A checkered daze

Today was a daze for me and my family. We're all sick. Darrell stayed home from work and slept most of the day. Both boys threw up last night. I've got a cough, the sneezes and runny nose, but couldn't rest since I needed to take care of the rest of them. We stayed home all day and finally went out on the porch in the evening to blow bubbles and get rid of our cabin fever.

Salem stayed in his PJ's the whole day. I think that has been the first time for that. He is getting more interested in playing board games. We played "Guess Who?" and Checkers. Playing those games brought back some childhood memories of my sister, Holly, and I playing.

For the Guess Who game, Holly and I arranged all the people with similar features to be together so it was easier to find them. Then we figured out the best way to ask a question to get more people eliminated, like "Does your person have facial hair?" instead of "Does your person have a mustache?"

When we used to play Checkers, Holly would get so mad that I would never move my back row. :) Then finally we'd have a face off between her last king and my last king. We'd both go to a corner and just move back and forth and never go out on the playing field. We were both so stubborn! Speaking of stubborn, it was really difficult for me to play with Salem and not be as competitive as I would have liked. It killed me to let him jump me when I knew it could have been prevented. But, I guess that's what every parent goes through. I'm sure you've read a sappy Hallmark card, or listened to a high school graduation speech that says "Mom, thank you for letting me win at checkers when I was a kid and making me believe that I really did win." I'll have to ask my mom or brother if they ever "let" me win (probably.)

Since it was Monday we did a quick family home evening. Salem went downstairs to get the FHE tree (chart telling you who does what.) Salem and Oaklen pretty much did the whole thing and Darrell and I just laid there on the futon and listened between coughs and sneezes. Oaklen chose the Sunbeam song, of course. He loves to jump and say the word "beam" and "him" at the appropriate times. Salem's lesson was on eating healthy food. He thought that it was a good topic since we were sick. He said "Heavenly Father told me that I'll get better today if I eat lots of feel good food." For the activity we played "doctor" with our medical kit. It's actually fun since you can really hear your "heartbeep" (as Salem says) in the toy stethoscope. My brother always liked to listen to mine to hear my little heart murmur. Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum, SSSS, bum-bum...

We had air popped popcorn for the snack and knowing from my previous post, Oaklen dumped almost the whole jar of popcorn kernels on the floor. What a turkey! :) I always think about my friend Kristy when I make popcorn. She gave me the blue glass canister that I use to store the popcorn kernels.

Now they're all in bed and it's time for me to do the same. I couldn't go to bed without writing this blog post, otherwise I would have been thinking about it all night. It seems like I always have a blog post going in my head. It's actually fun to have a narrative of my life. Sometimes I'm able to write them down, other times they'll just be stored away into Heather's memory. Speaking of memory...I remember Kathleen in Jr. High told me that I was an elephant. I didn't quite understand, then she explained that I have a memory like an elephant.