Holidays & The Flu - That's Where I've Been!

I know it's been a while since I posted on the blog - the holidays were wonderful, hectic and crazy.  I did my usually DIY projects around the house to decorate and bring in the Christmas cheer.

I made these stockings last year, they took forever because though I'm a patient sewer when I am sewing eye muscles, I am a bit a impatient when sewing fabric!

 I tried to take a little more time off this year to spend with the kids when they were home on break.We worked on little projects together, such as making "Reindeer Chow" together to give my middle's son's preschool classmates.  Got the idea from this blog.Making 20 of something is always more time consuming  than I expect it to be.   I thought making it in bulk would be easier, but the packaging took up time.  And, yes I know - are these 3 year olds really reading these labels?  Probably not.  Am I doing this for myself? Possibly.  But, I'm sure any Moms out there understand - there is this pressure to keep raising the bar with these kind of things and not in a good way.  But, I will say, the reindeer chow was darn tasty and even though I was trying to be low carb, I convinced myself this somehow fulfilled that criteria!My older son is in kindergarten and the room moms asked for locally made presents for his two teachers.  I am ADDICTED to the Magnolia Mom blog and they had this great tutorial on making gingerbread cookie Christmas ornaments.  I actually found this modeling clay at Ben Franklin that was non-toxic so my son could help roll out the dough and cut out the shapes.And the finished product.We spent so much wonderful time with my in-laws family.  My husband has 3 older sisters - one of them lives just six houses down from us, but the other 2 live in California.  They traveled to Hawaii for their annual vacation.  That means 9 adults and 10 children!  We found this great high school senior who is an awesome photographer.  We've been hiring him lately to take our family photos.  Check out his website here.  I saw the idea for the signs on pinterest and though I was for about half a second contemplating buying wood, sanding, staining and then painting with chalkboard paint to make the signs as in the original idea, better sense actually prevailed for once and I went with simple posterboard and a chalkboard pen. We did a lot of things that I've just never had the time to do here in Hawaii, even though I've lived here for over 6 years!  When we first moved to Hawaii, we were so overwhelmed with getting on insurance plans, learning how to manage a practice, build our patient base that we never had much of a chance for me to truly explore Hawaii.  My husband grew up here and his family has been here for generations, but I am an East Coast girl and hadn't even been to Hawaii before we got engaged here!  So, it was wonderful to take the time to do these things with our family.I think that was the most important lesson from this past holiday season - even though I'm busy with work, I really think it's about creating intentional time and moments with your kids.  Quality, not just quantity, right?And, then last week, we went to Maui for the annual Hawaiian Eye Meeting.  The meeting conferences were from 6:30-1pm, so it left plenty of time to hit the pool and hang out with the kids.  So, we decided to take the children with us.  Here are we are the beautiful resort - look closely because this was the last 5 minutes that all kids were healthy.Yup, that's right - the flu that's been going around Oahu hit all of the children.  The first 3 days of the conference, our oldest son had it, then the baby for the next 2 days and then the middle child for the last 2 days.  They weren't even sick at the same time.  And, if you can imagine - 5 of us crammed into one hotel room, cleaning up vomit off the beds, floor, etc.  Not exactly the vacation we were planning.  So, after this meeting we immediately decided to cancel our plan to attend another meeting in San Diego in April.  Just too hard.  I'm sure parents out there can relate - you come home from a vacation, needing a vacation from your vacation!  And, that was with just a 30 minute plane right.  As Arya gets older (she's now 16 months old), it just gets tougher to travel!  But, when we moved out here, my husband knew we would need to do a lot of traveling to the mainland, since all of my family is there.  Before we were married, Jeff and I used to try to take one international trip a year.  We scrimped and saved as residents and fellows - lots of ramen, walking instead of paying the $1.50 to take the bus somewhere, you know all those things to save money .  My hope is that we will resume international traveling in the way of medical mission trips and I'd love to take the kids.  I think it's so important for the children to see how life is in the developing world.  However, the thought of being outnumbered on a plane trip lasting over 15 hours with 3 kids scares my husband to death.  I think it's just about adjusting expectations - you realize it won't be pretty and it's not the same as traveling without kids, but you'll live through the plane ride and the end result will be to create memories that are amazing.  But, that was a bit of a tangent.I'll be back to a more regular posting schedule with an ophtho post about strabismus surgery next week.