Why I love winter.... and why I don't love winter

I love winter for many reasons - the beauty of snow falling while you can stay inside and be warm (hence the pictures from our backyard), the Christmas season, snow days, hot chocolate, sledding, snuggling under blankets, smelling chili as it simmers on the stove, etc. 

But the one thing that I detest most about winter is the illness that seems to come along with it!  We've been doing pretty well with illness BUT last week, let's just say we made good friends with our friendly pharmacist. I came down with strep throat (a given that I would get sick as I usually get sick at some point around conferences and we had conferences last week).  Unfortunately this also meant that my shoulder surgery (for some bone spurs) had to be delayed because they didn't want to risk the chance of infection.  Then to top things off, when I was home with strep I noticed Jackson had started to wheeze when he was coughing.  Being the paranoid mom that I am (especially since his asthma reaction in the fall) I called the doctor and got him in.  Thankfully they did a nebulizer treatment in the office and it worked whereas last time it didn't and he had to visit the ER.  This time we went home with some steroids and instructions to call if it didn't improve.  Well.... it didn't improve so now we have a nebulizer at our house for him.  At least we won't have to visit the office just for treatments now... and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we don't use it too much!  So the Hansen's have survived round one of illness and now after a weekend of resting and sanitizing the house we're so much happier here.  But a snow day would make things even happier!