The sun will still be shining...: Sick days, and better days

Well by now you've noticed that I didn't post last week. We were battling a gastro outbreak in our home, and Monday was right in the midst of it. I planned to blog later in the week but we were too busy playing catch up. Evelyn started it last Friday during game night (which was still lots of fun, hadn't played Bohnanza in a while so fully enjoyed that!) and then we thought all was OK Saturday (even babysitting the neighbour's kids... I really hope you guys didn't catch it, Caitlin!). Then I was up all night saturday and Josh was fine to get up & play with Evelyn but she fell asleep on the couch in the morning (something that never ever happens) and he was all of a sudden sick too. We spent the entire day pretty much in bed, and the next day in front of the TV. Josh was told to take a few days off to get better so we were able to recover, but weren't feeling like eating until about Thursday. That was when we finally felt like we could catch up (and even worked a bit in the basement -we had been upset about losing our Sunday reno day). By Friday we were all basically 100% (I had a cold going into the sickness, so that continued on, and Evey still has a bit of a runny nose). It seems as if we've just skipped almost an entire week.
Before getting sick (and maybe where the germs came from) Evelyn spent Thurs morning at daycare. Her second time and it went well... after I was gone (hopefully she's just keeping getting more & more used to it!) Mommy got to go to the mall & get her hair done. I found a new coat for $50! Evelyn started swimming again Tuesday (we were feeling well enough to get out of the house and were starting to get a bit of cabin fever) It's amazing how big a difference a couple months make! She was more willing to attempt the activities and move around and it helps that her friend Clara is in the class as well! Yesterday, she wanted to practise her bubbles in the bath and even wanted to put her eyes in (unprompted). I got to go out for sushi with some lovely ladies on Friday night. Much needed after our week in.
I can't remember if I blogged about our banking fiasco... Long story short: we had incompatible accounts from Ontario and Quebec so we had to switch all our accounts which was supposed to be a fairly straightforward transition... our transactions to the old accounts were supposed to still work for 90 days. Only exception: Government of Canada, which is where our paychecks come from. It was a stressful month of juggling a missing paycheck and getting everything set up again and working smoothly, but we finally received all our money and are all set to go. We even set up our budget a little better (we challenged ourselves to really keep to our grocery budget in Jan. and were within 23 cents of it! I went over with bananas in the last week, but we survived. Feb is going to prove a bit more difficult because we had to do our bimonthly costco run, but I have high hopes).
Remember how i keep saying we're almost done the stairs to the basement? (How could you forget, right?) We finished last night!!! I mean we still need aesthetic details, but that happens later in the reno schedule. We have solid stairs and can now finish drywalling the bedroom (the main reason we had to do the stairs now and not later). We were hoping to have the bedroom useable for this weekend (and had we not gotten sick, we'd be getting pretty close) but we are making huge progress (and maybe we'll use our dear guests for labour, or painting :P)
As you can tell, it's been quite the past couple weeks lots of highs & lows, but overall things are going well here now, and we have another busy week ahead of us. I'll probably be late next week with my Blog as my sisters & bro-in-law are visiting til tues... and I most likely won't make time on my birthday for blogging, but maybe Wed or Thurs :D.
Happy Valentine's Day to you all; sending lots of LOVE from Evelyn, Josh & me.