Maybe the worst is over....

Well we had a wonderful Christmas (and we'll be continuing to celebrate through the week as we see more family...yay)!! But we had quite the adventure.

Really it all started Saturday night when we woke in the middle of the night with a sick child. Brian had heard him and tended to him...I woke later and helped. But by morning we had already started our third load of laundry!!!Needless to say the whole family didn't attend church together on Sunday morning :( By the afternoon Christopher was fine and acting normal..minus not eating a whole lot. SO we attended a friend's church to watch a children's drama (which the kids lOVED...I'm still amazed they were as quiet as they were....Christopher was probably calmer just b/c of being sick).

Sunday night was uneventful so we went ahead with plans to visit with neighbors for a Christmas lunch!! Neither of the older kids ate much....so that should have been my clue. They played fine and then we went home for naps. Anna didn't sleep and came out of her room to tell us she didn't feel good.....ummm, not only did she tell us but totally got sick...everywhere....I'll spare the details...lets just say...more loads of LAUNDRY!! And some carpet cleaner.

So needless to say, we did not attend the Christmas Eve Family Service as a family :( But the kids and I relaxed and finished preparations for our family coming on Christmas morning. Then at bedtime Lydia started getting sick. So my two girls were sick together :(

On Christmas Morning, Anna woke and came to our bed (she had slept on our floor so we could tend to her and not wake Lydia...although Lydia was awake alot more thoughout the night than Anna was). We wished her a "Merry Christmas morning." And she responded, "Do we get to open some presents today?"

A note of thankfulness was that on Christmas morning, Christopher and Anna were feeling much better and really did well with having family visiting and the excitement of Christmas. We relaxed and made a late breakfast....we didn't even start opening gifts until 11:30am!!!!

Besides a couple more sickness epidsodes and cleanup jobs, we got through our Christmas Day....oh yes and three more loads of laundry....thank goodness my momma came and was gracious and very sweet to help with all the laundry and cooking!!! Christmas night we collapsed on the couch and FINALLY watched our Nativity Story video....I love this movie and the way they "fill in" the tiny details of the Biblical account of Christ's birth.

My Dad and brother had planned to hunt early in the morning. I heard them wake and start to get ready and then I heard the rain start outside. It rained ALL morning.....they were very disappointed but the rain was an answer to many prayers....we need it soo much!!

As it turned out they were needed this morning for another task :) One of the pipes under my kitchen sink decided to bust a hole this morning...right before washing our breakfast dishes. So the boys headed to the nearest town to fix the sink pipe!!! And Mom and I set to work cleaning up the kids (yay for wipes) and washing dishes (in the bathtub)!!!

Hopefully the worst of our stomach virus is OVER....I'm really considering not frequenting the indoor playgrounds at fast-food restaurants anymore this winter season....last year we got 2 or3 of these stomach bugs....it's a lot of work, laundry and hard on my kids' little bodies (after 3 days they finally ate a little bit for dinner....nothing compared to what they normally put down!!). I'll just let them run of some energy on the warm days or bundle them in 10 layers and let them loose outside :) I'm thinking a runny nose for a couple of days is EASY compared to that horrible stomach virus....my hope is that Brian and I don't get it....I think it's worse on adults...especially when they have to care for 3 well little ones while they feel "yuck".

I really want to share some pictures but I'll have the little montage finished after we visit with our Grandma and Granddaddy!! Then we'll have the complete Family Christmas Adventure 2007!!