The Prairie Triplets: Weekend Update

Last week was a little rough. At the beginning of the week Gabe had thrown up a few times. Very random and I thought it was just his body dealing with his asthma and the high level of allergens we have right now. Sometimes if he gets too worked up, his lungs get over-tired, and he'll just cough until he throw up.

It wasn't. On Wednesday he threw up his breakfast at 10:15. There was a showing scheduled for 11. Of course. Somehow I got him all cleaned up and all of us out of the house before the realtor showed up. He came back and crashed while Sam and Leona went to school.

Wednesday night I went to bed at 11pm. Pretty normal for me. At 12:30 AM Gabe had a bad dream. He needed snuggling. At 2 AM Leona was awake crying because her finger hurt. I'm not sure how or why exactly. She needed snuggling. At 3 AM the milk man dropped off the milk on the front porch. I know this because the Beagle made a long announcement over it. I'm glad to know the house is protected. I think. After that she needed to go outside. Of course.

At 4AM I woke up to the lovely sounds of someone puking. I rushed into the kid's room and headed directly to Gabe.

He was sound asleep.

Dazed and confused I finally realized the puking was coming from Sam's little home. Wonderful. Puke everywhere. I got him cleaned up. Changed the bedding. Got him a bucket. He needed snuggling.

He seemed fine so I went back to my room to go back to sleep. For the next 3 hours I would rush into his room every 20-30 minutes to help him puke. Thank goodness I had gotten him that bucket. At some point I just tried to dose on his floor. At 7AM I gave up and he came downstairs to hang out on the couch.

We watched movies that morning. We cleaned up puke. And we snuggled. He fell asleep right before I took Gabe and Leona to school. I scooped him up, grabbed the bucket, and dropped them off. Sam and I came home, I grabbed a quick ham sandwich, and then we napped together for the rest of school.

Around 4pm I started to feel a little off. Thinking back I probably felt funny all day but I was so exhausted I didn't even notice. By 5pm I was puking. Great.

Somehow I managed to put the kids to bed. I had to pause a VERY short story to throw up. They were so sweet though. They tried to help me feel better and kept saying how they were taking care of me.

Douglas flew in around 9pm. My fab friend Jen M. was nice enough to pick him up from the airport.

I'm sure he was THRILLED to see me. Nothing like "Hi Honey. Haven't seen you in 10 days. Happy Anniversary Weekend. I'm giving you the best gift ever. The Flu Bug. Excuse me while I go vomit."

I was up all night. I was lucky enough to get, as Leona says, "the yucky poops" too. Considering I only had one half of a ham sandwich to eat that day I'm not even possible how I was able to expel that much from my body.

I was absolutely miserable. I threw up water, advil and anything I tried to settle my stomach. Like the kids I never had fever or chills. I hurt SO bad though. I just ached. I had a HORRIBLE headache. The kind where you have double vision. At 5 AM I took a bath which helped a bit but not for long. And I was SO thirsty.

At 7am I knew I was incredibly dehydrated. Douglas called about getting an iv of fluids at the walk-in clinic but they don't do them there. The ER would have cost me about $1000. I decided to suffer through it.

I finally stopped puking around noon. I slept most of the day. At night I ate a little soup and then went to bed early.

Saturday morning I was doing better. I ate a bowl of oatmeal and had a bunch of water. I still felt very weak but figured I was through the worst of it.

Then I got ready for my race. I don't know that it's recommended to run a half-marathon 24 hours after having the stomach flu but I was certainly going to give it my best effort. I had my favorite cheering squad with me. The boys were so much better by Saturday.

They are great at helping me warm up. Lots of stretching.

You can't get enough stretching!

I'm really not sure what kind of stretching Sam is doing here but he could probably teach some kind of crazy yoga class! He is SO flexible!

My cheering squad headed off to spend the afternoon with my fab friend Jen P. while my biggest fan road the bus to the finish line to wait for my arrival.

I knew Robie Creek was going to be tough this year. That was before I was even sick. I had bruised my left foot a few weeks ago on a downhill run and I didn't run for almost 2 weeks. I was terrified I had broken it but I think the bone was just incredibly bruised. The kaleidoscope of pretty colors was quite entertaining to the small fans.

I knew I'd be taking it easy with my foot during the race and then the flu bug hammered that nail in the coffin. And did I mention it was HOT on Saturday? It was one of the warmest Robie Creek's on record. I was sweaty before we even started.

I ran the first 3 miles and seriously wondered how on earth I was going to do 10 more. I ran the next 2 miles. The first 5 miles took me an hour. Usually they take me about 45 minutes. I walked a bit from miles 5.5 - 6 during a steep section of the course.

Every time I thought I couldn't go on another aid station would appear. I would grab an orange slice, a piece of banana and a couple cups of water. And that would get me through until the next stop.

I felt like I was really listening to my body. I wasn't pushing myself and I was just taking it easy. There were several people throwing up on the side of the road and others chauffeured down on ATV's who couldn't continue the race. I kept thinking of Douglas waiting for me at the finish line. He'd come so far to see me and I kept thinking how rarely I got to spend time with him. My whole goal was to make it to the finish line. I didn't care what my time was. My only goal was to get there. And to not be a complete wreck when I did.

I hit mile 7 at 1:30 minutes. In the previous races that's how long it took me to hit the summit at 8.5 miles. The hardest 1.5 miles of the course. I, along with everyone else at that point, walked those 1.5 miles. A pretty brisk walk, but no running. I hit the summit at 1 hour 56 minutes.

The last 4.5 miles are downhill. They are steep, rocky, muddy and even a bit slush/icy. I did pretty well but at mile 11 the fatigue was really starting to set in. At mile 12 my adrenaline kicked in again and I knew I was going to finish.

My official finish time was 2:44:22. My 2009 time was 2:30ish and my 2008 time was 2:20ish. Even though this was the worst finish I've had it might be the one I'm most proud of. This was really an exhausting race mentally and physically for me. I was so glad Douglas was waiting for me at the end. Here I am at the finish dragging myself to get the timing chip off.

My foot did remarkably well. I'm sure it didn't hurt that I was taking things a little more slowly. Soaking your feet in the Robie Creek after the race is amazing. MUCH better than any ice pack! It's a mountain stream and the snow is melting down from the slopes we had just run through. You can only leave your feet in there for about 30 seconds before they are so numb you can hardly stand on them. It's fantastic!

We found a spot to sit and eat some food. I tried to eat a baked potato but nothing was really tasting great. We waited our turn in the long bus line before we finally headed home. We got back to the house around 5pm. Douglas rescued Jen from the kids and I jumped in the shower.

One of the difficult challenges of Douglas being home every other weekend is trying to fit in all the fun things to do when he is here. Sunday was our anniversary and somehow I found energy to rally for date night. Jana arrived to watch the kids and off we went.

As it happened one of our favorite singer/songwriters, Josh Ritter, was in town for a very small show at the Record Exchange (a local record store) on Saturday night. There were only 300 tickets and I was more than happy to preorder his new album and get two of those tickets. He played a fantastic acoustic set for over an hour with songs from his new album and plenty of old favorites.

It was a GREAT show. The only problem? There were no chairs. Just standing. I spent a lot of time leaning. We could have stayed for autographs but I would have had to be carried out had I stood any longer.

After the show we headed to Asiago's, one of our favorite restaurants in Boise, with our favorite waitress, Sarah (Jana's sister). Douglas had a great meal. I ordered a great meal. I ate a lot of bread and brought my lovely meal home. I also drank a lot of water. I wasn't quite feeling up to a glass of champagne. We were home a little after 10pm and I think I was asleep as I brushed my teeth.

Excuse my awful cell phone picture of Josh Ritter. My camera didn't manage to make it along.

On Sunday I slept in until 9AM. I awoke to the smell of waffles and the laughter of children helping Daddy in the kitchen. I lingered in bed thinking how blessed I have been to be with this man for 12 years. Then I hobbled my way down to the kitchen to tell him exactly that.

We lounged around on Sunday morning. It was so nice just to relax together as a family. Sunday afternoon was Depot Days at the Old Boise Train Depot. Every year they open the building to the public and it's really a fun time.

The boys thought the bus ride to get to the Depot was fabulous.

You can see the Capital building and downtown Boise behind the kids.

One of the wheels of "Big Mike" - a locomotive engine on display.

Their favorite activity was watching the model trains cruising around. I could just see the wheels spinning in their heads. Our little wooden track doesn't have anything on this set-up!