I Thought January Was My Friend

After the craziness of the holidays,  I am usually so happy to see January come.  I crave the calm and routine after the dizzying pace we keep in December.  I know lots of people don't love January, but I tend to like it.  Not so much this year.  I thought January was my friend, but it was mean to me! I'm  kidding!  Sort of.  Actually, there were some really beautiful moments this month, but still,  I struggled to keep my spirits up and I am not sad to see the month end. 

Faith had A LOT of downtime, and has been more than a little bored.  She took to creating hairstyles on the little kids.

She is a little Who down in Who-ville.

A dead-ringer for Alfalfa.

When Bethany looks back at pictures of her when she was Greta's age, she complains that I never did her hair.  CORRECTION!  I totally did her hair, but it had a very strong forward growth pattern and it was unruly.  When Greta looks back at pictures, she will have similar complaints.  But for the record, her's will be justified.  I don't always do her hair.

In our efforts to help Faith heal from her concussion and hopefully alleviate her symptoms, I took her to an eye Dr. to check her eyes-- specifically the side that got hit by the dodge ball.  In good news, the Dr. said her eyes are healthy.  She did get her eyes dialated-- and judging from this picture, that was a heavy cross to bear.  

Faith and I are still going for our daily walks around the block.  She still gets dizzy and has frequent balance checks, but overall this past week was the first in which we saw some significant improvement in her energy, lack of headaches, stamina, and focus.  So that is really good.  She has an appointment at the concussion clinic on Tuesday and then hopefully we'll have a better picture of the longer term game plan.  

When it is too cold to play outside....

We enjoyed Abe's birthday date with some of our oldest and dearest friends, the Taylors.  We met in our ward in Draper when our oldest boys were babies and we are so happy to still be friends. 

Our family celebrated his birthday on Sunday evening with cake and ice cream and games.

And then the power went out for the rest of the evening.  As we scrambled to find candles to light, Clark said he feared for our family in an emergency.  I don't disagree.

And then Elinor-- being the unique, fabulous person she is--- had the marvelous idea to put candles all over the piano and play Phantom of the Opera music.  Which really did do something to set the mood and so we told ghost stories and laughed and it was great fun.  

 Not that this happens a lot, but you know when somebody posts before and after pictures of haircuts and you think-- "Oh, that's not really an improvement" or " I can hardly tell a difference".  Hopefully that isn't the case here, but here is the before...

... and the after.  I am really happy with the change and most of my family likes the new "do".  Peter has made it clear it prefers it the old way.  But you know, I think he falls into that "resistant to change category".  And that is okay.

Have I mentioned how great it is to have Clark home?  The boys have missed him:)