New Year’s Day was soft and quiet. Chris and I got to wake up when we wanted because the kids had spent the night at my parents. We showered and lazily headed off to breakfast with everyone at Cracker Barrel. Not our normal breakfast choice but my parents had a gift card and down home chain restaurant cooking sounded good. We all had fun playing the table games while we waited for our food. We came home and almost immediately had everyone lay down for rest time. Our kids are 4, 6 and 7 but they still “rest” or nap almost every day we’re home (think weekends, school holidays and summer). Chris is a big time nap fan so that leads the charge but we also think it’s good for the kids to have a special time to rest. And they usually fall asleep. Normally I work during rest time but that day I decided to finish a novel I’d started last week (Alex Cross by James Patterson). I NEVER do that. Read in the afternoon. But there I sat with the fire on cuddled under my favorite quilt. When I finished my book I grabbed the camera to go see what the kids were up to. Two were asleep and one was happily reading.

I worked some in the afternoon while the kids and Chris wrestled on the snowy trampoline. I cooked a good+new recipe for dinner (cut up rotisserie chicken in a casserole dish with cream of mushroom soup, salt/pepper and frozen mixed veggies… heat up in the oven. It called for putting biscuits on top of the mixture but mine never cooked through so I tossed those and make another batch in the oven. Open faced biscuits with the chicken mixture in top was awesome and the kids loved it!) and we just had an easy night. I worked until about 1am after discovering a pretty major issue with my ordering system.

At 4am my eyes literally popped open and I had no idea why I was awake. I laid there for several minutes trying to figure out why I was awake because everything seemed normal (I thought maybe a noise woke me up so I was listening intently) when I realized I was going to throw up. I didn’t even have a stomach ache! But I got up and sure enough! Chris woke up and asked me what was wrong… I told him I had NO idea because I felt ok! That’s when the stomach flu just LAUGHS because I was up every hour until about noon when my friend (a doc) let Chris go pick up a zofran from her house. Then I slept away the afternoon (that drug is a miracle!), was up some in the evening when I could finally eat some saltines and drink a Vitamin water (dropped off by the same friend, Jen, who was SO awesome to me that day!). I fell asleep again around 11pm and slept straight until almost 9am when I woke up feeling mostly normal!

Whatever that bug was… it was HARSH and UGLY but FAST! Yesterday I felt almost human and by evening was totally fine! I didn’t eat much all day but didn’t feel sick, just not hungry yet. I took it easy though… straightening up the house, running a few errands, etc. Then my parents surprised me and decided to risk the fact that my kids MIGHT have been infected with the same bug by kidnapping them to Peoria for my niece’s birthday! We quickly packed them up and shipped them off, then spent the evening with our neighbors celebrating Kelly’s 40th birthday!

TODAY: Catching up! Two days away from the computer after weeks of barely working is becoming an issue! I have emails just PILED up, TWO websites in the beginning stages of being built, orders that need to be placed, blogs that should be written, etc. I’m kid-free and husband-free (he is at school for a contract non-kid day) so my music is cranked and HERE I GO!

I’m going to pretend like 2013 starts TODAY and not that it started with vomit! Happy Friday!