the Christmas Recap

Well, it's been an eventful few days here....let's see if I can share.

We arrived in Illinois on Thursday. Seems like we were just there (oh wait, we were!!). Friday night we did the Christmas program where my grandma lived for 16 years. We had a few tears, but we had fun overall sharing our music with the people there. It was our 12th program there, and many people remarked that they have not missed a single year! At the end, we were even given a beautiful fruit/nut basket. It's sad to close that chapter of our lives, but I really treasure all the memories of our years there and sharing our love of music and our grandma with the other residents.

Let's see if I can set the scene for our next event. Mom and I were upstairs cleaning some things out of my grandma's apartment....we were actually waiting for the elevator to fill up with boxes to be loaded. Open comes the elevator, with Jason, Bryce, Reagan, Ruth, and Jeff. As it opens, Bryce is emptying the contents of his stomach, Reagan is gagging and screaming, and Ruth is crying (what in the world is going on??). The poor little guy got sick all over himself on the way home and numerous times throughout the night. By the time I awoke Saturday morning (Christmas Eve), I was not feeling so hot....which led to my experience with the stomach bug. I missed all of the festivities with my extended family on Christmas Eve. Bryce was with me until dinner. I thought we had escaped any further transfer, but Reagan woke up sick Christmas morning, as well as a few hours later my mother. Awful and disgusting! So, we cancelled our Christmas company, postponed the ham dinner, and were washing, disinfecting and praying for this to leave! Merry Christmas to us! Oh, let's keep going, shall we??? My neice Anne woke up late Christmas night sick, then followed by my dad, Reagan again, Jason, then Jeff (my brother-in-law). So, at this point 8 out of 11 people staying at my parents house got sick. In addition my cousin (who apparently spent quite a bit of time playing with Reagan on Christmas Eve) and his girlfriend came down with the wonderful bug too. I'm not sure I can adequately apologize for infecting 10 people (myself included) with this awful nastiness! I suppose it will be one of those things you will always remember and look back and laugh about, but right now Christmas was kinda stinky....

We did enjoy spending all that time together, although much of it included yucky cleanup and lots and lots of laundry. It was a Lysol Christmas....