This incredibly long blogging break

has been brought to you by a sick kid, another sick kid, and then a third sick kid.

And then JD got sick.  We're talking lay-in-bed-sleeping/moaning-all-day-when-not-puking sick.  Yeah, that was great.  And the funny thing is, when I'm sick, I still get to take care of the kids.  When JD is sick, that's not the case.  Thankfully he's not that sick often.

That left me.  I thought I was in the clear.  I wasn't.  My sickness overlapped JD's.  We were both miserable.  I used most of my sick days for the year over the course of three weeks.  It took us awhile to get better.  We were literally counting down the minutes until we could put the kids to bed and go to bed ourselves.  We had an 8:05 bedtime for about two weeks.

And then we were well.  We got caught up on (almost) everything that we had ignored during our time of feeling crappy.  And all of that was a priority over blogging, hence the long break.

I've enjoyed staycation this week.  Mostly, I've been at home, and I've realized that I'm much more of a homebody than I used to be.  I used to love being out and about, and then, with kids, it was harder, and now, I'm usually perfectly content to stay home.  On Monday, I had four extra kids over, and it was busy, but fun.  Monday night, Christa had a couple girls over for homemade bbq chicken pizza (yum!).  Quin had a rough night, and by Tuesday, he was definitely sick.  Bonus- he's been kind of cuddly this week.  My big outing on Tuesday was grocery shopping- I hate grocery shopping.  Hanging out with Christa during chemo on Wednesday was one of the highlights of my week.  Three other friends (including two other teachers on staycation) were also there, and while the reason we were there stinks, it was nice to chat, laugh, and be thankful for friends.  Speaking of Christa, she's pretty amazing.  She had her husband shave her head Tuesday night and it only added to her awesomeness.  On Thursday, I never left the house.  I wish I could say that my house is spotless as a result, but it's not.  Quin got lots of cuddles in though.

The big kids have been gone enough to not drive each other crazy.  Ryley has enjoyed several afternoons with Aunt Lisi at a local stable working with Bella, one of her draft horses.  Zeke has been to wrestling practices and has fallen in love with a new sport, skiing!   Ry is at the mountain with Dick today to give it a shot as well.

I'm not going to finish everything I had hoped to this week (I will finish the book for book club tonight), but all in all, staycation has been a success.

Ry helped JD tap some trees over the weekend.

We're going to attempt making our own maple syrup.

Honey?  Anakin?  Ry isn't here to tell me which goat this is :)

I hate the cold, but love the beauty of winter in VT.

Ry is wearing a horse shirt, "racing her horses" on some game, 

and has the dog wearing a bandana with horses on it.

My sick little guy during one of his perkier moments.