"Because sick people are hi-larious."

It is the season of illness and computer crashes. Simultaneously. Which is why you haven't heard anything from me for a while. I am going to go back and post pictures from the kids' birthday as soon as I can. I picked up some malware somewhere and the anti-virus software we were running on my computer was inadequate to the task, and it completely messed up my registry. So, with much cursing of the perpetrators of such evil, we had to reformat the C drive and reinstall all programs.

Doug's had a cold with a lingering, annoying cough which he is finally getting over. When I came down with it it settled in my ears. (Painkillers help with this sort of thing--Yay.) Andy spiked a fever on Tuesday night and was quite miserable.

It started snowing that night, right at bedtime, and was coming down pretty heavily. Kate wanted to go out and play in it right then, but I told her she could go out in the morning. The snow continued for several hours, and early the next morning we got the robo-call that Kate's school was on a two-hour delay. Doug checked online and found that his morning classes had been canceled. So we got to have a snow day. Or at least a two-hour-delay snow day. You know, as much as one can enjoy that sort of thing with a miserable feverish child who just wants to be held all the time. Especially when you aren't feeling so great yourself.

Sure enough, when Kate got up she said she wasn't feeling well either. This was no surprise--I'd been just waiting for her to come down with it too. I took her temperature and it was 101.9, so I figured I'd keep her home from school. And then she didn't even get to play in the snow at all because it started raining. Pretty hard. I think the snow was all washed away within a few hours. (Not that I was monitoring it closely, or anything--I had a lot of other things requiring my attention!)

Kate's "not feeling well" didn't last long, though--as she was playing and having a great time, I mentioned to Doug, "She's not acting very sick." And then at about 1:00, I thought, "Hmmm... I guess I could have sent her to school after all." She was practically bouncing off the walls by then. I remember my mom would call it "Funny Fever," when we had a slight temp that made us kind of punchy. Seemed like that sort of thing. Though by that night she was pretty draggy again and went to sleep very quickly. She ended up staying home Thursday, too, though once again I'm not completely sure it was necessary. Hard to make these calls sometimes.

I took Andy in to the doctor and found out his ears were infected, so we got him on Amoxicillin. He's feeling a lot better already. We had a couple of really bad nights, but last night he slept so much better (and I did too, of course) and today seems positively perky by comparison.

As I said to Doug the other day, "There's nothing like being sick to make you appreciate not being sick." You know how, once you're finally feeling better, your body just goes Ahhhhhhhh! and starts pumping out those endorphins? That's a great feeling. And then there's the deep sense of relief and well-being from knowing that your kids are finally feeling well and resting comfortably. That's a great feeling too.