The end of 2014

Well, our break from Christmas break has gone absolutely nothing like expected. I guess that’s life, huh?

The last week of school, Reed was awarded the WWJD award at his school. He looked so cute that night but was so shy and embarrassed and wouldn’t take his award. :) When Ava saw him dressed, she said “REED!" You look so handsome!!!!”

The last day of school, the kids’ school had a Christmas luncheon and I ate lunch with both of them.

Afterwards,  I took them to work with me for just a few minutes until Zach was done taking a big test. Ava was with me talking to some co-workers and Reed had already gone back to my office. I found him tapping away on my calculator. He loves going and “working” on that!  

The weekend before Christmas, we went to visit Zach’s family and have Christmas with them. We had a good day visiting and celebrating Christmas.

I was off work the entire week of Christmas. The first day off, we hired a baby-sitter and had a day date. We ran some errands and finished up our Christmas shopping and enjoyed lunch out by ourselves.

The next day I had a doctor appointment to check on the baby and we all went. The kids got to hear the heartbeat and they thought that was really neat. Then we just had a fun family day.

Later that day I started feeling bad. My chest was hurting and I just didn’t feel well. I woke up on Christmas Eve and went to the walk in clinic first thing. I didn’t want to mess with a hurting chest. I don’t feel like the doctor took me very seriously. He sent me on my way with a zpack so I wouldn’t get worse. He said he normally wouldn’t have even prescribed anything. Well, I’m glad he did because by the next day i was SICK.

I still didn’t feel awful on Christmas Even and managed to enjoy our normal Christmas Eve celebration.

Zach had some kids play music at church on Christmas Eve and Ava was an angel. Reed was just ornery. :)

After church we went to my Grandma’s for dinner and gifts and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.

I woke up Christmas morning feeling crummy. I got up and watched the kids open their gifts. They had a good morning. I had woken up in the middle of the night and gotten a drink and found Ava wide awake at 2:00 am because she was excited. Then Reed woke up. They were up for a while. I remember those days. :)

Santa brought them both bikes and hid them behind paper in our foyer! I love this b/c they can’t see their goodies without us! :)

After they opened their gifts, I went back and laid down for a little while. Then I got a shower and got ready because my parents were coming to town for the day and came to have Christmas at our house before going to my grandma’s. After they came, i took another nap before we went to my grandma’s again. While there, I started feeling awful. I couldn’t breathe out of my nose, my sinuses ached, my eyes hurts, and my ears hurt and I was just miserable. We left and went home and I got in bed and pretty much stayed there for the next two days. I think I had a bad bout of bronchitis and a sinus infection so thank the Lord that I had the antibiotic. The bad thing is that being pregnant there was so little I could do for any relief and I was just absolutely miserable for days.

On Saturday, Ava started running a low fever and felt puny and Zach started feeling like he had a sinus infection coming on. Reed was the only one well and he was SOOOOOO good that day. Without anyone feeling up to playing with him he managed to occupy himself really well and was so well behaved.

I really questioned on Saturday how I would go back to work on Monday when I’d spent the whole day in bed. Around bedtime, it was like my body just all of a sudden felt better. I woke up Sunday feeling better, which ended up being a good thing because Zach and Ava were down for the count. They went to the walk in clinic. Zach had a bad sinus infection and Ava had flu A. Just what we wanted.

Ava was really sad because the doctor told her she needed to stay away from me. I had to go all over town to get meds for her and Zach. I called my doctor on Monday to see if he wanted me to do anything. He wanted me to get tested for the flu since I’d been sick and sent me to the hospital outpatient center where they treated me like I had the plague. It took almost an hour just to get a darn swab! I was NOT amused!

Fortunately, my test was negative. He did have me taking Tamiflu so that i could help ward off the flu. Fortunately by about Wednesday Ava felt so much better!

Here was our family saying goodbye to 2014! 

My little ones on the first day of 2015. Hard to imagine that at the end of the 2015 and beginning of 2016 we will have another little one in that picture!

Me and my little buddy!

On Friday, everyone was finally better and after being cooped up for almost a week, Zach took the kids to Chick-fil-a for breakfast and playing on their last weekday break.

We spent the weekend doing some big time cleaning. Our house is so CLEAN and feels so good! We also had some down time which was nice. It has included playing lots of games with Ava.

Yesterday was incredibly COLD and to avoid more cabin fever, we got a little creative with the day. We let them have a picnic lunch in Ava’s room.

After that, Reed said he didn’t like laying in his room but in Ava’s room, so we let them lay down in her room. After a while it was VERY quiet and i found them like this. I told zach if I’d known that was all it would take for them to take a nap, I’d have done it a long time ago!

We also got some really sad news over the break. Last week, Reed’s teacher was in a car accident and sadly passed away. This has been just devastating. She was married one month ago and her new husband also died as did his grandmother. We’ve explained to Reed that he will have a new teacher when he goes back to school this morning but it’s an awful lot for his three year old mind to comprehend. Last night he talked about something that had happened on his last day of school before the break and said “And Mrs. Perez was there!!! But now she won’t be.” We’ve had a lot of moments like these and they have been very, very sad. Lots of prayers have been said for our school because I know this week will be tough.

It was just another reminder going into 2015 that life is so very precious. We aren’t promised tomorrow and never know when a day will be our last. It’s definitely a reminder to me to make every day count!