The Bednar Family: Holidays 2013

So it would appear that I am good for update about 1 time a year. That is so crazy because I actually spend the better part of my days sitting at my home office desk in front of two computers all day. It has been a super busy year so here I am in August sitting down to do some updates for the year.

I want to start with looking back at our holiday break with my family in Santa Rosa. As usual we spent about a week in town visiting with the family. There was something different in the air this year as I knew it would probably be our last holiday with my dear grandpa with us.

Grandpa has been mentally and physically deteriorating the last year and we saw a pretty steady decline in 2013. He has a hard time remembering anything happening in his daily life but can still remember the war (WWII) like it was yesterday. This year, I really wanted to make sure we spent enough time with him that I could leave in January to go back to CO knowing that he knew I loved him and how much my life has been enriched by him being a huge part of it. I made sure to bring Luci with me to visit my grandparents every day. We would spend an hour or so just talking and being together. Luci really seemed to take to Grandpapa (she always has)... as she would sit right next to him and hold his hand and talk to him. He would smile, pat her hand and say things like "well isn't she a cute little thing" & "I sure love you". I'm not entirely sure he actually knew who she was but he knew he loved her and he told her often.

I was really looking forward to Christmas Eve & Day as this year would really be the year when Luci was excited about Santa coming and not afraid that "some big man comes into our house while we are sleeping"... that didn't sit well last year. We had so much fun wrapping presents and getting the cookies and carrots ready for Santa and his reindeer. We set up our camera to capture that jolly guy in the action and the girls were blown away in the morning when we showed them the video of Santa bringing their presents during the night!

From here, things went a little downhill. The flu made a nasty appearance. One by one, people started vomiting. The worst was Isa vomiting all over Luci while they were asleep in bed. Luci didn't even wake up until I had to pick her up and put her in a shower to get everything off of her. It was awful. Poor Isa, was so sick and felt terrible about throwing up all over. We were able to relocate Luci & Isa into separate spots, get everyone cleaned up and back to sleep. The only two people who didn't get sick were Luci and me! We were so lucky.

Louis and I got a day on our own to see some friends wine tasting! We drove a few hours and met up with Natalie and AP and had an awesome time.

After this crazy week, we flew home to Colorado to settle back into the snowy winter and to prepare for Luci's upcoming birthday.