The Gift That Keeps on Giving...Stomach Flu

The children asleep...all snug in their beds, til oodles of vomit rolled out of their head.

Christmas Eve started out good. Had a huge turkey thawing that a dear friend gave us, all my food ready for the big Christmas dinner and I climbed into bed for a nice winter nap. But what to my wandering eye did appear but Zach by my bed looking ghostly with fear.

He didn't quit make it to the toilet and woke me up to say he had "ralphed" in the bathroom floor. This was about 3:00 Christmas morning. We rolled up the bathroom rugs and cleaned up best we could that late at night and I sent him back to bed with a trash can by his side.

Christmas morning he didn't even want to get up to open his present but we forced him downstairs and made him as comfortable as we could on the couch while we opened gifts. He immediately went back to bed and stayed there til after three in the afternoon. Massey started feeling ill by 1:00 and stayed in her room most of the day. My family came over for the feast and Zach finally came down and ate a little around 4:00. I hated them being sick on Christmas but what are you going to do besides make them as comfortable as possible and tell them it will be okay ? Not much!

We had 12 people over for dinner and other than the "sick bay" I had going on upstairs we all had a great time. The last of the bunch left around 6 or 7. I cleaned up the kitchen and the living room and made myself a huge plate of all my favorites (love that broccoli and rice casserole) and settled in for hopefully another nice winter's nap.

About 2 in the morning I woke with a start. It felt like Rudolph was banging his hoofs on my heart. My stomach didn't feel so hot either so remembering Zach's short shot last night I headed to the downstairs bathroom just in case. Not one minute later...here came my (formerly favorite now) broccoli casserole back up through the pipes. Once it comes out your nose it immediately moves down your "favorites" list. I didn't think it would ever stop and was just glad I was downstairs so as not to wake up anyone else . Thirty minutes later when I felt I had expelled all the internal organs in my weak little body I crawled across the hall to the laundry room and got a wash cloth out of a load of clean clothes and curled up on the tile floor by my porcelain microphone and slept in a fetal position til the dry heaves finally went away. I'd say this was around 5 AM.

When I got the courage to get off the tile floor (cold tile feels really good to the side of your face after hurling for what seems like a week) I dragged myself into my oldest son's room, he had gone to Acworth to spend the night after everyone left on Christmas.

Massey woke me up late... with my wash cloth still on my forehead mid morning to tell my that Daddy was upstairs locked in the bath room with his own set of problems.

Ole TJ was smart to run off to Acworth!! He hasn't been home since and is probably waiting for the "All Clear" from the CDC.

All of us have slept for hours on end...that seems to be the only thing that helps. We have a refrigerator full of great food that no one can keep down but have gone through a case of ginger ale and a case of toilet paper.

I slept til after 2 today and wouldn't have gotten up then but I had to be at work by 3. I called work and told them I would be thirty minutes late just to get an extra half hour of face time with my pillow. I didn't get off of work til 11:30 tonight and felt like I had been run through a wringer.

Hopefully it has run its course in our house and tomorrow we can start eating all the wonderful food we have left over from Christmas.

Bah hum "BUG."

Til next...a now even skinnier COTTON