The Saturday 7

I have two weeks to catch up on!

1. Spring break was lame as usual. I watched various nieces and nephews throughout the week, so my kids were happy to have other kids to play with.

We also had friends over on Thursday, so it was fun to catch up with them. Other than that though, the main event of Spring Break was just . . .

2. The gardens with the cousins. We go most years to see the butterflies, and most years the kids zip through the butterfly exhibit in 10 minutes then want to go home. But this year, a lot of them were actually pretty interested! We had fun!

A butterfly landed on Lena. She was partly terrified/partly excited.

With my buddy Cove

We always have to take a pic by this sign.

3. On Friday, Lena woke up in the middle of the night with terrible ear pain. I knew it had to be an ear infection, so I got her in to the doctor right away. Sure enough, it was infected and had some kind of fluid filled sac that the doctor said could pop any time. Of course, our normal pharmacy didn't have any amoxicillin in stock, so I spent the afternoon making the rounds between all the other pharmacies. I finally found some, but it obviously doesn't work immediately. And ibuprofen/tylenol were not helping the pain. Lena cried all.day.long. Wailing and moaning and sobbing. All day. I'm already not the most compassionate person in the world, but crying nonstop over something I can't fix makes me a little crazy. I tamped down the crazy and tried to be as nice as I could, but inside I was rolling my eyes at her dramatics.

4. On Saturday morning, I woke up with a sore throat, but ibuprofen took care of it, so we went on with our Easter egg hunt extravaganza. First, we had a hunt at church with the rest of the town and 15,000 eggs.

By now, Lena's meds had kicked in and she was pretty much back to normal.

The kids loaded up on candy, and Levi even won a prize: a stuffed chicken. Haha. Nova was the big winner of the church hunt:

Levi was a little less excited about his chicken after he saw Nova's prize. 😂

Then it was off to Niki's for Egg Hunt 2.0! She is beyond generous and stuffed enough eggs for all 10 kids to get 25 eggs! And sweet Tater and Madi hid them all around her yard.

We had lunch together while we were at it:

These two were big fans of the Dorito bowl

Niki even made these fancy (nonalcoholic) drinks for the kids. She's the best!

After all the festivities, Justin and the kids went home and I went to Meijer to buy Easter basket fillers. Nothing like the last minute! When I got home, I was feeling sick-ish and my throat was starting to hurt again. I took some more ibuprofen, but it didn't help as much this time.

5. By Easter morning around 6:00 am, I was in agony. My throat was on fire and I felt like I was swallowing glass. I was sure this had to be more than just a cold, so I got up and went to urgent care right when they opened at 8:00 am. I didn't have a fever or white spots in my throat, though, so I was worried that I was just being a major wimp. I got right in and they were able to do a rapid strep test. I was so relieved when it came back positive a few minutes later. Although the doctor warned me that I would be contagious for 24 hours so I had to cancel my Easter plans. I was so miserable that I didn't even care. I got home in time to help get my family ready for church then flopped down on the couch to watch the service online. The pharmacy didn't open 'til 10, so I had to wait a while to get my antibiotics. And as I lay there practically writhing in pain I suddenly had more compassion for Lena. Lol. I staggered Ibuprofen and extra strength Tylenol around the clock and it did almost nothing to help. I was in pain for a solid 48 hours before the antibiotic finally started to do its job. Apparently strep as an adult is a whole different ball game than the strep I remember as a kid! Or I've just gotten really wimpy in my old age. Lol. I was so relieved that we had the day off of school on Monday, because I would've had to call in sick. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty dicey, too, so I'm very thankful I only had to work on Thursday. My voice wavered a little since I have three classes on Thursdays, but it held out, and I'm feeling pretty much back to normal by now! Whew!

Lena and I got to share the amoxicillin chart since I was only a couple days behind her. 😂 Her Dr. said she only had to take it for 7 days. Mine said 10. And I'm not messing around. I'll take it for all 10 days to keep that pain from coming back!

6. I was kind of sad that Easter was a bit of a bust for me. It's one of my favorite holidays - certainly the most meaningful spiritually. But I didn't get a family picture of us all dressed up in our finery, I didn't get to belt out the resurrection songs in church, I didn't get to go to family dinner. It was a bit reminiscent of Covid Easter 2020. My kids were lucky they even got Easter baskets!