and last but not least...

Lovey & Murray have joined the flu crew! I felt terrrrrrrrible on Thursday & Friday. Standing up & moving around was taking more effort than I could believe. Every time I moved my head dizziness just about knocked me on my butt, and the pounding headache wasn't much fun either. By mid afternoon I could barely keep my eyes open and I had to sit down as much as possible.

I had chills that I just couldn't get rid of and in one of my fits of wild indulgence (more on that later), I jacked the heat up all the way to 25ºC. The heck with the budget! and I left it that way ALL afternoon too!

Lovey got up yesterday morning and was back in bed shortly after. She spent most of the day sleeping but got up occasionally to see what her sisters were doing, drinking lots of water etc. She had a temp of 102.2 last night but it came down without any acetaminophen and she just had some chills today.

(Honey: what? you want to take a picture with my hair in my face????)

I watched the clock all day Friday, just waiting for 5:00 & for Murray to get home. That's all I was hanging in there for, him to come home and take over & I could park myself in bed and stop this torturous moving around!

I heard the front door open & started making my way upstairs to greet him & pass the baton so to speak. I got to the landing and stopped dead in my tracks. Who was this drawn & pasty impostor???? Where was my big strong man, come to rescue me?????!??!?!?!?! Being the lovelygood & adoring wife I am, I greeted him with "on NO!! you look TERRIBLE!" Bam. He'd been hit and worse, I was NOT off the hook as planned.

Supper wasn't impressive but wasn't complicated either. Frozen pizza, heat & serve. Honey was feeling better and actually ate more than her father did! (normally no small feat). The other two didn't bother with anything. Once supper was done, I did sit in bed to read for awhile. Murray got everyone tucked in by 7:30 and was in bed shortly after himself. I had little energy to move around but wasn't feeling sleepy so I took the Lovey shift for 8:30 & 9:30 then went to bed after that. I can't say that any of us really slept much! Sweetie's hacking cough didn't seem to let up. She didn't want her door closed so the vaporizer wasn't able to help much. Lovey kept needing COLD water. Honey called out for me on occasion and I was stuffed up and having trouble breathing and Murray was coughing fairly often.... blech. Needless to say, I skipped my circuit class this morning.

Somehow I did feel better than the previous day so it must have been the litre of orange juice I drank yesterday morning. I'd been getting to bed early all week but hadn't been pumping the OJ so no wonder it took 3 days to kick this. Since Honey & I were both feeling somewhat improved, I took her with me to run errands today. We went to the bank, the department store and then took a break for some icecream! (self pitying wild indulgence #2). It took her almost 45 minutes to eat a cone. How the thing didn't melt & drip all over her, I don't know. My blizzard was gone in no time flat. Eventually we got the grocery store and I went a little crazy in there too. I bought a jug of $8 orange juice (never before in MY LIFE), chocolate milk AND a large bag of kettle cooked chips. They weren't even on THE LIST. (W.I. #3)

Sweetie who was the first one down, still isn't better. She could barely stay awake this afternoon & was in bed by 6pm again. She's not sick to her stomach & doesn't have any more fever, just cold symptoms... I'm not sure if she should be over this by now? She came down with it on Tuesday. I've heard some people say this bout really digs in & sticks around for the long haul. Mum & Dad came down with it last Saturday and still aren't fully over it although starting to feel better.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

Round 3 for me? UN-believable!

I seriously cannot believe that I'm feeling under the weather again! Yesterday I was feeling really tired & had a little rest while the girls watched their movie. Today I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer & at 4pm I crashed again. Honey came home from playgroup and went straight to bed and slept all afternoon, up for a bit around supper time, ate nothing & back down she went. It's not even 10pm and I've been wanting to go to bed for almost an hour but Murray is out at hockey so I have to do one more bathroom trip or there'll be a flood in someone's bed!

My head is achy, my stomach is questionable, I'm dead tired, when I turn my head I get dizzy and my legs feel weak. I'm trying to remain optimistic but I have a feeling there's some praying to the porcelain in my near future.... so far Lovey's not showing any symptoms and she's had a great day. She & Honey both ran around like mad at playgroup having a blast. I felt bad that we've been cooped up for a few days, between raging blizzards and Sweetie being sick, they haven't been able to play outside since I don't know when. Sweetie was feeling & acting much better this morning but then barely left my lap at playgroup but I was pretty much ready for that and went with the "greater good" theory. Carla G is probably going to kill me but I did try to keep my distance from the baby!!! Sweetie stayed awake all day but fell asleep just before supper and napped for a couple of hours before waking for a little snack, ¼ of a popsicle and a few crackers. She also had a few Rice Krispies for bkfast but that's it for today. Her fever has disappeared though so I'm hoping that means she's pretty much done.

Lovey spent some time with me in the kitchen, working on Mighty Minds. It's a game/puzzle/tangram thing. You have to use geometric shapes to make pictures or other shapes. There are 30 cards and increase in difficulty with each card. Once I went through the first couple with her, she wanted no more input from me and whipped through & finished #18 and showed Murray when he got home. She was pretty proud of herself and I was more than a little impressed myself (mommy goggles, I know!). She did another 2 or 3 after supper with Murray and when he tried to do one himself, she interrupted so much with "help" that he gave up!

Honey woke up at one point in the afternoon and came out to rest in the rocking chair, needing a cuddle with me. Once I sat down, I realized we'd forgotten her animal and I asked Lovey if she'd help her sister feel better & get it for me. She ran down the hall to the bedroom and came back with 2 of them to make her feel "extra" better. Then with a little twinkle in her eye and a smirky smile, she zipped back down to their bedroom. She reappeared a few minutes later in this outfit, making goofy noises and walking funny.

She said she wanted to make Honey laugh so she'd feel happier. Honey wasn't feeling well enough to appreciate this touching effort but did let out some giggles when I asked her what she thought of Princess Ballhead ;) Sometimes, they just do the cutest things for each other, awwwww!

Ok, the hour is up & it's time for flood prevention duty & then I'm hitting the hay. Wish me luck tonight!

Poor Sweetie!

She is NOT feeling well today but hasn't been too miserable about it and mostly just slept all day. We took her sisters to school & on the way home she got sick but since she hadn't eaten much since yesterday at breakfast, the mess was minimal (bonus!) but Bunny took most of the hit (oh noooooooo!). She napped until it was time to go back & get them, skipped lunch and went back to bed shortly after we got home. She woke up before supper, thought it was late at night because her blind was down & got her pj's on. She came out to tell me & was really confused by all the sunlight in the living room! She asked if she'd missed supper. She stayed up for half an hour or so and then went back to bed just before supper and woke up just before I went to the gym at 7. She went back to bed at 8 when her sisters did & was the first one asleep.

Since Sweetie was in bed I didn't want to go outside with Lovey & Honey but they were really good today & played "Genevieve" Barbie downstairs for awhile, then watched a movie and played some board games. I only heard one squabble and they resolved it themselves. They then worked on their Princess activity books and Honey decided she wanted to try the word search game. Triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicky!

Murray is totally exhausted tonight! He was out shovelling til about midnight & then came in & did some of his side line programming work for another couple of hours. He must have put in 4-5 hours of shovelling last night & he's back out there tonight. He wants to get the mailbox cleared out because there's a paycheque on the way for that sideline stuff :). Just as I was putting Sweetie in the car to go back to the school this morning, the plow went by and threw a whack of snow back into the driveway and made me late for Honey & Lovey. I just stared at the pile for a minute, looking around desperately for some reachable place to put it! Everything's so high on the sides, you have to climb a mountain WHILE pushing one in the scoop! blech! I did the bare minimum and don't envy Murray all this work. Lucky for me he enjoys it so ;)))

New Heights!

More snow! We got quite a pile last night. The rec room window is completely blocked and the drift is reaching the upstairs window in the living room now.... and I don't think Mother Nature is done yet. Murray's been out shovelling most of the evening with a short break for story time. Brian Fellows, from down the street brought his new snowblower down the street for a test drive & took care of one end of the driveway where the plow had gone by. This was a bank that Murray had to CLIMB up and over to get into the driveway tonight. It took 20 minutes of snowblowing to clear it. Good thing Murray likes a good work out & good thing the neighbours are helpful!





Murphy can't get out the back door and I've been sending him out the front door today. Around 4:45, he decided it must be almost time for Murray to come home and he ran out and parked himself by the big tree with his nose pointed down the road and looked like he was ready to wait for him. I didn't trust him not to chase after the plow or the neighbours out shovelling and had to call him in. He wasn't too keen on that idea though.

and something's up with Sweetie.... this morning when she woke up she complained that her forehead hurt & that she was hot & her legs were wiggly. I gave her some acetaminophen & she seemed ok the rest of the day til supper when she mentioned feeling funny & jiggly legs again. She crashed into bed at 6 pm, 2 hours before bedtime. Never a good sign so we'll see what comes next.

On top of all this fun & games, we've been having trouble with our water. For quite some time, we haven't been able to run it for long before it turns brown. If the girls have a bath, the tap water is sketchy for the rest of the day. Murray contacted a well company to ask if our pump might have slid down too low & they thought it was more likely an iron eating bacteria and gave us info on shocking the well (apparently this is supposed to be done every 6 months so it's good that we're only 8 years behind schedule on this! who knew???). So on Saturday night, in went the bleach. Sunday afternoon we drained it all out, this took hours. It started out looking similar in colour to Coke and eventually got clearer & the bleach smell disappeared. All good!!!!!! Nope. Sunday night the water was still murky and this morning it was brown again. I turned on all our taps, hot & cold for another 2 hours this morning and it seemed to help but we'll see what it looks like tomorrow. Oh and did I mention we ran out of milk for the kids today? home. trapped inside. all day. no water. no milk. hello TV & juice day :)

Lovey

I can't remember what was so funny but I had to share these cute pictures of Lovey! She is such a smiler!!!!!

Hello Puppy!

(Honey's on camera duty!)

The girls had a great time at the sleepover and were excited about the new dog. Sweetie had mentioned several times " I just can't wait to see that puppy!!!" The dog was really good with them and they let him check out their toys. Even BUNNY. He kept grabbing Bunny in his teeth and dragging it away which I would have thought would release the screaming demons but when Grammie started to take it back , Sweetie told her "that's ok Grammie, he likes Bunny and it makes him happy so he can have it for awhile." Luckily he didn't love it enough to take a piece out of it :)

We got home Saturday afternoon and I finished putting the dessert together and we waited for Flowergirl to arrive!!!!!! Her brother gave her a lift out to our place and he & his girlfriend stayed to visit a few minutes. Flowergirl brought her friend from uni with her and they stayed for supper. Knowing residence meal plans leave a little to be desired, I planned a big roast beef dinner and they ate well! We had mashed potatoes, bourbon yams, yorkshire pudding, beans & carrots, gravy and the roast of course with the piece de resistance for dessert: Toblerone cheesecake!!!!! Luckily I'd told them to wear their eating pants!

The girls were disappointed with they realized that Flowergirl & friend were not staying overnight. Sweetie was so put out that she wouldn't even give hugs & kisses when they were saying goodbye.