Jan 11-13, 2022

That minute to breathe and relax? Cancelled.

Tuesday was looking up. Until it wasn’t.

Tuesday

Long-term housing – We did a lot of discussing and planning for what we’re going to do (buy a house, rebuild the house, rent a house, etc). For now, we’re planning to dual-track rebuilding efforts and potentially buying another house in the area. We know that rebuilding is years away, and we already had been thinking of upgrading to a new house in the next few years. So the timeline for that upgrade may be accelerated as a result of this mess. But, the market is already hot and clearly this event makes it even more competitive. We’re working on getting mortgage pre-approval now, such that we can keep the Muirfield mortgage and buy another house.

The path for rebuilding is still very unclear. But our plan is essentially to let some of our neighbors get the process started. Several of them have expertise in this area, connections to builders, etc. Many have already gotten the ball rolling and will eventually be asking the rest of us to join them. For now, that’s our plan for rebuilding. We’re sure this will evolve in the coming months. We also listened to our HOA’s meeting about rebuilding on Tuesday. And it was a DISASTER. The HOA leadership team was defensive and rude, and it went completely off the rails. Since the meeting, 3 board members have stepped down, and there is a petition for 2 others to remove themselves (though it sounds they’ve so far refused) based on their behavior during that meeting. (Anyone wanna make a TV show of this drama?!?)

Neighbor get together – One of the highlights of Tuesday was getting to meet up with our neighbors for a drink. We have about 6 houses on our chunk of the circle that did Halloween together, exchanged Christmas gifts, etc — so it was really special to get together and celebrate our neighbor Marcie’s birthday.

The dreaded call – But then our celebration was cut short when we got the dreaded call from the kids’ school. Theo had been exposed to a kid who tested positive for COVID. We have to come get him and his class is closed for a week. We knew this was coming, but we were hoping to get at least 1 day to catch up before it did. Nope.

Wednesday

Theo was at home with us, so we took turns trying to get some things done. Lauren brought over the amazing care basket she’d been building for us from family and friends — including a toolbox full of tools, comfy clothes and self-care stuff, a digital picture frame (which we still need to set up!), and loads more. And then Tom and Debbie came over with all our deliveries that have come to their house. So we are getting to be pretty stocked up!

We picked up Avery from school, fed the kids dinner, put them to bed, and then ordered some fancy takeout and drank champagne. We were mildly celebrating our successful progress…and then we heard Theo crying and coughing in his bed around 9:15pm. He’s usually OUT for the whole night, so this was somewhat alarming.

We got him up and his breathing was very labored. It sounded like he was having trouble getting the air he needed, and we started to panic. Nick called 911, and we were going to get an ambulance, but in the time it would take for that, we figured we could just drive him to an ER. I hopped in the car, drove 10 minutes to Foothills hospital, and we were seen immediately. They pretty quickly thought it was Croup, and got him a few breathing treatments (steroids and epinephrine in a nebulizer) to help open up his airways. They also swabbed him to test for Covid, RSV, Croup, etc.

Tom came to the house to watch Avery, while Nick drove to meet us at the hospital. Thank goodness again for Tom and Debbie saving us through this disaster of a year we’ve had so far.

After a couple hours in the hospital, Theo was feeling much better. His breathing sounded much more normal, and we got confirmation that it is Croup (basically his airways closing as a result of a parainfluenza virus). And confirmation that he’s still negative for COVID. We headed home around 1am.

Thursday

Since parainfluenza viruses that cause Croup are very contagious and can be dangerous for small children, we kept Avery home for the day so she doesn’t spread anything to her friends at school (especially those with small baby siblings). We traded on and off watching the kids and trying to complete some of the key tasks to move forward (new key for the Subaru, submitting documentation for mortgage pre-approval, etc).

We keep saying things like “Well, it can’t get any worse” and then it does. Do I sometimes wonder if I’m being tested? Yes. So we’re just not saying that it can’t get worse anymore. It could be worse. We’re all alive, we’re all (relatively) healthy, and we have a huge system of support behind us.

Thank you again for all the notes and love. Hearing from you all during this time is more powerful and healing than you imagine.