As of today, we are somewhat normal people again. My poor 2-week old baby got the stomach flu on Wednesday night that lasted through Friday. On top of the flu, he had a croup-sounding cough that was kind of scary. I almost took him to the emergency room on Thursday night, but thought that I would wait until Friday. Luckily, he felt better on Friday. He has slept on my stomach for the past 3 nights so that he wouldn't choke if he threw up or coughed.

Wednesday night, my fabulous book club friends gave me a little baby shower with the 6 of us. They are the most giving and thoughtful people. I received some adorable clothes, the softest blankets ever, and a photo session with Jill (I am sooooo excited!). And, of course, a great assortment of yummy food. Naturally, I just took for granted that Jill would document the event with pictures; so, sadly you'll have to look at her site for pictures of the fun occasion.
With this crazy flu that has been storming through this house, I still have not written about Halloween. The kids picked out their outfits this year (thank goodness for costumes that you can buy for under $20!). Max was batman, Jake was a black Ninja, Devin was a "BIOOO" (BYU) football player, and Mason was a giraffe. Now this sounds great; however, I believe that there is always trauma that comes with Halloween. It happens every year. Let's see if I can document this correctly.
- Max's batman costume was a button-in-the-back costume. He wore the costume to school, so we were just praying that he didn't have to go to the bathroom, because it would be very embarrassing to have to ask the girl teacher to button him back up. (He didn't have to go, thank goodness.) But, the batman costume has flashing lights that you can turn on and off. The wire to turn the lights on and off was hooked up to the back, so we had to rig the costume to have the wire run down his arm -- heaven forbid that he couldn't turn the batman light on by himself during the Halloween parade!

- Jake's costume was supposed to be a white ninja. Of course, he opened the package before Halloween and has been wearing it around the house. Well, the morning of the Halloween parade at school, he couldn't find the white ninja mask. He couldn't possibly wear the costume without the mask! So, 10 minutes before his ride was coming and very upset about the mask, he decided to go as a karate person with his somewhat dirty karate outfit. But, for trick-or-treating, he didn't want to be the karate person, he wanted to find the ninja mask. It was not to be found. So, I let him open the black ninja costume that I was going to return because Max decided to be batman. Unfortunately, now the white shoes that he was going to wear didn't match the black ninja outfit. And, he was furious with Max for wearing the black shoes to go with his black batman costume. 15 minutes late for trunk-or-treating, we finally got him to wear the black cowboy boots. What a tragedy to have to wear cowboy boots when you're a ninja!!!

- Devin, for some reason, decided that he was not going to wear any of the many costumes that we have in the Halloween bucket. (Although, he has been wearing them around the house perfectly happy for the past how many days!) So, once again, late for trunk-or-treating, we asked him what he wanted to be. "BIOOOOO" (BYU) football, he said. Great! We could pull together a costume like that in this house full of BYU fans. But, unfortunately we couldn't find our BYU jersey. So, we put any shirt on with a number and gave him the BYU helmet that is broken to wear. He was pleased as can be.

- Mason was a giraffe. The outfit was 12-months, but I just couldn't fathom buying a new outfit when I wasn't even going to take him out trick-or-treating. So, I let him curl up in the costume just for pictures. So cute!

Yeah! Halloween is over. It's definitely not my favorite holiday. Bah humbug to me!