It's bad, stinky and we're almost out of toilet paper.

I'm back home. This Thanksgiving will go down in history as my most memorable Thanksgiving. Ever. We left for New Mexico last Sunday, cramming the car up to it's gills with everything needed for a week away from home. The car drive down there went smoothly. I thought Greta would be more of a handful than she was. She did beautifully considering it was 16 hours each way. Wesley was slightly annoying chiming in with the "I want to go home" or "Are we there yet?". Luckily this didn't start until Albuquerque, only leaving 4.5 hours of this annoying chatter. It was wonderful getting to my in laws house. They are sweet people with a warm and inviting house. We always have a great time enjoying everyone's company. I got to see all my darling nieces, man are they growing up fast! Wesley and Greta had fun hanging out with all the girls. I sincerely wish we all lived closer.

Thanksgiving was delicious. There were 24 people there for dinner. My in laws are very generous people that opened up their house to people that didn't have anywhere else to celebrate Thanksgiving. I met many interesting people that evening and ate way too much food. Any weight I gained from Thanksgiving is gone now along with a few more pounds.

It started Saturday morning, the morning we were to leave for home. We awoke to the sounds of Greta throwing up in her crib. It was 5:30 so we cleaned her up and brought her into our bed. Poor thing threw up four more times before we even got on the road. That was the beginning of the end. Luckily she only threw up one more time while we were in the car. About an hour into our drive I look in the back seat to find Wesley throwing up. He got a full breakfast that morning so you can just imagine how much vomit was coming out of the kid. I didn't even have a bucket or anything so he completely covered himself, the car seat and stuff under his feet in the car. It was seriously awful. We pulled off on the first exit we could find to figure out what to do. Luckily it was southern New Mexico and the weather was in the 60's so we took the poor kid out of his car seat, stripped him down on the side of the road, and cleaned him up. I scooped up vomit that was in his car seat, there had to have been two cups just there alone. We ran out of baby wipes and resorted to using clothing from the suitcase. There are several things that probably won't be ever worn again.

The strange thing about kids when they puke is that you would never have known that they were sick before or after the event. Here was Wesley kicking, singing and all around being a three year old, then the next thing there is chuck everywhere, then he's back to kicking and singing. It's totally bizarre. As a bystander you might have not even know anything happened except for the hysterical woman in the front seat exclaiming "OH MY GOD, WESLEY'S CHUCKING EVERYWHERE.....HOLY COW IT'S EVERYWHERE SEAN......OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH". This of course upset poor Greta and she started screaming at the hysterical woman (me).

So we get back on the road after our thirty minute clean up stop. We find a toy bucket that will suffice as a chuck bucket. Wesley proceeds to throw up every half an hour for five hours. Luckily he's at the age where he knows he's about to throw up and can remember to use the bucket. So we don't have anymore messes to clean up.  Every half an hour we would pull off on the nearest exit. Pull over, pour out the bucket (which contents got smaller and smaller) and pull back on I-40. If you were following us it might look like a game, we were constantly pulling over. After about five times of doing this we decided to just start pouring the chuck into a drink cup, then pouring hand sanitizer over it to mask the smell. It was awesome (please note the sarcasm).

We decided to drive home in one day rather than stop near Amarillo, TX and get a hotel. We thought if we were to stop and then get sick ourselves then we'd be stuck in the hotel for who knows how long. So we traded off sleeping and made it home at 3:50 am Sunday morning. The kids slept well in the car after their ordeal. We had no throwing up after 6:30 pm. I thought all was well. Wesley was keeping stuff down. We stopped and got some Pedialyte.

Then last night Sean and I got it. We were hit hard. All night long we were hugging the toilet. The fun thing about this virus is it affects you on both ends. During the night I got up after dry heaving to find poor Wesley sleeping in the hallway with his pants pulled down and his little potty full of diarrhea. The little guy had gotten to the bathroom but didn't make it back to his bed. He just gave up and was sleeping on the floor.  It was a bad night for everyone. The kids aren't throwing up anymore but the diarrhea is awful. Greta has the worst diaper rash I've ever seen. I just can't keep her dry.

I think I'll just stop here. I could keep writing about how bad these past two days have been but I think I've painted a pretty vivid picture without going any farther. It's bad. It's stinky and we're almost out of toilet paper. Pray for us.