The Best Laid Plans

When I'd originally scheduled our trip to Utah I had planned to leave on Friday or Saturday to start driving back home. Then one day I was reading in the Ensign and noticed that the dedication of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple was scheduled for Sunday the 23rd, and was going to be broadcast to stake centers throughout Utah.

I figured we couldn't pass up a chance to attend a temple dedication, and so we made arrangements to get tickets, to spend the night Saturday in Smithfield, (at my dad's house) and to attend the dedication with my dad & Ramona.

It didn't work out quite that way.

When we left Russ's parents house on Saturday I told the kids that they had to have a nap on the way to Logan. I should have been suspicious of how completely zonked they were.



We spent Saturday afternoon at Sean & Katie's house putting on the 2nd coat of paint. (Yes, more ibuprofen for me!)

Here is what her walls originally looked like,

And here are Sean & I with our paint tools in front of the painted wall. It looks terrific!

Late in the afternoon as we were painting it became obvious that Jenna was running a fever. By Saturday evening it was 105. This meant that Plan #1 was changed--it was no longer ok to go and spend the night at my dad's house. Ramona's 90 year old father has recently moved in with them, and the last thing I wanted to do was to take the plague to Grandpa Luker and kill him off. I might have been ok since I had now been on antibiotics for more than a day, but if the little kids were now coming down with the plague we definitely couldn't go.

Fortunately for us our wonderful friend Katie said that it was ok for us to stay with them, since we'd already been around them with our germs.

On Sunday morning I changed Plan #2 and sent off Jason, Rachel, and Jared to go to the dedication with my dad. I was so sad not to be able to go!

Happily I was able to go to the afternoon dedication session with my dad and Ramona while Jason watched sick Jenna.

By Sunday evening it was obvious that now Jared was running a fever. And I was starting to panic. Plan #3 was that we were supposed to start driving back to North Carolina first thing Monday morning, and I wasn't sure I could do that A)with sick little kids, or B)if my co-driver Jason got the plague. Katie's neighbor, a very nice physician's assistant, came over and looked at the kids and wrote prescriptions for them. In a move very unlike my normal self, I asked for a prescription for Rachel and Jason too, and he obliged. (What a nice man!)

Sure enough, Rachel woke up Monday morning with a fever and by the time I was back from my agonizingly long wait at the Walmart pharmacy (apparently insurance companies don't like to fill prescriptions for triplets all at the same time because it confuses their computers even if the children in question already have "individual person codes"!) Jason was obviously sick. So much for my other driver. I finally decided (after crying about it for a while and feeling pretty bad for myself) that we would change Plan #3 and stay for 2 more days to give the kids a chance to let the antibiotics start working.