We went to Texas this weekend to visit Victoria and Patrick. Unfortunately, it was a miserable trip. We are still recovering from the disaster…

All of us were looking forward to the trip, very excited. Our plan was to stop in Jackson on Friday and pick up Uncle Matt as he was riding with us to visit his friend in Dallas. We would leave Jackson at Ethan’s bedtime so that he would sleep for the trip. We ate dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Head’s house and everyone seemed to be feeling fine. Ethan had a blowout diaper, but he didn’t seem like he felt bad. I got him ready for bed and nursed him, then he had explosive vomit all over the place. All over me and himself and the bed.

After taking a bath and changing clothes, we decided that we should continue on to Texas as planned. Ethan has had the stomach bug a few times since starting daycare and it has never lasted more than one puking episode. And he has never passed it on to an adult. So we thought we were safe to continue our vacation because we knew he’d be feeling fine in the morning.

Morning rolls around and everyone is feeling just fine, aside from being tired and sleepy from driving all night. We went to lunch at the Angry Dog in Deep Ellum, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Ethan even sat in his high chair without argument and ate a ton of food for lunch.

After lunch we went to the King Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art, and unfortunately, it sucked. It was a very poor exhibit. There weren’t a lot of artifacts and they didn’t do a good job of explaining the significance of the various pieces on display. The exhibit wasn’t just about Tutankhamen – it was also about Akhenaten, the pharaoh prior to Tut. This was a really fascinating time in Egyptian history as Akhenaten attempted to completely change the country’s religious views to a monotheism. This had a huge impact on the culture in many ways, and is very noticeable in the art from the time. I’m getting off the main topic here… my point is that the small amount that I remember from my Archaeology of Egypt class was vastly more information than was presented during the exhibit. The average visitor to the exhibit probably learned very little about the cultural significance of the items in the exhibit. Oh well.

Back to the story. We were disappointed in the exhibit and still tired from the drive, so we decided to head back to Victoria’s to take it easy for the rest of the day. We played Rock Band for a while and then went to the AWESOME Central Market grocery store.

Right after we got back from the store, Aaron started to feel really bad. Then he got really sick and slept in the bathroom. Ethan was hysterical that dada was not in the bed and he kept me up for most of the night. Victoria and I made a pallet on the floor in the living room and lay down with him to try to keep him quiet and happy so we could all sleep. Somewhere around 3am, I started to feel really bad, and I started puking too.

The next day was horrible. I think all I did was lay on the floor all day long and moan. Terrible body aches and nausea. Then we get a call from Grandma and Grandpa Head that they were really sick and Matt was really sick too. His friend took him to the doctor, then brought him over to Victoria’s apartment to meet back up with us. We all just laid around and cried all day.

Sunday night, Victoria started puking. And she puked all night and into Monday morning. She was still in the bed Monday night when we decided to leave to beat the terrible storm that was headed our way. Victoria ended up making a trip to the ER on Wednesday because she started puking again and was really dehydrated.

We all agreed that it was probably the worst stomach bug any of us had ever had. We are still feeling crappy and not completely back to normal. I haven’t eaten a full meal since Saturday’s lunch. BLAH.