Quarantine Lifted

Today was the first day we really ventured out of the house. The four of us have been ill since Christmas day when Nelson first showed signs of a sniffly nose. It has been down hill from there, culminating last night with a 6 hour stomach flu. I kid you not! Have you ever heard of the 6 hour stomach flu? Well, I had it and NO it was not bad food. Very strange. This cold has put all of us down, Papa in the hospital with pneumonia, Grandad, I hear, sounds like a fog horn, Colter had a 102 fever for 3 days and Unlce Kane missed work. Kane's parents even went home with the little treat. The four of us are slowly improving. We did go through an entire box of Puffs yesterday, but the cough is productive and slows at night.

So, we returned home from Wyoming last Monday. It was a rough go to get home, having head-colds-from-hell. We made it home about 2 am, however, our luggage did not. We did receive 4 of the 5 pieces two days later with the last piece, the biggest, containing Henry and Nelson's clothes and most of our Christmas presents, still MIA. And when I say "big" I mean the largest suitcase you can buy. And it was packed to the hilts, weighing in at 49.6 pounds. We even went to the airport 4 hours early and slipped it on a scale just to make sure we were not going to get charged more than the 45.00 we were already forking out for that leg of the journey. So, how an elderly woman lifted it off the conveyor belt, put it into a car and hauled it up to her apartment, I will never know. And to think that she unpacked it and put a picture of my sister's family on her mantle, still not knowing it was not hers, is so endearing to me. She told her daughter about the picture she found in her suitcase. The daughter, living in Denver, asked her to go to the mantle, look at the photo and asked if she recognized anyone in the photo... "Well, no, actually I don't." Is that not the cutest thing ever. She even told her daughter that she thought her clothes looked smaller. The daughter then took it from there, contacted us and contacted the airlines. We received the bag 3 days later, with everything back in it and the photo wrapped very sweetly in a pair of the boys' jeans. So sweet.

Here are the pics from our first trip out of the house since the New Year. We wish you all a healthy (I wish us that too, is that bad?), prosperous (again, ditto for us), and peaceful year.

Happy New Year!

Henry took this photo.