So as I mentioned we are in Florida with my family for Christmas/New Years. We have been looking forward to this time with them for months and literally counting down the days. The hardest thing about our move to Charlotte has been leaving my family and our church family so any chance we get to see them is highly anticipated.
We drove through the night on December 13th (Josh did GREAT!) and arrived exhausted around 2 am. We said our half asleep hellos and went to sleep. We spent the weekend just hanging out with one another and Josh LOVED all the attention he got from his aunties and Mimi and Gamps. Jon drove back to Charlotte on Sunday afternoon and would return later in the week. Josh and I had a blast hanging out with the girlies and Mimi and Gamps. We went to Kristin and Katie's Christmas gymnastics show, made people chow (a VanLue Christmas time tradition) and finished our Christmas shopping.
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| At the Christmas gymnastics show! |
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| Making People Chow with my favorite little helpers! |
Jon drove back down late Friday night and that Saturday we headed out to some Disney hotels to look at the Christmas decorations. It was Josh's first trip to Disney territory and SO fun!
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| On the boat! |
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| Beauty! She's getting so old! |
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| My Leni girl |
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| Posing in the Mickey ears at the Contemporary Resort |
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| The Grand Floridian hotel - one of my favorites! |
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| Brown party of three :) |
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| Love them! |
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| All the kiddos |
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| Every year the Grand Floridian hotel has this life-size gingerbread house and they sell the BEST gingerbread cookies from it! Another tradition :) |
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| I love our little family |
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| Just being silly - or normal |
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| Shopping shenanigans |
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| My giggly boy |
On Sunday Jon and I got to play/sing on the worship team at Grace. It was so much fun being back doing what we love! We also had rehearsal for the Christmas Eve service which we were so excited about. Josh spent the day with Mimi, Gamps and aunties three and had a blast!
Around this time Jon mentioned that he was feeling tired (not unusual after making an 8 hour drive in the middle of the night and spending the following days at Disney and band rehearsal). He took some vitamins and went to bed early. No big deal.
Monday the parents and kids went to Disney for the day so we stayed home and finished wrapping and were lazy. My sweet husband (still not feeling that great but not really letting anyone know) watched Josh for the majority of the day so I could get everyone's gifts ready to go. I love watching him be such a devoted dad…it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
The next day (Christmas Eve) we had to be at the church for rehearsal at 12:30. Jon had told me that morning that he felt tired (now going on day 3 of him not feeling that great) so we got some Starbucks because that fixes everything right? We rehearsed, ate some lunch/dinner and prepared for the first (of 3) candlelight services starting at 4:00. I noticed Jon didn't eat much…very odd considering it was pasta and meatballs (definitely a man pleasing' type of meal). He said he just wasn't hungry. Hmm…
The last thing Jon likes the do is draw attention to himself so I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. Plus, the opening song of the service was pretty electric guitar heavy and thus if Jon didn't play the song wouldn't happen. Time to suck it up and play anyway.
And play he did!
The services went off without a hitch. That is until the end of the second service when Jon disappeared off stage during Oh Holy Night…totally unbeknownst to his wife who was just singing away.
After the vomiting guitarist returned to the stage he continued to play until the end of the service. Yeah. He's pretty awesome. He said he felt better so I figured it was simply a case of food poisoning or he was maybe coming down with some sort of virus. Ha…yeah it was some sort of virus all right.
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| Our family Christmas Eve photo before the diagnosis |
With one more service to go he downed some water and prepared to rock out one more time. This guy loves, absolutely loves to play his guitar and especially with the amazing group of musicians at Grace. It takes a lot for him to say he can't play anymore. But sure enough…after the first half of the set he told me he was done. He was feverish, sweating, dizzy to the point of almost falling over and definitely coming down with something. I paged Dr. Dad to come check him out and about 3 minutes later he had a diagnosis.
"Jon…you without a doubt have the chicken pox."
Fear. Panic. Bewilderment. Sadness. What the @%$&?!?!
All of those emotions hit me like a ton of bricks. Chicken Pox? Really? What 28 year old gets the chicken pox? Then my mind started racing. What did this mean for Christmas? What did this mean for my almost 5 month old son? Jon had been with Josh all day yesterday…would Josh catch this wretched pox also?
The husband, now allowing himself to express just how bad he really felt, wrapped himself in a ballet blanket I happened to have in the car and turned the air on full blast until the last service was over and I could pack up his guitar gear. Poor guy. He was so sick.
Service finally ended. My mom took Wubba home to get Christmas Eve festivities going with the girls and I packed up all of the now pox infected guitar gear. Chicken Pox. So many questions were running through my head. "Why Lord? Why on Josh's first Christmas would you allow my husband to get chicken pox? Why when we have been aching to see family would you allow something that would prevent us from seeing them?" I cried. I whined. I complained.
Then I laughed. Just like my mom told me to do. "Find the joy in it" she said. There's always something to be grateful for in the midst of something hard. I didn't see it yet but I knew she was right because well…my mom is usually always right…especially in situations like these. So I drove the patient home and locked him away in Katie's room (which is pink with hot pink cheetah bedding by the way). Poor Jon was too sick to care much about anything.
I put Josh in his new Christmas pi's - another VanLue/Brown family tradition and we went to bed praying that sweet little Wubba wouldn't wake up the next morning with the dreaded pox.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
To be continued in part 2...
