We are back.

The holidays came and have gone. Honestly I have to say thank goodness and goodbye!! The holidays this year were really hard!!! They always are, but some reason they were harder than last year it seems. Or maybe I'm just not remembering how hard they were because they are in the distant past. But this year I was an emotional, stressed out and depressed lady. It was hard!!!

Although they were hard, they were fun too. It's a weird situation. They were fun and happy with the girls. Vivian is at the same age Miles was for his last Christmas season and it's a magical age. Yet I found myself not really telling her much about Santa. She was probably a little perplexed by the whole concept because I really didn't speak much about with her. Yet she was aware of enough to know to ask for a bow and arrow...random I know.

I feel as though it's such a blessing to have children still in our home to distract us, urge us and almost force us to celebrate the holidays still. Honestly if I didn't have children around I would bag the whole season and be just fine. But yet it's still very difficult. I'm expected to put up a tree, wrap presents and the such all while having a large part of my heart just aching for another child to wrap presents for. In fact this is the first year we have put up a tree since Miles passed, and I waited until days before Christmas to even put it up. (In fairness I do put a little one in the girls room, just so they have some of the magic of the season.) Mark and I even considered not doing it again this year but we concluded we needed to for the girls, which they loved it!

It's just an exhausting time of year for me. It's hard for me to be so happy and fake so much happiness when I'm broken and aching for my whole family to be together for the holidays. Yet I hide it all from the world around me.

Along with that I seem to get sick each season. I'm just getting over, I hope, some illness I've been fighting on and off since Christmas. When Miles' first passed so many doctors, counselors and more warned Mark and I of how sick we would be over the next year or so. But I was pregnant and I think God protected me. Protected us. However, it seems that warning has now caught up to me and taken hold. Again, it's exhausting.

I don't mean to rant and be such a bummer. I only explain a little of this as to explain my absence for the past bit. But the holidays are done and we are back into the daily grind. Still recovering some from illnesses around the house, and Clara is working on her last molar....finally! She is one of our most adventurous, outgoing and tough children, yet teething has been so miserable with her. Sigh...but we are almost done. So here we are a new year, new adventures, new milestones ahead (some I'm really not looking forward to, like Vivian being older than Miles was in this mortal world) and new memories to make. So let's see what 2015 brings!