Three Parties, A Play and A Birthday

Whew - I haven't blogged in a while because it got pretty hectic there. I was planning and coordinating two Thanksgiving parties for my sons' classes, getting two costumes ready for my youngest son's class play and sending out letters, collecting money and buying a gift for my oldest son's teacher and planning a birthday celebration for him. And right after all of this was Thanksgiving. In between all this my oldest son did have H1N1 and missed 6 days of school. For a week my husband and me kept feeling like we were coming down with something. We got lucky though - it never took hold. Our youngest son felt fine during all of this, thankfully. However, about a week and a half later, he got some rash one Sunday evening. So he took the next day off school while I took him to the doctor. Turned out to be nothing big and it went away right away. Then a week later, I had to take my oldest son back to the doctor because he was up most of the night before coughing.
So we kept having illnesses and doctor's appointments happening during a time when I was really busy and needed all my days for planning and getting everything ready. Then the night before Thanksgiving, my youngest son got an 102 degree temperature. He had a fever all day on Thanksgiving and was lying on the sofa for much of the day, which is not like him at all. We had planned to go to our niece's house for Thanksgiving dinner but realized our youngest needed to stay home. So my husband stayed home with him while I went to the dinner with our other son. We cut our visit a bit short so I could bring some turkey and fixings to my husband. Our youngest doesn't like turkey so he ended up getting a cheeseburger, fries and milkshake instead - he was very happy. Thank you, Mc Donald's, for being open. Most other places weren't - we know - my husband was driving around trying to find something.
So now the Thanksgiving weekend is over and it's back to the drawing board. I really enjoyed having a long weekend that wasn't full of plans so we could all relax a little. We needed it and we earned it. We did some fun things like going for a family bike ride, practicing football (the boys start playing for a league in a couple of weeks), watching the boys ice skate at an outdoor rink and going to dinner afterwards, and putting up Christmas decorations. Although it's busy, I do love this time of year and I'm really trying to experience it one day at a time this year. Now I'll take a breath and start thinking about planning the holiday parties for each son's class.