Happy Christmas Eve Day to those celebrating! And Happy Everything to everyone everywhere!
Joy Joy Joy!
…and if you’re looking for a good chuckle… here’s a flashback to our all-time favorite J-M Christmas Story: click! (from Christmas Eve 2006, when K & O were 2-years-old, and wishing for a baby brother/sister)
We are heartsick over the Connecticut school shootings, and I’m having a hard time blogging about our very blessed life while others suffer such profound tragedy.
In an effort to catch up on blogging prior to our annual pilgrimage to New Hampshire for Christmas, here goes~~~
We’re all fully recovered from our ordeal, and doing our best to enjoy this precious life of ours to the fullest again. I often think about how lucky we are to get to go to what have to be some of the funnest parties on the planet. We’ve had a string of them in the past few days~~
*
Our dear friends, the Kulps, annual Christmas Party (this party is always outrageously festive and unbelievably amazing!)~~
Spencer’s 5th Birthday Party (at a bouncy place! Meera was on Cloud 9!)~~
Zoe’s 8th Birthday Party (at a bowling rink! the bambinos had an absolute BLAST!)~~
And a First Friday (this time was Kyle and Mama; and they are almost never on a Friday anymore; this one was on a Saturday)~~
Every ‘First Friday’ feels so special. This one felt so special. I took Kyle to a fancy classic steak house (steak = his favorite, and he is becoming quite the connoisseur). We had the best time together and savored every minute of that deliciousness (the food and the time). I will say this: my boy Kyle is quite the charmer. I have a hard time not imagining what he’ll be like on a date with someone special someday in his future. He is a boy who knows how to make his date feel like a million bucks. And he definitely appreciates the finer things in life and enjoys –more than anything– seeing others enjoy them too. I hope and pray that I’ll be able to see how his life continues to unfold.
Well, we have just been though the worst week of sickness in the history of our little family’s life. I’m going to try to use as little detail here as possible, in order to spare any readers from the disgustingness that has been our existence for the past six days. I’m writing this post for posterity’s sake; it is important to remember the bad and the good. This was in the category of BAD.
Friday night, at 8pm Owen threw-up in the most gruesome way imaginable. And that was the start. Braydon and I were up all night with Owen that night, who was violently ill for most of the night.
We spent Saturday trying to nurse Owen back to health, trying to make it through the day with two parents who had pulled an all-nighter, trying to occupy Meera and Kyle, doing loads and loads of laundry, and Cloroxing everything.
Sunday was a great day. We thought we were over it– and it was onward and upward!– as far as we were concerned. Little did we know.
Sunday night Braydon and I went to bed at 11:30. Half-an-hour later, at precisely midnight, Meera through up for the first time. She had been sleeping in our bed; we should have known, when she insisted that she go to sleep in our bed that night (highly unusual), that something bad was brewing. But hindsight is 20/20. I won’t describe the situation that proceeded for that entire night. I will say this: It was the worst case of a stomach virus I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything like it. Our poor, poor, poor girl was sick beyond belief. Read between the lines here people: it was absolutely HORRIBLE. Again, a long night of absolute non-stop misery.
Monday Kyle and Owen went to school. Braydon and I spent the day trying to nurse Meera back to health, trying to make it through the day with two parents who had pulled an all-nighter, doing loads and loads of laundry, Cloroxing everything, and attempting — with only limited success — to clean the carpets.
Kyle got home from basketball that night, walked in the door, and threw up. It was another long night.
We spent Tuesday trying to nurse Kyle and Meera (who still wasn’t fully recovered) back to health, trying to make it through the day with two parents who had pulled another all-nighter, doing loads and loads of laundry, and Cloroxing everything.
Tuesday night the most dreaded occurred. Mama got it. We knew things were bad when, at 2am, I fainted on the bathroom floor. It was the first and only time in my lifetime that I have ever fainted. We thank our lucky stars that Braydon was right there with me when it happened. It was another bad, bad, bad, bad, bad night.
Wednesday all three kids went to school. Braydon went to watch Meera’s 9am school show (I was so sad to miss it), then promptly returned home to spend the rest of the day trying to nurse Mama back to health, napping, doing loads and loads of laundry, and Cloroxing everything.
Yesterday I was still in recovery mode (lesson learned: a 40 year old does not bounce back as quickly as an 8 year old). Kyle and Owen went to school, and Braydon stayed home out of sheer exhaustion, an upset stomach upset (was it a touch of the flu? or was it purely psychological? we will never know), and to take care of Meera (who is home on Thursdays, normally with a babysitter, but we could not let the babysitter into our sick house).
A record number of videos were watched this week by our three bambinos. They loved that part of it.
Today we are all up, all going, and at work and school. We are over it.
It has given us a lot to think about. Mainly, how grateful we are for our health, our family, Clorox, and our living-on-campus-industrial-toilet.
Lots more blogging to come in the days ahead (I promise: not about vomit or diarrhea, but about lots of other — much better, and less self-absorbed — stuff)!
Owen’s letter above: “Dear Santa, I would like rollerblades this year please.” At bottom: “an easy maze for you!”
re: Kyle’s letter– in 2010 Kyle asked Santa for a bow & arrows. His interest in archery has waxed and waned over the past couple of years, but has lately been fully re-inspired by: 1) our move to a home with 1,800 acres of woods literally right in our backyard, 2) his obsession with The Hunger Games books/movie/story/the-whole-9-yards, and 3) his love of the movie Brave. Note: a quiver is the thing you strap across your back to hold arrows. I just learned this.
Note re: Meera’s picture at the bottom of her letter — “it is the erf with Santa and Rudolf bringing the presents to all the childrens of the world.” FYI: “erf” = ‘earth’
For the past four years of J-M Santa Letters click:
K & O drink their breakfast as they plot out their day’s basketball strategies
*
For several months now, K & O have been in the habit of smoothies for breakfast. We do this about 3 days a week. They believe (mainly because I tell them so, and partly because they feel it powering their jump-shots/goal-kicks/grand-slams) that these smoothies are “fuel” for their sports. Goodness knows, they are serious about their sports. As their mom, I’m serious about their fuel. K & O love this for breakfast. I love knowing that I’m sending them off to school with a few servings of fruit, and a whole lot of protein, already in their bodies at the start of the day. Here’s our current recipe:
K & O’s Super Smoothies!
This makes 2 very large smoothies or 4 normal sized smoothies (I used to make this recipe for K, O, Braydon, and me to share when the boys were younger… but now K & O drink the entire thing on their own).
Dump into blender, in the following order:
- 1/2 of a 32 ounce container of Chobani Greek non-fat yogurt (we rotate between strawberry and vanilla) — thats a lot of yogurt and a LOT of protein!
- 1 pack of Carrington Farms Flax Paks (0.4 ounce milled flax)
- approximately 1/4 cup wheat germ
- approximately 2-3 cups frozen strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, and/or frozen mixed fruit (we mix it up to keep it interesting! I buy frozen berries/fruit in bulk at BJs)
- fresh banana (1-2 bananas depending on size)
- approximately 2 cups orange juice
This will entirely fill our blender so that it is packed in with no space left. Blend on ‘high’ for an entire 60 seconds straight. Serve with smoothie/bubble-tea/pearl-tea straws for fast slurping (I buy these in large packs in Asian markets or on amazon).
The other night I found Kyle and Meera in Meera’s room playing what they called “Kyle’s Salon.”
photo courtesy of LehighSports.com; recap of tonight’s game found here (click)
Living on campus it is almost impossible to hide the major sports teams’ schedules from K & O. Now that it is basketball season, they are in their glory. For the past few days they have been well aware that LU Men’s Basketball had a home game scheduled for tonight. They also knew that I would not let them go because it started at 7pm and their school-night-bedtime is no-later-than-8pm. They fought me a bit, but pretty quickly resigned themselves to the misery of having a mother who wouldn’t let them go to the game. Earlier this evening I overheard them talking about the possibility of “running away from home” in order to “go to the game at Stabler Arena,” and I listened as they discussed together in depth the question of whether or not the staff at the door would let them into the game, using their own Lehigh IDs, but unattended by any adult– I cut their conversation short by assuring them that they would not be let in unless they were with an adult. Alas, much to their dismay they were in bed by 7:45pm tonight. However, the story does not end there. An hour later I went in to check on them and discovered that neither of them had fallen asleep (which is HIGHLY unusual). A half hour later, at 9:15, I went back in, and they were still awake. I started a grand inquisition and they confessed to me that they couldn’t sleep because they were too preoccupied with the basketball score. I got them both out of bed and we looked online to see the game situation. They were happy to find their team had won. They were even happier to find, in studying the stats, that their main man, #11, had a GREAT game. They then went to bed happy and content, and both fell asleep within 5 minutes.
… (or, at least, go out to dinner)
Papi’s in Chicago on a work trip / Kids Night at Red Robin / dinner after Meera and I picked up K & O from basketball practice
We were asked to participate in, (and me judge), a gingerbread house making contest in Sayre today. The bambinos were so excited for this event. I was wondering who would show up– the Sunday afternoon of the last week of classes; a highly valued study day– but sure enough, a bunch of kids came for a gingerbread house making study break. And it turned out to be a lot of fun, especially for the bambinos, who just can’t get enough of this kind of student-centered/student-run/student-event-stuff.
K, O, and M each joined a group, and they all went to work building their houses.
{Did you notice in the photo above, left, that MorFar is in the background!? Yes, he was there! He is on a work trip, and visiting us en route!}
One bambino, in particular, was in her glory for this event. Candy-and-crafts?!?! As you can imagine, Meera was a happy happy girl!
Some Lehigh Engineers got very serious about their design and construction!
Mostly, though, it was just a nice way to spend an hour or so of the weekend.
Sure enough, in the end, I did judge it. (Everyone was a winner!)
And Meera judged it too once we got home afterwards. While I was judging on creativity, she was judging on taste and taste alone. Her verdict? “Delicious!”
Recent comments