Tomorrow will be the end of the second week of our “summer break”.  We’re keeping B home from school during July and August to give us all a break from the lengthy back and forth commute to school, and to spend some fun summer time together.  Of course, it hasn’t gone like that at all yet, because from the day before our first day of summer break, Liam has been sick.

When he first got sick, I was sure it was strep — actually, I was sure it was scarlet fever, because his sore throat and high fever were accompanied by an all-over rash.  Turns out it was “just” a virus — he recovered from the sore throat and fever within a few days, but even though today is the 11th day of his illness, the rash has stuck around.  I think we probably *could* go out and do stuff.  The pediatrician assures me he is no longer contagious, but I feel like if he still has a rash that resulted from an immune reaction, then he’s probably still having the immune reaction on some level, and it probably won’t hurt anything (other than my sanity) to take a few extra quiet resting days at home.  Plus, Benjamin’s birthday party is on Saturday, and I want the boys to be able to enjoy it, rather than being miserable from being sick.

So, we’ve been housebound for ALL of summer vacation so far.  The weather has been beautiful (if a little warm some days), and with both kids feeling relatively well for the past week or so (not counting the rash) we’ve all been itching (pun intended) to get out of the house.  But, no luck so far.  Keeping the kids happy and occupied over the past couple of weeks has been a challenge.  It’s like being snowed in, except that it’s tantalizingly beautiful outside.  We’ve watched every movie we have about a million times, and I recently resorted to putting on TV shows that they don’t like very much, because the ones they don’t like they haven’t seen them in a while, so they’re still relatively interested in what happens.  We’ve built about 1000 Lego cars, put together every puzzle we own, colored, painted, and gone out onto the terrace to blow bubbles.  We’ve staged indoor basketball, soccer and football competitions, and we assemble the Matchbox cars for a daily “car party” each morning.

We’re actually having a pretty great time, considering we’re confined to the house during such a perfect time of year to be outside, but really, we all just want to go out and play.