Sweet Smells

Before I start in, I have to say that BDO posted an encouraging March 2010 monitoring report. This was the one we all, way back when, held our breaths for - hoping against all hope for a positive recount of details and financial (as well as many other areas) standing. Well, it's in. And it's good.

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I recall back in the spring, the concern or threat or taunting on potential H1N1 virus invasion of our house was concerning. Working at a camp year round, we knew what it could look like and though there aren't a lot of kids throughout the winter off-season, we had to take in to consideration whether or not to vaccinate our kids. You may recall some of the chit chat.

Other than the above, I'm not going to delve in further as to why we decided (and held our stance) on not having our kids vaccinated. I have vaccinated against other diseases and have gone as far as accepting the chicken pox immunization for them. Were we not deeply involved in camp ministry, (ours hosts over 3500 kids each summer from every walk of life) I can confidently say I would have not accepted that one as necessary.

I digress.

We seem to have come away from the winter relatively unscathed. With the exception of one night of puke which was a direct result of a game played involving a mouth-to-mouth passing of candy (ew!) of which I was notified after the fact, we have been relatively illness-free. There's been some snot, a few coughs but seriously nothing to write home about.

There's been consistent administration of the Vitamin D drop and I credit that along with a ridiculously healthy diet, to our kids' health. And one other important ingredient: cleanliness.

I credit our awareness of germs. We are a clean family, people. But, we do go out from time to time. You know, in public. Like to buy groceries and other necessities. And we do frequent locations which undoubtedly crawl with germs. But that's life and we've simply opened our eyes to the fact, and fallen in love with the benefits of sanitizer. Because you know, you can't take the bathroom sink everywhere.

So, after grocery trips touching umpteen different shelves, carts, and boxes or produce (which apparently small children have an innate need to do); and when leaving play areas or pools after sharing and engaging in activities which no doubt have been shared by many others before us; we all rub a couple drops of sanitizer on our hands.

It has served us well.

But the humour came the other day, and it's a thought I'm sure we've had many a time but simply have not spoken up...it happened after a grocery trip when I was in the car with the boys and we were all routinely rubbing our hands to clean them...and Ben got in to the car after having put the shopping cart away.

"Ah" he said, "the sweet sweet smell of sanitizer".

(Because you know, it does reak of alcohol.)

"Yes" I replied sarcastically, "so much better than the sweet sweet smell of puke".

How have you kept healthy?