Jonny & Megan: Post-Christmas Adventures

We got to keep everyone around after Christmas for a few days. Elizabeth was the first to head back (on the 27th) but everyone else stuck around for a bit longer!

Claudia and I often joke about swapping kids. Her mom wants a blue-eyed grandbaby and my mom has always loved the dark eyes and hair of Latinos. So if we swap, everyone is happy! Claudia did an excellent job charming Elijah. He was ready to go back to Arizona and be her gringo. Unfortunately none of her kids were willing to stay with me, so his dreams of Arizona life were shattered.

Tia Claudia and her gringo baby

I feel like every time people come to visit we take them to the same places. We already did Annie's Playground and it was too muddy for Kilgore Falls, so off to the Havre de Grace boardwalk we went!

A pack of wild Blood cousins on the boardwalk

A different pack of wild Blood cousins.

Also one of the few pictures I have of Elizabeth's girls!

We LOVED getting to know them better and my girls miss them already.

I guess I have to claim all of these ones.

Although if anyone is interested in an always-glaring preteen, I have one to offer!

We like to tell people how Jacob eats cucumbers like they're bananas.

And now I have photographic evidence.

Catherine and Brianna spent hours using Aaron's new dry erase markers from Santa.

This was Pretty Town and Ugly Town.

And this was a comic strip about boyfriends/girlfriends.

Either Catherine has a romantic side she's been hiding really well,

or Brianna had a LARGE influence over the subject matter.

We 100% knew that getting all of the Blood family together from literally across the entire country (from Daniel's family in New York to James in Alaska) would mean sharing illnesses. Our goal was just to not bring Covid to the party. But, of course, by this point omicron was already burning through the country. So we got to play a fun game: is it just a nasty cold, or the flu, or Covid? Some kids have gastrointestinal issues with Covid. Was Aaron's midnight puke fest Covid? Or Hazel's sniffles? Or Daniel's cold?

Right around Christmas most of us were just feeling kind of blah. Tired, stuffy noses, chills. But no one had lost any taste or smell, so we figured we were fine. Until we read that those symptoms are less common with omicron. It was time for a Covid test.

Jon 'borrowed' a couple of home rapid tests from his friend Franz. After some deliberation, it was decided that Jon and Kade would be the lucky nostril-swabbing winners. Kade's was negative. Jon's was positive. IMMEDIATELY and VIBRANTLY positive. But we'd all been in the same house, eating the same food, and with all the same symptoms. So...did we have Covid or not?

Since my case seemed to have started later and still be ongoing, I decided to go get tested. James came with me. I was excited because there was no line and the parking lot was empty. Turns out that was because they closed early due to a huge influx of people needed Covid tests. No problem. I decided to come back the next morning and try again.

I got there just as it opened and look what I found:

People had been there since 6 am (it opened at 8).

It took 90 minutes to get inside.

I arrived at 8 am and was finally seen around 2 pm.

Absolutely nutso.

But negative for Covid and flu, so...win?

Also, this was how I spent our anniversary.

Happy 16th to us...

I still didn't entirely trust my results and I was worried about the girls getting sent home from school with runny noses. So I preemptively took Elise in for a Covid test just to be sure. Hers was also negative, as was her PCR. By this point we just assumed Jon's was a fluke somehow. But then, about two weeks after Christmas, his Covid Toes made an appearance again. So now I'm more inclined to think that we did all get it, especially since I had really weird vertigo for a few weeks after Christmas that has now gone away. In a way it's almost a relief--now we can be done with worrying. Until the next variant, anyway.

But don't worry: Stephen and Jacob were still feeling well enough to keep Seth in line:

Seth loves having all his uncles around.

Jon is still anti-DC thanks to their predatory speed cameras, so we were lame hosts and just let everyone else drive to DC to be tourists. We did let them borrow our van. And two of our kids. We're generous like that. Elise and Catherine got to enjoy the National Zoo with their cousins!