I hope you all had a great Christmas.  We are still in waiting to see when we will get to celebrate with Jeff's family.  The flu has hit all of us here in Greenville.  Thankfully at our house we got Tamiflu right away, and Ada, who had it the worst of the three of us is pretty much back to normal.  Jeff and I, who just had aches are feeling like we never had it for the most part. Jeff's parents are still pretty rough.  The hardest thing right now is staying home, and not contaminating the public....although, I feel the public is probably getting contaminated fairly frequently.  This is especially hard for Jeff and Ada, who both wake up asking, "Where are we going today?"  They are not homebodies.

We had a good 2014, and made the most of it as much as we could.  We are looking to do the same in 2015.  A silly thing, my house made me restless in 2014 and continues in 2015.  I'm tired of everything being brown.  You see, when Jeff and I married over six years ago we both came with furniture and decor, and didn't feel the need to get new stuff, or if we did we matched it to what we had.  So a lot of Jeff's stuff was very neutral tan/brown, and since we lived in his house after we were married, everything leaned that way....and then when we moved here it carried over.  It was cheaper and easier to use the same than to redo.  So this year I have been adding color, and will continue to do that in 2015.  I can't wait for our bathroom to get redone, and to repaint our master bedroom.  The end of this year has made me want to declutter.  Now, I am a pretty organized person...and little ocd actually with that sort of stuff.  Still, things pile up before you know it, you hang on to things you think you might need, but never do.  So hopefully we will be getting rid of some of that.  A food thing, I tried to be even more conscious this year of what I (we) ate than normal.  After reading Grain Brain at the end of last year, it put a desire to cut down on carbs/grains/sugars to lower the chances of diseases...particularly Alzheimers, which prevalent in my family (my mom's side, including her).  We've all been gluten free for a couple of years, Jeff for longer.  I have cut out bread quite a bit.  Breakfast used to always consist of PB toast.  Now it's eggs, greens, cheese, avocados...and such. I have noticed that as I cut back, sugary things really do a number on me.  A couple of weeks ago I had half a apple fritter, and a couple of doughnut holes, and had a headache the rest of the day.  I'm hoping to continue that, and to ease Jeff into it.  He wants to do it, and is more aware, but has found it harder to convert.  I don't know how to get my picky four year old into it...maybe I can figure that out.  A giving thing, a culmination of studies/sermons/lessons at a church, as well as personal bible studies seem to have pointed Jeff and I in the direction of trying to be more aware to those who need help.  We've talked about different things that we'd like to do...one of which is doing more shoeboxes.  That is something that seems like a small thing, but means a lot to the child that receives that gift, and shows and teaches them about Christ.  Ada can also be involved with that one, and she had a ball packing shoeboxes with us this year.  We would like to do at least a box a month.

I think our/my Christmas card has been posted every year that I've blogged, and I haven't done that this year.  We had family portraits with M.C. Bonds Photography at the Burk Stark house in Abbeville, SC back in October.  I got the idea for the card just by living life....I think so many of us now days have our faces in technology too much....(another thing to cut back on, I suppose). The first image was cut with rounded corners to really mimic an iPad. :)