Happy Laetare Sunday!

It's Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent - meaning we are a little more than halfway to Easter!  This is one of the days that the priest wears rose-colored vestments - there are only two days per year on the liturgical calendar when rose is the color.  Lucy and Cecilia have been counting the days using the Lent calendar on the wall in the background of the photo above, and today Lucy wanted to change our little wooden priest's vestments to rose.  So we had a little celebration by making "Laetare Sundaes" with pink (strawberry) ice cream!  And I do mean a very little celebration...

...because these two are the only ones who could participate, unfortunately.  Chris and Caroline both came down with a stomach bug this afternoon.  Oddly, Cecilia and Lucy both had it on Wednesday... just for maybe 6-8 hours each, and they were done throwing up by mid-afternoon (Cecilia by mid-morning, actually)... so how do two more of us get it four days later??  I didn't know anything could incubate that long, but apparently it can.  Blah (literally)!  at least they are all getting it over with before Caroline's birthday this coming weekend (unless I get it in four more days, on Thursday?!?).  She will be having friends over for her birthday this year instead of a family party, and she is extremely excited!

Lucy, who ate her ice cream out from under her toppings and said she needed more ice cream to go with the rest of her whipped cream... ha, nice try!

So, here I sit, praying I don't get it as well.  I was sharing a water bottle with Chris earlier when we went on a little hike this morning.  I have not thrown up since high school - truly!  I mean like 18 years ago.  The last time I threw up was before I met Chris, so I am not about to start now if I can help it!  He must always know me as having a stomach of steel, ha ha!  Because if you knew me when I was 16... I had the weakest stomach ever.  I figure I have earned my puke-free streak because of how much I puked as a kid, ha ha.  I used to get sick to my stomach when I slept away from home... starting with sleepovers when I was maybe a 2nd or 3rd grader.  Then in high school, I'd get sick to my stomach in social situations, especially things like going out with my boyfriend.  I spent the entire prom my junior year in the bathroom, ha!  I would go sleep over at my friends' house and feel sick, then go to Six Flags the next day with my thermos of lentil soup which for some reason was my recovery meal the next day.  My mom and I retroactively diagnosed me with social anxiety disorder, in a half-joking way, because I didn't feel anxious in any other way except by my digestive tract's response... Zoloft came out a few years later, and we'd see those commercials with the depressed egg that bounced around and sat off to the side looking sad while the other eggs were partying (anyone else remember those??), and my mom would say, "You needed Zoloft, Erin!"  Ha, funny, Mom!  Maybe it would have helped, who knows?  But I randomly outgrew it somehow, at the end of high school.  By then I didn't feel sick at all with sleepovers at friends' houses, just sometimes in dating situations.  I guess maybe college cured me of it completely, where I had to sleep in a different place all of a sudden, with tons of my peers in the same building... I remember feeling a twinge of queasiness once in college, and never again.  I was done, cured, and so I'll be darned if I am going to break my streak now, you hear that, stomach virus??  I have been sick to my stomach enough to last a lifetime just in those few years!  I was even anemic from throwing up back then.  Way too much information about my problems of my past, yes?  But see, this is why I am trying to talk myself out of getting this bug too.  Can you convince yourself not to get a stomach bug?  Because I feel it in my system - either that, or I am paranoid because of everyone else having it - and it is not making me throw up yet, just feeling kinda blah in the digestive system.  Surely I can talk myself out of letting it make me sick, right???

Okay, so I better close and get some sleep soon, just in case it is coming to get me too.  I am so hoping we didn't pass it on to Father Luke, the priest we took out for dinner last night - I would hate that if we did!  He did a mission at our church this past week and was driving home to Missouri today, his sixth time doing a mission at our parish!  We love him; he is so friendly and engaging and gives solid, encouraging talks at his missions.  The mission week is always a great thing to have during Lent!  So say a prayer for me, and for Father Luke who is 75 years old, that we are spared!!

So I'll close with this bird, a new one to us!  We think it is a pine siskin, which is one we have never noticed in our yard before this past week.  There are a few hanging around our feeders - this one must be a female, because she doesn't have any noticeable yellow on her, and then yesterday the girls took a walk with Chris around the block and found a dead one on the street that had the yellow identifying marks... otherwise, it looked like this one.  So we are thinking we have IDed it correctly.  Any bird nerds out there who can verify it for us?  We also saw Northern Flickers for the first time a few weeks ago in our yard!

Off to bed I go now... not going to be getting myself a Laetare Sundae tonight, as much as I'd like to... just in case!

[Updated to add: My streak has officially been broken, boo!  All the words in the world couldn't talk my body out of it, unfortunately.]