January 2010 Wrap-Up

It's hard to believe that January is gone and now we are a week into February! Where does the time go? Even more, where has my little man gone!?!?! On Tuesday, my lil Michael will turn 6. Can it really be that he's 6?!?!?! I mean, I just had him yesterday, right!?!? He is growing up so fast and I want to capture every single moment of his life. I know that soon the time will come when mommy won't be as important as I am right now. *sigh*

This past month has been a challenge for me in every since of the word. The first 3 weeks were great (even had a snow day, which is super rare here!) and then it seems that life isn't getting the memo that I live in a drama free zone! I fell ill at work about 2 weeks ago. I really think it's all stress related but so far, nothing definitive has surfaced. I've had numerous EKG's, worn a Holter monitor (that's a heart monitor) for 24 hours, had several tubes of blood extracted from my poor arm, endured a CT Scan (did you know those things cost $5000?!?!?! it only took about 2 minutes!!!!!), and several visits to the doctor. I am scheduled to see a neurologist in a couple of weeks and if they don't see anything, the doc is going to chalk it up to "something they can't put their finger on". That's real comforting! I'm still having symptoms as before, but not as bad and I have not passed out since that Wednesday at school. I'm just really tired all the time and have very little energy.

If this wasn't enough, I went to a conference in Statesboro, GA last weekend. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive from my little town of Covington (filming site of Vampire Diaries, and in the past, In the Heat of the Night, Ben 10 Alien Force, Halloween 2, and Dukes of Hazzards, for those of you who didn't already know!) I take my family on business trips with me (never spent a night away from my kids!!) and I'm so thankful they were with me! Just as we are pulling into Statesboro, the transmission decides to fail (thanks AAMCO, we just replaced it in August!). Needless to say, the conference was wonderful and my family and I was stranded. We called the father-in-law to come rescue us. He brought the tow dolly with him and we went to hook up the van to come home and the people who used it last (he had loaned it out) had torn all the wiring out so we had no lighting. That cost us another night in the hotel (and a day of work for me). Then when the wiring was fixed, the van was too wide for the dolly and it cost us 2 hours of making adjustments and some cosmetic damage to my vehicle. I thought I would never get home but was so thankful when I did! Now we are just waiting on AAMCO to fix it (hopefully right this time) and me getting my wheels back. For the time being, I'm driving what feels like a tank (a full extended Ford complete with camper top...the thing is HUGE!) I am thankful for having wheels to drive though so that I can travel back and forth to work and other important places.

All that being said, I honestly didn't think I'd read more than 5 or 6 books because my month was so busy. However, I ended up reading a total of 12 books, which totaled 2814 pages and an average rating of 4.325!! Here's the breakdown (clicking on the link will take you to my review of that book)!

Jillian Dare by Melanie Jeschke
Green by Ted Dekker
Calamity Jack by Shannon and Dean Hale with illustrations by Nathan Hale
Thicker Than Blood by CJ Darlington
Lunar Antics: Boy Would I Hate to be Made of That Stuff by Robert Walters
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney (YA READING CHALLENGE)
Tea with Hezbollah by Ted Dekker and Carl Meadaris
Sand to Stone and Back Again by Nancy Bo Flood
A Highlander's Destiny by Melissa Mayhue
The Giant Slayer by Iain Lawrence (YA READING CHALLENGE)
The Glassblower by Laurie Alice Eakes (CHRISTIAN HISTORICAL FICTION CHALLENGE)
The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene (YA READING CHALLENGE) (NANCY DREW READING CHALLENGE)

I also made a total of 52 comments on other blogs. Not near as many as I would like but I did make more of an effort to blog hop in January. I hope to increase this by a few each month. Other fun things that occured in January were Natasha's Bloggiesta and I celebrated my First Bloggy Birthday. More prizes will be announced for the Birthday Giveaways later on this week. Thanks again to Megan Dimaria, Shelly Nicholson, and Candace Calvert for donating books for my birthday giveaways!

Onward to February and more great reading! I've already finished 2 super great books that I'll be sharing reviews of shortly! Don't forget your sweetheart on the 14th! :)