The Plague is over!!

Can I just tell you how much we hate viral gastroenteritis? You know, the one that's commonly known as the stomach flu? We just went through a long bout of it here at the Cason Hacienda and damned if it didn't just about wear us out. Trevor first showed up with the symptoms in October, the usual fever and diarrhea that lasted 5 days no matter what you took, 5 days for everyone of us, and that part of it worked it's way through the whole family over the next FIVE weeks with several of the kids having pretty high fevers for more than a day. Rebekah even had fever-induced seizure Christi knew what was going on as she had experienced this with Jessica when she was almost 2 years old but is still scared the heck out of both of us.Also during this same time period, as if having the sickies for 5 days for each person with only one bathroom was not enough we were also now one by one experiencing super high fevers with sore throats and aches and pains and once that was over,( keep in mind it is now the 1st week of December) we felt lucky that we'd gotten away without the vomiting, but of course a new 3rd bug had more in store for us.Christi had said on Thursday, wow, I think we are finally sick free, never ever tempt fate, as the next day Chad started throwing up, we had our first puker. Once that started, we all got another taste of the sickies as we each, in turn, got to experience that same thrill. Yeah, that was a real party for Christi. She and I both spent a bit of time with our friends Clorox and Lysol, cleaning up behind one sick kid after another.In a an 18 hour period 13 of us were throwing up. Christi, of course, got the worst of it, because I was at work during the night and isn't that always when kids do their best barfing? She was the one, up in the middle of the night changing their clothes and flipping laundry back and forth trying to stay ahead of the vomit tsunami and while doing this she was throwing up herself.Christi told me when I got home that at one 10 minute interval there were 5 of them throwing up at the same time, 2 in the kitchen and 3 in the bathroom, Bailey had to bypass the bathroom as it was busy only to meet up with Austin at the kitchen sink. She laughs about it now as she said it was like something that might happen in a movie. My one visit from the bug happened at work and I just lost the bananas I had eaten earlier and spent the rest of my shift with some relatively mild nausea. And naturally, just when we thought we had it beat, it passed around a second time and some of the kids got another wave of sickness.
We have now been clear for about 5 days( this is the longest we have been sick free since late October) and things are looking good as far as illnesses are concerned. The laundry is now clean and everyone is eating normally, just in time for the Christmas. All the kids got flu shots too and we have never experienced 3 different illnesses back to back and hope not to ever again either, lol.
We hope that all of you have a flu-free Christmas and a healthy new year.

Christi wants to send hugs and loves to her beautiful cousin Linda and she is waving hi, give Uncle Ray and Aunt Betsy a hug from Christi.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!!

Ok, Ok...we've been bad, bad bloggers, I know. You can't see it now, but Christi is slapping herself on the wrist. Actually she's sleeping, but you get my point. We've been remiss in our blogging duties and this is our mea culpa. It seems that our daily running around and our current battle with the stomach flu has crimped our blogging. That and we keep procrastinating on offloading the pics we've been taking for the blog and then tellling ourselves, "We'll do it later and then write that post we've been meaning to". Then later comes and goes and no post and...well that's how it goes.

But, here is an update, without the pictures and we'll get to those when we get one of these:

I had a friend in the service who carried one of these in his pocket and he'd bring it out whenever I'd make an excuse for something. Always good for a laugh.

As some of you may know, we've been doing the paperwork shuffle trying to get pre-approved for a home loan and after many, many phone calls and delivery of a thick stack of paper that spells out our entire value to the material world, we have finally gotten the go-ahead. We can now begin searching for a house in earnest. We actually had found one and looked at it informally the day it hit the market, and it was nearly perfect for us, but within 12 hours it had multiple offers stacking up. That is going to be one of the main problems we face in this search as the market pricing is so attractive and the supply of houses is short. That coupled with the ridiculous "special assessments" on homes in many of the areas we want to live (you'd be amazed) which drive the tax payments on these things sky-high. That is going to put a pinch on how much home we can buy or where we can buy. We'll keep you posted on how this goes.

Last Saturday the our band geeks marched in the Lake Elsinore "Unity in the Community" parade. We have pictures for that too, but the picture above applies to them also. It was fun to see them do their thing and they looked so good in their uniforms. Really cool.

This year we had planned to have Thanksgiving at our house, with a few friends and family, but those plans were interuppted by a wicked bout of the stomach flu. Christi and all of the little ones, from Austin down have been suffering the effects and as of this posting, we've still got little ones doing the "technicolor yawn" and Christi herself is still feeling quite ill. We're going to have to scale back dinner to whatever everyone is feeling up to eating.

So that's what we're up to. We plan to get to those pics this weekend, but that remains to be seen. We hope that everyone out there has a great Thanksgiving and enjoys the family and friends and the good times and whatever makes you thankful. Despite our bout with the flu, we're going to rejoice in the love of our kids and the time we spend together and we'll get through the yuckies as a family. We'll be keeping more up to date with the blog as we do have those pics and we'll have house hunting updates and if we're lucky...maybe we'll even have another special announcement.

God bless you and all that you hold dear.