Jay-B's Reflections: Happy Easter!!

What a long a crazy week! We are at the end of the week and it is Easter morning. We've just enjoyed a wonderful breakfast. Amy made waffles and I made sausage. I also made myself a few fried eggs. As of Tuesday morning, I am officially on a new diet to try and improve my health. I am not drinking any more caffeine and I'm mostly drinking water. I do throw in a glass of milk every now and then. So, mostly fruits and vegetables. Given that I'm not back to 100% health from a digestive standpoint, it really hasn't been that hard to adopt this diet. The most crazy thing is that tomorrow morning, we go to the hospital for Amy's c-section and we have little baby Jarrett! Crazy!!! It will definitely change our life, but I'm hoping it does. I want our lives to slow down a bit (if possible) and I want to spend the next month >90% focused on my family. I've been spending too much time worried about my own health and about work. Here are some photos of the family getting ready for church this morning (BTW - I LOVE NOT HAVING CHURCH MEETINGS ON SUNDAY!!)

Highlights from this past week are:

We have furniture in the basement!! We had our sofa, our table and chairs and our pool table delivered today! They all fit really well and they look great. I really love the sofa! We watched some TV yesterday and it was awesome to just cuddle with my kids and relax a bit.
Pain - wow - pain!!! Given that I cannot take relafin anymore for my back and I'm still trying to recover from the C.Diff, my AS symptoms have really gotten worse. I am so stiff and in such pain that it is really hard to move. I can't live like this - not the way that I want to. We have a young family with growing needs and I have too much to do. I need to find a way through this pain. On Friday afternoon, I went for a massage and I think things are actually much worse now - the pain is EVERYWHERE in my back instead of just in certain spots. I know that I will eventually feel better, but it will take a while and will be a long road.
Grandma & Grandpa Holt have arrived!!! Yeah! They drove out on Friday and got here around 3pm. We enjoyed giving them the tour of the basement and then spending the evening with them at the Dinner Theatre. We saw "South Pacific" and I really enjoyed the play. I have never seen South Pacific before, so it was really enjoyable. (However, this was probably the peak of my pain level for the week, so it was difficult to sit still and enjoy the show).
Long week at work. Although we all had Friday off for a holiday and we only worked 4 days, it felt like 6. It was a long week at work, full of busy meetings and trying to finalize the "cut-list" for the integration with LSI. We could be notifying folks that they will be let go as early as next week. Not fun!!
Passover Dinner - this was last night. We continued our tradition of having Greek food on Saturday night before Easter to celebrate the Passover a bit and to remember the real meaning of Easter. It was really fun and we sat on a picnic blanket in the living room.
Easter baskets & Easter Egg hunt - as always - this is super fun! The baskets were hidding in the following places:

Alyssa - in the dishwasher in the basement
Ashtyn - in the top shelf of the closet in the basement bathroom
Jantzen - in the closet of the smaller basement bedroom
Aubrey - in the game closet in the basement

Craig's list success - on Friday, I cleaned out the garage fridge and posted it on craigslist along with the padded coffee table and the basketball hoop. I sold all of them by Saturday morning. Very successful. I definitely had them priced low, but it was nice!
Tile in the bathroom - on Saturday, we had the tile guy that did our basement come fix some cracks and issues in our master bathroom. Very cool!! He only charged $50 and it looks so much better. Check that one off the list! Now we just need to tackle the mold in the master shower.
On Wednesday night, we enjoyed the art show at the elementary school. Here are the kids with their masterpieces: