I do, You do, Who wants Swine Flu?!!

Yes, we are having our own little party here in Idaho. Actually, once we got over the actual being sick part, and it's only been me and Alex so far, this whole self-quarantine, don't go out in public, cancel all your meetings thing is pretty okay. We're a little stir-crazy at times, and I don't want to know how many movies the kids have watched, but it's really nice to be freed from some of your responsibilities and appts. and things without feeling guilty. The last time I left the house was on Thursday to go to the doctor, and that is the only place I have been since last Tuesday. Literally. As I have started feeling better, I have complained to Danny that I want to be sick again because it is so nice for a change to not have to worry about anything except staying alive! As soon as I feel better, I start feeling this pressure to get lots of "things"done and be all productive, but I am fighting it.
Yesterday we made a fire and brownies and resisted eating the rest of them until 11 this morning, which I thought was pretty good. We've played Candy Land with the kids and Danny and I have been playing Scrabble. We found out we're not that good, but at least we're evenly matched!! Every other minute finds one of us banging our fist on the table saying, "If only I had this one letter!!" See, the problem with Scrabble is that even though you can think of nice, big long words, you never have the letters for them. So you have to know lots of weird short words, like "zareba", which is a small enclosure made out of bushes in Northern Africa. I did make a word that was worth 75 points- it was "quotes" with the "q" on a double letter square and the whole word on a triple word play. Definitely the highlight of my week!! And several times we have nearly spelt out swear words in desperation, but have always been able to put something else down. (But not until after we told the other one what we were thinking of using.)
Alex has been watching Oklahoma a lot and really likes "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " and has started singing it around the house in his best Gordon McRae-like voice. I love it, but Danny can't stand listening to the same parts on the tv anymore, so he gave Alex headphones so that he can watch the tv but we can't hear. Now we just have to get Alex to understand not to use the headphones when other people want to watch something.
I've started reading Catching Fire and wish that when I was sicker and just in bed I had felt like reading then!
Other than that, we're just laying around, kind of enjoying being left alone by the world. Having something contagious is the next best thing to moving out in the woods by yourself. We're thinking about catching ebola next!

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

Here is my trip in pictures. Unfortunately, I really don't know why, a lot of my pictures turned out so blurry I had to delete them. And, I forgot to take pictures a lot of the time because we were having too much fun! But, here you go with the few that I did get.

Notice Audrey is giving me the "look." She was very excited to see me, I hear, until I actually got there. But she warmed up after a little while.

Anya crabby pants
I think these next two pictures qualify as "wild and wonderful," while serving the dual purpose of paying Megan back for a couple of pictures she put on of me. Hehehe.. revenge is sweet. :) But those cookies do look really good right now. When Danny saw this picture he asked if Megan was using the cheese sauce as toothpaste. I didn't want to say anything but, well, they are in West Virginia now. They say that toothbrushes were invented in West Virgina, because if it had been anywhere else they would have been called teethbrushes.

Their very pretty and huuge back yard. I must have taken this picture the one day it didn't rain while I was there. The day I left it was 70 degrees. I don't think the weather likes me.

Huuge deck

Audrey wears her pink cowboy boots everywhere and gets lots of compliments on them.

This is Audrey "smiling" for the camera. It looks painful.

This is blurry, but it is Anya putting her dolly in the stroller. Very cute.

Aiden's room- I love it and so does he!

Anya's room. I took pictures of Audrey's room, but my stuff was kind of everywhere, so I won't post those. I'll let Meggie put some on. But if she doesn't soon, I can threaten her with the pictures I have of the room NOT CLEAN!!! (Insert evil laugh.)

The family room as seen from the stairs. The kids had little gold coins on the floor.

I think this is the only picture I got of Aiden that wasn't too blurry to use. He was at school the first two days and I think that he thought we just stayed at home while he was gone, waiting for him, because when he got home on Friday he told me, "Aunt Mel!! You have to come to my magic show tonight because you have been here two days and you haven't done anything fun yet!!"

This is a horrible picture of me, but I am putting it on here to show how tired I was on Sunday. After this we took naps. Look at the bags under my eyes! Yikes!

Just to reassure everyone that Brooks is still the same Brooks. Whew! We were so worried!
Very blurry pictures of some of the party food. It was all soo good! Relish trays and spinach dips and chips and cookies and homemade bread and cornbread and caramel corn and pumpkin cake and chili and hot chocolate and root beer! It makes me want to have a party!

Here are some of the pictures of the cool old houses. Mommy, you would loove them! I wanted to go inside all of them and Megan tried to convince me to go knock on one house and ask them about it and maybe they would invite us inside to look around. But I was too scared. I'll bet when Danny comes next year he'll go and ask for us. I love my husband!

I know Meggie put pictures of this one on her blog, but I just love it!! You need to zoom in so you can see all the cute details. This was the one that she tried to get me to knock on the door of. The next picture is of the back of the house. The picture doesn't capture how really huugge it was. You have to look to the far right and see that behind the trees it keeps going further and the bushes cut off the bottom fourth floor. The camera couldn't get it all in. Just the garage part is like my whole house. Can I have it, Danny?

On our hike, the day I left. Wahhh! See, Anya is upset just thinking about it!

This was the last picture we took together before I left for the plane.

There were so many fun things we did together that we didn't get any pictures of. Like going to a million cute little stores, watching High School Musical 1 & 2, craft stores, furniture stores, lots of stores where we didn't have any money and wanted lots, the big neighborhood garage sale, looking at houses and so on. Isn't it amazing that I could visit Meggie across the country and that we would find all the same things to do?! Best of all was just being there and visiting together and getting to see her family and friends and the wonderful new life they have there! I can't wait to come again next summer with my family and stay for longer. And this time I will have my huge truck that I can stuff full with all of my garge sale finds!! Thanks for letting me come stay Meggie! I did have the time of my life!