12-28-11 Update

I love having so many people who care about us. I have learned if I go 3 days without a post people begin to worry. I think that is so sweet and thoughtful of you all. I truly appreciate how much you all care about our little family. So let me update you.

First we are all four absolutely fabulous. We are just loving being home in our home. Chaz is spending his days playing on his computer and catching up with his friends. Since we pulled into the drive way our girls have had a revolving door of friends come through. So that keeps them really busy. I have been working on catching up with friends and getting my business closed out for 2011 and ready for 2012.

For those who don't know, Chaz loves computers. He is currently taking some certification classes with the Wounded Warrior Project while he is still at Bethesda. So he is applying what he has learned there to his computer here and looking to see what he can do to make it better, faster, etc. He also spends a lot of time helping his other friends online with their computer problems too. As for his health, he is great. His pain is under control and he is walking around just fine.

The girls are on a non-stop train of fun. They have had so many friends over to play and sleep overs I have lost count. We are letting them have as much fun as possible since their friends will be going back to school soon. The girls have friends who are their ages in the homes on both sides of us so they don't have to go very far to have lots of fun.

I have loved that fact that my crew acts like I don't cook in Maryland. They have cracked me up with their food orders. I don't know if it's just because we are home and they are finally thinking about it or what. Regardless I love it! I seriously have a list so long that we won't have repeats while we're here. We have made all of our favorite Christmas treats and as one of our random acts of kindness we took some to our friends who were here in Clarksville for the holidays.

We had a great Christmas day and Santa was very kind to our children. Chaz and I do not exchange gifts. We haven't in years. We let the girls pick something out for us, but we don't buy for each other. Santa did bring our family the game Jenga. Deryn was excited because and I quote, "Ms Stephanie, (Chaz's OT) let us play that together and that it is great exercise for Daddy's hand." I did brake the rule this year and I bought Chaz a 50-cal bottle opener from Bullets2Bandages.org because it was just too freaking cool. Chaz and I totally don't need anything this year (except a new house) so we only focus on the girls at Christmas.

We did get to have a great dinner and evening with another wounded warrior family the other night. The Kurtz family has family ties to Clarksville. So when we found out we would be in the same place at the same time we decided we needed to get together. We had them over for dinner and it was just awesome to have them in our home. We ate and laughed and it was just plain terrific to be in their presence and to be away from the hospital.

I have had a very lovely run in with my allergies. So I have been having fun trying out different meds to make it all at least calm down so I can breathe. I even went to bed at 6 on Christmas night. I woke up feeling much better and then dove in to taxes, taxes, taxes. I love my job and had to contact the IRS to find out what all I need to do to keep it going with my situation. I got those answers and now I just need to close out my books and back up files and finish out 2011.

As you can see we are just moving right along and are enjoying our stay in our home in Tennessee. It will be hard to return to Maryland, but we are not finished there yet. We will go back there and make the best of it. I am just so thankful for all of the wonderful people that we have in both places who make this journey so much easier!