Ugh ... and moving on

This summer will go down in my memory books as the summer we were sick.  Ever since we returned from our trip out to South Dakota, someone has been sick in our home.  We've had fevers, vomiting, other stomach troubles, coughs, colds, Kate's trip to Urgent Care, Anna's Lyme disease, and we're just finishing another round of colds.  I think I could probably count on one hand the times we've all been feeling mostly well in the last 6 weeks.  Matt laughs at me and my desire to quantify things like this, but at least one person in our house has be noticeably ill for six weekends in a row ... SIX WEEKENDS!  This last round Kate caught at our church's music camp last week.  She started with a runny nose on Thursday, I came down with things on Friday, Ethan and Anna were hit on Sunday.  Matt is still okay (fingers crossed!).

At least this one moves fast; at least this one doesn't have a fever; at least Anna and Kate will wipe their own noses most of the time, even if it's not with a kleenex; at least ...

Okay.  I think that's out of my system now.  I've tried not to complain to people other than Matt and my mom, but this is getting ridiculous.  Time to move on.

Last week Anna and Kate participated in music camp at church - Angel's Academy.  They had a wonderful time full of singing, dancing, crafts, Bible stories, and good memories.  The original plan had been for a friend and I to carpool since neither one of us wanted to drive across town multiple times a day all week.  Well, plans change when people are sick and I ended up driving three of the four days, and on the day I didn't drive, Anna will still at home feeling ill before her antibiotics kicked in.  The days I stayed at church were nice for me to have a chance to catch up with church friends that I haven't seen or talked to much over the summer :)  The week ended with the kids doing a bit of a presentation during worship on Sunday.  Kate and Anna loved it.

Update on Anna ... we assume she's doing fine with the Lyme.  We're fairly certain now that she was bitten by a tick locally about three weeks ago and we just never knew about the tick bite.  She's been fever free for over a week and the times that she has been tired in the past week are ones that had obvious causes ... waking up too early, playing in the pool for over an hour, having an overall eventful day, etc.  She has a check-up next Monday with our regular doctor, but we don't foresee any complications for her.

Update on Kate ... I had a parent meeting on Monday night for her preschool ... ahh!  How did this happen so fast?!  I think we're going to focus on Anna starting 1st grade first, and then I'll still have a week to prep Kate for preschool.  She doesn't do too well with long term plans anyway.  Besides, we know she'll do great with the preschool experience, she just may take a few weeks to adjust.

Update on Ethan ... The silly boy had a big week.  On Thursday he started army crawling and by Monday he was pretty fast at it.  He has no fear with army crawling, moving on hard floors, carpet, grass, or the driveway.  We're hoping that he figures out how to crawl on his knees soon because his clothes are getting really dirty by pulling his belly around all the time.  Also, over the weekend he figured out how to clap ... hooray!  Sunday and Monday he was pretty miserable with his cold, but since then he's been a really happy and energetic baby.

Update on the garden ... We had a bit of a hiatus after I pulled up most of the bean plants.  We made a bunch of freezer pickles and I froze some zucchini, too, before I pulled up most of the cucmber and zucchini plants.  Matt and I picked and froze the first round of corn over the weekend, but we'll probably have a little bit more to freeze this coming weekend, besides the corn on the cob we've been having for dinner almost every night.  The tomatoes are ripening and I have a "spaghetti sauce date" planned with a friend tomorrow.  We'll probably need to make salsa soon, too.

One of the more excited garden things for us this year has been watching our peach trees make their first fruit.  The trees would have made peaches last year, but we pulled the blossoms off so the trees would grow bigger first.  This last week we've been having fresh peaches every day, in addition to our corn-tomato-zucchini-cucmber-green beans diet.  They are delicious, well worth the wait!

Before too long I think we're going to be overwhelmed with apples, pears, plums, and grapes, too.  Yikes!

Update on Family Field Trip ... Today we did a family field trip to Cave of the Mounds (apparently "the" cave to visit in Southern Wisconsin).  We'd been hoping to all summer since the girls got passes through the summer library reading program.  Matt took the day off and we had a very nice day as a family.  We were all feeling mostly well and the girls were thrilled to be in a real cave and see all kinds of things they'd read about in books as we prepared for our trip.  Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, but maybe that just means we were too busy having fun :)