Ying and Yang (my negative AND positive sides)

I have a nagging feeling that the proverbial rug may get yanked out from under me again. I posted recently that illness really took the wind out of our sails in October. Well, Fionna's on day 3 of constant fever/tummy ache/chills. I can just see each child (and me, never Lenny for some reason) falling like ailing dominoes. I know, I know, I'm not manifesting good outcomes but it's hard not to be worried that we'll all get sick again. I swear, that's the biggest reality that I feel no one "warned me about" when we got pregnant the third time, the fact that it is damned hard to have three sick kids, often be sick yourself, and maintain some semblance of a normal life.

(BTW, just as I wrote of manifesting illness, a shelf crashed down from the wall, near where I sat. It's a shelf I've been contemplating giving away over the past few days as it holds spice jars I never use and I was thinking of replacing it with an herb rack I hopefully would use. I guess I answered my own internal debate as the jars are smashed and the shelf broken.)

Okay, I've given into my latent tendency toward being negative. Now, for the positive, the past week or so has been so very nice that I've got lots of *good* things to blog about. Last Sunday afternoon, the "girls" (Ainslie, Fionna and I) headed out to watch our local university women's basketball team play a long-time rival. And the "boys" (Grady and Lenny) went their own way for some special time watching "The Bee Movie." (If you're wondering why we divided our forces, we went to a university volleyball game recently, and Grady was very bored, so we thought this might be more fun for everyone.) The basketball game was a good one (we won), and Fionna cheered her pants off. I hear Grady liked the movie a lot too although he turned strangely laconic when I tried to press for details (much like Fionna does when asked about school -- why do kids do that?). After the game, Fionna, Ainslie and I hung out in the van on campus and waited for Lenny and Grady to join us. It happily coincided that the Univ. was doing their annual Luminaria display and we got to walk around and experience that, complete with cookies and hot cider (free!) and a horse-drawn wagon ride. The line was long for it but Ainslie was enthralled at what she apparently thinks were large dogs (she panted everytime she looked at the teams of horses).

In the weekdays since then, we've had a lot of Christmas spirit around here. The kids have decorated the walls and shelves (with some existing decorations, plus some new that they've made). Lenny and the kids put up the outside lights and decorations, a two-night project (in fading daylight, when Lenny got home from work). And yesterday, we got our tree and decorated that. To be honest, I'm normally a bit of a grinch but the kids are making the holidays feel very nice this year. :)