Grandmom and Aunt Bethany

Jarrett's mom and sister came down for a visit last weekend, and neither one of them had made it down in quite some time, so it was great to see them and spend some time with them. Elsa thought it was fantastic to have two additional doting relatives around, and had a wonderful time playing with her Grandmom and Aunt Bethany.

Grandmom presented Elsa with a few presents upon their arrival -- an "outside present," which was the tricycle she was given at Christmas (but no one was able to fit in their car on the way back to Atlanta), and a few "inside presents," some great new books. The labels to her gifts stuck immediately, and Elsa was super excited when we let her play with her "outside present" inside the house.

We did not do much most of the weekend -- our big trip out involved dropping some library books off in the drive-through drop box and making a stop at the new-ish gluten-free bakery here in Decatur, which is only open on Saturday mornings. This was quite exciting to at least Bethany and myself, as we are both following gluten-free diets. But otherwise we mostly lazed around and tried to stay out of the heat.

To help with that endeavor, Elsa started feeling sick Saturday after our errand and actually asked to go to bed around 11:30 a.m. or so. This never happens. She did not even want a story read to her. She had been up rather late the night before and was up pretty early, so I thought maybe she really was just that tired. But then she slept four hours, and I actually went in to check on her at that point, waking her up. Then I noticed she was warm. A fever had set in. And through doses of Motrin, it stuck around for about 36 hours, getting to its highest point of 102.5 very early Sunday morning. I am not sure exactly what she had, but it seemed to be something that was going around, as her friends, Finnan and Jude, came down with something very similar. I imagine it was something passed around at playgroup on Friday -- a nice parting gift, seeing as that was the last day of group for the summer. And we actually ended up missing the big end-of-year potluck at Gabriela's house Sunday evening because of the illness, which was a bummer. But we are just thankful Elsa is feeling better now.

So it was kind of sad that half the time of Grandmom and Aunt Bethany's visit was with a sick Elsa, but we still had a nice time being together and catching up. We hope to make a trip up to North Carolina to see them all again soon!