The crud. . .

Apparently I am coming down with the crud. Yuck!! I've been not feeling all that great for a little over a week (no appetite, pain in my shoulder and hip joints) so I figured I had something but wasn't sure what (Dan kept asking me if I thought I was pregnant--no, I'm not). Then on Tuesday my left ear started ringing and hasn't stopped since. So I decided to go to the doctor on Friday. He says that my left eustachian tube is blocked which is causing this ringing in the ear sensation. As I was describing my symptoms related to my ear I mentioned that when people talk to me it is like two people talking at once to which he gave me a funny look. We both laughed about that and I said that it wasn't like I was hearing voices but rather I hear 2 tones at once. He is really a good family doctor and we just absolutely love him and have a good relationship so his look to me was only in fun. He said that based on all my symtpoms, I am most likely coming down with the crud that is going around. This is the crud that hits you over the head like a sledgehammer and lasts 2-3 weeks. No way do I want that. So he put me on a 5-day steroid course and told me to stay home from work this weekend. Had I gone to work, there is not doubt that I would have come down with it full force and my critically ill patients definitely don't need it either. So now we are all taking our vitamins and drinking our Xango juice in an effort to keep this at bay. He also told me to plug my nose and blow several times a day to try to open my eustachian tube which interestly enough, is not possible to do while lying on your back in bed.

In other news, Dan survived another week living in a motel away from home. He's glad to finally sleep in his own bed again and today he doesn't have to wear a suit (although he still has to go to work and put a full day in). At least they have finally started having catered lunches on Saturdays. For some reason they never start that until February even though over half of the office works on Saturdays already at the beginning of January.

Last week I went to The Good Food Store and stocked up on a bunch of things. We are really trying to eat healthier and the kids are enjoying it so far. I stocked up on steel-cut oats, flax seed, red lentils, green lentils, brown rice, quinoa and other things. We've been having steel-cut oats for breakfast almost every day. The kids are loving it!! They don't want oatmeal any other way anymore.

We did manage to get our walk in the woods done this week. It was beautiful and the only other footprints were deerprints. I pulled Natalie in the sled for awhile because I knew there was no way that she'd be able to walk the whole way and I didn't really want to carry her, especially since I had the camera around my neck. Here is a pic of them sitting on one of the downed trees. The other is of them playing house under a bunch of branches. They were breaking sticks to make a fire so they could cook their meals and they each had their own sleeping area under a section of branches.




On Friday we went to Toyota to get the oil changed. Here are the girls pretending that they are moms out for coffee (they are drinking hot chocolate). It was quite cute.