A Very Nice and Very Bad Christmas

This Christmas we went up to Utah to spend time with some friends and with Mc's side of the family.  The kids and I didn't go there last year and so it'd been about 2.5 years since we'd seen everyone, and it was really nice seeing them.  The kids did great in the car, but it was still a long drive-- took us 13 hours to get there.

We spent some fun time with friends of ours at a get-together on Sunday night, and then on Monday we went to eat with some of those friends at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant and then we went to see "The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug" (I wrote about it in my previous post).  Christmas Eve was spent at Mc's brother's house and that's where we saw most of Mc's family.  I enjoyed seeing everyone and we made plans to spend more time with them later on in the week.

And that's when I got sick.

I almost always get a cold when I go out to Utah, but this time it was the stomach flu (called "viral gastroenteritis", which is different than influenza, the regular flu).  Over half of Mc's family was sick the week before we were going to drive out there, and while most of them looked fine by the time we got there, people are often still contagious for days after they start to feel better.  I might have gotten sick from one of them, or it could have been from any of the restaurants we ate at while we were there, or even on the drive up to Utah.  I'll never know where exactly I got it from.

So starting on Christmas Eve night and for the next 3 days I became well acquainted with Mc's parents' bathroom.  The floor and I spent a lot of quality time together.  On the third night the pain in my stomach was so bad that Mc had to take me to the hospital.  They gave me an I.V. to rehydrate me and some morphine for the pain.  Blood tests came back and said I was very healthy other than having low potassium as well as a high white blood cell count (due to fighting off the stomach flu and also due to being in pain).  After a few hours at the hospital I was able to go home where I slept for about 10 hours.

I felt like such a flake, having to cancel plans to spend time with Mc's siblings.  I was really looking forward to visiting with them, and cancelling disappointed me.

Another disappointment was that because I was sick I didn't get many pictures of the kids.  Both kids got a cold while up there, and even though they did fine for the most part, they couldn't play in the snow much at all and I wasn't able to get a picture of them when they did play in the snow.

Here are a few pictures I was able to get:

Little One flopping onto a giant moose.

Baby Girl liked the moose, too.

She started off being interested in the presents...

... but she quickly got bored and went instead to playing with Nana's kindle.

He was never really interested in opening the presents...

... but he was very happy with his new little train set, and he played with that for the rest of the morning while Mc and I opened up the rest of the presents.

I was so grateful to Mc and his parents for taking care of the kids while I was sick; I felt like the kids were in good hands and I could just focus on trying to get better and stay away from everyone so I wouldn't give them what I got.

Both kids were very good on the car ride home, even though Baby Girl was sick the whole time and she threw up once in the car.  Neither of them got much of a nap in the car, and we got stuck in traffic in Phoenix because IDIOTS don't know how to MERGE, so the drive home took almost 13 hours, and by the end we were all beyond ready to be out of the car!

While seeing friends and family is really nice, Mc and I are discussing whether or not making that drive each year is worth it.  It's a LONG time to be in the car, and sickness always abounds in the Utah valley during the Holidays.  We'd still like to get out there to see friends and family, but Christmas might not be the time to do it.  We'll see.