Our Crazy Christmas Season

December rushed in and now it's almost over. I can't believe how quickly time flies! It has truly been a month of great trials and great blessings.

It started with lots of studying for finals. Allan is finally done with school for this semester and is so grateful for the break. He did very, very well in 2 of his classes and well, we'll wait and see about the last one. But hey, it's over!..until January.

Last week I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). It's a form of arthritis that affects your knees, shoulders, heels, pelvis, spine and others and causes random tender spots around your body. The main symptoms are chronic stiffness and pain and fatigue. This is my 4th chronic disease. I'm getting quite the collection here. Haha. This one wasn't a devastation though because I've had symptoms for over 10 years. It just hasn't been advanced enough to be picked up by x-rays and MRIs (they look for sclerosis in the pelvis as the main sign) until now. It's just nice to not be told "We don't know why you hurt. You just do." because that's what I've been told for the last 10 years. At least now that there's a diagnosis they can do things to help me. So it's actually kind of a relief to finally have the official diagnosis.

My singing group, Voices, started to perform and we had 24 performances in just 2 weeks, not including the 6 Christmasgrams we did in just one day. It was a blast, but very tiring. I'm so happy to have a whole week off. We perform at the North Visitors Center at Temple Square on Thursday and then have one last performance just for family and friends on the 26th and then are done...until we start practicing for our singing Valentines in January. :)

I'm amazed I made it to every performance because like I said, a huge part of AS is fatigue. I was truly being sustained by the Lord. In fact, the day after our crazy 2 weeks, I crashed pretty hard. I didn't get out of bed much for about 2 days. Luckily though, I didn't actually get sick. It was a HUGE blessing.

Our last trial was that Allan lost his job last week. Needless to say, we are pretty stressed. It's also been a great blessing because it's truly brought Allan and I closer together and closer to the Lord. We've felt a constant feeling of peace both with each other and in general. It's so nice! But if anyone knows of job openings, please let us know! We so appreciate everyone's prayers.

I'm hoping to post a Christmas card on our blog soon as we just didn't have the time nor energy to get them made and mailed out to people. In the meantime, happy holidays to all!