Excuses, excuses

I thought I'd been doing a fairly good job at keeping up with my blog lately until I saw my blog listed on Jess' page indicating that it has been two weeks since I last posted anything.  So what's been keeping me from blogging?  Well, for one I had the kids home for a whole week and we were literally home the entire week.  I have had the worst sore throat ever for two weeks now.  It started in earnest the night before President's Day, which was the first day the kids were off of school.  I was sure I had strep because I was in so much pain.  The rapid strep test at the clinic on Monday morning was negative, but I asked them to please do a culture because Justin had strep in January that was initially negative, but did turn out to be positive after doing a culture. 

 Surprisingly, it was kind of nice to be sick when all my kid were home.  The girls kept Barrett busy and I had absolutely no where that I had to be all week and I got to sleep in every morning.  I got all sorts of advice on how to ease the pain of my sore throat, which I found out on finally on Thursday at 5 p.m. still was not strep, but the only thing that helped was taking 2 ibuprofen every 6 hours or so.  I think I've ingested more Motrin in the past two weeks than I usually take in a year.  It's amazing how it stops my tonsils and glands from feeling swollen and sore and it stopped the stabbing pain that was radiating out my ear.  I started worrying a little about how much medicine I was taking so I tried waiting until the pain was really bad before taking another dose. This really only made me miserable and grumpy.  It'll be two weeks tonight since the pain started and it's definitely getting better, it's just taking forever.  

The week before that I had Brynne home from school for the entire week because she had a fever all week and a really bad cold with lots of sneezing, runny nose and congestion.  I made her a Dr.'s appointment on a Wednesday after she had had a fever since the previous Saturday.  She didn't find anything obviously the matter with Brynne: no strep, no ear infection, no pneumonia, etc.  She told me to call her on Friday if Brynne was still running a fever.  On Friday she was indeed still feverish so I called and her pediatrician did decide to prescribe an antibiotic for her.  Once she got the antibiotic in her the fever went away and never came back.  My guess is she developed a sinus infection, but I don't know for sure.   So it's been a long month and I had higher hopes for March. 

 However, the first thing Blythe told me this morning was that she threw up during the night.  Bless her heart she didn't wake us up and we didn't hear a thing.  It's so nice that she's old enough to stay home by herself.  The rest of us went to church and left Blythe on the sofa.  I called to check on her between Sunday School and Relief Society and she reported that she had thrown up a couple more times.  I'm already keeping my fingers crossed that the entire family will be well when we go to California and Disneyland for spring break in April.  I don't think I'll ever a plan a trip over winter break after how sick we've all been this February.  So now you all know in gory detail why I've been neglecting my blog.