Recovering :(

Every time I start thinking that we've been going through a fairly healthy stretch, something happens. Alas ... this is the stage of life we are in.

Kate's pretty sick. Somehow between starting last weekend with a bit of a cold, swapping germs with the other kids, being exposed to all of the Chicago museum crud, and having one more virus enter her system when we visited friends in Milwaukee on Tuesday, she got sick. The poor kid hasn't been sick like this in a long, long time. Coughs, stuffy nose, fever, lack of appetite, fatigue, etc. Thankfully she's at least sleeping a lot. Yesterday was the worst for her so far. She was so tired in the evening that she was falling asleep at dinner. We put her to bed at 6 last night (crossing our fingers that we wouldn't regret that at 4 a.m.) and she didn't get up until almost 8 this morning. Poor, poor kid.

Before the viruses overwhelmed her system, Kate was already recovering from a sledding accident last Monday. We'd gotten a few inches of snow over the weekend and the temperatures were supposed to warm up on Tuesday and Wednesday enough to melt the snow, so I decided to take the girls by myself to the neighbor's hill in the afternoon. Anna went down on the tube pretty slowly the first time and then Kate choose to use the sled. Well, the sled went faster and didn't exactly go straight. I ran after her down the hill, but I wasn't quite fast enough to stop her from disappearing beneath a pine tree. Kate had a nice bump on her forehead that evening and a few scratches on her face, too. After Kate got over the initial discomfort, she proceeded to go down the hill again for about a half hour ... no trees this time :)

Matt, Anna, and I have done much better this past week than Kate. Neither Matt nor I have caught any of the viruses yet, and Anna has just had a relatively mild cold for a few days. Hopefully we all are able to stay clear of Kate's illness!

It's time for an extended Anna story now. This kid is quite the storyteller. Our "assignment" last week in Kindermusik was for Anna to tell a story with a stuffed animal and then draw a picture depicting the story. Anna's eyes lit up with excitement when Miss Debbie explained this task. Anna usually tells multiple stories every day with multiple stuffed animals, so to be able to do this as an assignment was very appropriate for her :) Actually, we ended up writing a small book, complete with pictures she helped take with the camera of scenes from her story. And this was about only one small part of one story she told one afternoon.

Along those lines, many of her stories the past few days have been about the movie Cars. To understand the significance of this, you must realize that we don't watch many movies with the girls right now. Up until this Christmas, the longest they'd watch TV at home would be for a half hour, or maybe 45 minute, VeggieTales video, Sid the Science Kid episode, or SuperWhy. Anna received Beauty and the Beast for Christmas from Uncle Adam so we've watched that a few times, but never with Kate. Then Anna watched Cinderella on the way down to Chicago last weekend. She hasn't really been too enthusiastic about any of the full length movies she's seen so far.

Well, I'd been thinking for awhile that she might like to see Cars, mainly since we refer to Matt's old truck as Mater, but also because she's seen some of the Cars merchandise around. So since the girls were both feeling ill on Saturday we had our first family movie night and watched Cars together. Oh my goodness. Anna was in heaven. Kate was, too, at least at the beginning. She kept saying "Cars go zoom, zoom!" We were a little worried that the girls might be afraid of Frank (the combine), but we prepped them for it and they were fine. The only part Kate was worried about was at the end when The King crashed.

Since we've watched it, all of Anna's stories have had something to do with racing, or cars, or Lightning McQueen, or Mater, or all of the above. She's also asked to watch Cars every day, but we pull out our standard line of "If we did it all the time, it wouldn't be special." She's not falling for that as easily anymore :)

It's good to know that a family movie night can be a fun option for our family sometimes :)