Happy Thanksgiving!

 

After spending nearly a month at home due to covid and quarantine schedules, it felt so good to be with our family for Thanksgiving.  We arrived on Wednesday evening, just in time to help Grandma make some homemade pumpkin pies for the next day's Thanksgiving feast.  

The next day Luke, Annalyse, and Everett joined us for some cousin playtime and a delicious lunchtime meal of all the favorite Thanksgiving treats.  Since our family is not all that crazy about turkey, Mom and Dad made a beef tenderloin that they got from Uncle Todd who is a chef.  It was probably the best beef I've ever eaten - so unbelievably tender and flavorful!  Simon especially loved dessert time and stole the whipped cream off of everyone else's pie after he gobbled up his own.

The next day was Black Friday and we decided to have the kids make candy houses.  We went to the dollar store and got lots of different sizes and shapes of candy to use for their building.  And because it's such a cool place, we decided to run to the Chippewa Candy Shoppe for a few other treats.  It was such an amazing shop, full of every kind of sweet treat you could imagine.  The kids each got to pick a few special treats to bring home and they were ecstatic.  When we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's, the kids got work on their houses.  They used poptarts instead of gingerbread, and it worked really well.  They had a blast decorating their creations and sampling along the way.  

The next day Annalyse, Lucas, and Everett joined us to head to Grandpa Arnie's Christmas Tree Farm to pick out their Christmas trees.  The Whitetail Christmas Tree farm was started by my grandpa years ago and I grew up helping out there each December.  They would have their little camper there all toasty warm, and I would help Grandma Edie collect the money and pass out candy canes to all the kids who came to visit.  My parents worked outside, showing people around and helping people shake and bale their trees.  For the last several years, no new trees were planted or trimmed. The trees that are left are big and wild, but are special just the same.  We found their trees, loaded them on the trailer, and fired up the campstove for some hot chocolate. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.  When we got back to Eau Claire, Olivia claimed one of the scrub trees meant for a porch pot as Cindy's (her doll's) tree and insisted that it get decorated for Christmas.  Grandma and Grandpa humored her, thinking it would be a temporary project, but it soon became clear that the little scrub tree would be standing in their house for the duration of the Christmas season. They decorated it with some of Grandma's older ornaments and lots of beads and garlands.  They topped it with construction paper sun, moon, and stars held on by tape.  They were so excited and found it absolutely beautiful.

Later that evening, Eric and I were able to slip away with Luke and Annalyse for a dinner out at Stella Blues.  I don't think the four of us have been able to have a dinner out together since they lived in California, so it was really fun to have the opportunity to do something together. 

It was a really special time with family, especially after missing last year's Thanksgiving and our recent isolation.  We are so thankful for our many blessings and our loving family definitely tops the list!

Positive

 It started with a slightly drippy nose.  On Monday I noticed Eric's voice sounded a little different to me, but knowing how little risk we've taken, we brushed it off.  The next day, it still sounded funny to me, but Eric assured me he felt fine.  By the third day, nothing had really changed but I was starting to get more worried.  Allergies? A cold? Certainly, not covid? Right?

On Thursday, it was Olivia's turn to be drippy.  In an abundance of caution I canceled plans with the Vadis girls that day, but thought it must be allergies...did the furnace filter need to be changed?  Maybe I was slightly drippy, too?

On Friday, Eric informed me that a person at work had tested positive.  We knew our vaccines would protect us, but we figured we would feel better once Eric had negative test results.  But we knew it couldn't be covid.

I'll never forget the look of panic on Eric's face on Saturday nigh at dinnert as he received the email from Walgreens confirming our worst fear: he was positive for covid.  And since Livi was drippy, and I was drippy, we probably were too.  I left my dinner on my plate and went into crisis mode.  Who were we in contact with?  Could we have infected anyone else?  I started to make phone calls to all who were at Nolan's birthday party the previous weekend because if Eric's symptoms began on Monday, it was possible he was contagious on that Saturday.  Making those phone calls was so difficult and emotional.  We had tried so hard and made so many sacrifices to try to avoid making someone else sick.  The fact that we could now be a link in the chain that could harm someone else was so devastating.  It felt like we had made all of those sacrifices for nothing.  I thought the vaccines were supposed to protect us?!

On Saturday evening, Olivia's cough started up.  It wasn't any worse than a normal cold for her, but I felt so guilty.  How did this happen?  Why couldn't we have protected her more?  

Sunday was Halloween and that's when things really started to get bad for me.  I could hardly get off the couch all day.  It felt like a heavy elephant was sitting on my chest.  I was absolutely exhausted.  I took a rapid home test and the faintest pink line showed up.  I was officially positive.  By the next day, my cough began and I started one of the hardest weeks I've ever had.  My horrible barking cough made my ribs and chest ache.  I laid with my humidifier blowing cool mist into my face all day and night, but I still coughed.  I slathered Vicks Vapo Rub all over my chest and I remember how strange it was when I couldn't smell it.  I barely got out of bed for six days straight, not even for meals.  Patti brought over a pulse oximeter which gave us some piece of mind.  My oxygenation was still in the okay range. But by day 5 of no improvement I was starting to get scared about needing to go to the hospital.  I begged and pleaded in my head, that I would not be one of those people who get admitted to the hospital and end up on a ventilator.  We did everything right!  Why was this happening? On day 6 I felt like I finally had made some marginal improvement and managed to make it to the couch to watch a tv show.  However, after just a few minutes out amongst our normal chaos, I was exhausted and had an epic headache and had to go back to lay down.  It took many days to regain my strength and join the rest of my family.

Fortunately Olivia and Eric recovered without incident.   I don't know what we would have done if Eric hadn't been well enough to take care of me.  He did lose his sense of taste and smell but his cold-like symptoms were never worse than a drippy nose.  Nolan got it too, but it was extremely short lived.  He had an extremely stuffed up nose for about 48 hours, but never even developed a cough.  Despite living in a house full of sickies, Simon somehow stayed healthy.  It is possible he contracted it and remained asymptomatic.  Regardless, my greatest relief in all of this was that the kids did not suffer too much.  If someone was going to struggle, I'm glad it was me and not them. 

This virus is so strange in how it can look like different symptoms in different people, and can not show up as symptoms at all!  It was so discouraging to get covid after all we've done to protect ourselves.  The silver lining though is that we'll soon have both natural protection and protection from vaccination, which will hopefully make us feel more confident about doing things in public in the future.  I'm so glad we all recovered without medical intervention and fortunately, no one we came in contact with contracted covid from us.