A week worth of pictures and germs

This past week was a doozy.  We have had such a bad luck with the sickies this month.  It's been rough.  It appears that we got the Rotavirus followed by the Norovirus, which just means we suffered the same nasty thing only one time we also had fevers.  Last week I had at least one kid home every day of the week and half of the week I had at least two of them home and Friday I had them all home from school.  We skipped piano, church, a party, etc.  We just stayed home and took anti-diarrhea medicine, at a lot of crackers, Popsicles, and drank a lot of Sprite.  We had someone throwing up from Easter Sunday until Friday morning.  Piper is the only one that escaped the retched virus.  She was hit with one of them first time around but this past week she was healthy while the rest of us all suffered through belly aches.  Eli and Will had it the worst and then the rest of us all had varying degrees of ickiness.  I think I permanently smell like disinfectant now.  I am so thankful Piper didn't get it.  I'm not sure I could have dealt with that very well on top of my own sickness and taking care of the boys.  

Anyway, I'm just relieved to be back to normal again and I am hoping no one comes near us that is sick.  We need a break!

There were some good points this week.  It was such beautiful weather and in between the puckies I tried to get us outside.  I took Eli and Piper on a walk one day and he braved the trampoline.  These boys will do anything to jump on the trampoline, even if it means having to hold their tummies after.  

 Piper loves the trampoline.  She loves how her brothers bounce her and she is trying hard to learn to jump herself.

Mid-week, after missing two days already, Will was home again.  I made him get out of bed and come outside to sit in the sun and get his hair cut.  

 And I made him drive with me to the end of the block so I could take this picture.  I have a good view of the mountains from my house but not an open view like this.  But this view is just a block away.

On Friday most of the sickies had subsided.  It was in the 70's and so beautiful that we decided to go to our favorite park in the forest and read some books.  

 Eli was mad at me because I wouldn't let him go over to the park area.  I didn't think other moms would appreciate us touching all the play equipment and passing on the nasty germs.  We just read our books, climbed trees, and chased squirrels instead.

 Here he is trying to make an argument for going over to the play area.

 Here he is still mad.

 They made a trail of goldfish for the squirrels.  They tried hard to catch them but I wasn't worried because these squirrels were crazy fast.

Saturday I had my photography class.  I think I will try to take two more classes before we move.  I am slowly getting better but there is a lot to learn and remember.  We met up in Manitu Springs and walked around the arcade area and took pictures.  The teacher gave us various challenges to do so we could practice lighting, movement, depth of field, etc.  

 We found this random group of hippies.  They were a friendly, interesting bunch and I wondered if they were homeless.  You can't see very well but this guy's feet were really disgustingly dirty.  I wanted to capture his feet but didn't want to be rude and get super close and be like, "Hey, mind if I capture how dirty your feet are?"  This was the best I got.

 After, the teacher took us to an oxygen bar.  I didn't even know such things existed.  Some of the group got hooked up with flavored oxygen.  Apparently, if you have a hang-over you should go find an oxygen bar and you will be over your hang-over.

Sunday we all stayed home from church.  I didn't want to worry about any germs we might still have to pass on to others and I also just didn't want to be around other germy people after being sick for so long.  Mike let me sleep in while he got up with Piper.  I came down at 8 AM to find the boys all hanging out in the family room playing Civilizations on the various computers and laptops we have.  It was pretty cute to see them all playing together.  Eli didn't play with the boys but he was off playing Mindcraft on the Kindle.  

I'm glad it's a fresh week and that I can put last week behind us.  Now it's back to the normal busy life of piano lessons, scouts, callings, appointments, etc.  Piper has to get shots on my birthday.  Boo.  We have two birthdays this week so hopefully we can have some fun.