Happy Birthday Dad!

Today was my Dad's Birthday so we went to Kemah to eat at the favorite restaurant, The Flying Dutchman. This is where we always go when we go down there to eat. We had a good group and good conversation. Niki of course kept us all entertained with her hilarious stories. You never know what that girl is gonna do. Tim and his girlfriend Alyssa came. And of course, Terry and I. I took a couple of pictures, Courtney took the rest.

I took this one of Courtney, but the budding photographer herself took the rest of these pictures.Tim and AlyssaNiki

Terry

Me (she actually pose me in this one)

and the birthday group!!!

We had a great time. I love you Dad!!!

As for me, I am feeling fine. Not sure if that is a good thing or bad, but praying for the best. I'm still cramping a little. I hope that is a good sign!!!!

Bed Rest = Boredom

I thought I might enjoy forced laziness for a few days. Well, I was wrong. Why is it when you are forced to do something you enjoy, it takes all the fun out of it? Normally I have no problem laying around all day, but after 3 days of it I think I might lose my mind. I am sore from not moving around very much. Even after today I will still be afraid to do to much, just in case. I am still feeling some cramping which makes me think SOMETHING has got to be happening in there. Oh well, I'm bored so I just thought I would take a few minutes to blog.

Frozen Embryo Transfer......Check!!!

So we got up early this morning to get ready to go to the Doctor's office. I was pretty nervous but in good spirits. I haven't been nervous about the actual transfer procedure, just what it entails over the next two weeks. So we finally get called back and they have me put on a gown and beautiful hat. They also had a hat for Terry and some great shoe covers. Terry was trying to put the shoe covers on and they were WAY to small. The nurse walked in and he showed her his feet and she said, "I ordered X-Large". I'm thinking that's weird because he doesn't have huge feet. So I'm sitting there reading my instructions and I keep looking at his feet. I told him he had to have put those things on wrong. He insists they are fine and they are just to small. Then Dr. S walks in to tell us about our PERFECT embryos, and Terry looks at her feet and says, "Mine don't look like that." She starts cracking up and has to help him put them on the correct way. It was pretty funny and she got a big kick out of it. Turns out Terry was the second husband this morning that had done the same thing and it was only 7:30. Who knew you actually had to have a PHd in order to put on surgical shoe covers. Anyway I laughed pretty hard and it was a GREAT distraction. So they finally got me back into the "sterile" room. Dr. S came in and took some blood and gave me some vallium. She put it straight into my vein so I was suddenly loopy. Terry was right beside me the whole time. They turned the ultrasound machine around so we could watch as they put the embryos where they belong. I was trying so hard to concentrate on it but I was quite out of it. All of the sudden Terry says, "There they are." And sure enough you could see the embryos hanging out in my uterus. They gave us a picture of it and when I can sit at our desktop computer I will scan it in and post it. It's pretty cool. NOW this does not mean that I am pregnant. The embryo(s) have to attach to my uterine wall before that happens. The odds are definitely with us but there is no guarantee. We will not know anything for two weeks. So the next two weeks will be pretty rough. I am on bed rest until Saturday and even after that I have to be on pretty much "light duty" until the pregnancy test. As of now I feel great. I have been feeling some cramping which is completely normal. My emotions have been "pretty" good today. I have only teared up twice. Once at the end of the procedure when I realized that they were in my belly and once this afternoon when Terry was talking to my belly giving those embryos a pep talk.

Our prayer for the next two weeks is that God will help those embryos figure out how they are suppose to attach and stay there, and that they are HEALTHY little babies.

They are healthy embryos and Dr. S was very impressed with them. They both got scores of AA so they are already GT kiddos!!!!

Happy Birthday Tim!!

So today my little brother turned 26 today. YIKES!! Considering that I just turned 30, I'm not liking that very much. It's hard to believe that we are all getting as old as we are. And we aren't even old!!! We had a great dinner with the fam. I got to see Braunsen (14- almost 15 y.o. cousin), I hadn't seen him since Christmas. I really miss that kid!!! He has grown up so much and is such an absolute joy to have a conversation with. I just want to eat him up, he is so precious. Can't believe he is going to be a Freshman in High School this year either. I remember when he used to run around the house in a diaper and wake me up in the middle of the night. He would run into my room screaming "EM". Of course at the time I didn't think it was funny, but now I'm glad I have those memories to look back on of him. Courtney was her normal sassy self, as usual. Lesli and Buddy were there. It was good to see them. I haven't seen much of them since Christmas either. Everybody is so busy and I have been a little preoccupied lately. I find myself lost in the sea of people around me. I have to try to snap myself back into the reality of where I actually am, and not in my fantasy world of...what's going to happen on Thursday? and Will this transfer work? I wanted to be present in the conversation, but when I am not directly involved I tend to mind wander. I'm worried and scared, happy and excited, and cautiously, cautiously, cautiously optimistic. I know that when this is all said and done that all of this will have happened for the perfect reasons. And truly I can't wait to find out what those reasons are. I pray every night that it is God's Will for us to be parents. And I promise to be the best parent I can be. I just hope He is ready for us to take on that roll. So as I sit here less than 36 hours away from those tiny little embryos being put back into my uterus where I can HOPEFULLY grow and protect them, I pray that this is God's timing and He is ready for us to take on this adventure.

So this post totally detoured from the title, but as you can see I am pretty one track minded right now. So Happy Birthday Tim, I love you!!!

IT'S A GO!!!!

I had another Dr.'s appointment this morning. My lining is still great and the nurse just called and said my Estrogen is 665. This is very good news for us because it means we are definitely putting those embryos back on Thursday. I will go in at 7:15 and get it all done. I'm so excited but extremely nervous at the same time. I also have to start those HUGE intramuscular progesterone shots tomorrow. YUCK!!! But hopefully it will all be worth it. We are going to be doing some serious praying over the next couple of weeks.

UPDATE!!!

I just got a call from the Doctors office. My Estrogen is not quite where they want it to be, it is 222 and they want 350, so we have to give it two extra days. Good grief this is a roller coaster. The new unofficial transfer date is July 26th!!! So just add 2 to all the dates I gave before. I will go in on Friday to "check" me out once again. Hopefully we can stick to this plan, but all things considered, I'm not bankin' on anything.

I know.....I'm a SLACKER!!

Since I have received several phone calls and messages reprimanding me for not updating my blog I figure it probably is time to do just that. I will say that I am still working on my blog from the river trip. It has taken me forever to upload all the pictures. So that means that when I finally do finish it the date on it will be July 9th because that was when I started it. I also must not lie.....I have been quite lazy the last couple of weeks and you will not hear me apologize for that :)

So here goes on the Frozen Embryo Transfer update.....

I started Lupron on July 1st. Had a few mood swings but nothing horrible. (Terry may have a different story). I hadn't really had any major hot flashes until night before last. That was AWFUL!!! I woke up dripping wet at about 3 o'clock in the morning. I literally had to take a sponge bath. BUT as of tomorrow NO MORE LUPRON!!! Well hopefully. I went to the doctor this morning and my uterus of course is beautiful. The lining is perfect so depending on my estrogen level I will be off of the Lupron as of tomorrow. I should get a call in the next couple of hours about my blood work. So that puts those little embies back in my beautifully perfect uterus on July 24th at 8 a.m. Then bed rest until July 26th. I'm recruiting visitors as I will probably be bored and I need conversation to occupy me so I won't stress out thinking about what is going on inside my body. So if you are not busy on July 24th - July 26th I won't be either. Although I will say that on the 24th I will probably be a little out of sorts because they will give me vallium before the transfer to make sure I am completely relaxed. I will probably sleep a lot that day BUT the next two days.. come on by!!! So that is pretty much all I have right now. Just say some prayers for us over the next several days as the countdown has begun!!

River Trip, 4th of July, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!

Yes, I am aware that I am lagging in my posting. So I shall play catch-up in one post. We had such a great time while at the river. We stayed at a place called Hideout on the Horseshoe. This place was amazingly beautiful. Our view was so relaxing. We did alot of sitting on the porch.This was where we spent the majority of our time. We kinda took over this part of the porch. We ate all of our meals out here and even napped!!

View to the right (or downstream) of our cabin.

View to the left of the cabin or upstream.


View to the far right. This path lead down to the river.

We arrived on Sunday and Courtney could not wait to get in the river. She had been talking as excitedly about this trip for the last couple of weeks as we had. She put on her bathing suit and talked her Uncle Terry (not very hard) into getting in the water with her. They had a blast shooting each other with water guns.I love her stance in this picture. She is SOOOO GIRLY!!!

After watching them play for awhile we headed back up to the cabin and relaxed on the porch.

Monday morning we woke up with the intentions of floating the river. You see this might possibly be my favorite thing in the world to take part in. I LOVE to float the river!!! They have been getting quite a bit of rain up there so they would not allow us to take tubes, but let us rent a raft. They also scared us to death and told us that the dam had just been opened and the water would be rising and begining to run faster while we were on it. Well since we had to float right past the cabin we decided to drop off Courtney with my parents. When we started out it was pouring down rain. Niki and I both questioned Terry big time on his decision to go ahead with the trip. We dropped off Court and headed on down the river. The sun came out about that time and it ended up being a BEAUTIFUL day. We never felt the water rise or start picking up speed while we were out there. In fact we got out and sat in the water several times just to make the trip last longer. Somehow we turned a 2 hour trip into an almost 4 hour trip. It was great. Terry, Niki, and I took a ton of pictures from this trip BUT I can't figure out what happened to them. They were on the water camera and somehow didn't ever get developed. Go Figure!! But we still had a great day on the river... This is us pulling up to drop off Court with Dad.

That night we did our nightly routine of hanging out on the porch and eating as much as possible. Mom cooked every meal!!! We all came home with a couple of extra pounds. Niki and Terry were having an eating contest and I can honestly say, I'm not real sure who the winner was. The idea of the contest was to see who would have to go home wearing a shower curtain because their clothes no longer fit them. Neither actually went home in the shower curtain but they both claimed they needed too!!!

Tuesday we floated the Comal River partly in beautiful sunshine and partly in pouring down rain. This time Dad came along. The first time down it took us about an hour and a half. The second time the water was running much faster and was much dirtier (from a little pouring down rain) and it only took us 30 minutes. We let Courtney ride on Terry's lap down the tube shoot. She loved that!! The second time around Niki and I both had issues of staying in our tubes. She fell out on the shoot and I was turned around backwards watching her and all the sudden I hear Terry yelling my name. As I turn I realize I am in BIG trouble I was in the wrong spot to go over a dam like apparatus and out I went. It was about a 2 foot drop. I was fighting to get back on my tube as I see Niki on her way to the same spot I fell out and start yelling at her, "Don't do it, get to the side!" and over she went. Dad watched the whole thing so he went down the right spot and stayed in his tube. Oh well, it was funny. That afternoon and evening there was more relaxing on the porch.This is before Niki and I tumped over!!

Dad and Courtney

This is an example of how we relaxed on the porch. Niki slept for 2 hours in that chair with her blankie.Courtney relaxed right along with us!!!

Wednesday, July 4th, we spent the day at the outlet mall in San Marcus. I always love that place. Unfortunately the Lupron kicked in and I was in a yucky mood for part of the time. Allthough I did get 2 new Coach purses and that made me feel much better. That evening more of the same. We were going to go to a free concert that was going on down the road but we just never really got around to it. We could see fireworks over the trees every once in awhile, but we were definitely enjoying our FREEDOM.This rainbow was beautiful on the 4th of July. I you look closely you can see that it was actually a double rainbow. And you could see the beginning and end of them. It was really neat!!We took a few pictures on the fourth!!!

Thursday, the most important day, July 5th----My BIRTHDAY!!!!! We woke up Thursday morning and Terry was VERY ready for me to open my gift from him. You see, Terry doesn't EVER keep gifts from me. He always gets so excited about what he has bought for me that he gives it to me immediately. For example, at Christmas I usually sit and watch him open his gifts because I have received each of mine as he has bought them. I have worked really hard to break him of this and he was oh soooo successful for this big nasty 30th birthday of mine. He was so funny before we left because he had it all wrapped in this cute little pink box. Now he did TRY to give me this gift early but thank goodness I kept him at bay and he wasn't able to follow through.

My cute pink box. I wonder what is inside????

A beautiful ruby and diamond ring. I LOVE IT!!!!!!! He did SOOO good!!


Then I got a Coach purse from mom and dad. And one from myself also :)

I also got some scrapbooking stuff from Niki. YEAH!!! I need to catch up on scrapbooking 10 times worse than blogger.
Then it was off to the river. We couldn't rent tubes from the outfitters so we decided to take our lives into our own hands and buy our own tubes. We'll show you Mr. River Authority Man. I decided I WAS floating on my birthday. If I had to turn 30, I was doing it the way I chose. We floated the Horseshoe 3 times and then decided to keep going after we dropped Court off the last time. I did good staying a float this time however Niki had a couple of spills. Somehow Terry never once fell out of his tube on this trip. How does that happen?? It didn't even matter, we had so much fun.
Mom and Dad

We got up Friday morning and sadly it was time to go. We packed up and headed out.
This is at our back door. Our cabin was the "Comal" cabin.

We had to take all of our things out to the cars and set them on the ground. Dad was the only one allowed to put our things in the vehicles. I think Terry was allowed only to do what Dad instructed him to do. I wonder if Dad knows Terry was alone out there for a little bit moving stuff???? He does now!!!

So that was our week on the river!!! We had such a fun and relaxing time. Maybe we will get to do it again next year....

Ok...I started this post on July 9 and I am posting on July 18, I definitely need to get with the program!!!