A Rough Couple of Weeks

Two things I despise: the stomach flu and mice.  In the last few weeks, we have dealt with both of them!  My 8 month old nephew, Landon, came down with the flu first.  Then, I babysat him a few days later when his mom and dad were sick, and then my kids came down with it!  They started getting sick in the middle of the night when we were without power!  You could hear it but you couldn't see it... lovely!  A few days later, Josh came down with it, and a few days later, I finally got it!  It was pretty much awful.  Jacob got sick in his crib 3 different nights, Hannah got sick in her bed 2 different nights, and Josh and I felt HORRIBLE for about 12 hours each (like I was asking Josh to just shoot me, horrible).  I don't know how many loads of laundry I did.  My parents avoided us for a week and a half, but after we finally hung out, they still got it!  I did recently read that you can be contagious for up to 3 weeks!  During this time, my kids did not leave the house for 12 whole days!!!  And during that time, mice decided to nest in our car!  I had seen a mouse in the garage and we had set out traps, etc. with no luck.  Well, they found a great food source in our backseat (pretzels, crackers crumbs, etc.).  They built a little nest under Hannah's carseat and I found other "evidence" in Jacob's seat.  I about lost it!  They also chewed a hole in Jacob's carseat cover-very maddening!  I stripped the carseats, machine washed on HOT (supposed to hand wash on cold!), and sewed up the hole.  Josh thoroughly cleaned the inside of the car, and we filled it with dryer sheets (they supposedly can't stand the smell).  So far, so good.  We put traps and things all around our garage.  To our knowledge, we've had no luck.  But, there has been no further evidence either...  Honestly, I think we caught the problem early and maybe it's behind us?  And I think this flu is behind us as well!  I should just be thankful because the flu went around town the week before we left for Disney and the week before Christmas, and we avoided it both times, so at least we didn't have anything major this week!  Also, the mouse incident motivated us to clean out our garage a little bit (it really wasn't bad...).  But we drug an old treadmill out to the trash.  Our newspaper lady left a note that she took it for scrap to help pay for her new tires that she needed.  So, maybe it all happened for a reason?  I'll be glad if it's awhile before we deal with either of those things again!