I had a million things to get done!

So, that was our week. If this round of illness is any indication of how the whole cold and flu season is going to be, I am going to crawl under a rock and not come out until May. I had actually had some optimism about this cold and flu season being a little better since they are washing their hands so much after pottying. I guess time will tell. They are getting flu shots on Friday. And speaking of pottying, Will's sickness has set us back some. He's had a lot of accidents in the last 5 days, but we are getting back on track today, so I'm not worried. He feels a lot better today, and now that he's off the oral steroids he'll feel great in a day or two more. I'll try to get a good update of all the funny things they've been doing and saying next week. They've been quite imaginative lately!