Pox Party

We always celebrate the winter solstice, but it looks like sickness is going to be a regular partner in our celebration. Last year, we had the Puke Party. Quoting from an email I wrote 'Our Party started off by Kate puking five times in our bed in the very early morning hours. Next night it was Jane's turn, another few hours of early morning puking, including some blood. It detoriated from there...

Erik's first episode was when he wanted to be picked up and puked all over himself, me and the kitchen floor. Tara's first episode was while sitting on the toilet, she even managed to hit the walls...

I lost count somewhere, but we must have had at least 80 vomiting episodes on the solstice. Most of them hit bowls or towels, but of course not all of them...

I thought we were over the worst, but Monday morning at 5am we got woken up by crying from the girls room. Tara had puked all over herself, Jane, the bed, and other stuff... And it had a nice black color from the cake frosting on the solstice cake... (it was yellow/blue/black, but black clearly was dominant after a night inside her stomach...)

Erik still was vomiting this morning. And a few hours later he complained about wet feet. Turned out he had dhiarrea dripping out of his pants...

We got hit by 2 feet of snow last night, so today has mostly been spent shoveling snow, poop, and puke... Happy holidays LOL At least nobody threw up on Christmas day, we just dealt with diarrhea.

That sure was a solstice to remember, but luckily I knew that this would be a one time occurrence... Looks like I was wrong! Although, technically, chicken pox is another sickness I guess. And at least it's less messy than the puking was. But still, it's a bummer to have sick kids during the holidays, they will for sure miss the fun spirit training at karate this week.

Cees and Tim are the only two who have had chicken pox. Tara and Jane are having it now, and I am wondering whether Kate is coming down with it or not. It's hard to tell with her eczema. And we have been wondering whether Erik's impetigo maybe really was chicken pox after all? Somehow I am not convinced of that, but I guess we'll see whether he comes down with chicken pox or not, either now, or two weeks from now.

I did get my last xmas shopping done today! Both the presents and the grocery shopping! I am so organized! LOL Now I just need to wrap 5,000 presents and I will be all finished! (ok, maybe a few less, but that's how it feels right now :-) We went for a lot of consumables, paint, paper, notebooks, craft supplies, quite some family gifts (gymnastics stuff, dvds, nintendo games, etc) and of course lego, books, and a few other presents for each kid. I got a barbie video camera really cheap last year after christmas, which will be the big gift for the girls and Erik.

For the solstice, I'll bake a solstice cake and we'll make a solstice fire in the fire place. Roasting marshmallows, and making s'mores. I hope the girls will feel up to it!