Fun Scrapbooking Adventure

We went to one of our favorite scrapbooking stores yesterday to make a really cute never ending card. This one was for St. Patrick's Day, but now that we know how to make them, we can adapt it for any holiday. Today we are going to make a couple for birthdays. It is just the coolest thing. I took a little video of it so that you can get the full effect of how it just keeps folding around and around into 4 different layouts. Here it is:


And here are the pics of each panel. I can't wait to make more of them.





We have another snow day today - we woke up to another 10 inches of snow and it is still falling. That is 37 inches in less than two weeks. That is THREE FEET of snow!!! Oh well, we got an extra day of vacation out of it!

In Like a Lion!

Well, March is certainly coming in like a lion! We are slated for another foot of snow tonight and tomorrow. I think I would rather have all of my hair pulled out one strand at a time than have more snow. That probably means a snow day as well, and we just had a week of vacation - we don't need another day off. I'm officially done with winter.

Speaking of winter, the Winter Carnival was a bust yesterday, so we just stayed home and hung out with Olivia. We played W.ii, colored, ate cookies, played on the computer, etc. It was a great day. Today we will return her to Mom and Mama.

We are also going to a scrapbooking class this afternoon to make a Never Ending Card - pictures to follow! I love going to these classes and learning new things.

On the TTC front, we are still plugging away - my estrogen level was still really low on Friday, so I am staying on the same dose of Foll.istim (75iu) and going back for bloodwork on Tuesday. My body always stays low at the beginning and then my levels seem to jump literally overnight. I will probably go back again on Friday and then we will monitor things much more closely after that. I would assume that the IUI will be next week sometime around the 11th or 12th.

Happy March!

Fun with Olivia

So, as I said in my last post we have Olivia for the weekend. She is always lots of fun. We started our day yesterday with the all important BRAND NEW episode of The Back.yardigans. Missing it would have been a tragedy!

We played some W.ii in the afternoon and then we made some projects. Markers, glue, paper, and scissors are all a five year old needs. We now have a beautful snowflake and a butterfly card hanging on the fridge!

Then came time for cookie making. Olivia got all of the cookie cutters she wanted and lined them up ready to go. She very nicely made selections from all seasons so we ended up with everything from Christmas trees to hearts, to bunnies and much more.

I just love this picture - I was sprinkling flour on the island to roll out the cookies and MJ happend to snap a pic at the same time!

Here she is cutting out the cookies.And of course, she had to make sure the frosting was good to eat!

According to Miss Olivia all we needed was purple, pink, and white for frosting because "Those are Valentine's colors, you know."

We had lots of fun frosting and sprinkling the cookies. I'm not sure if more frosting went in Olivia's mouth or on the cookies. I know that more sprinkles ended up on the floor than on the cookies! We had to vacuum when we were done!



Here is one tray of our final creations!

Today we are off to a Winter Festival in the town where my parents live, so we'll have some good pics and stories from that!

Vacation Update

We have had a great vacation and can hardly believe it is practically over already. We ended up having to call in the troops (my dad and brother) to help us dig out of the storm - they were life savers - we just couldn't do it all alone. The snowbanks where the plow went by were up to my waist. When we finally dug out the mailbox, it was broken off the post, so we just stuck it in the snowbank!

Anyways, we had a great trip to Fox.woods - we had lots of fun, but darn those machines that just kept eating all of our money! We had a fabulous room and MJ was quite excited that we had a KING size bed (I'm kind of a bed hog)!



I was excited that you could sit on the "throne" and talk on the phone!!



It was so great to just get away for a couple of days. On the way home we stopped at IK.EA and did some shopping which was fun as well.

Yesterday we were cleaning machines and we emptied all of the furniture out of the bedrooms upstairs and cleaned the carpets, etc. Definitely a necessity when you have two dogs and two cats.

This morning I went for bloodwork to see how the meds are doing. I will continue stimming for at least another week. I'll get the results later today.

And, finally, we have our favorite five year old Olivia for the weekend, so I'm sure we'll have some fun posts of our adventures with her!

15 inches

We went to bed last night in the midst of a snowstorm with no power. We woke up this morning to this:

Um, yeah, we got a little bit of snow overnight! It is beautiful though! I am sitting here looking out the window at just a blanket of snow. The poor dogs couldn't even get out to go pee this morning.

In other news - we went to my parents for dinner last night. Alan (my brother) made ribs, beans, cole slaw and corn bread. Can we say YUMMY, YUMMY, YUMMY! The funny thing is that we though it would just be the five of us (MJ, myself, mom, dad, and Alan). Well, add another 7 people to the mix and we practically had a party. It was lots of fun and great food too!

Tomorrow we are heading to Foxwoods - a casino for the night. It should be lots of fun and hopefully we can win some money! If not, it will be a great mini getaway.

TTC/Fostering Update

Wow, lots has happened in the past couple of days - I guess when it rains, it pours - or maybe I should insert SNOW in place of rain!! We got 6 inches Wednesday night, 6 inches Thursday night, and we are slated for another 12 - 16 today. Fun times! Can't mother nature visit someone else for a change?!

On the TTC front - I had my baseline ultrasound and bloodwork on Friday. All was well, so I started my meds on Friday evening. Now I get to "shoot up" daily for the next 18 - 20 days. I really love the Doctor's office that I go to. They are so nice and want so badly for us to be pregnant - if only their well wishes were enough!

The only disappointing part of the visit to the doc was that they told me that this is cycle 8 on injectibles and that is pretty much their limit on how many cycles they will do . A lot of this is because we don't really know the long term effects of these injectible medications. So, if we are not pregnant this time, we will have to consult with the head honcho to see what her recommendation is. In terms of where we are at, the only thing that will work for us is if we can maybe get them to do a couple more cycles in their office as IVF is not an option financially.

Based on the above news that our TTC efforts may be over sooner rather than later, we are even more happy that we attended our first foster parent training yesterday. This is DEFINITELY something we are ready to pursue and we are excited about the possibility of welcoming a child into our lives who so desperately needs a home.

The training itself was LONG and BORING!!!! But at least it is 6 hours down for the 21 that we need. The next step is to take our classes - ther are 5 of them that are 3 hours each. We will do these starting March 11 and we will be done on March 25. Then, we will have a homestudy, fire inspection, be fingerprinted, get references together, etc. My guess is that we can be licensed by the end of April.

We were defnitely impressed with the agency which helps a lot! They are a private agency and they offer many supports to their foster parents. We may have to wait a little longer to get a child through this agency because the majority of the children they work with are teenagers and we want to work with kids under 10. They said it isn't impossible to get young kids, it just may take some time.

So, we are moving along with lots going on! We also get to enjoy February vacation this week - one of the fabulous perks of being a teacher! We are going to just hang at home for the week with just an overnight trip to a casino with some friends. Should be fun!

One

Cycle Day one that is! We are off and running again and right on time! We both have a renewed excitement with this try. We have fingers, toes, and everything in between crossed that this cycle will be the one. This coming week marks three years since we started trying to have our baby. I think we have definitely put in our time! I have baseline bloodwork in the morning and ultrasound in the afternoon. If both things are fine - I start my Folli.stim tomorrow night!

We also have our first foster parent training session all day on Saturday - so lots going on in the realm of making our dream of a family become reality.

Not to mention vacation starts at 3:30 tomorrow! I love being a teacher!

Redeemed!

Some of you may remember some of my past posts about the football pool at work. Well, MJ and I lost in our top standings in the last two weeks of the season! The best part of the football pool is that we all go out to eat at the end of it and the winner pays the bill and keeps the change as their prize. As part of this dinner, we did some fun football trivia type games. I was the big winner of these games! I won a New England Patriots calendar, date book, lunch box, can coozie, and bottle coozie. Unfortunately, I had to give back the princess crown! We had lots of fun though!

We are getting very excited as there are only four more days until vacation!

Perfect Dinner

Just a few pics of our scrumptious dinner we made for Valentine's Day last night. We had crab legs and we fondued shrimp and steak. We still have food left over, so we'll have the same thing tonight. It was so yummy, I'm not complaining! The dogs even had a special treat because my mom bought them hickory bones for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! May you all spend the day with the ones you love! We are going to go Pop-up Camper shopping and then enjoy a wonderful dinner of shrimp and crab legs when we get home! We decided to make a weekend out of it and we are going to have steak tips tomorrow night!

Just a few pics of the Valentine's treats we made for the staff at the two schools we work at plus MJ's class. We cranked out 130 bags of these pretzels in a few hours on Thursday night. That equals out to about 275 dipped pretzels! We weren't going to do anything, but after the week we've had with budget cuts, etc, we decided that everyone needed a pick me up! It was a success - and we are glad we did it!

Have a great Valentine's Weekend!