A Good Way to Start the New Year!

We started at the end of February, days before the Oscars (be still my heart: "but it IS Colin Firth!").  One of the most popular posts was the one on the Oscars.

As I look back at last year, I'm so glad that the year is over.  We overcame so much.  Our daughter had had successful tricky surgery and was recovering.  I had surgeries and many things went wrong health-wise.  My boys had their health issues.  Suddenly we were a family with embarrassingly bad health luck.  You certainly don't want to walk (or get wheeled into) a hospital with the receptionist looking up at you and starting to enter data into her computer before you even get to the desk!

We had blessings as well.  Ok, I'm not happy that the house is a mess and the remodeling is not anywhere near complete, and you can't find anything you're looking for.  But my middle child got married and I was able to fly (for a price, a HUGE medical price) through twelve time zones for the wedding.  I was able to meet the bride and get to know her and her family.  I never thought I'd make it to Asia but somehow I did.  Secret: it was never even on my bucket list! 

I started a blog, yet months before, I didn't even know such an animal existed.  I've made my family happy because they get a bit of a break from me when I'm writing.  They don't need to answer so many questions or feel guilty that I'm in bed almost 24/7, usually alone and too sick for any company.  

I'm thankful for the friends I've made on twitter and the friends I've reconnected with on Facebook. I can't believe that I can actually SORT OF use a computer and the Internet, thanks to the iPad given to me just weeks before my daughter was first hospitalized.  By her fourth or fifth hospitalization I pulled the monstrosity (the dreaded iPad) out of my bag that I was dragging around with me from hospital to hospital.  When my daughter got stabilized one night - and I dared not move away from her bed - I pulled that sucker out and tried to understand what all the hype was about.

 That, in turn, led me to the family then trying to get me in sync (HaHaHa: a computer pun!) with the 21st century and gifting me with a computer of my own, again!  I kept breaking them, through no fault of my own!  It was a hard and frustrating road and still is.  But I'm doing it and I thank you, those who read my blog regularly, because suddenly I feel as if I DO belong to the human race and may actually have something I can contribute to it.  So, take a bow and curtsy for my thanks to you all.  And I've managed to learn how to sort of use twitter, though that's very much a work in progress.

And in that thankful spirit, to start the year off, I'm doing a picture-heavy post of some of the highlights of this year, a retrospective, if you will.  Enjoy!  You've been part of this, whether you realize it or not!

We talked about holistic medicine in addition to traditional, Western Medicine, but more still to come!

I lambasted the CDC, the NIH and the so-called specialists who were really our enemies in too many instances and proved to be more so on December 20 with the Ampligen hearings (fiasco).

My heart was broken when the posts I worked so hard on became unloved stepchildren and didn't get as much attention from viewers as those dealing with makeup and skincare.  I love both subjects.

We talked a lot about family and the benefits of laughter.  I love this because you can finally see how loony my family truly is: hubs and daughter after two sips of champagne, laughing their fool heads off as they tease me about my taste for contemporary Russian pop and my trying to get them to love it as well, though they can't understand the lyrics (blah blah, blah blah, blah blah!)

At last our first spring together came, and we had beautiful tulips, hyacinths, and other flowers from all the bulbs hubs and I planted when we talked about fibro-brain on this blog.

We celebrated what was for most our first Russian/Ukrainian Easter together, one that falls on the "wrong date" most years...

A two-fer: We talked about insomnia and my daughter was home from the hospital, finally. (Knock on wood for both!)

We enjoyed learning about the makeups that worked well with our funky skin and were easy to apply, like the  BB creams and the CC creams (One link and another link product, Trish McEvoy, as well as pampering)

We spoke of Brain SPECT scans scans and lamented that they had gone by the wayside for fibro  and CFIDS/ME/CFS

And a new miracle cream, Heal Gel was found in Britain which did miraculous things for the  hardiest of scars, including my daughter's.  (A new review, updated and detailed soon to come!)

We talked about makeup techniques, brows 4, brows 3, brows 2, brows part 1 and time savers.

We shared holiday tips on how to survive and we looked forward to the New Year.

 And so, Happy New Year (and a Happy New Year in Russian too!)

And we made it through the holidays and somehow survived!  Here's to starting the new year, 2013, on the right foot.  Here's to all having everyone's health improve.  Here's to all laughing as much as possible and having much love in your lives.  And here's to getting to know you.  

Ciao and paka!