It's beginning to look a lot like ChRiStMaS!!!!

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Thanksgiving

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30 Weeks

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Halloween Festivities

We were kind of bums when it came to Halloween this year. I didn't decorate our house or anything. I think it was a mixture of being in Hawaii for half the month and being pregnant. We didn't do anything on Halloween night but a few days before we got together with some friends and carved pumpkins.

My pumpkin is the spider, and Michael carved the pirate

 I don't know what it was but this year we only had 2 Trick-or-Treaters! Good thing we bought all good candy that we liked so we had it all to eat for ourselves.

Loser Blogger

So I know that i'm a loser blogger, but I have good reasons. As many of you know, I have been back and forth on the whole going private/not going private dilemma that probably a lot of people have gone through. I hate private blogs for the same reasons that most everyone else does, you have to have an account, there's no way to know if they've updated unless you click on it and sign in... etc. Well I think I have come up with the perfect system for me. I don't want our blog to be private, so that everyone can see, but I am putting things in place to make it safer for me and my growing (More on that later) family.

One thing I was really worried about was people knowing our last name, and being able to find out where we live and all that good stuff. If you have our name on the side of your blog please get rid of our last name so that no one lurking can search for our last name.

Another thing I was worried about was that i've heard stories where people have stolen pictures of people's kids and whatever and used them for scams or other things like that, well I found this cool post on how to disable the right click feature on the pictures, so people can't download your pictures. It's super simple and for anyone that is worried about that, here is the link HERE to Right Click disable all your posts

Even if you disable the right click function on your pictures, people can still left click and enlarge your photos. Once the photo is enlarged in a new screen then they can right click and save/copy it from there. DO NOT disable left click all together, then you wouldn't be able to click on links, comments, or anything!!! In order to left click disable your pictures you have to remove the link for every single photo. It is a little time consuming but I think it is totally worth it! I am in the process of doing it right now, and since I don't have very many posts because i'm a slacker blogger, it shouldn't take too long. I know sometimes you want people to be able to look at the picture bigger and closer, and I guess if it is a picture you don't mind people stealing, you just don't disable the function for that particular picture. Here is the LINK if you're interested

Anyway, that was probably a long boring post and I commend you for getting all the way through it. From now on, i'm going to be a better blogger, because ultimately I do want this as our family journal for everyone to be able to look back on. And also, if you do read my blog, comment once in a while so that we can still keep tabs on each other. I feel the blogging world has made us all slackers on our relationships since we can just click and see what everyone is up to, instead of asking them and actually interacting with the people we are reading about.

Long time no blog

Well everyone, the time has come for me to take on the daunting task of updating my blog up to date. It's been a year as of today since I have updated and now I feel completely behind and overwhelmed. Everybody keeps telling me to update my blog but I know that I need to go back and post some major things that have happened in our life recently. I know that probably nobody cares, but just like everyone else I eventually want to make our blog into a book, and it's more of a journal for me than for anyone else so I just need to suck it up and do it. Since this blog is mostly for me, i'm going to post them around the date they happened, and fake like I wrote it back then :) My goal is to have them ALL done by Sunday night so wish me luck. Keep checking back for updates if you want to see them.

We found out what we're having and it's a......

I know these pictures are terrible but they're the best ones I could get. Who knew it's almost impossible to scan an ultrasound picture. Either that, or our scanner is just dumb. Anyway, we went to the doctor today and we are having a GIRL! I totally had that feeling the entire pregnancy that it was a girl. It looks like Intelligender worked for me. Poor Michael was kind of hoping for a boy, but I know that she will have him wrapped around her little finger! We honestly have no idea what we're going to name this little girl, so if you have any suggestions bring them our way!

Intelligender

I don't know how many of you have heard of Intelligender but it's this silly test that you are supposed to pee into and it supposedly will tell you what the gender of your baby is as early as 10 weeks. An ultrasound can't even really tell until 15 weeks. I saw it on the show The Doctors and I thought I would try it out just for fun. It says it's over 90% accurate so I guess we'll see. I took the test and I'm pretty sure it said we're going to be having a girl! We'll find out September 8 what we're having for real, but it will be interesting to see if Intelligender is right!

First Doctor's appointment

We had our first Doctor's appointment today and we got to see our little baby! I haven't really been sick this pregnancy, I have just been exhausted. I would literally come home from work everyday and sleep until the next morning. Poor Michael wondered what he got himself into. Anyway, here is a little picture of our gummy bear. It was wiggling it's arms and legs like crazy. This whole experience is so unreal, it's so weird to think I have a little alien growing inside my body.

Baby Bean 10 weeks

oh BABY!

Yes, it's true! We're going to have a baby! Are a very shocked and excited and just trying to let it all sink in. Since I really want to remember all the details, I am going to tell the whole story. I am a pretty private person, so most people don't know all the details but I want to be able to look back in 40 years and remember how our first baby came to be.

It all started back when we were seriously dating, discussing when and how many kids we wanted to have. Back then we decided that once we've been married a year, we would start trying to have kids.  Anyway, we decided that after a year we would reevaluate and see if we were ready. Well the year came and went and we decided that although a baby did sound fun, we still weren't quite ready for it so we held off longer and decided we would wait until we were married 2 years. Time went by and I started getting a little bit baby hungry, but nothing too drastic. I knew that I wanted kids soon but I wasn't all in yet. Michael never really was ready either. (I'm pretty sure he could've waited 5 or 6 years)

I went off of the Birth Control pill January of 2009, but not because we were ready to have kids, but because I was really sick of taking it. I was sick of the weight I had gained (although it probably wasn't because of the BC) and I was just sick of what it did to my body. I never really enjoyed being on Birth Control just because I wasn't myself on it, plus I knew that sometimes it takes a while to get pregnant after you've been on Birth Control so I knew that when we were ready, I wanted it completely out of my system. I went off Birth Control and I got my period back normal every month. Time went on and we decided that we were ready as we would ever be to start trying to have kids.

We finally made the decision that we would start trying July of 2009. July came and went and I never got my period. I was so excited that maybe I was pregnant and it would be super easy for us to get pregnant! WRONG. I don't know what it was, stress, whatever but I didn't get my period until October. I was so weirded out that my period had been pretty normal my whole entire life, and even 6 months after Birth Control and then we finally start trying to have a baby and it just disappeared! Anyway, I went to the doctor to see what was up and why all the sudden my period disappeared and she did some blood work and came back and said I have PCOS and Hypothyroidism. Now I had never heard of any of those before,so of course I went to Dr. Google and researched the heck out of both of those. Anyway, the doctor said that before we do anything, she wanted to get my thyroid under control so she prescribed me with a drug that gives me the same hormone that my pituitary gland obviously wasn't producing. They say that Hypothyroidism can affect your fertility so we were hoping that it was just that and we would have no problems. Well once we got the thyroid issue worked out and I was on the right dose of medicine she gave me something called Metformin to take which supposedly helps PCOS. You are supposed to take it 3 times a day and it is just terrible. It made me super super sick and after a month on it I decided that I wasn't ready to be taking that much medication every day. Michael is kind of anti medication and he was hesitant all along that I had to take so much medicine pumping my body full of hormones.

I think I only took the medicine for one month so February 1 I just decided that I was sick of taking all this medicine and really for us we weren't ready to dive that deep into the "having a baby journey" yet. I hadn't had a regular period or I don't think i even ovulated in that entire time frame and I just wanted to get off all the medicine and just start trying naturally again. I knew several people that took clomid to ovulate and I figured that's what I wanted to do. the doctor I was seeing was just a nurse practitioner so she didn't have the ability to prescribe clomid so she told me to find an actual OB that would prescribe it to me.

I called around and somehow found a Dr. about 40 miles away that deals a lot with infertility and we decided to make an appointment with him. He seemed really good and he had a long wait time and wouldn't even accept new patients unless you were referred. Anyway to make a long story really short, we had scheduled to meet with him 3 times over the next 3 months and for some odd reason the appointments never worked out. The first appointment I totally spaced and went the wrong day (which is completely unlike me, especially because I waited so long for the appointment and was so excited to finally get answers). The second appointment we went all the way up there and he had an emergency c section. The third time I was on my period randomly. Anyway I look back on it and realize that there was probably a reason for all this and for some reason I was not supposed to go to that doctor. In that time frame January-April my periods were starting to come a little bit more regularly. Anyway, the month after I finally gave up on going to see that doctor I took a pregnancy test and it was POSITIVE!

From starting trying to get pregnant to actually pregnant it took us about 10 months. To us it seemed like an eternity, but I know in actuality that isn't a very long time compared to what I have seen some of my friends go through. Seeing so many of my friends go through infertility with expensive treatments and things has really made me so much more grateful for this pregnancy. Every time I find myself wanting to complain about my aches and pains and discomforts of pregnancy I always think about those people that have a harder time than I did, and those that might not ever even get to experience pregnancy. I hope to never take pregnancy for granted.

We are due January 26, 2011 and I am so excited because I get to spend most of the cold winter months cuddling my baby inside!

AuStRaLiA

Back in March my parents went on a 3 week vacation to Australia. About 2 weeks into the trip we got a call from my dad saying that my mom was really sick. She woke up one morning unable to speak or get up out of bed. She was mumbling and trying to get up but didn't have the strength. Anyway, my dad decided to call an ambulance and she rode 1.5 hours to the nearest hospital (they were out in the sticks).

To make a long story short they didn't know what it was at first. After an MRI they ruled out a stroke (which was good) but they still didn't know what it was. They thought it could be Viral or Bacterial Meningitis but had no idea which one. They decided to pump her full of anti-virals and anti-biodics and hope that within a few days she would come out of it. It was a pretty scary time for my family with my dad being all alone clear across the world, and all of their kids being far away across the world and not being able to do anything.

Since I was the only person to have a passport I was the lucky one that got to go over there and help. Since I was kind of scared of flying internationally all by myself, Michael decided to come with me! After several days of my mom being dazed and confused she finally slowly got her memory back. It was such a relief to see that she knew who I was and that everything was slowly coming back to normal. She had to stay in the hospital for about 6 or 7 days total so that she could get pumped full of the medicine so that they could make sure that whatever she had would be completely out of her system. She was officially diagnosed with  Meningial Encephalitis by the Australian doctors. To this day we still don't know how she got it, they said it's just a virus that goes around. Someone else could have gotten the exact same virus, but in her body at that time it turned into Meningial Encephalitis.

We got there on a Monday and she was released from the hospital on a Thursday. Our flight back wasn't until Sunday so we had a few days after she was released to finish up the trip with some sight-seeing in Melbourne.  Here are some pictures from our trip.

This is the airplane we rode on. I believe it is the biggest plane that they make. It is a double decker from the front to the back and has 10 seats across with 2 aisles.

 This is the hospital that my mom stayed in. It was super old.

This was just a cool looking tree next to the hospital

My mom will probably kill me for posting this but good thing she doesn't read my blog :) This was her after 4 days in the hospital. I guess the medicine they were pumping her full of made everything taste like metal. For some reason this particular day the food didn't taste like metal so she devoured that hospital tomato soup. To this day she says it was the best tomato soup she's ever had and she craves it all the time! I am pretty sure it's just because that's the first time she had eaten real food in 4 days.

 Another cool looking tree

Wild Kangaroos in someone's front lawn. I guess Kangaroos are kind of a nuisance there. They eat the grass down to the root and it kills it. They are pretty much EVERYWHERE! It was so cool.

 Australian sunset

 Downtown Melbourne train station. It was HUGE

 Michael in front of the free city tour bus

A really cool church

Day of Lovers

For Valentine's Day this year we just hung out at our house with some friends. Julie brought some dough over so we could make yummy heart shaped Pizzas and chocolate lava cakes.

 mmmmm the Lava cakes were SOOOO good. I'm not a big dessert person usually, but these were to die for!

 Lance and Julie about to devour their lava cakes!

Isn't he handsome? I don't know how I lucked out and got such a good looking guy! LOVE YOU MIKEY!