Running in Circles: Happy New Year!

Wow. I can't believe it's the new year already. Seriously, where does the time go? I've been thinking alot lately about the last year (well, honestly the last two years). I haven't really talked about this on my blog, but now that I'm FINALLY GETTING BETTER (!), I think it's time. It's been two years. For two years, my life has been a series of ups and downs. Big downs. I first got sick last January when I was pregnant with Lia. And I was REALLY sick. I had 5 ER visits, 3 hospital stays, and saw probably over 30 different doctors over a 5 month period. Nobody ever figured out what was wrong, and then one day, everything was back to normal. Six months went by, and I found my health going downhill quickly.

2009 brought worsening symptoms (crazy bad hives, joint pain and swelling, never-ending headaches). I saw SO many different doctors. I even went to the Cleveland Clinic in July and saw 6 different specialists there. I spent most of the year on large doses of Prednisone, Doxepin, and many other drugs. At one point, I was taking 15 prescription drugs every day. I've had just about every blood test under the sun done on me, skin biopsies, MRI's, you name it. Still, no answers. No one could explain why I was sick and the positive effects of the drugs were always short lived. The Prednisone was the one drug that kept my hives at bay, but it made me short-tempered, moody, angry, gave me insomnia, and made me FAT. I spent 8 months of 2009 on Prednisone. The last rheumatologist I saw in September told me that we were out of options. They had tried every drug on me that they had and none worked. He told me that I would have hives for the rest of my life and that I would never be able to get off the Prednisone.

That's when things finally started turning around. Thanks to some facebook friends of Josh's, I was encouraged to start seeing a Naturopath. Now, I'm not going to lie... I was totally against it. But to be honest, I was out of options. I knew I had to put my full faith in this doctor, and that's what I did. Everything she told me sounded a little crazy and weird, but it's been 3 1/2 months since I started seeing her. I'm off ALL of my prescription drugs and I'm feeling 98% better. My hives are gone, the joint problems are gone, and so are the headaches. It turns out that the very same drugs I was taking to make the hives stop were simultaneously making me better and worse at the same time. The antihistamines and immuno-suppressants were helping with the hives, but they were also doing damage to my liver and kidneys, which is what was causing the hives in the first place. It wasn't until I started weaning off the drugs when I was able to see this for myself.

I am SO thankful for my health. Being so sick for so long has really had a huge impact on my life. There were so many things we didn't get to do and so much time that passed getting us further and further behind on everything... work, housework, laundry, raising babies, being married. Now that I'm better and I feel like I have my life back, I've got a lot of new year's resolutions. I decided to blog my resolutions this year and also to write them out and hang them up somewhere in my house. 2010 is going to be the year when I put my priorities first. And I figured having a constant reminder of that couldn't hurt :) I'm sure I'm not the only person out there that makes resolutions every year that get forgotten after a month or so.

So, here goes:

Resolution #1: Be healthier. I'm going to continue seeing the Naturopath and following whatever diet and supplement regimen she prescribes. I'm going to lose the rest of this drug-induced weight I've gained in 2009 (about 25 lbs to go). I'm going to do some form of exercise at least 5 days a week, even if it's just chasing my kids around the house or the yard for 30 minutes. I'm going to keep eating alot of veggies even after I lose the weight. I'm going to go to bed at a decent time (by 11 pm) at least 5 days a week. I REALLY need more sleep :)

Resolution #2: Be a better wife. I'm going to spend more quality time with my husband and less time worrying about the never-ending list of things to do. They can wait. We're going to have date night once a week, even if it consists of a red box movie and low fat popcorn. And I'm going to make sure that I support him in his dreams and goals and make sure he has time for himself.

Resolution #3: Be a better mom. I'm going to yell less. I'm going to discipline a little more and stick to my guns better so that my kids know I mean business. Hopefully this will equate to them listening more and me being less frustrated. I'm going to remember that they are just little kids and sometimes little kids are bratty. Even when they're not tired. I'm going to spend less time picking up after them and more time playing with them.

Resolution #4: Travel more. Traveling is really important to us, but we always have a lot of excuses for why we don't travel more. One of the best things about our job is the flexibility. There's a lot of time during the year that we can sneak away for a week or two and we're going to do more of that this year. Our road trips are a pretty inexpensive way to travel and we have so much fun.

Resolution #5: Work less. I know that sounds weird, but it's true. We've spent the last 4 years of our life working like crazy to build a successful business. We've both been able to quit our day jobs and just focus on our dream job, photography. This has really improved the quality of our life, but I don't feel like we take advantage of that enough. I want to be more efficient when I work. We're going to take at least one full weekend off every month. We're going to take at least one full day during the week every week off. And no more working seven nights a week. We're going to work 4 nights a week max.

Resolution #6: Buy less stuff. Last week, we ravaged the house, piling up the minivan with donations for Goodwill. That combined with having to find a place to put all the kids new toys from Christmas made me realize that we have WAY too much stuff. So, I'm going to spend less money on things we don't need so that we can spend more money on the things we value... time with our family and traveling.

Now, I leave you with some images of my favorite people in the whole world, taken way back in June on Father's Day...