Thankful to Be Home

We arrived home from Assiniboia last night. Our family had a great trip. The kids were terrific, we had a nice time visiting my relatives, and we enjoyed lots of good food. I was somewhat apprehensive about the seven-hour drive to Saskatchewan, but our kids were amazing in the car ---- until the last hour of the drive home yesterday.

Unfortunately, we brought home some unwelcome guests ---- stomach bugs. My cousins came down with the flu while we were visiting with them. My husband started feeling sick on the way home last night. Normally, Ben will always drive on long road trips. You have to know he was feeling rotten when he asked me to drive from Medicine Hat to Calgary.

I don't mind driving, but I have awful night vision. (To tell the truth, my vision is not stellar at the best of times.) I drove west, straight into the setting sun, through dusk and into the night.

Our children had been angels the entire trip, but they finally decided they were tired and bored when we hit Brooks. Baby Girl started screaming, my toddler cried, and our preschooler began to whine. My husband was curled up in the passenger seat, valiantly trying to hold out for the bathroom.

I gripped the steering wheel and prayed all the while. I could barely see the road. I was terrified of a deer jumping out of the ditch. (We'd seen dozens on our drive out.) I have never been so thankful to pull safely into our driveway!

Ben was sick all through the night. Poor guy. He hardly ever gets stomach bugs. Thankfully, the children all seem fine at this point. I've been scrubbing the bathroom with bleach, and have done endless loads of laundry all day. I'm hyper-vigilant about washing hands with soap. I figure that if no one else gets sick tonight, we should be in the clear.

But I have to admit ... over the last hour I've grown increasingly nauseous. I pray that I'm not getting sick. It's not so much that I dread throwing up (a night of vomiting kind of pales in comparison to three months of morning sickness). But if I get sick then the germs will continue to live in our house. There will be a greater chance of the kids getting sick too. I really don't want that to happen.

We'll wait and see, I guess. It's silly, but this evening I've been hurrying to finish all my jobs --- folding the laundry, unloading the dishwasher, watering my plants. If I'm to be out of commission for a couple of days, at least the house will be in order. This evening I even ran out to Sobeys and bought a big tub of Clorox wipes (for me), and Imodium and soda crackers (for Ben).

I'm praying that we'll all be fine. At least Ben is feeling much better now. And you know, I am thankful that our family is healthy (for the most part!). If the occasional stomach bug is all we have to deal with, we're doing okay.