Birthday Booty-Shaking and Flu Pandemics

I wanted to apologize for my recent absence here, which has been due to several factors.

The first distraction from my normal blogginess was the big surprise party we've been planning for my Mom's 60th birthday, which took place this past Saturday. We had a turnout of almost 50 people, which is officially the biggest party we've ever had at our house. It went really well, but took a lot of planning and setting up by all of us: Dad, Laura, John and Mark all brought their "A" game in a big way. I'm pretty sure we managed to surprise Mom, at least mostly. She knew my grandparents were coming, and I think she may have figured out that we had invited a few more people than we had admitted to, like her brother & his family. But she was not expecting the deluge of well-wishers that we had lined up for her, and I know she was very pleasantly surprised to see everyone.

After all that hard work and the loads of fun we had at the party, we planned nothing for Sunday except relaxing & catching up on our TiVo'd programs. But alas, it seems the party gods demanded a sacrifice for blessing our party with so much good food & drink and great company. I awoke Sunday morning with what I believed to be a nasty cold, but have since discovered is actually an even nastier flu, complete with fever, chills and a bit of vomiting. And as of yesterday, the pandemic has spread to both my parents, as well. Somehow (miraculously) Mark has managed to avoid the plague that has been set upon us, at least so far. And believe me, I'm knocking on wood as I type this, 'cause the last thing we need is our only wage-earner (and my personal choice for Favorite Housemate) brought low for days by this miserable flu bug.

So I am currently in Day 4 of my illness, and it has yet to get any better. Some symptoms have come and gone, only to be replaced by others. But I'm hanging in there, and I'm sure I'll be back to my blogging soon. We're all pretty certain to miss Thanksgiving, though, which bites. I'll probably ship Mark off to his sister's house, so at least he can have a semi-normal holiday. He deserves much more than that, with all the extra hours he's been putting in lately. And who knows - maybe we'll have a big Thanksgiving-y meal here at home in a week or two, when everyone's had a chance to recover.

I have lots of photos and some video from the birthday party, which I plan to share here when I'm feeling a bit better. My personal favorite is the show all the kids put on for us - what a hoot! But it's a really long clip that will need some editing to upload, and I'm just not up for that yet. So, until I'm back in the blogging saddle, I leave you with this - a short video clip from Mom's party, primarily featuring my cousin's daughter Rebekah and her mad dancing skills:


Rebekah Shakes Her Booty from Barbara Raymond on Vimeo.