January's over, hooray!

Man, January kicked my butt this year. Not quite as bad as last year, but still, what a dreadful month! As always, one of the month's only saving graces was my birthday.

I turned twenty-six; it was pretty sweet . . . and somewhat well-documented.

The celebration started the night before with a date night! Except Chuck didn't feel so great . . . so we grabbed dinner real quick at Red Robin and then went home, leaving the boys with my mama overnight. (Incidentally, I was initially sorter bummed that Red Robin doesn't do anything special there unless that day is your actual birthday, but it does make sense AND part of my new 26-year-old maturity is understanding that the world doesn't actually revolve around me, so it was a good intro into that.)

When we got home poor Chuck was simultaneously sweating and shivering so after consulting the thermometer (103 degree fever, yikes!) he went to bed and I was left to ring in my birthday solo (and text Heidi a lot):

Ahhh, a classy self-portrait of the newly-minted 26-year-old.

Proof of both the time (just after midnight) and my slight obsession with Aaron Rodgers. It's okay, Chuck understands. Then I proceeded to sleep on the couch in an effort to not get sick (spoiler alert: it didn't work, more on that later).

Six and a half hours later, I demonstrated my newfound maturity and woke up to go running with Nicole even though it was my birthday.
Here is part of my super sexy running attire: long underwear and awesome argyle-patterned socks.

Aaaand another awesome self-portrait.

After this my day become slightly more lame and less documented for a few hours. Chuck continued to be real sick, and my awesome planning hit a pretty serious snag when we realized that I had left my children at my mom's house without their car seats, meaning she could not bring them back to me that morning after all. Which meant that instead of Chuck, Will, and me going to Will's preschool transition meeting, I went solo. And got there ten minutes late after going to the wrong school first! (In my defense, they just switched to a different elementary school this year and haven't changed the name on any of the paperwork yet . . .)

Luckily the meeting went very well nonetheless and it wasn't a problem at all that Will wasn't in attendance. And after the meeting I got to listen to a voicemail in which a very groggy Quinn sang Garth Brooks' song 'Ireland' with the words adapted for my birthday. (Reminiscent of Chuck's birthday in November, when the voicemail was Quinn singing an adapted bday version of 'O Holy Night'). Then poor, sick Chuck and I braved a trip to Boise so that Chuck could go to an un-reschedulable (I may have made that word up) meeting at work and I could retrieve our children from my very nice mom (whom, incidentally, I bought lunch for as a way to say thanks for bringing me into the world 26 years ago. You're the best, Mama!)

Then we came back home and I hurriedly made some cupcakes and went to Cub Scouts, leaving poor, sick Chuck to take care of Clyde and Will. I take back everything I've ever said/thought about men being total babies when they're sick (although it's mostly true) because Chuck was a total trooper that night. And the following few days. . .

Funfetti = deliciousness. And my Scouts very sweetly sang 'happy birthday' to me and to mark the occasion we did 26 jumping jacks to start off den meeting instead of our usual 25.

Maren and me! I really, really love Maren. She has kept me sane for the last year in Cub Scouts. I'm sure she has no idea how much she's helped me and how much I love her, but she has and I do. Even if she was smart enough to take off her Scout shirt before we sneaked in (late) to the Relief Society meeting after Scouts was over, leaving me to look dorky all on my own :).

After Relief Society was over and the little boys were in bed, I settled in on the couch:
to be so extremely flattered by all of the sweet birthday messages I received on facebook! Combined with all of the texts and phone calls and in-person greetings and such, I felt so loved :).

And then I felt feverish. And oddly cold. YEP, I got the flu too! While I very responsibly made sure that Clyde and Will were both vaccinated for influenza during the fall, I neglected to get a flu shot myself/bug Chuck until he got one. Serves us both right, unfortunately and next year we will ALL get the flu shot! So then I spent the next five days sleeping a lot and feeling dreadful. Luckily by that point Chuck was feeling quite a bit better so he could take care of the boys. And finally on day four and a half, my fever broke and I began to feel human again, yay! (P.S. The fairly common misunderstanding about influenza vs. the stomach flu drives me a little crazy, so here's my spiel: Influenza is characterized by fever, chills, body aches, fatigue, etc. It lasts 3-5 days and it's what the 'flu shot' immunizes against. The 'stomach flu' is usually a 24-hour virus that cleans out your whole digestive system with a whole lot o' throwing up and diarrhea. Both are very fun sicknesses, clearly, just in their own separate and awesome ways!)

So that was my 26th birthday . . . exciting, right? Has there ever before been a blog post 'round here with SO many pictures of me and not a one of my children? Yikes! No worries, this was an anomaly and their bright smiling faces will return posthaste.