We drove home Sunday, did laundry and put everything away. Monday we woke up and we were all sick. We all spent the day in bed. Thankfully we have a king size bed with adjustable base. We piled in the bed and raised the head so we could all breath and spent the day watching a Harry Potter Marathon and napping off and on.
When we got to Olympia we stopped at Barnes and Noble to pick up some games for Taylor's family for Christmas. We had fun looking at all the cool toys and games there. Barnes and Noble always has a great selection of Christmas gifts. Then we met Sue at Mark's house. Connor started to feel sick at this point and was coughing and sneezing too. He never did get a fever though. Both boys spent the bulk of their time lounging and watching Harry Potter movies. Lauren and Brianna came over the next morning to make some sugar cookies. Everyone had fun making and decorating sugar cookies. The boys made a big plate of cookies, but they each only had 1 bite from a cookie. They really weren't feeling good, but they had fun decorating them. That evening we played board games. We stayed at Mark's house Friday and Saturday. I slept with Kaiden in one of the guest rooms with a queen bed. Connor and Sue stayed in the guest room with 2 twin beds. Jason slept on a mattress on the floor in the bonus room. Poor Kaiden was sneezing all the time and every time he would have a massive glob of snot come out. His fever was gone by Saturday though. But Jason and I started to feel a cold coming on, so we decided to drive back home Sunday and not stick around for Christmas. We didn't want to get anyone else sick. We got lucky with the roads. The drive there and back were dry- no rain, wind or snow! We were all happy to get our Piper from the kennel.
We had a not-so-merry Christmas this year. We lost Jason's mother a week before Christmas. On Tuesday we got a call from the school that Kaiden was throwing up. He came home with a headache and puking all night. Then we got a call we lost Jason's mom. So, Wednesday morning we packed up the car, dropped Piper off at a kennel and drove to Longview/Kelso. Kaiden seemed fine and we thought he was all better. Since it was all last minute the only open hotel was a Motel 8. There was a Red Lion hotel in front of the Model 8. When Jason pointed out our hotel to the boys on the way there, Connor's response was "that looks like a nice hotel" until he realized ours was the motel 8 behind the Red Lion he was looking at... "that hotel doesn't look as nice dad." When we checked into the hotel and went up to our room we found a towel wrapped around the smoke detector and held on by electrical tape. At this point Connor was really starting to question staying at this hotel. We had thought the hotel taped the towel up, but when Cameron came over after dinner he pointed out that the last guest probably did it so he could smoke in the room. The rest of the room seemed fine though. After checking in we took Sue, Cameron and Frann out to dinner at Red Lobster (Connor's pick). Connor ordered a huge plate of coconut shrimp, which was Grandma's favorite. We tried to take her out to Red Lobster for lunch/dinner every time we came to town and that was always what she ordered. After we filled our bellies with sea food we went back to the hotel to visit for a while. Sue spent the night with us at the hotel. Sue and Connor shared a bed. Jason, Kaiden and I shared the other. This is when Kaiden took a turn and started getting more sick. He spiked a fever for the rest of our trip and spent the majority of the time just sleeping or laying around. I had to keep giving him Tylenol, which you could time it and exactly 40 minutes after the Tylenol he would perk up and bounce around all happy for the next hour + before crashing again. Poor kiddo.
Right before we left home Connor gave me my Christmas present... something I've been asking for years... he drew a picture of our family! I'm going to frame it to put by the fireplace.
I decided to repaint Connor's room. For his baby room I had light blue upper walls, a wavy brown bottom and sea animal decals on the walls for an ocean theme. I let Connor pick the paint color and he went with his favorite color- bright orange. We decided to leave the upper walls light blue, repaint the lower walls bright orange and add a pure white boarder in the middle. Connor loves it! I think it looks great too.
