Help!!! I think I have a parasite!

I had a snack at about 10:30 last night, I had some cottage cheese, thinking protein would be nice and sustaining, as well as a few dark chocolate chips and a little fruit. At 3:00 am I was awakened by a painfully ravenous tummy, crying out for food! After a few vain attempts to ignore it, I reluctantly headed to the kitchen to get a snack. This time it was apple slices and almond butter. I struggled to get back to sleep after this because my brain was ON, and I wasn't sure my insatiable little tummy was full, but eventually I dozed off. However, not 4 and a 1/2 hours later, before 7:30 am I was AGAIN no longer able to sleep and ignore my protesting stomach!!

This is very frustrating, for one, as all who know me well can attest, I used to be a champion "sleeper-inner", sometimes lasting till past 10:00 am!! It was lovely! ;) However, in the past month I've lost my beloved talent, as I'm no longer able to last past 8:00 am!! And secondly, I'm extra tired lately since my little parasite is also draining some of my energy, but between kids and tummy, it's hard to find time to sleep. :P

My Darling Baby

Look at the cute little baby I have growing inside me!! ;)

I went for my first ultrasound yesterday and they were excited to solve the mystery of how far along I am. I told them my best guess was 8 weeks. As soon as they found the baby in there, they told me it was much larger than 8 weeks. The system determined 9.5 weeks, with a due date of December 29th.

It was so fun to actually see "Himher" in there, with a little heart beat and wiggling like crazy. I balled of course...but hey, I'm allowed, right?! I'm pregnant. ;)

I read here about my baby's size and development, apparently it's about an inch long right now.

Molly's Baptism

Molly's baptism weekend was really a great experience for her. To start off the weekend, Grandma Carol and Grandpa Don arrived on Friday afternoon (May 1st). They came bearing gifts (that's what they do). ;) Ben got the usual Lego set plus a traditional 4th of July shirt and a handy little pen with his name embossed/printed on it. Ben enjoyed his gifts but it was Molly's weekend to shine so hers were extra special gifts!! Grandpa Don made Molly an amazing doll chest with a real lock and key (I think the lock was her favorite part). :) The chest was made out of cherry wood to match the hope chest that he made for her mom! I can't even count how many times she opened, closed, locked, then unlocked her chest that weekend! She loved it! Then she got a queen size quilt made by Grandma Carol. It's beautiful and a real keepsake too!! She made this one for Molly because Ben gets the one she made for Rachel shortly before she passed away. Molly also got a traditional 4th of July T-shirt (Grandma Carol gives them one every year) and a fun little pen like Ben's, only her name was embossed/printed on it.After visiting for a while and enjoying the gifts (and waiting for Rob to get off work) we went out to eat. We tried letting Molly pick the restaurant, but we wanted something nicer than Chick-fil-A. ;) We chose Johnny Corinos. The kids had a blast and Ben ate everything in sight (as usual). Molly ate her pizza, a few bites of other people's food, and definitely her dessert! ;) (Dessert's the best part).

Saturday morning at 10:00 was the baptism (May 2nd). I forgot my camera (which is ironic because I'm known in my family to be the one to ALWAYS have my camera.) :( So Grandma Carol and Grandpa Don came to the rescue by having TWO and took lots of pics for us! :)

Molly asked my dad to baptize her a few months before her baptism. I thought it was just a whim and that she'd change her mind when it was crunch time because she's such a daddy's girl. However, right until the end she remained firm in her decision and knew exactly how she wanted it to be. She wanted Grandpa Doug to baptize and Daddy to confirm. (I was asked by the stake to give a talk on baptism and was a nervous wreck until that part was over....me and public speaking are not friends.)

The service wasn't really personal, since it was the whole stake combined, (I think it was 6 kids...we had the biggest group and it wasn't even Molly's whole family!!) which was kind of a disappointment for Rob. But then we were able to have just our group for the actual baptism and confirmation. Molly wanted people to write their testimony for her while she dressed after her baptism. (The building was SUPER cold that day and Molly shivered the entire time, except in the font, she said that was nice and warm.) :) The confirmation was really neat and Molly felt that her Mom (Rachel) was proud of her and happy for her decision.

After the baptism we had a shindig at our house. It was pretty packed!! (We'd never tried such a gathering in our little house....it was declared adequate for the group, only just!)

(FYI: In the following picture, Grandpa Don and Molly are sitting on the hope chest Don made for her mom, and next to the doll chest he made for Molly, as well as the quilt that Carol made Molly. Also, Molly's pre/post baptism dress was provided by Grandma Paula. It's one of the silk dresses she had for "Somewhere In Time." After the party Grandma Carol and Grandpa Don went to their hotel for a nap. Daddy went with some of our BIL's and my sisters to watch the latest X-men movie and got out just in time to meet us at Mimi's Cafe where we had dinner with Grandpa Don, Grandma Carol, Grandpa Jan, Grandma Paula, Ben, Molly and I. Lots of fun. After that we visited with Grandma Carol and Grandpa Don a bit more and then had to say good-bye again because they had to head back early Sunday morning.

Day at the Beach

The kids had a day off school the other day so I took them down to the new sand beach that they put in at the lake in the neighborhood. They had a blast and it was fun to watch them play with all the kids that had congregated there. Definitely a hotspot!

Ben recruited most of the boys and they built a "canal system"...he seemed to be the self-appointed foreman.

Molly played with a few little girls and they built their own little lake. Every time she wanted more water she'd go do down into the lake all the way up to her chest, fill up her bucket instead of just dipping in her bucket at the shore and just getting her feet wet. It cracked me up. :)

The Tests...

As per requested: a picture of the first test done at the insta-care lab...I didn't keep the other one that they had to do because I doubted the veracity of the first...but it looks exactly the same. :)

Ever since the moment they gave us our life-changing news at the insta-care, I've been in shock and having a hard time believing that it could really be true. I told my sister Maria that I was thinking about going and buying a whole box of pregnancy tests and using them all just to help myself believe and let it sink in. She told me that she had one at her house that I could have so she grabbed it for me. I used it this afternoon and it was a new-fangled, handy-dandy, digital kind that prints the results of the test right on the screen...well...how can I doubt that?! :)


Thanks Maria. ;)

Truth is stranger than fiction!!

I believe this is one of the strangest, most unbelievable, surreal days I've ever had!

It started out like most other days, driving my kids to school while I plan out my day. I was on Bangerter Highway thinking about the house I was going to clean after I dropped off my kids. I went to pass a guy and as I looked to change lanes I approached the guy in front of me a little too closely (whether he slowed down or what I'm still not sure...these things happen in a split second) so I panicked and swerved into the lane that I had been about to move into. The problem is I swerved too sharply and started heading for the oncoming traffic so I over corrected that swerve and went back towards the traffic that was on my side. Once again I swerved to the left and ended up sliding out of control across three lanes of oncoming traffic. I messed up one girl's car pretty good and she got little cuts on her face. And somehow there was a guy in a Toyota affected too, but I can't quite figure out how. I feel so blessed that my kids and those poor people are all okay!! I believe it truly is a miracle that we walked away from that accident and avoided serious or fatal injuries to anybody!! And I'm so grateful that we were protected!

I was pretty shaken up and couldn't think clearly. Lots of nice people stopped to check on us, but I couldn't figure out how to use my cell, then who to call, then how to get a hold of anybody. Molly was crying and showed me a little scratch she had on her knee. I tried to give her sympathy but didn't think of anything else I could do. Ben piped up and said there was a first aid kit in the back of the car and offered to doctor her up. What a sweet, level-headed boy, just like his daddy! Finally I got one of my sisters on the phone and she came right over and took my kids away from the accident for me. She took Ben to school because he seemed ok. Molly felt too traumatized to go to school today. After they left my mom showed up and gave me a long hug and helped me to feel better. I sat in her car to wait for Rob to show up. Meanwhile the cops cleaned up the road and the tow guy got my car loaded on his truck.

Rob came then and helped me to feel everything would be okay. He was so supportive, reassuring and comforting! I'm so grateful for him! He took care of everything with the insurance and the cops, I was too frazzled to think straight. After that he gave Molly and I both blessings. I just have to say, again, how thankful I am for my sweet husband. He's so sweet, thoughtful and worthy to use the priesthood to bless others!

Rob took Molly and I to insta-care just to make sure we were all okay. We both had a little back/neck and leg pain. I told the insta-care doctor that I have OI so he decided to have a few x-rays done on me just to make sure everything was fine, but he didn't think there would be any problems. After getting into a little gown the x-ray technician asked me if there was any possibility of me being pregnant. I told him I was pretty sure I wasn't because we'd been trying for five years and that I had endometriosis. He said let's just check and gave me a cup to go pee in. He came back a few minutes later and said it was positive....I said "positive that I'm not pregnant right?" He responded, "No, you're pregnant." I started balling and ran (in my little gown) out to Rob and told him. He said, "WHAT?!?" I turned around and said, "Are you SURE?" The lab girl popped her head around the corner and said, "Would you like to check again?" I said, "Yes!" They did another strip which immediately turned pink. They told me they were pretty positive that I was pregnant! I was standing there balling and staring at the strip and they asked me if this was a good thing. :) I told them it was definitely good, but very unbelievable. After that the doctor decided it would be best to fore go the x-rays. He gave me a prescription for Loritab and one for pre-natal vits. :) Then he gave me a list of OBGYNs.

The rest of the day I've been trying to absorb and believe that this day was real. The first part was too horrific to be real...the second....well too simply amazing!!

P.S. Rob and his dad went to the tow yard and took pictures, I'd post some but they're too traumatic for me to look at. :(

CREATE!!

What an inspiring message!!

It gives me renewed belief in myself
and a greater desire to encourage creativity in my children!!

Happy Happy Day!!!

The day has come at last that I was beginning to think would never come!!

We are live and published on the LDS adoption website!!! It seemed that everything was conspiring against us to get to this point, between miscommunication with our case worker, to expired doctor visit/physicals, to part of Rob's driver's license photo copy being cut off so that his background check wasn't working but nobody telling us....to all kinds of other things, it seemed like it would never happen! Well, at the beginning of this week our case worker called and said that we were approved!! I wanted to make sure it wasn't just the preliminary approval, but the actual committee approval and she assured me it was....so I once again thought we were home-free. Every day I checked the website...several times every day.... :) to see if we were up and "live". But alas we were not, day after day. However I was trying not to lose heart because our case worker told me that she didn't know how long it would take the "computer people" to get our profile posted. Finally today I decided to call the adoption secretary over there and ask her what to expect and maybe if we were live and I just couldn't figure it out. :P (She's been in my parents' ward since I was in first grade so I didn't feel too bad about calling to chat with her about it). She told me that we were not published yet and that it was our case worker's job to "push the button" and make us "live". She told me to call her and let her know that. I called and had to leave a message, politely asking her if she might make us "live" on the website. Finally, SUCCESS!!! Tonight when I sat down to the computer, I checked the website, did a search and actually found us!!

You can check it out here if you want.

Now....where's our baby? ;)

P.S. If you know anybody who knows anybody who knows somebody who's looking for a family for their child....you can refer them to our profile its #5588632 on beta.itsaboutlove.org or our adoption blog: http://looking4atiebreaker.blogspot.com/. Thanks a million y'all for your love and support and encouragement that you've given us!!!!

The Prodigal Sheep

A few weeks ago Ben leaned over to me during church and told me that he had to give a talk in primary that day. I told him that it was kind of too late to plan a talk but gave him my scriptures and told him to just find a scripture, read it to them, and tell what he thinks/feels about it. He told me he wanted to talk on baptism so I helped him find a scripture on baptism. But after reading it he handed me back my scriptures and told me that he'd decided to tell the parable of the Lost Sheep. I asked him if he knew it and he assured me he did. (I realized he probably did because he reads either the New Testament or the Book of Mormon reader pretty much every day but was still very curious to see how it would turn out.) :)

Rob and I went and sat in the back of the primary room during senior primary opening exercises and waited with baited breath to see what he'd say. When it was his turn he stood up and calmly said, "I'd like to tell the parable of the Prodigal Sheep." He then went on to relate the parable of the lost sheep, quite well in fact. He even included, in his own words, the part where Jesus explains the meaning to the pharisees (I think...Ben could tell you). :) However, at the end of the narrative he looked over at us and so I mouthed "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen" to him because he'd recently born his testimony in sacrament meeting and forgotten that part. Ben divined what I was mouthing to him but must have been not quite sure because he said, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen" but ended it like a question, and sat down. :)

Despite our amusement we were really proud of him! :)

I Take That Back

I changed my mind again.

No more nicknames or pseudonyms for my blog! :)