Pretend church

Our family has been going through the WORST cold I think we've ever had. Oh, my sweet Ellis, who got sick the day after we got home from our family reunion. Her Grandpa got something that sounded exactly the same. We thought it was strep throat, because her throat was so sore and she had a fever. But she also had a cough like nobody's business. And, the strep test came back negative, so guess it wasn't. But it was as bad as strep, anyway.

Two long weeks of Ellis being sick - a week of fever and headache and cough, then an ear infection! And literally the day she starts to feel better, Lige and Lillian get a sore throat...

Friday, Sam got it.

Yesterday, we discussed who would go to church and who would stay home. Lige volunteered to babysit, since he was still feeling too lousy to go to church, but well enough to take care of everyone else. And we decided to leave Jane home. Because, even if she wasn't sick yet, she was certainly contagious, and shouldn't go to Nursery. So today, I went to church with just Martha and Ellis. It was quite lonely feeling!

It turns out that Martha still doesn't like sitting on the pew, even without anyone else to bug her :) Otherwise, church was awfully relaxing. We got home to everyone watching a church movie, and Jane taking a nap. I went down and said hi, and asked how church had been. Our family has a long-held tradition when people are sick of Pretend Church. This was just the first time they've had Pretend Church without any parents involved :)

Lige got pretty into it. He printed a program. I found it on the ground and slipped it into my pocket to keep forever, because it's adorable :) We always invite someone cool to be the speaker at our pretend church, and Lige went above and beyond this time by inviting someone who...well...is coming all the way from the other side of the veil to speak to our family :) It was awfully nice of President Monson to come visit us!

Something new this time was inviting the entire Tabernacle Choir to church. That was nice of them to come. And just to clarify - they didn't actually do the sacrament, that line is just in there because it's what's always in the program. The part that blows my mind is how he got his program formatted so nicely without taking forever. Because let's face it - it would take me an hour to figure out how to get the justification so nice!

Lige just told me - they invited President Monson to speak because Sam didn't want to hear a talk he'd already heard, so they went to the general conference from the time before he was born, and picked one from someone he hardly remembers, just so he wouldn't complain that it was boring :)

So, they had pretend Sacrament Meeting, then they had pretend Primary. Jane told me all about it when she woke up - she was a big kid and got to go to PRIMARY today! For Primary, she got to take a nap! It was so exciting. I think she mentioned it about 10 times.

And, I get the Motherly Intuition Award for the day - when Jane woke up from her nap, she had a fever. Look who was so smart to leave her home, even though she wasn't sick yet!

So, sign us up for another week of quarantine. Hopefully this one is the last one...