Winter sucks

The last week has brought many challenges for us. First, we had to cancel Christmas with my parents because my mom got sick and a blizzard hit. That same weekend, Brianna got the stomach flu. The stomach flu was then inconsiderate enough to come and visit Kaitlyn, Andy and me. We were bummed, especially after having to "cancel" Thanksgiving as well as our Christmas with Andy's side of the family. We did make the best of it though, and had our own cozy family Christmas at home. The girls woke up Christmas morning to an especially fun gift that Santa had dropped off overnight - a brand new play kitchen. A pretty nice one, in fact...Santa's elves must have worked hard on it.

We then made plans for this weekend to visit Auntie Danika and family in the cities - which have now also been cancelled as Brianna and cousin Piper got some sort of virus. I'm not sure how Piper has been doing (good I hope!!!) but Brianna took awhile to recover, and even yesterday was still battling the high fever and is now developing a nasty cough. However she is definitely on the road to recovery, since the first day she was sick (Tuesday) when her fever was 104.3 at Urgent care.

Our next plans are for Cook next weekend, to finally have Thanksgiving/Christmas with my parents. I hope everybody stays healthy!!! Winter sure is a pain in the butt, what with all the snow and cold and illness that floats around. I can't wait for spring!

New Years Eve was last night and our Christmas present from my parents was delivered - new living room furniture! We have spent 5 years with our old stuff, which was already worn when it was passed down to us in 2004. But now it is just plain awful...although shockingly, somebody on freecycle wanted it. And when she saw it, she said it is "much better than her old stuff". (Yikes, what is her old stuff like?) By the time it is retired for good, it will at least have definitely been used as much as possible - and then some.

Brianna and Kaitlyn are starting to play together and interact more and more - tossing balls and chasing them together, pressing buttons in their new kitchen then looking at each other and laughing at the noise, and even rolling around on their Dora couch together, almost wrestling at times. I love watching them get closer and seeing them both realize that their sister can be...FUN!

That's all for the first post of 2010. I hope everyone has an awesome and memorable year this year - I am sure we will!