What were you grateful for this week?My own room. 

What was the most difficult or challenging part of this week?Surviving 10 days at the Mountain. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week.  Everything that I did for my family and the two other families that were with us. 

Tell us about your week!  I am just going to start off by saying that I literally looked myself in the mirror when I finally arrived back in Milan, and OUT LOUD SAID “You did it and I am proud of you.” The Mountain is my sanctuary, as I have said in previous posts. I love the peacefulness and the house itself. Add in the skiing and how wonderful THAT is, you really don’t have to do much to convince me to go away for the weekend. But with the two added families, it was a completely different experience. Not that it was a bad one, but to say that the past week of my life was easy would be a fairly large lie. I am also incredibly grateful for this family and the things that they do for me and I am obviously very much in love with my little gremlins (G & P), but after experiencing other people’s children? I looked at my potatoes with so much love and relief. 

On top of the stress and work load that I was under, EVERYONE got sick. [My host family’s oldest son] threw up, one of the other moms spent all night throwing up, [my host mom] was sick for a full two days (still is), kids were pooping irregularly and/or too often (my fingers constantly smell like bepanthanol and my gag reflex really had to step it up), etc. And ON TOP OF THAT, I wasn’t sleeping. Which isn’t a new development, it’s something that’s been going on for quite some time now, but it has really started to wear me down. So all things said and down, things are a bit rough around here. Oh and I’ve been here for nearly six months, which just goes to show that time has absolutely no mercy when it comes to the speed with which it moves.