Yes, this is a post of JUST words...

This is the first post-Christmas blog post.
The blog post where there should be an endless amount of pictures for you scroll through.
Stories about children's faces lighting up at the sight of new gifts.
Recounts of our new favorite traditions for our family and stories of our first Jesse Tree Adventure.

Oh and has New Years come and gone, too?
Well then, I should be listing last year's happy memories and this year's resolutions.

Alas...I'm going to make a list of excuses for being such a poor blogger.
Excuses such as
- Christmas morning I woke up with mastitis. Which meant I did not attend the Christmas morning play put on by our house helper's daughter's kindergarten, but Brandon and the 2 bigger kids did. So Christmas morning was a bit lonesome around our house.
- Christmas evening at about 8 p.m. Brandon remembered Caleb and I needed new passport photos printed off for our trip up to the US Embassy in the Capital the next day. He scurried off to a local print shop to have that done while I watched It's a Wonderful Life by myself.
- The next day we dropped Eden and Salem off at a friend's place and the three of us went to the Capital for an overnight stay for Caleb to get immunizations and coincidentally for me to see a doc for the mastitis.
- Did not get to see a doc. They were overbooked.
- Next day. mastitis cleared up, praise the Lord. We came back home to a sickly Salem.
- Salem graciously passed along his cold to the rest of us...which lasted about 3 days.
- New Year's Eve, Eden's cold seemingly morphed into a stomach virus as well. We woke up after a couple hours of sleep to the sounds of a vomiting child, the worst sound ever.
- New Year's Day, Eden has officially made best friends with our sofa, her blanket, and our tv.
- Somehow we became even more insane over the past couple days and have commenced potty training with Salem. Yes, we've clearly lost our minds. As long as we're at home being mopey, we might as well be getting something done in the process, right?


While our Christmas day, the days that followed, and New Year's weren't exactly as we'd hoped, we're still grateful to our Savior for His birth, His gift of life to each of us, and yet another year to look forward to his goodness.