Elliana 5 Years!!

I am a bit delayed in posting Elliana's birthday blog, as our house was recently ravaged by illness, pnuemonia and an abundance of snow days, keeping us more than a little busy and away from the computer. 

Elliana's last photo as a 4-year old!!!

It was a wintery wonderland on Elliana's birthday. The beautiful, crisp white snow that we don't get very often (well, usually, this winter is a bit unusual).

It was too cold to play with temperatures in the sub zeros, but we ventured out to the toy store, lunch, bowling and finished the day with dress up and playing!

Cuties dressed up at Rapunzel and Mother Gothel - favorite part of my day! 

We rounded out the birthday weekend with a friend party at Jump Zone, an indoor inflatable playground. Eliana never stopped smiling and LOVED hanging with her friends as they bounced around all day. 

group shot of the friends!

Sick Week

So far, 2014 hasn't been awesome. Sure, we celebrated Elliana's 5th birthday, which will be a separate post, found T.J.'s donated shoes (long story...) and witnessed T.J. turn another year older. But, in all honesty, those are about the only highlights thus far and we are 15 days in!

In the midst of illness it feels like a virus will never leave your body and allow you to return to normal. Such is also true when a virus enters your house and visits each member of the house , truly an unwanted house guest. Last week, a nasty bug struck our family and seems to want to stick around.

We've spent the last 8 days in quarantine as this yucky bug attacked each of us separately. Fever, cough, body aches, lack of voice and energy... Yep it shows no mercy to even our youngest family members. 

With fevers still in half of our little family I know we still have several days of recovering ahead of us. Until then I'm determined to make the most of our time and enjoy all of these cuddles! Praise the Lord for Nana who gave me a day off yesterday to get some of my mojo back and realize that this too is a phase and that there is life outside of the house that someday we will enjoy together as a family. 

This month, we have enjoyed nearly EVERY new toy, craft and project we received for Christmas and birthdays, consumed several series of children's television, snuggled a LOT and created lots of crafts to survive the wintry bucket of sick that we are currently climbing out of. 

Praise you Lord for healing T.J. and I, for giving me a light at the end of the tunnel and for allowing us the flexibility and freedom to take care of our little girls.