I'm not the only one either. All the siblings have been trying to distance beforehand. Pop had a rough bout with food poisoning that put him in an Israeli hospital in January. His kidneys put him in the high-risk category for coronavirus. And baby Graham's under 6 months old.
The odds were low, but the stakes were high.
There's no guarantee everyone would remain healthy or that we'd be able to meet next year. Megan was scheduled to move to an overseas post for several years over summer. Nana and Pop made the decision to go forward and hoped to see as much of the family as they could.
When my siblings started to say they were in I kept quiet. A month out, Carrie didn't want Shane and I to go at all. She was worried about the virus spreading at protests and that Heidi being in and out of care would increase our chances of being exposed. I said I wanted to hold off a decision to wait, pray, and see how the data trended.
Thankfully, the numbers for VA did trend downward even with everything going on. I can't tell you if it's due to the masks, people being cautious, less deadly strains of the virus becoming predominate, or God just saying, "Let's slow it down."
Shane and I buckled up and headed to the coast Sunday afternoon. I knew it would probably be okay, but the fear of being the one to introduce the virus to my family still nagged. We've been very careful. Shane and I prayed before we left that we'd all stay healthy or that God would be with us if we did get sick (It was a common prayer at meals and I'm sure at bedtime throughout the week!).
Fear is a liar. Fear will tell you everything that possibly could go wrong and then if one of the endless situations it predicts plays out it will tell you it was right all along.
But I was still nervous for the first several hugs. We were all in.
I'm writing this 5 days after the beach trip ended and 12 days after the first of the family arrived. So far, everyone's reporting in as healthy! I'm the only outlier with my allergies, but those are a minor nuisance in the scheme of things.
I'm really glad we got to go and make memories this year. I've uploaded a ton of pictures I have to write posts for.
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