Happy Thanksgiving

It's been almost six months since I lost my grandma, and every so often, something reminds me of her and I get emotional again. The plan was for us to go to Blythe for Thanksgiving and spend it with my family on that side, and especially to see my grandpa. When I woke up Monday morning with a throat so sore that I could barely swallow, I knew my strep from three weeks ago had returned. Not being able to find an appointment that day with any doctor's office in Surprise, I went to urgent care to make sure that I wouldn't be contagious and we could still visit with my family. So we were all prepared to go, I had made enough dessert to feed an army, all we had to do was wake up Thursday morning and drive. And when we woke up, Bailey's throat was really sore again and her glands were swollen. So of course we had to skip our family celebration. Jason and I rushed off to the grocery store to get components for the meal because, of course, all I had was dessert. We were able to pull off a pretty nice meal. We had a roast chicken wrapped in bacon (which kept the chicken really moist!), green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and rolls. And although it was just the five of us, it was nice to talk about what we were grateful for and to make our preparations for the Christmas season, most importantly I think, to make our plans for how we can help others. And even though we gorged ourselves on desserts (well, the kids did; Jason and I were actually pretty reasonable), we haven't made a dent in how many goodies we have in our house.

Today I took Bailey to the doctor, and of course it came back as strep. Talking with the nurse practitioner, she suggested we bring the younger two in to have them tested as she thought they might be asymptomatic carriers. They of course were closing in 10 minutes and the kids were at home, but they were nice enough to stay open long enough to have Jason bring the kids down. Sure enough, Lindsay tested positive for strep, so she's probably the reason Bailey and I keep coming down with strep. So now we just need to get Jason tested and on some antibiotic, and then our whole family will be on antibiotics. 'Tis the season for sharing, right?

Long time gone

Wow, I was just looking at my dashboard account to get some information about a post I posted to my business blog and realized the date on my blog for my last post was back in September. That's so sad! So just a quick post today, a little update about everyone. Bailey is still in band and loving it, she's playing the clarinet in advanced band and going to be starting the trombone with beginning band. She writes all the time and has her own tumblr page (don't ask me what it is, she changes it all the time and I can never remember what it is). Cole is doing marginally better in school this year. He's still having the same issues and we don't know how to help him, and I'm still fighting with the school to get him help. He sees a psychologist and psychiatrist often to help him work things out, but that's a long drawn out process so progress is slow, frustratingly sometimes. He really enjoys video games, which we use to help him work on things that are hard for his brain to do in other environments. He started band this year and is doing percussion and is doing really well. Lindsay also started seeing a psychologist for her anxiety, it had gotten to the point where it was just interfering with her life so we wanted to help her with it. She also started band this year and is playing the clarinet just like her big sister. The band teacher loves our family because we have such talented musicians.

Jason is just busy with work and tennis a few times a week. He doesn't have a lot of down time, and when he does it's usually to help me out with housework. My business has taken off this time of year. I've heard this time of year is comparable to a CPA's March and it really has been for me, two to three bookings a week until the middle of December, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I've been very surprised at how quickly my business has grown and I've gotten so much positive feedback from my clients and their friends about the quality of my work. I love my job very much. I do have trouble learning how to balance the new found work with taking care of my family and the house, but it's nice to be busy. If you want to check out my work, you can view it in one of three places, my website, my blog, or where I post most of my work, my facebook page. I'll be taking our Christmas card photos this weekend so hopefully I will have the time to post them here soon.