The Hellwig Family: What a Week!

What do you get when you combine a holiday weekend, a visit from family, and no sleep? A sick Brian!

I just knew the second Brian started running a fever Saturday night before Easter that it was going to be a rough week. For some reason, he ALWAYS gets sick at the most inconvenient times. Every time we travel he gets sick. Holidays, he’s likely to be sick. Family visiting, sick. They don’t get to see our happy, agreeable Brian. All they see is a tired, sick child who is highly emotional and falling apart. (Sigh)

Other than that, we had a BLAST with Erika, Eli, and Eva visiting for Spring Break. They arrived Friday before Easter and we spent Saturday decorating cookies and dying Easter eggs.

The Easter Bunny came early to our house - Sunday mornings are too hectic!

Brian being creative with Easter eggs

Sunday we all got dressed up in our new Easter clothes and went to church. Then that evening we had an Easter egg hunt and a lesson about Easter. I love having kids because you get to teach them about the gospel and Jesus Christ. According to Eli, Jesus died on the crosswalk. This is Easter according to Brian:

Why do we celebrate Easter? The Easter Bunny’s coming!
What’s the other reason why we celebrate Easter? Jesus is alive! He isn’t dead anymore!

It’s kind of funny that just around this time Brian has started to kind of understand dead and alive. Mostly because he’ll see a dead bug and know since it’s not moving, it’s dead. Or the worms he saw after the rain are dead because they dried out in the sun. But then, it’s kind of hard to explain where Jesus is since he’s not dead, he’s alive. Brian kept saying, “I want to go see Jesus.” It was too cute!

Here we all are in our new Easter outfits:

Here are all the kids with their "loot"

Monday we had a girl’s day out (plus Micah) shopping and bought out Children’s Place at the outlet mall. It was so nice shopping with no kids! It was always easy to shop with Brian, but with Ellie it’s another story. So, we were very grateful to our babysitters that day.

Tuesday was craft day. Denae beaded and Erika and I made cute boards to hang all our bows and clippies on. It was a really cute idea! Also, by this day I knew I needed to get Brian to the doctor, who was kind enough to meet us that evening, diagnose the suspected ear infection, and prescribe the antibiotics.

Eva and Ellie in their cute pink dresses (thanks Erika!)

Wednesday we had a Build-a-Bear party. Thanks Mom! It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it, especially the older ones. We’re excited to go back and buy more accessories and outfits for birthdays, etc.

Giving their bears a "bath"

Ellie and Pinky

Having fun at the play-place (before the meltdowns)

Enjoying a campfire at Grandma and Grandpa's (the kids spent the entire week gathering wood)

Thursday we had everyone for dinner over at our house and Eli spent the night (this is where the no sleep comes in J). Brian was sooooo excited for him to stay. Eli slept in Brian’s room and they did pretty good except for a potty break at 10 pm and waking up before 7 am when Troy left for work.

Brian and Eli after a fun sleepover

Friday. By this point Brian was falling apart due to the infection, the medicine, and lack of sleep. We wanted to go see Horton Hears a Who and I really wanted Brian to be able to go. So, before the movie I tried to get him to take a nap, but to no avail. We made it to the movie, but halfway through I was puked on trying to get him into the bathroom. This was my first public puking experience and I felt so bad for the little girl who had to go in the men’s room (with her dad standing guard outside) since there was puke in the doorway to the lady’s room. Needless to say, I didn’t see Horton save the Who’s from near total destruction (although I got a nice recap once we were showered and back with the family). The funniest thing was, after all this, Brian was in one of his best moods all week and we were able to have a nice time eating out with the family that evening.