Long Weekend

It was a long weekend and not in a good way. Memorial Day weekend is usually one of my favorites of the year. When we lived in Wisconsin it was the official start of summer filled with fireworks, parades, and our annual birthday bash. Here in Arizona it's not as much fun, but at least I had a weekend of swimming and my birthday to look forward to, right?

Jerry said he'd take me out to dinner (just us!) on my birthday Saturday night so we had cake a day early on Friday. In hindsight, I'm really glad we did this! Wesley was nice enough to make my cake for me since Roz wasn't here this year to do it. He really did it by himself too. I just put it in and took it out of the oven, he did everything else on his own. We had a quick dinner and then the gang sang to me and we had cake.

After eating cake we went for an evening swim. As we were getting out, I grabbed the camera to take a picture of the moon rising over the mountains. I need a better camera. This is a terrible shot of a beautiful moon rise.

I did get this cute photo while I had the camera out though...

Saturday morning we burned disposed of some weeds and took care of some yard work, refreshing ourselves in the pool as needed! Annabeth wanted to be like Daddy and wear a hat and sunglasses while doing yard work.

"These glasses need adjusting..."

"Still not quite right..."

"What?! They still aren't straight?!"

The Foremangirl says: "Work harder boys!"

Annabeth enjoys the pool for about 5 minutes before she asks for a towel and a snack. After getting such a cute shot the night before I thought I'd try again. I really liked this first one, but silly JD photobombed in his undies!

We swam a bit more in the afternoon and then got cleaned up for dinner. Grandma Joddy and Grandpa Steve were kind enough to come and watch the kids so Jerry and I could go out. I chose Monti's La Casa Vieja. We have always loved Monti's. We have had many a delicious meal there. This was the first time we had been back since the return move to Arizona and it did not disappoint! We enjoyed our dinner (except for the call from Papa John's Pizza - somebody who just turned 40 so maybe he really is getting old accidentally placed the pizza order for the kids under "carryout" - but we got it all figured out and no one starved).

We didn't stay out late. Grandma and Grandpa left and we got everyone to bed. I wasn't feeling so hot. Jerry wasn't either. We decided to go to bed early. We weren't even asleep an hour before Wesley got sick. We got him settled and fell back asleep and then Eli got sick. We got him settled and then I got sick (it was after midnight though - so, technically, I wasn't sick on my birthday). Thankfully, that was it for me, because I was up once an hour with either Eli or Wesley all night long. Jerry got up and gave the non-sick children breakfast but didn't even make it through clean up before he got sick. 

That left Justus (fifth in line) in charge. Yikes! That's like getting to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate in the presidential line of succession! I must say, he did a pretty good job. They played (mostly) quietly and watched videos. Jerry had said he would run to the store to grab some Gatorade, but didn't make it before he got sick. One of our nice neighbors ended up bringing us some Gatorade and soda to sip. And did we need it! That's all the four of us had all day. Jerry and I took turns dragging ourselves to the kitchen so the other kids didn't starve, all the while counting down the minutes until Annabeth's nap at 1pm. As soon as she went down so did the four of us. We all slept until she woke up at 3:30pm. 

We were all feeling a bit better at that point and did our best to make it through the day and make it to bedtime. We all slept great! When we woke up this morning everyone was feeling better, but we decided to just take it easy for the day. I had plenty of laundry to catch up on. I had given myself the day off, laundry-wise, on my birthday which meant by Sunday, with the extra sick laundry, I was waaaaaay behind. 

So today we stuck close to home. Jerry and I made the rounds with bleach.  The boys played with their neighbor friends and we went swimming a couple times. Thank goodness for the pool! I guess even an otherwise cruddy weekend can be redeemed when you can just step out in your back yard and swim! But, even if you ignore the getting sick part, I still think Memorial Day weekends are more fun in Wisconsin. Perhaps we'll try and plan a visit next year...

Side note: If anyone has any ideas why we have gotten sick so many times this year, I would love to hear them! We are normally such a healthy bunch. We have been sick more in 2013 than all the other years combined. The water test for our area just came back and it is fine, so it's not that. We just can't figure it out!