December 13, 2009

December 13, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

Christmas season is in full swing around here! We love it! We’ve had a quiet week by comparison. Monday was M’s first day back after being out of town so he worked a little extra. We had a short FHE that night after dinner.

Tuesday I ran a bunch of errands during the day. I am so happy that J is getting easier to take on errands. Whenever I leave a store with him still in his car-seat (instead of me carrying him) I get so excited. That night I went to mutual. We had a combined activity where we made ornaments and then played a quick game.

Wednesday I decided to keep B-man home from school so that I could take him to the doctor. He was on day ten of an antibiotic and was absolutely no better. In fact his cough was probably worse. I was so glad that I decided to take him in. I am happy to take my child to the doctor, but I hate to go and have them say he just needs to take it easy. After listening to him breathe and cough they realized that something was wrong. They gave him a nebulizer treatment, took his “pulse-ox”, and then sent me to get a chest x-ray to see if he had pneumonia. There is a kind of pneumonia that presents with no fever. He hasn’t had a fever the whole time, which has made it hard to figure out how sick he really is. After all that we went home. The doctor called later to say that the x-ray was clear. (That was good.) We all spent a couple hours at Costco while they figured out medications, before heading home for dinner. Now four times a day we do a nebulizer treatment and he is on a new antibiotic. I am hopeful that soon he will be cough and congestion free… Now if we could just get all of us well at the same time for more than a few days. That night M went to help build a manger for our ward float in our town’s Christmas parade.

Thursday and Friday were both slow, frigid days. Friday morning I had a follow-up appointment for B-man. He is slightly better, and they want to see him again next week too. That night I went to an Ornament exchange hosted by a woman in our ward. Saturday we were up and going early. M went to go walk in the float for the parade. We had the basic Nativity and then two sets of missionaries in their traditional missionary attire. Then the people walking behind the truck were handing out pass along cards and throwing candy. Apparently it went really well. Everyone is excited to do it again next year. Originally I was going to skip the parade since I had two sick boys and it has been so cold. But B-man was devastated, so instead I drove to the end of the parade, and missed the first few floats. We were still able to see the most important things, M, and Santa. Luckily the weather was cooperative and slightly warmer with no frigid wind. We came home and had a fun lunch, before splitting up to do various errands. M and B-man were together, and I had J. In between the evening I also made some Challah bread. It finished just in time for me to run one loaf next door before heading off to see one of the girls in my class perform in a local theatre production. I went with another leader and had a great time. The show included appetizers and dessert, and then had lots of little skits from various other productions.

Today has been a busy day. M had meetings in the morning, and then when he came home I left to go to a meeting for Young Women. I came home and worked on my lesson. Then we all went to church together. After church, (which had some excellent talks on tithing) we went to a little Christmas party that was thrown by some friends. It included a little white elephant gift exchange and was a great evening. Lots of kids, food, and fun. We got home way too late, and tried to get everyone to bed quickly.

We love you all!

R, M, B-man, and J