Today I am…

Looking Back at 2014!

It was a tough one for me this past year!  As most of you know, I found out I was pregnant in February, although the announcement of our New Addition came later, when I knew that all was ok.

Because I knew it would be an interesting pregnancy, I attempted to start a series entitled Pregnant Over 40 to share with others what it was like in this age group.

Shortly thereafter, however, I became very sick.  Not just with normal morning sickness, but flu-like symptoms for a couple of weeks.  Later, after going to the Dr., I was diagnosed with Toxoplasmosis.  It was terrible.  The meds made me very sick so I didn’t blog much at all…just here and there as I could.  Of course, I started another series, The Truth About Toxoplasmosis to share my experience and educate, but I was not able to do much with it.  It was all I could do to just get things done with my traditional sales career and family.

As soon as I found out that the Toxoplasmosis had not infected the baby and that I could stop the medicine, we took our first family vacation. Two weeks in Jamaica.  All-inclusive.  Pretty awesome.  I never thought I could take that much time and truly relax, but I did.  I am already counting down until our next one.

But of course (given the year thus far), about a month after our return, feeling as normal as a pregnant woman could, I went into the hospital. My water broke early.  I had one very hard and scary week, but our sweet Mattias entered the world.  A bit early, but healthy.

He spent a lot of time in the NICU (7 weeks), but is now home, healthy, happy and growing!

While all this was happening, My sweet Emma turned 5 and started Kindergarten.  Such a big girl.  I am so proud of her.

Due to all the events, over the course of the year, there were a lot of things that I was not able to accomplish.  Things such as blogging as much as I would have liked to, growing my bhip business, growing my Denise Designed services and participating in the One Little Word Challenge.

While it sounds so bleak.  I was able to do some of all things described above…just not as much as I would have liked.  So to highlight some blog accomplishments, I choose to feature some of my DIY projects as part of my Top DIY Projects of 2014.  As I was writing the post, I realized that I had done more blogging than I thought, so these were only a snippet afterall.

The saying that When One Door Closes, Another Opens is true.  Doesn’t matter whether it was Mattias being born early, Emma starting at a new school, struggling with work and family or something more simple like a Link Party, doors closed and new ones opened.

One of those doors that closed was my link party.  As most of you know, Share it Sunday came to an end.  A big thank you to Michele at Our Rosey Life and Sondra and Sondra Lyn at Home for putting up with me over the past year. But no worries!  A new door opened and I was able to launch another Link Party, Sunday Features. Its turning out to be a hit!  Thank you to all of you who have been linking up and partying with me.

As you can see, it was tough, due to many challenges.  But I had a lot of highlights as well…most around family and health.

A huge one, that didn’t fall directly into the family and health category (although the accomplishment make both of those categories better) that made life so much more easy was my quota attainment at work.  I hit my number at the halfway mark for the year.  How fabulous! Making my number helped me to reduce some stress and motivate me to figure out how to do more to finish my year out on top!

So the year was definitely a rollercoaster, with some disappointments and some blessings.  My biggest accomplishment was truly learning how to better balance and focus on…FAMILY and ME!

2014 is now in the books and I am ready to see some positive things in 2015.  I will be sharing my Looking Forward to 2015 later this week so stay tuned for all the things already accomplished in the first few days of the new year, along with the things to come!

But before I end, I just want to thank everyone for all of your support and help.  There are so many people that I can’t call the out here, but you know who you are!  I am truly blessed!