The beginning of the plague

I'm not sure what happened but this winter we got hit with something nasty.  I had been sick with this obnoxious, but not serious upper respiratory something for about two weeks.  Then, for Norah's birthday weekend the family went down.  And I mean hard.  First, G said he just wanted to lay down for a minute, which is something he NEVER does.  He looked pretty terrible too and this was around 4 pm.  Then, I didn't see him until about 12 the next morning.  Dude said that he wasn't feeling the greatest as well, but I didn't know if that had something to do with Papa laying down.  But, when your crazy active 5.5 year old just curls up in a chair and falls asleep?  He wasn't lying.  So, I had him eat something small and he headed up to bed too.  Lucy, was soon to follow.  Norah had earlier in the week thrown up once while I was working but then seemed to have diarrhea for the rest of the week.... that poor girl pretty much lived in the bathtub because she didn't know what was going on.  :(  She luckily got better before we got to my parents because I knew that my Mom wasn't going to be very sympathetic to her if she ended up pooping on her floor.  Lucy ended up throwing up once and then seemed to be in the clear.  G however had it for a few days and Dude never had any gastrointestinal problems was just very lethargic and under the weather.





Now, while all this exciting stuff was going on I was still sick, but I was the least sick of them all, which meant I was healthy.  This probably went on for a good two weeks, which also meant that nobody was training for their marathons that were quickly approaching.  Did that stress me out at all?  Of course it did!  All this was happening right around my peak week and I was thinking that I was missing out on key training and long miles.  I was starting to get discouraged too because I would try to run (that was silly) and wouldn't even be able to run 3 miles without thinking that I was going to lose it.  Not the type of feeling you want to have about a month out from your race.

Luckily, this sickness passed and even though it seemed like a very long time it was't.  We are truly blessed that we are pretty healthy and I pray that we never take that for granted.

JVG

Winter Blast

My crazy husband, Gracie, and my sister decided running a half marathon together in the dead of winter was a great idea!  It was SO COLD that people had icicles hanging off of their facial hair, hair, eyebrows, you name it.  He really enjoyed it and said that he would like to do it again next year... I will be there to cheer you on!  :)




















We are so proud of the nutters for being able to do that in this temperature... really, even at all.  A half marathon is a huge accomplishment!  Well done!

JVG

Huge Chunk of Ice

This has been an interesting winter for us as we moved into a new place at the beginning of December.  We had been looking for a place because the winter was so terrible the year before at Rosewood and we didn't want to experience that again.  However, this place hasn't proved to be much better.  Upon moving in the door to Norah's bedroom fell off its hinges and it took them 1.5 months to come and fix it.  Really?  Then, after they replaced it it got warmer and it wouldn't fit in the door frame, so we can to call them again to come fix that.  Add on that our dishwasher broke, followed by our dryer and then the basement flooded... we weren't happy.  We also had to call them because the previous tenants had left a roll of carpet there which was now soaking wet and i didn't want it to get moldy.  Guess how long it took them to get it out of there AFTER they said they were going to take care of it?  Humph.  Well, anyway, the last straw was when we heard this really loud crash so we looked to see what it was and this huge chunk of ice had fallen off the roof (it tore the gutter right down) and landed on the AC unit in the backyard.  It was ridiculous.  Luckily, we didn't need the AC in the middle of the winter, but I just couldn't believe how lazy they had become with everything around this place.  This is definitely something that could've been prevented.





Anyhoo, we had an interesting thing happen to us this winter.  The sensor in our van kept telling us the wheel pressure was low so just a random day I asked G if he could go take care of that.  So he went to the gas station to fill it up which shouldn't take long right?  Well, I get a call from him saying that the wheel is deflated because the little nub that you unscrew came completely off!  WHAT?!  So he finds a spare tire and we get it to a tire place and they said that this isn't the first one that they'd seen.  That, it was pretty common this winter because it was so cold and that people have shredded their tires driving on the highway when it happened.  So, even though it was a bit of an inconvenience during the day I am so very thankful that we caught it when we did.  It was a cheaper fix because the tire wasn't destroyed and it could've been much scarier had we been driving with everyone in the car. So, small blessings.  :)

JVG

Catching snow

This past winter was a hard bitterly cold one.  There was so much wonderful snow outside to be played in, but we couldn't because it was so nasty out.  However, there were a few days that we were able to go out and enjoy all the wonders that winter has to bring.











There were a few days (in a row even!) that we got to build an igloo and a snow man and a few other things in the front and back yard.  That was one of the big appeals of this place was the fenced in back yard, but we hadn't been able to utilize it quite yet... so the kiddos were thrilled when we finally were able too.  :)  




















JVG

Frost Bite

My friend Hannah, signed up to run a 10K at the end of January and I told her that I would run it with her.  I apparently like to volunteer to run races with friends... but I thought that this would be good because this was the first time she had ever run a 10K and I know that it can be nice having a friend there.  She did really well and she finished strong!  We chatted a lot for the first few miles but then she wanted to try and finish in under an hour so we decided that we should start running a bit faster.  We didn't quite make it under an hour but we were close!  Her first goal was to just finish, which she did with flying colors, so her next goal I think will to run it in under 60.  It was a little cold, but it isn't called the frost bite for nothing!  haha.  I did, however manage to place in my age division and got a nice glass!  :)  Almost makes up for not getting a medal  hehee.  We had a great weekend hanging out with them and look forward to it soon!






JVG

Mini Vacation

I think that this is our first real family vacation!  We thought that the kids would really like to just go hang in a hotel and swim because they had such a blast when they dropped me off in Chicago and that hotel didn't even have a swimming pool!  We didn't go far, but far enough to make it feel like we were going someplace.







The weather on the way there was awful.  Somehow we picked the weekend that it was going to blizzard and look like another snowpocylpse. I honestly had to stop watching the road because it was raising my blood pressure... but good thing that Gaetan is such a good driver and so calm :)  We made it to the hotel safely, despite all the snow and FREEZING temps and got all checked in.  The kids wanted to get swimming right away so that's what we did!












I was honestly so cold from the outside that the pool was too cold for me, so I immediately went to the hot tub.  Duder put on his wet suit and had a ball and the girlies followed him in.  They played and played and played going back and forth between the hot tub and the pool until we all were famished and decided it was time for dinner.  Since the weather was so nasty out we decided to order pizza and eat it picnic style in our room.  We realized that we hadn't ordered delivery since we've been married so it was funny for us to pretend like we knew what we were doing.  We ate everything we ordered!  All that swimming made us hungry!









We thought that we were going to try and get the kids to sleep a little later than their normal bedtime but we were wrong.  They were still wired and wanted to play... and they stayed up until 1:30 AM.  OMG.  I was exhausted and I was surprised that those boogers still had anything left!  Eventually everybody passed out... whew.





My first night's sleep was pretty terrible.  I had Norah in bed with me because she woke up in the middle of the night quite unhappy so I tried to snug her but she definitely didn't want that.  In fact, all she wanted to do was kick me, scream in my face and then after she eventually fell asleep ON me continued to stick her feet in my ribs.  And, to top it all off she peed on my arm.  seriously.  Everybody was still asleep when Norah got up so I took her out and we had breakfast together in the lobby.  Then, I started gathering food for the others to eat in our room for breakfast.  I was honestly pretty spent from the previous night but our crazies kiddos were ready to go!  I was honestly thinking that we would check out a night early and drive home that night because I couldn't go through another long night like the one before... but, the weather pretty much dictated what we were going to do!  After breakfast and the kiddos first swim of the day we had to decide if we were leaving or not because the weather was going to get considerably worse.  We decided to stay after we went for a little drive for food and knew that it wasn't worth trying to drive home tonight.








I have to say that I am impressed with how much those kids love being in the water.  It was so peaceful since we were really the only ones using the pool to have them swimming and watch the blizzard outside.  I also couldn't believe how good of a swimmer Dude is!  I mean, we see him in swim class so I know that he can but this was the first time I had watched him just go back and forth back and forth.  It was almost like we didn't have to watch him because he was so good at it!






The kiddos were so tired the second night that they went to bed at a reasonable hour, which meant that we could go to bed at a reasonable hour.  :)  It made the morning so much more tolerable because packing everything up and making sure that we didn't leave anything behind is quite a task!  The drive back was much better than the drive there but it wasn't awesome still.  We did have a great time and I was happy that we could do this little mini vacation with the kids.





JVG