Update on the Crazy Life

 So... I haven't covered all of Hubby's surprises, but I will in the next few days.

I had been planning this surprise party for YEARS!  I literally told the family to mark their calendars on Hubby's 38th birthday giving them two years to make travel plans to come to our house for his 40th, and they totally came through.

It felt like planning a wedding to arrange all the moving parts, coordinate so many out of town guests, plan activities while they were in town and more.

Here is what life has been like since...

Labor Day weekend -- Chris gets surprised by LOTS of family.

Labor Day Monday -- Chris gets surprised by some friends, and then we take family pictures.

Monday evening a visiting family member vomits (at the hotel) and spikes a fever

Tuesday, our kids play at our house with their cousins, and the ill family member hangs out on our couch, resting and playing with the kids when feeling up to it.

Wednesday, our ill family member gets a rapid test for COVID which comes back positive.

Wednesday I spend the afternoon and evening on the phone with the rest of the family who attend our party, and our close friends who attended the Monday surprise to explain the situation.  The health department calls me to ask for the details of the birthday gathering that we had and to find out if our children had been back to school since their exposure.  THANK GOODNESS, our kids had NOT been back to school.  We deliberately made the decision to keep our children home to spend the week with family because we had not seen our family since Christmas.  Had our children returned to school, Tracey's entire class and the twins' preschool class would have gone under quarantine.  That was not the case.  But our children were put on a 14-day quarantine and asked to not return to school until Sept 22.

Thursday morning all the kiddos and I get tested for COVID.  By the way, we still have family in town at this point in the week -- after all, they were planning to stay until Saturday, and now the only thing that has changed with the COVID diagnosis is that they are going to drive back instead of fly.

By Friday we bid farewell to the last of the cousins.  We also get our COVID results all of which were NEGATIVE!  Praise God!  After days of back and forth with the Health Department, they have made the recommendation that ALL adults who attended the birthday festivities quarantine for 14-days, and make the recommendation that we can return to work and our children return to school on September 22.

On Saturday we say goodbye to Memaw and Pepaw and begin our remaining 9 days of quarantine just the seven of us.

Sunday (Sept 13) was Hubby's actual 40th birthday...

Then Monday-Friday began the week of Hubby and me BOTH teaching virtually from home, with all our children at home with us.  We have all been completely healthy without even a hint of COVID... which is wonderful.  It also means that our children have been bouncing off the walls wanting to go back to school.

This past weekend, Hubby went bear hunting and the kiddos and I were home -- of course... waiting out the clock of quarantine.

Yesterday was our LAST day of all of us home, and Hubby and Tracey, Howard, and Caroline are SOOOOO ready to return to school.  They also understand with a completely new appreciation why we wear our masks because if we get sick or even around someone who was sick, we have to stay home again for awhile.

I will still be teaching from home, but I will be doing so with less children each day and hopefully getting back to our normal routine -- or at least the routine we had for one week before Labor Day weekend.

So, if you've hung with the post this far, I will end with a picture that I saw a few days ago that left me laughing out loud.