Looking Back

January 2015, a time to reflect on 2014 and make goals for 2015.  Looking back, the first couple months of 2014 were rough for us.  Honestly, I look back at pictures from January of last year and can't help but remember how depressed I was.  Postpartum depression hit me hard and adjusting to life with a newborn & an 18 month old was anything but easy.  After having a few major breakdowns, I caved and got help.  By the beginning of February, I was beginning to feel a lot better!

January and February brought about a few other changes in our house (as if having a newborn wasn't enough!).  After many months of talking, we decided to find a new home for Winston, our miniature dachshund.  After the birth of Elijah, we had noticed a major change in Winston's personality.  He began marking EVERYTHING in the house and would growl/try to nip if Elijah came too close to him.  After coming to the realization that we didn't have the time or money to invest in re-training Winston, we found a good home for him.  It was extremely hard to see him go.

As if that wasn't enough, Luther passed away a couple weeks after we had re-homed Winston.  This was really tough on me because Luther had been my companion for the past 8 years; he was with me during MANY life transitions.  It's been almost a year since he died and I still find myself missing him.

A couple weeks after Luther died, Dustin started struggling with a mysterious sickness that we still don't have an answer as to what it was.  To this day, I am convinced that he had valley fever, which I'm going to assume was caused by moving dirt when he had buried Luther.  For months, he had a fever every single day, sometimes accompanied by chills & throwing up.  We had several trips to the E.R. because of shortness of breath and many doctor's appointments.  One of his final boughts of it occurred on Easter morning and he slowly started to get better after that day.

By May, things started to calm around here.  We celebrated Dustin's 30th birthday and looked forward to celebrating Elijah's second birthday & our 5 year Anniversary in June.
 

Happy Birthday, Elijah!

A little getaway at Loews!

The rest of our year was pretty "normal", for which I'm thankful.  We ended our year with a bang, by taking a 2,000 mile road trip to Wisconsin.  We hadn't taken a vacation for a year and a half, so this trip was much needed.  I think the thing that I enjoyed the most about the trip was that we got to spend two and a half weeks together.  
 

Christmas in Wisconsin

Happy Birthday sweet girl!

And so, we say good-bye to another year and look forward to a great 2015!