Finally the week that the kids had been waiting months for arrived....Winter Camp!! This is the camp run by our parent church and kids come from all across the U.S. for this. There were even a brother/sister from the Bahamas that came. Most years there are 70-80 campers but this year there were 116! This was the first year Mariah was old enough to go so she and Alex were campers and Ethan was on staff helping teach dance class. He's pretty good at swing dancing! I kind of expected a little more emotion from my daughter as we hugged her and said good bye, but she was a trooper and said "see ya later" and that was it! No tears, no pleading with me not to leave her......sigh.........!
My concern from seeing the dorms last year was how many bunks were crammed into each room and how easily it might be to spread germs.....particularly H1N1 and I expressed those concerns to one of the directors several months ago. They were trying to take that into consideration I was told and would encourage the washing of hands and would try to keep any ill children separated from the healthy ones.
Well off we drove anticipating a week without children and the possibilities of what we would do with our time.....
It was decided that with no kids here it would be a good time to tackle the removal of our bathtub from the second bathroom. It had developed some major problems years ago and when we got the upstairs bathroom done we just kind of put this project on the back burner not quite knowing how to fix it or when to do it. As we drove home from camp we formulated a plan and stopped off at Menard's to look at materials and get ideas.
When we finally got home Monday night we found out that my mom had tripped and fallen the previous day (less than an hour after I had talked with her on the phone!) and had fractured her left ankle bone! She's now in a walking cast and is able to get around a little using a walker.
Tuesday morning we started in on the tub. It's cast iron so it resisted removal pretty good. The sledge hammer was very persuasive, though! After removing that and the flooring we discovered daylight peeking through the wall. That didn't seem right, and when it's only in the 20's out it lets in some pretty cold air too! Ken made good use of his time and after another run to the store was able to get that fixed and then the base started for the shower. We decided not to put a tub in and to just do a shower instead.
It's a little hard to see in the picture, but the limestone foundation is showing at the bottom of the wall and there is a 4 foot deep hole now where the tub used to be! The insulation stuffed in the wall was put there temporarily to close off the holes til Ken got it repaired.
Wednesday I spent the day at my mom and dad's helping with some things over there and taking some food. The problem with a broken foot and living in a two story house means that probably the bedrooms are on the second floor and that is the case at their house! My poor mom now has to try to sleep on the couch or in a recliner. She's tried both couches and the recliner and isn't too happy with any of those arrangements! This is going to be quite a challenge for her.
Ken and I spent the evening with good friends that night playing cards, having dinner and watching some tv and returned quite late to hear this on our answering machine: "Uh this is Ethan.......Well, I'm in the infirmary..............................in isolation...........................well.........ok. See you later." I about had a cow hearing that kind of message and knowing it was too late at night to find out what was wrong!!!! Thankfully Josh came home just minutes after that and he said Ethan had called him and that he had possibly gotten food poisoning!
First thing in the morning I called Ethan and apparently a stomach virus had been spreading through camp which actually started the first day. Ethan was feeling better Thursday, but they were keeping the kids in recovery for 24 hours after the last time they threw up to make sure they were ok. He was fine by Friday.
The problem was that by Thursday night more than 1/2 the camp had come down with this virus and the decision was made Friday morning to close the camp, get as many kids out of there as they could that hadn't gotten sick yet and relieve some of the stress of the health care workers who had been working round the clock to take care of 70 plus kids and adults that were vomiting all over the place!
Ethan called me at 9am Friday to come get Alex and Mariah and some of the other kids from this area so another mom and I took off with two vans to shuttle out as many kids as we could. It was a little hard tracking down all the ones I was taking as the kids had been moved a couple times from dorm to dorm. They kept having to move the well kids out of dorms and turn them into recovery rooms.
I finally got Alex, Mariah, and two other kids and we headed off. Each child was given a large garbage bag for the trip home "just in case" because the urge to "urp" apparently tended to come on suddenly! Mariah was beginning to show signs of getting it so I put her in the front seat so I could get her out the van door suddenly if necessary and off we went. She managed to fall asleep pretty quick and it was a very quiet ride........until.........a voice from the back of the van said "I don't feel so good" and then seconds later......"urp!!!" Thank goodness for the garbage bag! This boy was not even feeling sick an hour earlier! I had brought a roll of paper towels "just in case" so we kept on moving. Thankfully he was the first one I dropped off and the rest of the ride was uneventful.
Mariah went straight to bed and I began doing laundry! Nothing from their trip will be left unwashed! The sleeping bags are going to the laundry mat Sunday after Ethan gets home and I have his also.
This morning Mariah looks pretty good and never did get sick. She might have just been tired, and perhaps all the kids getting sick around her made her queasy. Only time will tell if we get it or not. Of the 116 kids at the camp only 30 had not gotten it and since I had one get it on the way home it takes that number down to 29!
Since the virus seemed to spread so easily and quickly I made the decision to skip church today and keep us in quarantine until Monday to try and keep from passing this around any further.
Hope you all had a better ending to 2009 and that 2010 will get off to a good start for everyone!
