Here are some cute pics of the kids from Halloween night.  You might notice there is only one with Samuel in it – that’s because, as soon as the picture was taken, he asked if we could take off the costume so he could go lie down on the couch and watch TV.  His temp that night spiked at 104.5 so it was no wonder he didn’t want to participate in the fun, but more on that below.  Here’s the boys in costume:

Halloween

Casper, The Friendly Ghost

Have you ever seen the movie, Space Balls?

Okay, it's really Matthew under that helmet!

He fought the mask and the mask lost!

So here’s how the evening went.  First we ate dinner, then put on costumes, then took pictures, then removed Samuel’s costume so he could rest, then Brad took Peter and Matthew to about 4 houses right by ours while I answered the door.  After that many houses, Matthew, who was also running a temperature, wanted to come home.  Meanwhile, Samuel would NOT remain on the couch.  Too much excitement with the doorbell ringing every few minutes.  I wondered what the moms must have thought when my snot-nosed kid without a costume on answered the door.  I still maintain that that sight was much scarier than any of the costumes the kids were wearing (at least for the parents).

So after bringing Matthew home, Brad took Peter out to Trick or Treat.  After about half an hour, I was really starting to wonder where they were and I got a text from Brad asking if we still had kids coming by.  I wrote back, asking where he was and they had wandered into the adjacent neighborhood!  Apparently Peter was enjoying hearing how cute his costume was and all the extra candy he received as a result.

About the ghost costume…lest you think I’m just cheap, when I polled the boys a month ago about what they wanted to be for Halloween, Peter already had his costume planned out – minus the mask which was given to us by Jana at the last minute.  (By the way, I offered to cut a bunch of holes in the sheet so he could look like Charlie Brown but I guess he hasn’t seen that episode because he didn’t go for it.)  As for Matthew – yes, that is his costume from last year.  Again, it wasn’t my idea!  He already knew exactly what he wanted to be, so hey, who am I to argue???  And Samuel – that poor costume has been worn so many times, it is ripped in several key places, like under the arms and right in front.  But for his school parade, they had to dress up as a civic hero or Bible character, and since this was all we had that fit the bill, he went as a firefighter.  Then on Halloween, he forgot the Superman pajamas (see previous post) and decided to wear his fireman costume.  For about 5 minutes anyway – long enough for a picture and that’s all that matters, right?

So about the sickness.  It started with Samuel on Thursday of last week.  He was running a low-grade fever and said he had a headache, but that was it.  Then Friday morning, Matthew threw up and started running a low temp and complaining of a headache.  I figured it was the flu or a virus but it didn’t really matter which since I had heard the Swine Flu was a pretty mild flu compared to the other versions.

Over the weekend, Samuel’s temperature kept spiking and Matthew’s would go up, but not above about 102.  They both complained of body aches and headaches, but nobody threw up again.  With Motrin, they were pretty comfortable.  Then came Sunday night.

Sunday night, Samuel woke up around 11pm and had a pretty high temp.  I gave him Motrin and something to drink and put him back to bed.  He was up again about half an hour later saying he couldn’t sleep.  He wasn’t kidding.  I could not get him to stay in his bed so I finally put him in our bed until he got sleepy, then took him back to his.  He was awake again at 6am.  I decided it was time to rule out an ear infection.

Since Matthew still had a fever on Monday, I made the appointment for both.  They did a swab for strep and flu on both kids and both strep were negative but only Matthew’s was positive for flu.  I still can’t figure how Samuel’s isn’t flu – he has exactly the same symptoms as Matthew!  So I’m assuming the test was wrong.  Anyway, turns out if I had taken them in on Saturday, they would have given them Tamiflu (I thought they weren’t giving any of that out anymore).  Oh well, live and learn.

So today is Tuesday and we were up the better part of the night with Samuel.  His temp comes down with the Motrin/Tylenol, but he complains of stomach aches, back aches, bottom aches, even hands and feet aches and just can’t sleep.  He spent the whole night in our bed so I slept very little.  But the good news is that with the flu, the fever is only supposed to last 5-7 days and we are now on day 5 for Samuel.

So that’s an update on us – how are you?  I love to read comments when they are posted so please feel free!  It will give me something to do in between wiping noses, taking temperatures and administering medicine!