Sea World and Sickness

When our family first moved to San Antonio, Homeschool Day at Sea World was an event we could attend at the start time, waltz through the gates and leisurely enjoy our day with a small-ish crowd and lots of interaction with the animals and instructors. This year, the line was into the parking lot, and (according to the ticket counter) there were 3,500 people there as of 9:15am, compared to the 600 people that attended the areawide public schools day the day before! It was so encouraging and refreshing to see the volume of families that homeschool here in Texas, and for our kiddos to see they aren't the anomaly when it comes to education!!  Here are some pics from that day, before the stomach bug descended...

Yes, we pulled Ella from school on account of her having what we thought was allergies, but what proved later to be a respiratory virus. It just happened to coincide with the fact that the day was Sea World day; Natalie was at her school, where she was in the process of contracting a tummy bug from a classmate! Mom believes Ella's presence this day was a case of Divine providence, as her presence there proved to be invaluable to the family at the time, just after the bottom picture was taken, when David began to projectile vomit every half hour courtesy of an overeager and hyper-contagious tummy bug. His illness started while waiting in line for the final show, and ended Saturday morning.

Once we were home, Grace became ill, healing Saturday afternoon. Friday night, Natalie was super ill, emerging Sunday morning from her camp right in front of the toilet (yes, the virus was THAT bad) and this we hope will mean by Sunday afternoon (meaning, today) she will have strength enough to perform to her satisfaction for her CHAIR TEST (!!!!!) at YOSA. Unfortunately, the chair tests cannot be auditioned at a later date, even with illness as the complaint, so it is today or last chair, which is just not an option for Natalie!  Prayers appreciated (: .

On a completely random note, in light of the events of the past week regarding virus and our family, I think the same quirk in Claire's system that prevents her from eating dairy or gluten actually PROTECTS her from contracting this particular stomach bug!! She drank DIRECTLY AFTER DAVID from the SAME cup on the day he was ill, and she has been perfectly HEALTHY this entire time! Weird, huh? We'll take it!

So, that's a Mom-view of the week past; Dad's would include work, school, work, school, funeral, wedding, work, school....Ella has a Girl Scout volunteer event this afternoon, and church time this evening...fingers crossed for Natalie's chair test at the same time, and the strength of healed-but-still-tender-tummies on their first 'car day' post illness while we cart the older children around!

Much Love Always,

The Meissler 7