This week has been a bit rough for our family… mostly with illness, but there have been other added “surprises” too. One of the things T LOVES about our new house is his “man-cave.” That’s the area just behind the garage (if you pull into the garage, there are stairs up to the house, as the garage is under the master bedroom. Behind the stairs is a big area… he’s got a newly acquired set of woodworking tools on one side of the room, and area to set up 5 PS2s, three home theater seats, a projector for movies and the biggest gaming screen possible. It’s guy’s night heaven.

After last Friday’s big gaming night, T’s been sick and at home all week. Well, on and off all week… he has tried a couple of times to go into the office… and those days have kicked his tail each time. He finally went to the dr. yesterday because he could feel the junk settling in his lungs… yes, secondary infection from flu… the dr. said this is what kills people when they get the flu… oh, joy. Not that he was close, just not something you want to mess around with.

J has been having some stomach/head issues… mostly just pain, no actual signs… hopefully he’ll avoid anything stronger. However, we did keep him home from school. G seems fine… hope he stays that way!

Both girls seem to have some diarrhea… K had some this morning and S waited until she got home from school… I guess it was a HUGE mess upstairs as she tried to make it to the toilet but could not… T had the joy of being there and he cleaned it up… I worked with the laundry to be able to clean the clothes (she had her panties off trying to get there, so it was all over everything else) and he just threw her shoes out. K has not been sleeping that well… I don’t know how many more of these sleeping 2-3 hours and then up for the next two hour nights I can take…

Now, my head hurts… my lungs feel heavy… I really don’t want to get sick… sigh… T slept all morning, and then got up at 11 and I slept from 11:30 to 2:15…

So to top it all off tonight, the boys were ALONE in the man-cave playing games, while T was putting the girls to bed, and letting me rest. He was rocking K, who was finally settling down, when J yells from the man-cave the words I don’t ever want to hear again… “DADDY… A SNAKE!” Oh, yes there was… a baby King Snake had found it’s way into the garage. I later learned (when the boys were all upstairs and trying to find pictures on the internet) that J almost stepped on it… UGH!

They trapped it, identified it, asked to keep it, and turned it loose in the woods behind our house. And now they are all three back to playing games. As for me and the girls… it will be a while before we have a girls night in the man-cave…

The one the boys found was not this big… it was maybe 10 inches long, but they didn’t take any pictures.