Trying to get into the Christmas spirit despite feeling sick

My in-laws arrived Friday night and as has become tradition I made spaghetti Bolognese for dinner when they arrived. After dinner my stomach was starting to feel bad. At first I thought maybe it was the wine, but I had only had 2 glasses. Since my son had been sick earlier this week I was afraid I was getting sick too. Sure enough, shortly after I got the kids to bed, I got sick :( I went to bed around 10, and not long after I heard my daughter crying. I went out to find her coming out of her room, she had thrown up too :( I got her out of her dirty pjs and started stripping her bed while occasionally darting in to my bathroom to get sick since she was using hers.

I got her cleaned up and back to bed, and about an hour later heard her getting sick again :(. I went in to help her and then my oldest came out of her room. At first I thought she was just coming out cause the bathroom light was shining in to her room, so I said, "Welcome to our puking party, do you want to join us?" Not funny since sure enough she was sick too. I sent her to our bathroom while I sat and waited for either one to finish hoping I wouldn't get sick in the meantime.

The rest of the night is a blur of who was sick when, it got to the point that I didn't respond to every sound like I normally do as I just wanted to get some sleep. I figured if they really needed me, they'd come get me, which they didn't.

By the morning my oldest and I were pretty much back to normal, but my middle one was still pretty tired. We had planned to head down to Christkindlmarkt to see the tree and have some German food. We decided to take the L rather than driving and parking two cars. The two youngest kids were free so it was much cheaper this way, and my little guy was very excited to ride the train. We got off a block away and managed to get a table in the tent pretty quickly. After some beer and gløgg, we got brats and potato pancakes. It's kind of tough to go with kids because of the crowds, although stroller parking helped. The only bathrooms were port a pottys so no changing tables.

They used to have a nice train set but not this year. They used to have a tree that was made up of lots of smaller trees and branches and while it looked nice and full, it always seemed lame that they didn't get a real tree like at Rockefeller Center. This year they got a real tree but it was very sparse and people were calling it the Charlie Brown tree. It wasn't quite that bad, but there is no doubt in my mind, they could have found a better tree.

We didn't try to walk around and look at the different stalls. It was too crowded and after being sick the kids were too tired. We headed home, everyone took a nap, and we ordered a pizza for dinner.

Then finally we decorated the tree. My oldest and youngest had a lot of fun helping and it looks good. Unfortunately my middle kid was still tired after being sick so after putting a couple of ornaments on, she laid down on the couch and just watched. When we were all done, my oldest played all the Christmas songs she has music for on the piano and then everyone went to bed. A nice ending to a rough day.