Winter Miracles, Winter Disasters, and Asking Reader Input

Good morning, dear readers! I hope that each of you has survived the Christmas season with health, reason, and finances intact!

We have had a lovely Christmas season. Despite having had countless illnesses rolling through the house repeatedly since early November (the latest of which being the reason that I'm not at church right now), we have had a wonderful couple of months celebrating the birth of our Savior and enjoying the season.

For New Year's, we spent a week in northern Arizona, visiting two sets of relatives and trying not to freeze to death. It was great!

While we were visiting the frozen north, though, we had one really rotten day. Yikes. It all started the day before, when our eldest spent the day consuming every kind of junk food known to man (long story), ending the day with eating five pickles. Ick. The next morning, he awoke with a hurting tummy and spent the entire day in intense discomfort (plus throwing up twice). Which leads me to two questions:

Question #1 for my amiable readers: Can overindulgence in junk food cause a day-long tummy-ache in a child?

We have not really experienced too many stomach illnesses in our family, and almost no serious ones. At first we concluded that this must be a run-of-the-mill stomach bug, but based on the facts of (1) our child's absolutely hideous diet the day before, as compared to his usually healthy diet, and (2) the fact that he only threw up twice during the day, we wondered if it might have been diet-based (but don't know if that's possible).

Any reader input?

One puzzling thing that we ran into with this bug(?) was the issue that despite our efforts to give our child tummy-ache remedies (both natural and OTC), he somewhat hysterically refused all of them ("No! I can't! My stomach hurts!" etc.). And frankly, I found myself not knowing what to do. We felt that he needed something, but we also didn't want to make a discipline issue out of it with a child who was already miserable. So while we (unsuccessfully) tried persuasion, we didn't force the issue. I know, I know - BAD PARENT ALERT! But I would like to ask my readers, again...

Question #2: When you feel that a sick child needs medicine but the child is adamantly refusing it, what do YOU do? Do you try to persist, or just accept that the child needs to wait out the illness?

One thing or another, it was a rotten day for all of us! Especially since all seven of us (plus a dog and a bird) were crowded into a tiny single-wide mobile home. We were all exhausted by the end of the day!

Is he cute, or what? (This is the younger brother, not the sick one.)

However, we had a lovely end to a horrible day - snow! DH and I went for a quick breather-walk, and we started seeing tiny flakes of snow falling. For all you out there who are used to snow, this won't sound like much, but in my 31 years on the planet, this was the first time I had ever seen snow fall in person! I have been to places where there was snow, but never where there was snow falling. I can't even express how unutterably lovely and wonderful it was!

It felt like the most wonderful of rewards for making it through a truly trying day.

The next morning, we all went out to experience the snow. It was lovely packing snow, and DS (feeling much better) and I worked up a creditable snowball fight.

Anyone wondering about my oh-so-stylish footwear? They're gen-yoo-wine G.I. boots, straight from the Vietnam War via my dad. They nearly killed my feet, but when it's freezing outside, flip-flops (my usual gear) are, alas, not a viable option. 

We also, for the first time, made a snowman!

He may be only four inches high, but by golly, he's cute. 

All in all, we had a great week - though I was beyond thankful to be home at the end of it.

But I sure hope that I can experience snow fall many, many more times over my lifetime! Loved it!

Happy Sabbath, dear friends! Love to all!