Not Your Average Family

What do your kids like to do for fun? Well, my kids like to look for and dig bones around our acreage. Do we live dangerously close to a cemetery for my kids to be doing this? Also, Yes, They tell me that these were all found in the creek bed. Can I be 100% sure that they are all from wild animals? Also No but it's not going to keep me up at night. The dogs were thrilled! I was thrilled! Have you seen the price of dog bones at the store? They found about $50 worth of dog bones, and they did it without fighting.

 

Not Many Left Standing

 

Even though we had done our best to keep Robb quarantined from the kids and then the boys quarantined from the girls, Abby still managed to get sick and tested positive. At this point I threw in the towel, and we stopped masking in the house, and everyone could go wherever they wanted. Abby's case was more similar to Robb's lasting about 5-7 days and she felt nauseous, lightheaded, had a fever and headache. She is our little germaphobe and had tried so very hard to stay healthy. After each additional person tested positive, we then had a different return to school date. Emmy, who I call my Covid unicorn, managed to escape without ever getting it. She was tested 3-4 times per the school's request, and she was negative each time. One of those tests may have been less than accurate though. They are coming up with "easier" ways to do the testing all the time. The one test that I signed her up for, you picked up in the drive through pharmacy window and without getting out of your car you had to take the test in front of them and then put it in the drop box. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! Emmy was in the back seat of the van, and I was in the front, and they very specifically said that you were not to get out of your car. So, I'm on my knees in the front seat reaching into the back seat trying to get a swab far enough up Emmy's nose to count and then swirl it for 15 seconds.  It was like holding down a rabid cat. She was screaming, crying, trying to get away and hitting me. The pharmacist was watching all of this through the window and shouting instructions at me. At about this time my butt hits the horn and the person in front of me thinks I am super rude for honking at them. It was great! So, it's anyone's guess how accurate that test was but she never did get sick. I never did get it either but I had both my vaccines so that wasn't so surprising. Emmy may not have ever gotten it, but she was out of school for close to 4 weeks by the time it had went through our house and then she was away from them for 10 days. The crazy thing is that she was the last one that could go back to school. 

Covid Positive

 Robb has been working from home and we don't excessively go out, so it was weird when he woke up in the middle of the night on Thurs. freezing cold, drenched in sweat, achy and overall feeling horrible. He had laid awake most of the night and after I woke up, I knew he had to have Covid. I made him an appt in the middle of the night to be tested at 9am the next morning. I had a bad feeling about this, so all the kids stayed home from school too. Sure enough the rapid test came back in about an hour and, he was positive. So started the most miserable 7-10 days he has had in a long time and my trial as a single parent. We quarantined him to our bedroom with no one in or out except me and I wore a mask and was super careful to wash and sanitize after each trip in and out. The kids and I sanitized every surface of the kitchen. He felt completely horrible and slept all day long. Of course, the day before was the one time in a year that he had met with several co-workers to go out to lunch. This is what we get for letting our guard down. He had to notify his co-workers as well as talk to a couple parents of the basketball boys that he had played bball with the night before he had gotten sick. We did our best all weekend to quarantine him away from everyone but by Sunday night I was starting to wonder about the boys. Bryce was laying around a lot and had no energy. On Monday late afternoon and evening Bryce didn't feel good (chills, headache, achy) Caleb told me he felt fine he just had terrible diarrhea. He somehow had missed that this was a symptom of an illness we have spent the last year being screened for everywhere that we go. On Tues morning I made appointments for all the kids to be tested. I couldn't get all the times together, but I took them all at the same time on the off chance they would be nice and swab them all then. Thankfully, the lady must have known I was desperate because she swabbed everyone and called a couple hours later with results. We knew Bryce was positive before we left. Not sure why his was faster than everyone else. Bryce and Caleb were positive, and the girls were negative. We then had to modify the quarantine to having the boys in the basement and the girls and I upstairs. Thankfully, I have had both doses of the vaccine and I am really counting on it working! Robb has felt so horrible that he really can only be up for about 15min at a time before he breaks out in a cold sweat and feels dizzy. Bryce spent all day laying down and feeling horrible. Caleb never seemed to feel terrible. He kept telling me that he had a bit of a stomachache and diarrhea, yet he wanted a giant bowl of chocolate ice-cream and sausage for supper. So, our quarantine now starts over. I had to notify the school and they set up the protocol for when the girls could be tested and return to school and when the boys could return to school. I also had to cancel orthodontist appts, dentist appts and contact all the activities to let them know that the kids were out for at least 10 days. 

Having the boys confined to the basement posed some issues especially when I had to work on Wednesday. We paid Abby a small fee to be the cafeteria lady and take orders for food, drinks and snacks for the day and deliver it to the steps where they would pick it up. It is interesting trying to separate your household but otherwise the girls are out of school for the boys 10 days and another 10 days. Yikes!! I think after some thinking about where Robb could have picked this up it almost had to have been at State Basketball. We knew that this was a bit of a gamble but like I said, numbers are down, and we let our guard down because we were desperate to do "normal" things. After feeling so miserable for so long I'm not sure Robb would have chosen to go but hindsight is 20/20 right. We've spent a year avoiding this and now we have it. You just get through it and hope that everyone handles it ok, and no one ends up really sick. Not sure we ever thought we would be living through a pandemic just a year and a half ago. How things change!