Stephanie and the kids came to visit today. Risky with all the bugs going around this house lately. The kids seem to be recovering, but Beth has had a lot of problems with pain swallowing, for a few days now. Not normal strep throat pain, either. Can't sleep, can barely swallow her own spit. Can hardly eat anything. Like knives in her chest. They were going to go stroll through Winona Lake but Beth has been so wiped out she couldn't manage it. She has an appointment tomorrow at the clinic in Fort Wayne. I hope just taking some fluid out of her band will fix things.

Today was the Easter egg hunt at our church. For the second consecutive year, it was pouring, so the hunt was moved indoors. Beth wasn't at church today because of her strep throat, and she missed the hunt as well. But I took the kids, who both seem healthy now. Their hunting was typical of their respective styles...Alex ran all over, throwing as many eggs as possible into his basket and grabbed all he saw. Missy strolled, or jogged at best, and picked up one or two here and there. She at one point stood right in the midst of a lake of eggs on the floor, picked up one, checked it out, and walked on. After a few minutes when it was all over, she noticed that she only had 15 eggs in her basket as opposed to Alex's 50 or so. And there were no more eggs to be found. Yesterday a large group at church was stuffing the eggs. Beth had been scheduled to help but she was in bed most of the day. I had some things to drop off at church for her, so I took the kids, and we wound up staying to help for a couple hours or so. Otherwise, it was a resting kind of day. And basketball...my bracket is trashed. One of the worst I've ever done. Who saw Northern Iowa over Kansas? Or Ohio over Georgetown? Or Butler? But MSU is in the Final Four so I'm good!

Beth's throat has been in rough shape. It is bad enough that she's been going through all the apple cider vinegar we have. I bought a new supersize jug today. And I stayed home from work today afternoon so Beth could go in to the doctor, and she has strep too (which the doctor said is not easy for someone without tonsils to get) and an ear infection. And a second ear infection on the way. I hope I don't catch this. The kids both already seem better. The doctor gave them a note for 2 days off school, but they probably were well enough to go today. But, might as well keep them home with as recidivist a bug as they have. And WOOOO HOOOO! Did you see Michigan State beat Maryland on the buzzer beater? I had to press the 'back' button on our DVR over and over and over again.

Beth took the kids to the doctor this morning, and we have TWO kids with tonsilitis. Missy's is much less severe than Alex's, though. Looks like the kids will miss some more school this week.

Yesterday, Alex finished his course of antibiotics for the strep throat. Today, Alex came home from school with a sore, red throat and a fever. The poor kid just can't get ahead of it.

The Cub Scouts played Laser Tag and did go-karts at Somethin' Funn tonight. Beth was hosting a Pampered Chef party while it was going on. I'm recovering, but still am incredibly stuffy. And worn down. I missed work Monday, but did go help work on setting up the pinewood derby timer at the Lemp's church again Monday night. We finally got it working the way it's supposed to. I was back to work today, and was able to accompany the Laser Tag trip. I played laser tag with the kids once, near the end of the evening, and very distinctly thought 'thank God' when they announced the time for the round was over. I was terribly ready for it to be over. The running around was too much. Alex, however, loved it.

Microorganisms...everywhere....it started for me Saturday when I was at Cub Scout leader training. Around lunch time I started thinking 'I can feel the cold taking root in my nasal cavity.' It's a bad one. Anyway, after the leader training there was a birthday party for a neighborhood kid at the McDonald's playplace. She's Missy's friend but Alex was invited too. There was, however, an 'incident' in which a pretend fight escalated, and ended with Alex fake karate kicking the kid and the kid pushing him down. I didn't see it but I was told Alex was trying to get away and the other kid went after him. Anyway, we removed him from the premises for a while and I took him for a little drive. Things were calmed down when we came back. Shortly after the party, Erika came over to babysit. Beth and I were not out long though, because I was feeling worse and worse as the night went on. We went to Goshen and did some shopping (including NyQuil and Kleenex), but then just came back. We had been going to do wings and trivia, but by the time dinnertime came, I didn't feel up to it. We got takeout and came home early. Today I've just been down. Missed church.

Alex went back to school today. He missed Monday and Tuesday with strep throat, but he has been much better almost at once since starting an antibiotic Monday morning. Mom left Monday, with the understanding that she should seek medical attention immediately at the first sign of a sore throat. He was well enough that Monday night he went to the Lemp's house in the evening so Brad and I could work on getting the pinewood derby timer set up at their church while Beth was at Bible study. Apparently, Bradley has had it recently and they've all been exposed so they said sure, bring them over. And they played for a few hours while Brad and I worked. Tuesday, however, Alex was wearing out in the evening so we kept him home from Cub Scouts (I went to help out). Today he was just fine, school was no problem, and it was skating night at Kids Klub. He's doing better on the skates every time we go. Now the the important stuff...I have my bracket for the NCAA tournament filled out. My Final Four: Kentucky (champion), Villanova, Syracuse, and Kansas. No big surprises there, I guess...and I have the Spartans going out in round 2. But I'm hoping for better. I also filled out a bracket based only on average SAT scores of the school student bodies...there, Final Four is Duke (champ), Cornell, Georgetown, Vanderbilt.

It's been a close call this weekend. Mom arrived here on Thursday, and Alex's birthday was Friday. Coincidentally, Friday was also the carnival at Lincoln school, which made Alex think that it was all for his birthday. I took the afternoon off and went to visit Alex's classroom with Mom, Beth, and Missy, and brought treats for the class (Oreos and juice). For dinner, we told Alex he could pick out any restaurant he wanted...and he chose Golden Corral. Then we went to the carnival, where they had the inflatable bouncy things, and the putting greens, fishing ponds, basketball bowling, cake walks, chaos, cheap toys, etc. Saturday was Alex's party. In the early afternoon his friends started arriving here, and then we loaded up about 10 kids into 3 cars and headed to Bremen Bounce. I gave Alex, Luke, and Nicholas my video camera to entertain themselves for the drive there, and it was a very silly time. But a little while into the fun, Alex started coming back to where we were sitting asking for a drink. And then a tiny bit later, another. And the time in between him coming to us kept getting shorter. Then he came to us in tears because he didn't feel good. We thought maybe he was feeling overwhelmed by the crowd and noise, so I took him out for some fresh air and all he wanted to do was sit in the truck, which he did with his eyes closed. We went back in, but he never went back to playing, but he did rally some when we left. We went back home, finished up the party, did cake and presents, the kids went home, and we rested the rest of the day, but he was running a fever and had a sore throat. Sunday we all skipped church and stayed quiet at home as much as possible, except for going out for pizza, which seemed to wear Alex out, and despite being excited about pizza when we left, he didn't eat much of anything. Today, the visit to the doctor confirmed strep throat.

Back from Vancouver this week. I left on Wednesday, this time not forgetting to bring a passport. I also went with 3 guys from work this time instead of solo. We got there and headed straight to the plant from the airport (since we found out just the day before that we needed a lot more time to get everything done than we thought we would) and got set up. After dinner we all started to wear out early because of the time change. I just watched the Red Wings get dominated for a while and sacked out early, then was wide awake at about 4:00 am. So, lacking anything else to do, I went walking. With a GPS and a set of coords to a cache that eluded me last time I was out there. I went for a nice mile and a half hike, through some primeval forest park in the heart of Port Coquitlam, and found the cache along the Coquitlam River at first light. The walk back seemed a lot quicker somehow. We worked all day on the requalification and headed to Vancouver for dinner. We were going to check out the Capilano Suspension Bridge if there was time, but there wasn't, so we just got dinner at Cardero's and went back to the hotel. We did get everything done, but it would have been nice to be able to sightsee a little, but hey, that's not why we were there. We did think that it was odd that they had just had the winter Olympics wrap up the previous week, since it was so balmy. They could have the summer Olympics there no problem. Anyway, we headed back on Friday morning (except one guy who had a later flight) and were back home again late (like 9pm) Friday. Our small group was just wrapping up (even the McCoys were leaving...yeah it was that late) when I walked in. I hadn't had time to shop for presents so I was just going to grab something...anything...at the airport in Vancouver, so I got a nice coffee mug for Beth, and some nice fridge magnets for the kids, which made Alex cry. His exact words: "you got me a fridge magnet?" before the heartbroken tears and sobbing. I think he stayed up mostly to see what I got him. There were no nice t-shirts or stuffed animals at the airport, my misfortune. Anyway, Saturday Beth and I had a date night. We went out to see "Alice in Wonderland" which was not as bad as we'd feared but not as good as we'd hoped.