Two Fantastic Weekends!!!

A little over a week ago we had the pleasure of being a part of my niece, Cella's baptism! She was ecstatic to have her cousin Christian perform the baptism. It was an amazing experience for everyone. Emma and Elizabeth sang "When I am Baptized" with their beautiful, sweet voices. We are so blessed. It was a fabulous weekend! The stress hit on the way home, President's Day, when we left late to miss D.C. traffic, but instead drove right into a blinding snow storm! As an added shock, it was 80 degrees when we left North Carolina... eeek! We made it home, with many spoken and unspoken prayers uttered. We were still on a high from the lovely weekend spent with family and a spiritual milestone.

Then it was time to get ready for Elizabeth's 14th birthday! We decided to paint and decorate her room. It was a transformation from mauve and peach (ugh), to plum and silver walls with turquoise accents! So very pretty! Emma helped with it all. I'm not quite done, but will include a picture when finished! She was so happily surprised. She also got the Chi straightening iron (a brand new one found on craigslist for over half the price new- I love that!) she has soooo longed for, and was thrown a surprise party by her good friends! It was awesome! In the middle of it all, Christian passed his driver's test and is now an official driver!! It's all good!

A New Year...

This new year sure started out with a bang! We ended up in a landlord/tenant nightmare, water-leaking, mold growing fiasco over the holidays and moved into a new home, by necessity the weekend before Christmas! It was C-R-A-Z-Y, insane! It was a mad rush to unpack (thanks to my mom for coming to help). Then Christmas decor out and around (after first locating it). Then Christmas shopping. Then Christmas and a New Year's very fun party. Then the bang... I had a whopping 12 mm. kidney stone that got STUCK and I was extremely ill, hence 2 ER visits, 2 surgeries, the installation of a ureteric stent (Ugh with a capital U), the passing of Conan's sweet Grandma Dorothy, me in bed- in pain for almost 4 weeks, removal of stent (just say NO to that), Christian breaking his thumb, and here we are with February almost over and me wondering "where did the past 5 weeks go???" Hmmmm...
Oh yeah, and how did I gain 5 pounds? Such are the questions of life.

So, here I am. The first day out of bed I went so wild with activity that I ended up with sore muscles!! Who knew that doing laundry was a workout? I have the best family and friends in the world. They were all so good to me. The other day I made a comment that I am so happy to be able to do normal THINGS and Elizabeth looked at me with that teenager look of pure exasperation and said, "ME TOO! I was YOU while you were in bed." To funny. I had to laugh.
Some adventures are really best left in the past... Like this one! Happy New Year, finally...