Thankful Thursday - Emerging from Holiday Vacation (Sick Edition)

Here I am.

It's been a while since my last blog post.  Someday I'll figure out how I manage my life's workload as a mom of 6 kids.  Today is not the day (though we made progress).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Life around here is generally good and our housefull is looking forward to what 2014 will bring including, hopefully, adoption day in about 2-3 months.  *fingers crossed*

I took the last 2 weeks of the year off for vacation.  I try to do that whenever I can to reconnect with my family, knowing as much as I can that my kids will grow up way too fast and I won't have these days for long.  I'd planned on fun things like trips to the zoo, to the wild animal park, fun days at home, and ice skating.  I really wanted to take my older kiddos ice skating.

Sunday (22nd) came around and we got up to go to church as normal.  Baby Baby had been coughing, a usual occurence due to recurrent bronchiolitis, so I thought I'd take his temperature just in case.  He was fine but the other kiddos wanted us to take their temperature for fun and lo and behold the quiet one, not displaying any symptoms, had a 103 fever!  Crazy.  So we stayed home and rested. 

Monday came around and I was able to pull off our annual cookie baking day with my kiddos and the nephews (minus the little ones - they went to day care).  I was feeling like I had a cold coming on all day.  I didn't feel well but after missing cookie day last year I pushed through.

Tuesday I felt horrible.  I along with a couple others had this weird recurring fever.  I was miserable really.  My fever would go up to just about 100 and then stay there and then go down and then go back and then go back down.  Really weird.  There was no daycare on Christmas Eve so I had to do what a mom does and suck it up while trying to care for 6 young kids.  And the baby wanted to be held non-stop.  And we bought a Christmas tree and needed to decorate it.  And there was some last minute shopping.  You know the drill. Life doesn't stop for a sick mom.  I did make it to the doctor who said I had the flu but then changed their mind after the test came back inconclusive and the digital reader thing said negative.  The strep test also came back negative so they sent it off to the lab to grow more, just in case.  Because I had "nothing", I didn't take the kids-with-the-random-fever in either - they would have had to go to the ER - so we just hung out at home.  We did forgo Christmas Eve service to stay home and rest (and do final wrapping, etc.).  It was the right decision but it killed me inside - I love Christmas Eve service and my newest kiddos have never attended.

I stayed up till 12:30 or so getting Christmas morning stuff ready.  I was tired.  I was sick.  I pushed through.

Christmas morning I felt horrible again and still had the fever but it was Christmas morning so the adrenaline and joy with my kiddos helped me make it through.  After my hubby went to bed around 10am though it all went downhill.  I had to make the ham and banana bread for my brother-in-law and sweet potatoes but doing that and the bare minimum for my kids (bananas for breakfast friends...) was all. I. could. muster.  I bought my kids McDonalds for lunch.  On Christmas.  I was SICK despite what the dumb lady at the clinic said.  Oh, and by now my fever was up to 103. 

When I got to family's house for Christmas dinner one relative saw how sick I was and offered to watch my kids while I laid down for a while.  I hit the couch at about 1:30 and didn't get back up until my family left at 7 or so.  By now I knew I had the flu and I didn't care what the test said.  My hubby arrived to the celebration by 4 and I was so grateful.  Leaving my kids in the care of any one individual is not something I'm comfortable doing and I was in no shape to help.

I cried a lot.  I hated that I was sick on Christmas when I should have been celebrating with my family and having fun with my kids on our first Christmas together.

Over the nest few days I started feeling better, very slowly.  Turns out the lab test results came back on the 26th and I did have strep.  Again.  And the flu.  By that point hubby had the 103 fever and 3 kids were down with it too, though the ones who'd had the flu shot were much more mild than my hubby and I.  One child came down with the flu each day through Sunday.  We made 2 trips to the ER where by chance I found that some of them had strep as well.  Hubby made it to the clinic too.  I went to the Target pharmacy 4 times in 24 hours for the different prescriptions.

We finally started to feel better around New Year's Eve.  By that time you could imagine what our home looked like and how behind we were on the normal things that we'd have to do for our family of 8 because we'd spent so many days just surviving. 

So, now we have one day left of vacation.  I'm thankful we've made it this far and that we're all feeling good now.  We didn't get to do all those things I wanted to do but we spent a lot of time together.  A lot of time together doing nothing, which probably was good for us in the long run.  The only thing we DID together was ice skating - we managed to get out on Christmas Eve to go ice skating while some of the littles were in school.  It was a great time and we felt like we were normal again.

Sometimes holiday vacations don't go like we think they will.  Nevertheless I'm thankful for God's provision and healing and thankful for Christ's birth and the opportunity a new year brings.