A Welcome Return

Play dates are back! Woo-hoo! My days just got a little bit easier. I don't think I can stress the sheer joy I feel for being able to give the kids another thing to do. And might I add that Alex and Abby are incredibly excited as well? I haven't seen them so happy as they were after our outing yesterday. We decided to go to a school playground and play. Alex and his buddy Wesley chased each other around and played for over an hour. Wesley and Greta have had a cold recently and we were hesitant to go over in fear of the spread of germs. But it's been well over a week and I finally threw my hands up in the air and said, "I don't care. I'm done with the over-protection gig." I figure that if Alex was in school, he would have been exposed to Wesley much sooner than yesterday. So seeing as how Mandy's kiddos seemed well and Alex was devastated at the idea of not continuing his play-date with Wesley, we headed over to Mandy's house for the remainder of the time. So what has kept me in the 'protective' state as far as sickness goes? Oh, that's easy. Alex's doctor. He told me that I need to keep him as well as I can by even keeping him out of school for an extra year until his lungs had time to heal. Well, it's been a year since his last asthma flare and he's doing great. So I'm hopeful that his lungs have healed enough that a little cold now and then won't be so devastating. I hope I'm not wrong about this because I sure don't want to land him in the hospital due to my 'under-protection.' For now, I'm just thrilled to have some normalcy back for awhile. Next week we're even going to go to visit my brother and sister-in law for a few days for some fun for the kids. Wish me luck though, because I'm making the trip alone and I am not good at driving in the city. That...and I have no idea how to get there by myself. Thank goodness I have a friend who's willing to loan me her GPS for the week. Otherwise, our long-distance play-date would land me somewhere half-way across the country. I'd probably hit the Atlantic Ocean and wonder where I made the wrong turn.