(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

Well I did it again. Slacked off and missed Infertility Friday. I have a good excuse this week though. I was so busy packing my entire house on Friday preparing for our big move yesterday. All went well and we are all moved in to Gram's house relaxing and enjoying some down time. I'll do a post tomorrow about the move.

As far as infertility stuff goes, there is no new news to report this week. Nothing has happened and nothing has started yet. I did find out a friend and I are going to be doing the frozen transfer on the exact same day. I have such mixed emotions about it. At first you hear we will be doing it at the same time and you think "Yes this is going to be so much fun! We will be in the waiting room together, going through everything at the exact same time. Having babies with the exact same due date!" All those things are fantastic! But they are only fantastic if both of us have a successful transfer and get pregnant. Reality sets in and you realize there is no guarantee it will work for either of us so it makes it not so great after all. We will be comparing symptoms and getting great news or horrible news on the exact same day. If one of us gets pregnant and the other doesn't, it's going to be very hard. It will just leave you with the feeling of "if it would have worked for me like it did her, I would be doing these things at the exact same time too." Moral of the story, it is life and it's happening at the same time regardless so let's just try to make the most out of it. Please start praying now that it works for both of us and we can share the joys of pregnancy together!! There is totally power in numbers when it comes to prayer so I will take all I can get! Talk to you guys soon!

Happy Memorial Day to all the fallen heroes loved ones and family members! I could never be strong enough to be married to someone in the military, much less enlist myself, so I have the utmost respect and appreciation for them! I hope you all enjoy your long weekend! 

Last Week's Shenanigans

This past week was Delainey's last week of school. We had an end of the year field trip to Chuck E. Cheese which Delainey loved! We really enjoyed her year at Living Waters and are looking forward to next year when she is in VPK. I can't believe we only have one year left till my little princess is in Elementary school. Wahh :( She will be going on Mon, Wed, & Fri from 9-3 so I at least I will have 2 days that I will still get to see her during the week.

 She has matured so much over the year. She went from a toddler to a grown lady!

 As usual lately, our week consisted of more packing and more unpacking for the girls. I swear I get one box packed and 20 minutes later most of it has been pulled out. The girls are loving the empty cabinets though. It makes for some dynamite hiding spots for Hide & Seek. I thought the girls were so cute both laying on their back reading their books. Blake seems so old!

Friday night the girls had a sleepover at Gammoe's house so Dave & I could make our first trip to the storage unit. We did lots of attic stuff and boxes. Babe came to help too so that was lovely. Our real packing day is this Saturday. We have all the family recruited and a 26 foot truck rented so hopefully it won't be too bad. I am getting nostalgic watching my house go from my beloved home of 6 years to bare walls. I brought home both my babies to this house and we have some fantastic memories here. Who knew I would be so attached to a thing. I am so excited for our next journey, but we have some fantastic memories here that I never want to forget.

 Saturday, we went to watch Kenty do a fitness competition and of course Delainey had to test out EVERYTHING. She loved hanging on these!

 We had lunch at Derby on the Park in Riverside and then went out to the beach for Erica's gender revel party. She's having a GIRL!!! I am so excited! She already has a boy and I think everyone on Earth needs a girl! LOL But seriously every mom needs a daughter to be best friends with when they get older and to help them raise their own kids one day. Krista is preg and due Sept. 28th, Erica is due Nov. 18, and Tracie is due Nov. 24th....crazy! Hopefully Jessica and I can join the group soon! :)

Since 95% of my house is packed up, meals and food at home is next to impossible. So tonight we improvised and went to the pool to swim and had dinner at the poolside cafe. It was a lovely night!!

Please pray everything goes well with moving this weekend and that everything falls into place for our closing. On to mom's we go for the next 5 months or so!

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

Last week was a success. I am all paid up and ready to go for the July FET cycle. The nurse was calling in my meds so I will be ready to rock in 3 weeks. We will be gone to Lake Lanier the week I start everything so I need to have it all in my possession ahead of time. Luckily, she told me I could start my birth control 3 days late in June when I get my period. She initially told me that since my period was a few days after the time to start the birth control, I would need to start it a whole month ahead of time. No thanks!! I don't need to be crazy any longer than necessary. So really I will be on the birth control for only 18 days. I can do anything for just 18 days right? Other than that, nothing new over here. I feel like when we chose to do the July cycle it seemed like an eternity away. I can't believe how fast the months have flown by and it is already almost time. Blakely is starting to get a personality, talk some, and move around good these days so I am ready for another baby. I know just wait till I have 3 everyone says, but I am excited to have a house full of maniacs running around!

On another good note, the timing of this works perfectly with where life is for us right now. We have been diligently packing the house in boxes to get ready for our move next weekend. We will be moving in with my mom for about 5 months so if I do become pregnant, it will be awesome to have some help during the first trimester exhaustion. Our house should be ready late October, early November so it should be plenty of time to move in before the next baby comes around. All of this though is a plan. It may not work and that's ok if it doesn't.  We will just have to try again. It will happen all in God's timing. Talk to you guys soon and enjoy your weekend! I get to find out tomorrow if one of my besties is having a boy or a girl!! I can't wait!

Sunday Family Boat Day

This past weekend was spent packing boxes, moving things over to mom and dads house and a day of fun on the boat. It can't be all work all weekend right?! Less than 2 weeks till moving day! :) 

 After church and lunch we headed out on the boat to hang out and have dinner at Beaches restaurant in St. Augustine. We decided to skip our usual sunday family dinner and do something a little different and it was a perfect day for it!

Delainey's 4 Year Update

Height: 43 inches
Weight: 40 Pounds
Head Circumference:  Who knows, but I would say it's an average size. Fits well in hats lol!
Movement: You are a wild woman and so strong at that! You can climb most any tree, you can do the monkey bars and can do a pull over on the bars all by yourself in gymnastics. You shimmy up a rope to about 8 feet, you can do a backbend and are working on your cartwheel in gymnastics. You are still a great swimmer. I am hoping to work on some strokes with you this year, but you usually like to just have fun and not actually "work." Your hopscotch is getting better and when you take your time you can balance very well on the beam. In soccer, you are fast, but not to great at dribbling or kicking the ball on the move. You would rather play tag vs actually playing in the game. LOL
Eating Habits/New Foods: We are moving into a new phase with our eating. It is hard for you to focus at school or in gymnastics sometimes so we are going to try to see if your diet will help with that. Time to cut out most sugars, processed foods, and food coloring and dyes. We are trying to add more protein in the mornings and less bad snacks throughout the day. Your meals consists of: Breakfast: pancakes & sausage,  yogurt with granola, bagel with cream cheese, granola bar or cereal. Lunch: you love to do picnics/finger foods for lunch, especially while at school. Some new snacks you love are pizza rolls, pirates booty, pretzels, apples, salami cheese and crackers, and smoothies.
Dinner: You eat pretty much whatever we eat. You prefer butter noodles to spaghetti sauce and you don't love some vegetables, but you like most foods besides that. You love chinese food, steak, caesar salad, butter noodles, Mexican food, chips and queso.
Sleeping Patterns: You are a sleeper through the night from 8 pm to 7:30 am on average. We have an occasional bad dream or you have to go bathroom and that wakes you up. Once you are up it is rough getting back to bed. You lay quietly but just lay there for like an hour or so before actually falling asleep. You definitely like us to lay with you to go to sleep at bedtime, but it only happens occasionally.
Sounds/Words: You are almost completely good at recognizing all the letters in the alphabet. No we are working on the sounds they make (phonics) so we can start reading. We do need help with writing though. You are just starting to learn how to write your own name. Hopefully this summer we will perfect that. You have a great imagination and love making up stories.
New discoveries/accomplishments:
-You completed preschool -3's class at Living Waters and loved your teachers and class.
-You celebrated your birthday at Disney at the Bippidy Boppidy Boutique and had lunch in Cinderella's castle.
-You are turning into an awesome big sister and are so helpful with her
-You played soccer at the YMCA. It was ok, but you didn't love it.
-You learned how to ski in Steamboat CO.
-You started gymnastics at Starlight and are doing really well.
-We went to Mickey's Xmas party with the whole family.
-You are still a dynamite swimmer.
-You went to the Circus this year and Frozen on Ice
New Friends I've made: You've been hanging out with mostly the same people at school. Callie moved away so Claire is your new favorite friend at school. Your new obsession is boys who you say you are going to marry. One day you're going to marry Noah and then the next day its Alejandro. You can't seem to make up your mind. Luckily we have a long time to decide on that.
Places you went/Adventures: You went to Disney quite a few times for the Christmas party, your 4th birthday, and 2 other times with mom to make use of our season passes. We flew to Steamboat to go skiing for a week, we went out on the boat several times, we went to Frozen on Ice, the circus and lots of days at story time and chick-fil-a. You are loving your weekly gymnastics class too.
Things you love:  Dress up, playing with your princess barbies and clip dolls, watching Disney movies, reading books, playing outside, going to the park, swimming, doing art, playing teacher, making up stories or talking with imaginary friends. You love pretending to be me and Grammy is your mom. It's so funny how serious you take your character.

Clothes: You are in 4T or 5T sleepers and you do 5T clothes for the most part. Your shorts are 4T still. You are still obsessed with dresses and love to wear jellies and flip flops for shoes. These are your current sizes: Gymboree-5T, Target- 5T, Old Navy/Gap- 5T. Size 11 shoe

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

Last week, I discussed briefly my journey with IVF for Blakely and that we were doing a Frozen Embryo Transfer(FET) this summer to try for another kid. I left you hanging with the question of are we going to put in 1 embryo or 2? The answer is our plan right now is 2. There is a lot that goes into it, but I think it is the best choice for our family.

The pros of doing 2 embryos is an increased chance of an embryo taking and getting pregnant, and to be honest, that is really it. The cons of doing 2 embryos are there is a 10% chance of having twins (and there is always the very small possibility that the embryos could split so I'd be looking at a max of 4 kids), if I did get pregnant with twins it is higher risk, room for more complications, harder on the body, harder to do with 2 children at home already, most likely some bed rest, and increased chances of complications if I get Placenta Previa again. Not to mention who knows how it will effect my MTHFR (blood clotting disorder) stuff. So when the list is all laid out, we choose 2 LOL. Our outlook is our chances of both taking are not that great and if I do get pregnant with twins than that is what God has planned for us and we will figure everything out as we go.

I am heading in tomorrow to pay all the fees and have my prescriptions for my medicines called in. The worst medicine of all is the birth control they put you on for 3 weeks. It has so much estrogen, that you literally go nutso. Hopefully I can control myself a little better on it this time and not be so emotional. I'm sure it seems silly to most of you to take birth control if you are trying to get pregnant, but it is necessary to stop all ovulation and get your body on track so they can time all of the shots and implanting properly. After 3 weeks of birth control, you have an ultrasound to look at your uterus and ovaries to make sure there are no cysts and everything looks good to move ahead with the FET. Dr. Brown also does a trial transfer before hand. This is where he squirts dye in your uterus to make sure everything looks good and that the catheter can get to your uterus easily. After these things are done. Things are a go! All of this will be starting in less than a month! I can't believe its almost here. Until next week guys, have a good weekend!

Emily's Bridal Shower & Mother's Day

This past Saturday, we celebrated Emily's upcoming wedding by throwing her a bridal shower. Most of her bridesmaids and friends all chipped in to make it happen and it turned out great! It was at Marjorie's parents house which was awesome seeing how they live on the beach. We had finger foods, coffee and a mimosa bar, and a desserts bar. Emily opened LOTS of presents and we played a few games about who knew the bride & groom the best. We had a great time! 

 After the shower, Dave went out on the boat and I took the girls to the community pool and called it an early night since Mother's Day was the next day and we had Blakely's baby dedication the next morning at church. Well unfortunately our plans came to a screeching halt around midnight when Delainey started throwing up. I followed suit a few hours late. I was so sad we missed Blakely's baby dedication, but Dave brought Boo and he did a great job. We watched the service online. Delainey and I laid in bed all day watching shows and movies and we felt pretty good by the end of the day. It definitely was not how I wanted to spend Mother's Day, but such is life. Here are some pictures I took of my computer while watching it online. Kelli & Jeff dedicated Ivy too so that was cool the cousins were right next to each other.

I hope everyone had a good Mother's Day weekend. It is TPC week here in Jacksonville so David will be there all day Saturday and D & I may make an appearance too. We will see! Enjoy your weekend friends!

(IN)FERTILITY FRIDAY

It's my first week of Infertility Friday and I have already slacked off and not done it on Friday. Friday's are usually busy days for us so my new plan is to doing my post Thursday night so it will be ready to go on Friday. :) We will see how this works out. LOL
Anyways, in my infertility awareness post I mentioned that I was going to try to have another baby this summer and start doing weekly updates on what is happening medically or emotionally or even just say no new news yet! So before we get into what's currently happening, I'm going to let this post be a little background on my infertility journey.

I got pregnant with Delainey via IUI and it was basically a miracle, because at the time I didn't know I had endometriosis. We tried 4 IUIs for another baby. It didn't work. I discovered I had endometriosis by having a laprascopic surgery. After surgery I had a 6 month window where my chances of getting pregnant were increased. I did 5 more IUIs all to no avail, so we decided to IVF for Blakely. I ended up with 7 embryos and we chose to put in just 1 egg since they were fresh eggs and since I was under 30 my odds were pretty good with just 1. It worked and along came Blakely!

So where does that leave us now? Well, I am a realist and know the chances of an IUI working are slim to none so we are not going to waste the time or money trying that. Plus I have 6 frozen little embryos just dying to be put in my uterus :) So we are going to do a Frozen Embryo Transfer at the end of July, pending everything goes according to plan.

After meeting with the Dr. to get more information about the FET (frozen embryo transfer- you will see this abbreviation a lot!), he felt very confident that I had a baby in my group of 6 embryos. FETs are much less invasive than a fresh cycle because 1. you don't need to actually get the eggs out of your body and fertilize them which requires anesthesia and surgery 2. the meds you take are not nearly as intense or expensive (woohoo!) Basically for an FET you take some progesterone to get your body ready to think it's pregnant, then you go to the Dr. and he places an embryo in your uterus with a catheter and then you continue with the meds and just hope and pray. The downside of an FET though is that they are frozen so their viability is decreased. For that reason he really encourages to put in 2 embryos vs. 1. He said there is a 10% both will take and 90% chance only 1 will take, if you do in fact get pregnant. So what are we going to do 1 or 2? You will have to wait for another infertility friday to find out our plan! Sorry again about being a day late to post!  Have a good weekend!

Delainey's 4th birthday trip recap

Yesterday was Delainey's actual 4th birthday, but we really celebrated it this weekend. We headed down to Disney for a Royal Weekend fit for a Princess!! Let me just first start out by saying, this trip was planned 180 days in advance at approximately 6 am. LOL People are crazy when it comes to getting reservations at the best places at Disney so when the day came when the trip was 180 days away (the furthest in advance you can book), I was on the computer at the crack of dawn making sure we got everything we needed! Luckily we did so here is a recap of the weekend with TONS of pictures!

Friday morning Dave took off work and we headed down to Orlando for a nice relaxing day. We started off by stopping by Ikea, then we checked into our hotel (Melia Orlando and it is a dynamite location and 2 bedroom suites which were heaven!) and went swimming, then we headed to Disney Springs (the new name for Downtown Disney) for a nice dinner at Morimoto Asia for Dave's birthday. After dinner we walked around Disney Springs just enjoying the night. We headed home for a little night swimming and then called it a day.

Saturday we got up early, Delainey picked out her princess dress to wear for the day (she chose Snow White), and we headed to Magic Kingdom. Our first reservation was at the Bippidy Boppidy Boutique where she got her hair, nails, and make up done. She loved it!!! It was well worth the $65 to make her look and feel like a princess! She looked so gorgeous!

After Delainey became Snow White, we headed to lunch in Cinderella's Castle at the Royal Table. It was the best food I have ever tasted in any Disney restaurant. I would 100% go back again. I had a roasted chicken over cheesy polenta and David had a pork tenderloin over parsnip puree. We had an appetizer and dessert too. Delainey's kids meal was even good...beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and corn. She met most of the princesses and ended lunch with a cupcake and song to celebrate her birthday!

After Lunch, we did a few rides then decided to head home to swim and let Blakely take a good nap. It was getting pretty hot around 3 pm. Dad & D swam while Blake & I rested in the hotel. We headed to grab dinner at Panera next to our hotel and made it back to Magic Kingdom around 7:30. We did a few more rides and then watched the Electrical Parade. It was our first time seeing this parade and it was really great!

We made the mistake of waiting for the fireworks to end before leaving and so did the other 10,000 people in the park. It took about an hour to get back to our car so that was not fun, but luckily both girls were passed out for that wait! Shout out to my friend Steph who let me borrow her double BOB stroller. It was fantastic and fit both kids with plenty of room to spare! We may be needing one of these in the future. If only I jogged. LOL

Sunday, we went to Hollywood Studios where we had fast passes back to back so we knocked out almost everything from 10:30 - 3:00 and then decided to call it a day and head back to Jacksonville. 

We had a fantastic weekend just the 4 of us celebrating Delainey & Daddy. It definitely was our best weekend to Disney to date! I don't think we will be topping this one anytime soon! Here's to being a mom of a 4 year old and 1 year old :)