Two Weeks of Illness

Remember how I mentioned everyone had so much fun on their cruise?  Well, everyone sure paid for that fun in a big way.  Everybody got sick on the very last day of the cruise.  When they came home, Benny and Gram were both in the midst of bad colds.  Sam felt fine, he said....then hours after arriving back home, he suddenly erupted in full blown pink-eye.

Off to the doctor we went, and both boys missed their first day back at school.  Benny had a sinus infection and ear infection.  Sam had pink-eye.

The next day Gram took a turn for the worse and got pneumonia!!

Benny had a rough week and felt lousy, but was able to return to school for three of the days.

Poor Sam stayed home ALL WEEK with a red, red eye that itched, ached, hurt, oozed, and blurred.  He was so miserable. 

At the end of the week he came down with a very painful throat infection.

So...our house was a house full of antibiotics and eye drops and cartoons, and I tried my best to keep Sam company while he laid around feeling awful.

Fortunately Sam was able to return to school the following week, after nine long days of being sick and being unsightly.

Gram needed a full two weeks to recover, but she is almost all better now.

So maybe I DON'T want to come on the cruise next time, after all?  Who knows.  But it sure sounds like the family shared some big ugly germs.

When the boys finally both felt better, we had a long, long afternoon of extremely rowdy behavior and tons of NOISE.  Though it bugged me, it was also music to my ears. So glad to see everyone feeling beter at last.

Let's hope that was the worst of it...for a while, anyway.

Cruising On Spring Break!

Is it possible?  Yes, it is!  The boys went on another cruise for spring break!!  This makes two years in a row, and their third cruise overall.  (Last year we all went on the ALLURE OF THE SEAS.)

This time, Gram packed up the boys and whisked them off to the Caribbean for seven days!  They joined Bass, Cory, Mikey, and Eydie on the CARNIVAL FREEDOM.  And they had a GREAT TIME.

Yep, that's my fearless eleven year-old, parasailing with Eydie and Mikey in the Florida Keys, on their first day of the trip.  Wow!!  Was I ever surprised to get the phone call afterwards and find out what they did!

And of course, Sam went too--with Cory!

They also visited an alligator farm (ranch?) while there.  They had Key Lime Pie.  They road the Conch Train.

And they saw the very end of Route 1!

The ship was beautiful (Mom said) and they had lots to do.

Everybody (but Mom, who took the picture,) pepares to board

Water slide on ship!

Sam, Mom, Benny at dinner

Eydie and Mikey

Aunt Louise and Cory

Various outings.....

And let's not forget going Ziplining while in Jamaica!  That sounded very FUN.

That's just a sampling of photos, and not much detail, but you get the picture.  The boys had a blast and we are definitely going to make a photo book from their trip!

Benny says he has noticed "a pattern" for his spring breaks, and is already wondering if Gram will take him on a cruise next year, too?

If so, this Mom's going to go along, too!

Bon Voyage!

Easter 2012

Every year, the highlight of preparing for Easter has always been the dying of the eggs.  I love to watch the kids make beautiful colored eggs, and I often join in with a few extra eggs I boil just for me.  So imagine my shock this year when both boys decided they were "too old" for dying eggs.  What??  No WAY.

As you can see, I pushed them into dying the eggs, and they went along with it, and maybe even had fun.  But I wonder.  Will I have to push them into it next year, too?  Is it over?  Already?  How can you be too old to do something so fun?  It's just not fair.

In any case, the boys dyed their eggs, and Poe watched.  They griped at me for taking photos, and nobody wanted pictures of them (another lovely new thing that comes with age) but I made the best of it.

And in the end, look what pretty eggs we had.  And the boys were not scarred for life, as they might have feared.

Let it be known that there was not one single mention of being "too old" for Easter Baskets. Nope, we had those hidden as usual, filled with candy, and the boys enjoyed them.

This year we had Mom and Dad come to our house for Easter dinner, and it was lots of fun to plan the menu and put it together.  We all sat outside and enjoyed the very warm weather.  And everyone got a little something from the Easter Bunny.

Unfortunately, Easter was immediately followed by a round of illness for everyone, starting off with Sam coming down with pink eye that Sunday night.  But that is a story for another post.  For now, I will just enjoy the photos of the egg dying, because who knows--it may be the last one I can talk them into.