Month of Sickness

The month of love was a month of illness in our home. Caleb started it off with an ear infection, which was quickly followed by a nasty eye cold. Literally, a cold in the eyes. Looks like pink eye, but is not the bacterial kind and both eyes get so, incredibly goopy and tender. The only thing we can do about it, is keep the eyes clean as much as possible with warm water and wait it out. The poor kid was miserable with that for a good 8 days. Luke then got the eye cold which put him down for 6 days...it was rough seeing those babies so miserable. Movies, popcorn, detox baths and snuggles consumed our days for a good 3 weeks of the month.

Luckily, Dallin and I avoided the eye cold, but we all had a cough and congestion virus that just would not go away all month long. When it rains, it pours! We survived all the illness and are looking forward to getting out and about, again.

Before the eye cold hit hard, the boys enjoyed a snow day. Dallin even stayed home from work because of how treacherous the roads were due to the amount of snow we got. We invited some of Luke's friends over and Dallin built them a sledding ramp, which turned into a mini snow cave-sledding hill. Caleb, once again, was not a fan, but the older boys absolutely loved every minute.

I got to take the lovely glucose test this month to check for gestational diabetes. Everything looked great, but man does that hour on a sugar drink high through my whole day for a loop. We did learn that a King Sized Snickers will have the same effect as drinking the glucose mixture. You would just have to consume it within 5-minutes...that's a lot of candy bar to devour.

For Valentine's Day, Dallin took me up to Midway for a nice dinner at the Blue Boar Inn. We enjoyed a quiet evening to focus on each other and not have to worry about children climbing all over the place.

We also took a 4-week class about strengthening relationships. One of the weeks was to take a color personality test. Would it surprise anyone to discover that Dallin and I are pretty much opposite sides of the color wheel on the personality wheel?! Dallin is very yellow and I am very blue. It helped us to see why we both do certain things and have certain tendencies.

And now, for the tale of The Untouchable Harry Potter Book:

Luke has been begging us to read the second Harry Potter book. Dallin has all 7, so I had him dig it out so that we could start reading it as a family. Turns out, the second book he has, is the "Collecter's Edition." Basically, he got swindled $70 back in the day the same way we all got tricked into thinking Beanie Babies would be worth something by now. Anyway, he did not see it this way and requested that we not read the book because, "We need to keep the pages in mint condition!" My very logical brain is thinking, "What good is a book if you can't even read it? You're denying the book it's purpose and joy in life." Plus, there are probably hundreds of these "Collector's Editions" out in circulation. Thus began an almost weeklong disagreement about this book. Mama B got wind of this dispute and used Valentine's Day as an excuse to buy us the illustrated versions of the first three Harry Potter books. The Collector's Edition is still sealed in its cellophane bag with the stipulation that the boys can freely look at the illustrated ones whenever they please, seeing as Dallin wanted to keep those in mint condition, as well. Who's side do you agree with?

The duration of February was spent getting healthy with stay-at-home activities including amazing Lego creations by Luke, inventive ways to play with toys by Caleb (the laundry basket) and sweet treats from Ruby Snap for mama. We also went and saw the Lego Movie: 2 for President's Day and did some science experiments with alka seltzer, oil and water. Luke is a scientist, through and through. That simple activity kept him engaged for a good 45-minutes before I cut off his alka-seltzer supply. He also made robot Valentine's for all his classmates, tried FunDip for the first time (he is fan), and got to disassemble Dallin's old laptop computer.

Welcome, March! We are excited for the last official month of winter!