Do you ever have one of those weeks?

This is one of them for the Cruze family. Especially Emma.

All six of us have been hacking and coughing for a couple of weeks now. We've largely chalked it up to the change in the weather, and for some of us that's probably the case. Emma however added to her symptoms really bad wheezing and slightly increased lethargy (our usual queen of staying up late was quick to fall asleep and needing to be woken up for school). We took her to the doctor yesterday and it turns out she had walking pneumonia. Well. No wonder.

Emma had just recently been put on a daily Zertec and Nasonex regimen by her allergist (to help with hive outbreaks and stuffiness). We'd been giving her xopenex and pulmicort for her wheezing for about a week. Yesterday's diagnosis added zithromax (an anitbiotic for the infection) once and prednosone (a steroid for the wheezing) twice daily for five days.

That's a lot of drugs for a 44 pound girl.

But here's the saddest part. Her dr said she'd be contagious until 24 hours after she started the antibiotic. Which equalled about 4pm today. Which equalled no school. Which equalled poor Emma missing her class field trip to the Smoky Mountains. Yesterday when she realized this she cried. Emma doesn't cry about everything. Only things that break her heart.

She was resigned to the sad facts by today though. Still disappointed, but accepting of the way things had to be. I tried to make it fun for her at home. We spent some time getting some last minute costume details ready for our trunk-or-treat at the church which was tonight (silver lining: at least she could go to that...I'll post some photos later). She and Josh got to watch The Wizard of Oz. But all of her grief melted away and her smiles and giggles took over when we did the best thing of all. We carved her jack-o-lantern. Last Monday we went and got our pumpkins for family home evening and Emma drew her face design on it right away. It's been a busy week and we had not had time to do the carving yet. It was a busy day today too, but we decided it had to be done. It was perfect. As far as I can remember Emma's never participated in any pumpking carving, so it was a new experience for her. She started out timid and trying to scoop the guts out with a spoon. That wasn't very effective so she soon threw caution to the wind and dug in with both hands. She loved getting her hands (up to her elbows) all gross. She loved the finished product. She loved that Josh thought it was too disgusting to get anywhere near and thought it smelled so bad he held his nose the whole time. But she was squishing the guts between her fingers and scraping the insides of the walls and asking about the pumpkin we buy in a can and popping out eye holes and forgetting for an hour that she wasn't on a Smoky Mountain field trip while taking six medicines a day. I'm glad we took time to smell the pumpkin guts.