'There's no place like home'

It's practically February and I know Christmas has come and gone, but I still wanted to share a little bit about our holiday home leave.

I, especially was anxious to be home for the holidays. The flight was long and hard on Markus. Nearly four hours before we landed we had awful turbulence for an hour and unfortunately, Markus got sick to his stomach. Soon after, he managed to get sleep until we landed. At first we thought it was merely motion sickness. When we finally arrived in Detroit, Markus's condition didn't progress so a couple days later, we took him in to Children's Hospital of Michigan. Since he had been dehydrated from the frequent vomitting and diarrhea, he had to be given an IV. It broke my heart to see him in pain, though he felt much better and regained energy after the treatment.

You can say that the first week home was a right-off. Sadly, we missed out on my family's Christmas dinner since Rodney and I spent most of Christmas Day at Mt. Clemens General Hospital connected to IV's. As expected, we succumbed to Markus' bug, which had to be the Norovirus. Thanks to Ritchie's connections at his ER, we waited not a minute to be looked after. We remained quarantined in the Frijas' comfy basement...thank goodness for the new plasma TV to help alleviate our misery. One by one, our family members who came in close contact caught what we had and eventually got sick. It was dreadful.

After a week of recooperating and getting over jet-lag, we finally got out for some fresh air. It was nice driving everywhere for a change, rather than taking subways and trains. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do all we anticipated like go to a theatre to watch a movie, eat out at favourite restaurants, play more poker, and do more visiting. Needless to say we were more than happy to be home in the presence of family and friends. There's no place like home!