Smiling Through the Rain

Hey blog friends, sorry about going M.I.A. on you all. The holidays have kept me plenty busy, so I haven't been around much to blog. I am not typically a holiday type person, but this year Oklahoma decided to have "winter storm 2009" on Christmas Eve. What this meant for my holiday was that I had to go to less houses to celebrate due to bad roads. Awesome! I was able to sleep in, leisurely open presents and then put them away, eat turkey once and actually enjoy it... Our house got a ton of snow and buried all of our Christmas decorations, which apparently our Home Owner's Association (HOA) would have suggested we do with them based on the fact that we didn't win the lighting competition for the 3rd straight year. Our house with all of its snow I thought I'd show you all pictures of the 3 who did win though. We'll start with third place just for fun. I personally feel it's a bit painful to look ...

I promised a post with pictures of our well-lit house (planes actually try to land on it and neighbors can't sleep until we turn our lights off)... This is an overview of the "simple" style we have chosen for our Christmas decorations. We totally live by the motto " less is more ". Now let's break it down by sections so you can truly appreciate the beauty of it all. :) Here you'll see our angel collection next to Santa/Rudolph/snowman/tree. You might notice the little gray rabbit next to Rudolph. Your guess is as good as mine on why he belongs. It's like the Christmas version of Where's Waldo? You might also notice the 8 foot tall Santa inflatable in our front bedroom. He's a little blocked by the North Pole sign in this shot. Next on the tour is our 4 penguins and our carousel. Better view of Santa on this one. Here we have the gingerbread family (hopefully next year we'll need to add a new one...), our soldiers, and our swee...

One of those days just happened. You know the ones. Everything should be fine, but inside you're just a mess. No real good reason, nothing to blame it on, no one to yell at. Just a battle within. And I'm losing. I guess it's mostly just that I'm tired of infertility. Kinda feels like it has conquered me lately. I try to keep control of the situation, but after 19 months of ups and downs, that gets hard. Loneliness and hopelessness settle in, and hope and positivity pack their bags. We'll get back there again. I just need a little time. I'm not sure what I need time for, or if it would really even help. But it sounds good. Stupid holiday season is what's doing this. I wouldn't even put up a tree this year because we should be putting our child's gifts under this year's tree. And we're not. We could have a million gifts and it would still seem empty because in my heart I know what's mising. So I don't want a dumb tree to remind me of th...

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I made and sent out Christmas cards this year. For those who know me, I'm not really a Christmas-kind-of-gal. Too high-maintenance for me. But something possessed me to download pictures onto a Wal-mart card and actually mail them out. Wow! Next thing you know I'll be baking cookies and hosting parties. Aaron and I chose 7 kids to buy for off the Salvation Army tree this year. We usually choose 2-3 but this year they have a ton of kids due to the economy. So we got a few extra. We have now bought 3 bikes, 2 scooters, clothes, an exersaucer, toys, etc. I'm hoping this brings good karma our direction for the next few months. What goes around comes around. Right? Things are about to get really busy in our world. We have Aaron's work party this Thursday, his extended family on Saturday, his parent's house on Christmas Eve and then my family Christmas Day. Lots of fun, but I'm sure we'll be tired a...

It's amazing how slowly days pass when you're waiting for your period (or hopefully- the lack thereof). I'm in last part of the dreadful 2 week wait. And I can't help but let myself fall into that silly hopeful mode again. I've never, ever believed I was pregnant from any other cycle (especially the one where I was actually pregnant). Not the clomid, or the IUI, or post-surgery. Until now . Now I believe that I am. And it's not because I'm having any justifiable reason to think so, it's just that I can't imagine going any longer without being pregnant again. I miss it so much. And it only gets tougher every month that goes by that I come to terms with the fact that my belly won't get bigger (except from holiday eating) and that we won't be preparing a nursery and that I will be returning for empty uterus ultrasounds if I choose more treatment. I miss the phone calls and e-mails and cards telling us congratulations and seeing how I'm feeli...

I had a question on my previous post asking how big a pygmy goat is. They should weigh around 35-60 pounds. Our little chubby goat weighs more in the summertime when he's chowing down on our grass (we don't have to mow the lawn). His belly always look pregnant and he'll eat almost anything. One of his favorites is dog treats and also plants that we don't want him to eat. And he happens to love dressing up for our Halloween parties. The only problem is that when people try to take pictures with him, he tries to eat their costumes. Hope that answered your question! (This blog is turning to crap when I start talking about pygmy goats)

Last night, my sweet husband spent about 2 hours steam cleaning the carpets in our study. They were drying this morning when we left for church, looking brand-new. You could see the pride in his eyes of a job-well-done. This becomes a very important part of the story I'm about to tell. As many of you know, we have one outside dog, Evie, and a pygmy goat named Chester. Evie and Chester are a little on the hyper side so they don't get to come in the house to play. I actually even worry that somehow they might destroy our backyard. Me with my little Princess Mya and Suspect #1: Evie A picture of Suspect #2: Chester in his halloween costume Somehow while we were away being good people at church, these two little criminals broke into our house. By broke in, I mean that they somehow pushed our door open that goes from the back patio into our bedroom. Maybe one of us failed to shut it tight and obviously didn't lock it. Regardless, we were greeted on our arrival home by a very ...

Of all these months that I've tried to do ovulation predictor tests (for my IUI, clomid cycles, etc)and have been absolutely baffled by the results, I finally got my positive test. In the past, I've done them and thought, " is that line as dark as the control line?" "Am I doing this right?" "It is urine I'm supposed to use on this, right?" Now, I get it. This is what a positive should look like. R is the control line and T is the test line. It's checking the LH (luteinizing hormone) in my body. LH peaks right before ovulation occurs. What you're looking for is the test line to be as dark or darker than the control line. I got this positive yesterday(on CD 16) and then my temp peaked this morning. So, it looks like the egg has been laid... I've done my part. Let fertilization occur. Or not. But for now, I just want to say how happy I am that my surgery worked. We never had a chance at getting pregnant before. I NEVER...