Happy Holidays!

Christmas was awesome and it felt SO GOOD to be home and in our own home this year.  And with Stephen being almost 4 this year, it was a lot more fun.  He understands the whole concept of Santa now so of course that it made it exponentially more fun.  Although it was nice that he's still young enough not to question the intricacies of Santa's magic, which I have a feeling won't be as easy next year and I'll have to be much more careful about where I put presents and things like that.

In between hospitalizations, we did have a chance to start a new family tradition; chopping down our own Christmas tree.  We drove out to a great tree farm in Middleburg, VA and stomped around the fields until we found the perfect tree for our little family.  It was actually a perfectly shaped tree; just up on a stilt (as we like to call it).  Plus, it made it nice and easy for Bill to saw the tree down! And we got a gingerbread train completed, albeit with a pretty messed up caboose, the tree and house decorated, and at the last minute, the cookies were made!  Bill also started a really cool tradition of leaving a note from Santa to Stephen net to his cookie plate.  It ended up getting soaked in coffee Christmas morning (shocker!), but I think those notes will mean a lot to Stephen one day.

And I think we got about 90% of the Christmas cards out this year, but in case I missed some friends, and for those of you who I don't know but follow Stephen's story, here's our 2014 Christmas card:

And here's our Christmas morning-in-pj's selfie :)

New Year's was also super low-key this year.  We decided to brave the cold and went out to Mexican at a (fairly) new town center area and Stephen had a great time running around a walk-through Christmas tree they had set-up.  It made for another fun Schwartz-selfie photo op!

But most importantly, Stephen is feeling a lot better!  We've done lab work twice since Christmas and his numbers are all pretty good and his appetite has pretty much made a full recovery and he's been sleeping great.  I'm a little nervous sending him back to school this next week with the flu running rampant, but we also all need to get back into a routine (desperately), so I think we'll just take things day-to-day and week-to-week.  He definitely needs to stay healthy the next 4-5 weeks, because Bill and I have a little vacation planned!!  Bill worked his butt off all year and made President's Club with his company, Wells Fargo, so we'll be heading to Miami for a few days to celebrate at his sales conference in February.  2014 had some super milestones and awesome moments, but also some really low lows, so we're looking forward to celebrating Bill's huge accomplishment and moving forward in 2015 and not looking back!

Although....we do have a big day coming up tomorrow....someone's BIRTHDAY!!!!!  Here's a hint....4 years ago this very minute, I was humongous, tired, and scared out of my mind.  You guessed it...Stephen's birthday!  Tomorrow our little miracle turns 4.  Unbelievable!!