Ya gotta know when to hold 'em...

We've had several people ask us if all this illness adds up to us heading back to Oregon earlier than our original summer of 2017 plans.

We've asked ourselves that question as well.

After taking two days off work due to high fever, David slowly crawled his way back into the office, still not well, and had a coworker say "are you the type of people that believe the Universe might be giving you signs that this just isn't meant to be?"

"Does all this mean you're heading home now?"

(We hear that one a lot too...)

The answer at this point, is no.

Not yet, anyways.

We have opened ourselves to the possibility of heading home this summer as opposed to next, though. 

But to leave now would actually be more difficult than staying. The idea of packing up all our stuff, and cleaning up, and shipping our things home, and spending days on planes....well, all that sounds much more daunting than just staying put, especially since I can currently hardly manage our days without a nap. 

And right now we're managing.

David is back at work, even though he's still not feeling great. He's doing alright.

We've still got meals coming for another week.

We still have several people willing to run errands for us.

The kids are still *slightly* under the weather, so they're content to just hang around the apartment with their decrepit mother all day. 

We're gonna make it.

One of my friends here -who has lived here 10 years- said she just believes the viruses here are harsher than they are anywhere else.

I gotta say, I'm leaning towards believing her!

But we've got probiotics aplenty, and fluids galore, and lots and lots of rest.

I feel like we're doing all we can.

We've also heard that living anywhere "new" makes you susceptible to every virus, and you can expect to catch them all in the first six months. 

We're just in month five.

We've been hit fairly hard in the first five months (David had a nasty GI bug for nearly two months, the kids and I have had virus after virus, and I had the emergency surgery), but I'm stupidly cautiously optimistic about the next several months. 

We HAVE to be getting over the hump.

We just have to be.

And we haven't accomplished what we came here for just yet.

I mean, sure, we've made and saved some money (it'd be helpful if we hand't had to pay nearly a month's salary for my surgery and hospital stay...), and sure we've immersed ourselves in a new culture, but we haven't completely found our groove here yet, and we want to. Sure, we've traveled to Bahrain, but that just scratches the surface of places we want to see around here! We have a tentative trip to Sri Lanka planned for the summer, and we SO want to see that happen.

Gotta travel a bit more while we're over here.

Maybe it's a bit of pride too -although I doubt anyone would blame us for cashing in our chips and coming home at this point - but we sold our home, our cars, put all our stuff in storage and moved across the globe to spend two years here in Kuwait. We just plan on seeing that through.

So at this point, we're planning on being here until the summer of 2017, as originally intended. We're praying for wisdom if that's the best decision for our family, or if going home summer of 2016 is better. Far be it from us to let pride come before wisdom from above ;).

And with that - this post is long and boring enough, and I actually went to the grocery store with my kids today, so this post-op patient is in need of a nap ;)