Easter 2013????

So, what do you do when it’s 12:56 am and you’re wide awake – well past your usual 10:30 pm bedtime? This is the sort of thing that happens when I sleep until 9:00 in the morning. 9:00 in the morning?? But I never sleep that late! 8:00 is late for me! And on Easter morning, of all mornings! A major day like Easter usually has me getting just a few hours of sleep, due to late night preparations and early morning excitement, getting ready for church, etc. OK, so let’s back up a bit.

Last Wednesday night found Mick and I up with a very sick toddler – first time little Trent had the stomach flu in fact. (How cute does he look here? This was taken the next day, when he just wanted to sleep and be held. No problem, little guy.  ;-)

He was over the worst of it by Thursday morning and we were all looking forward to the big holiday weekend coming (Mick’s day off on Good Friday, lots of goodies to bake, 1st annual Easter breakfast at church, special time of worshipping the risen Lord with our church family, followed by the usual trip down to Mom and Dad’s, and finally some seasonal Spring weather as the icing on the cake). Naturally, there was a lot of excitement mixed with worry. Dr. Mom was getting barraged with questions: Was it something he ate? Do you think we’ve had it before? and the big one: Are we going to get to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s on Easter??? We tried to carry on as usual with our preparations and as the hours turned into the end of the day and on into the next, we were starting to get cautiously optimistic that we’d have the green light on Easter morning. I spent several hours on Friday working on the BIG grocery shopping list, which means I’m planning meals for about 3 weeks in advance, plus we had the special holiday recipes AND Rachel’s birthday meal to plan for. Erica and I headed to Aldi-Walmart-Kroger (our shopping trifecta) and about 2.5 hours into it (it ended up being 4 hours of shopping!), got a call from Rachel saying that Grant was getting sick. By the time we got home, Brooke had also gotten sick and Claire and Sarah weren’t feeling well.

So, all available, able-bodied family members (which at that point was 4 of us; Rachel was holding Trent who still wasn’t feeling good enough to run around) helped put away about 457 bags of groceries while we were intermittently interrupted by Grant’s & Brooke’s – ahem – illness needs. Once we got groceries put away, I inhaled a quick dinner and cleaned up the kitchen. In the meantime, it was becoming apparent that Sarah and Claire would be joining the “fun.” Later, when I finally sat down with Mick, I realized *I* wasn’t feeling too hot, which may nor may not mean something when you’ve been dealing with that sort of thing long enough. But unfortunately, I was joining the “fun” along with the others and before I knew it (actually, after many long hours) it was morning and Rachel and Courtney were down for the count, too. Mick came down a little before noon with the same grimace on his face that we all had. So, poor Erica spent a lonely day staying as far away from the rest of us as she could. I’m not really sure what she did, actually. I know she spent quite a bit of time outside (finally got that warm weather we were hoping for) and reading upstairs. This I do know: 1) she didn’t have much of an appetite that whole day; and 2) she washed her hands a lot. Late Saturday night, she finally came down with it, too, proving to us that she wasn’t in fact Super-Immune Girl. We decided we were glad she at least didn’t have to spend anymore time waiting and wondering whether she’d get sick or not. So, the day was spent sleeping in, recuperating, enjoying the 60-degree day, getting a little caught up on Mount Laundry, Facebookery, trying to teach Jack to fetch, making lots of toast, and watching an episode of Columbo (our Sunday-night ritual). In the evening, Mick read a children’s book about the first Easter and we sang “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” And all that great, special food is packed into the refrigerator and pantry so we’re hoping to have a do-over for Easter next weekend!

Oh, and Rachel’s birthday? Well, being the planner that she is, she informed me right after Trent started getting sick that if anybody else got sick before Monday, she wanted to postpone her birthday. So now, we’re also planning on celebrating her 17th next weekend.  A most unusual weekend. “Mom, yesterday seemed like the longest day ever,” said Brooke, earlier today. Yes, the flu will do that. If you feel like life is moving at too fast of a pace and you wish it would all just slow down, well, be careful what you wish for! You may get a completely cleared off calendar for a couple of days, courtesy of gastroenteritis.

And because I don’t want to end my blog post with a word like “gastroenteritis,” I’ll instead end with a picture taken today of a beautiful rainbow that appeared in the early evening. There’s actually a slight double rainbow if you look closely.