What a crazy and wonderful weekend! Getting our tree and decorating with the kids then doing our Thanksgiving/Christmas with my family. This year we went to my sister’s and wow can she really entertain! We had amazing snacks, some of what the girls helped with…
    

And after those sweet treats we better try for something healthy…what a cute veggie train Sarah made!!  

  
Michelle then got out a craft for the kids…a homemade ornament!   

 

She even had a craft for us adults. And thanks to Tim, he turned it in to a competition which made me frazzled and I kept messing up…of all people to compete against…my brother!! And I don’t do well losing to him…which we did 😝   

 This was our finished product…with help from Skyler and Emma! Too bad I dropped it on the way in to the house😟 Good food followed by opening gifts! The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting and playing games…   

 Didn’t take long for Nathan and Caden to get the Lego set put together and Asher sure did love the peanut butter cup Christmas trees! Thank you Michelle and Jeff for opening up your home and providing such a delicious meal and fun activities for all of us to do!! The kids are still talking about it! Was great spending time with everyone! 

Unfortunately with the excitement of the last few days, I did pay the price due to my fm striking today, causing me to be stuck in bed with pretty severe symptoms most of the day. And while this morning, at my worst, I was frustrated and angry…upset that three days of fun and busy with family would cause my body to shut down so fast…I prayed and maybe bickered a little with God! Why do I have to get so run down just because I’m being active with my family?

But, Tim took care of the kids and I was able to rest. Tonight I am slowly feeling better and am so extremely grateful that I continue to have better days than bad. While the bad days are hard to fight through sometimes, I at least know my symptoms are from me overdoing it, pushing myself to the limit…and not because my stents are closed. I do get better after a few days! But am I really overdoing it simply by living my life?

I got to see my entire family yesterday! We got to hang out, and catch up on what was new…and we made memories with our kids! 

With fm, it’s hard to know when symptoms are going to flare up but I have amazing family who are getting a better feel on what this disease does. I am able to tell Tim I need him to take over and he asks no questions…he only sneaks in our room on occasion to make sure I’m breathing…which sometimes freaks me out when I turn around and he’s just standing there peeking at me through the door! haha!

While today was a bad day full of heart palpitations, extreme weakness and fatigue with headaches and a heartrate over 140 simply walking from one room to the other…we did have a wonderful week! I wouldn’t change anything about it! 

I’m not going to stop living life in fear of having a few bad days that might follow! If I did that, I would have nothing to blog about🙃 

So again, thank you to my family for such a wonderful week and thank you Tim for getting the kids to church and to Grandpa and Grandma Lalk’s for dinner and to hang out with family! 

I did do a lot of praying today and the kids had a lot of fun, so really, it wasn’t a bad day after all….finding God in every situation always makes it a better day!