For starters, I have to apologize ahead of time for the awful iPhone photo.  You never know when the idea of a blog post will come up and you have to capture that moment with a photo! Right now I am on Christmas break from work.  I have 11 days off and when I go back to work, work will be very different.  I will have a somewhat desk job... I think.  I will update this topic once I know more I promise! So anyways, this week I have done NOTHING!! Nothing at all, so when my neighbor and I discussed going to the mall and finding outfits for tomorrow evening... I didn't think it would be a bad idea.  We started the day at BJ's restaurant with some pizza and beer.  How can the rest of the day go wrong when you start it this way?   

Well I can tell you how!  TOO MANY PEOPLE mixed with being at home in your cozies for 4 straight days equals wanting to punch people in the face when they keep running into you and not walking through the crowds correctly.  It drove me crazy and I immediately wanted to leave.  We didn't find anything and will try to go to the local stores here in town tomorrow. No more going to the bigger city for me. So anyone else have any fantastic NYE plans?  Tomorrow I will post about New Years resolutions and my thoughts on those... Have a great night!

Trip to Ohio!

So back in July we surprised out Ohio family with a trip over there for the Fourth of July. In Ohio we have one family: Uncle B, Aunt M, cousins J, JJ, C, and L. Cousin J and Aunt M were the only people who knew we were coming and everyone else was surprised. It was so much fun to surprise everyone! We even bough tears to Uncle B's eyes. We even got the surprises on video, I'll think about posting those on here. We had so much fun there. We BBQ'd, went to cedar point amusement park, went to a HUGE 4th of July party, and shot guns. I even got to help feed their pet baby deer. We always have such an amazing time when we are around them. That whole family are the kind of people that make you feel like being around them makes you a better person.  After surprising everyone and spending time with family that you truly enjoy spending time with, Michael and I sat up our first night there and discussed for an hour how awesome it would be to live here.  We went as far as to do research on jobs for the both of us out there.

Me feeding Baby!

C. shooting into a pile of dirt

Views from their awesome back porch, we were out there for hours

Beautiful isnt it?

Us at Cedar Point... what a day!

Cousin J's laundry room that I feel in love with!
I would do more laundry if I could do it in here. 

At the 4th of July BBQ

The fireworks show was AMAZING over the lake.  

Me and J :)

Here's a small view into the trip we had... lots of funny faces!  

We miss it there so much, and hope that we can visit there again really soon. 

Sage Chicken Yum!

So tonight I made dinner for us and the neighbors. I was over at their house earlier watching The Notebook :( and I was telling my husband what I was making for dinner. As serious as ever my neighbor looks at me and says "is that dinner for everyone or just you guys?" I started immediately cracking up! I love that we are close enough with our neighbors to invite ourselves to dinner and the same for them. For dinner I made Sage Chicken and roasted vegetables. It was amazing! I pan fried chicken breast dipped in egg and Pablo bread crumbs with chopped up fresh sage. When they were done I splashed a little lemon juice and vuala!

Any suggestions for new recipes to try???

Updates....

Well, so many things have happened since I last blogged...

We went to Monterey to whale watch for my birthday... won't be doing again... everyone (25/29 people) got sea sick.  I was super nausea, it's not fun watching 25 people throw up.

Michael installed can lighting in our living room... I wanted 4, he installed 8 and now we have museum lighting!

Michael put molding around our green wall

 We finished the front yard!  

We were in the ER and OR 5 separate times for Michael (kidney stones, work injuries, kidney stones, kidney stones.. removal of kidney stones.. at one point we were in the ER 3x in 1 week!

We surprised our Ohio family with a 4th of July vacation to there that made us really sit down and think about moving there.  It's so wonderful to be surrounded by amazing people all the time.  

Went to baseball games.. drank beer...

Made it out to the lake with our neighbors and had a kick ass time for Labor Day. 

Got new carpet :)

And decided that we need to take more photos... that's my New Years resolution.  There was so many other great things that happened this year and we don't have pictures of them :(

One of them being........ that I finished my Masters of Science a couple of weeks ago!!! Wow that was an accomplishment. On another sad work note, I had to say goodbye to one of my kiddos that I had been working with for a year and a half.  She was an amazing little girl who has come so far and is growing more and more everyday into a wonderfully independent functional citizen.  Sadly now I will no longer see her :(

On another note about accepting that things will work out, we have been trying to get pregnant (pause for "Awwww")  Unfortunately for as long as I can remember anytime I have thought about having a child with Michael I have had this gut wrenching feeling that it wouldn't be easy.  I have been blessed my whole life, AMAZINGLY blessed.  There is only one thing in my life that I didn't get when I wanted it, my GRE scores.  I studied, studied, studied and still got horrible scores.  Even that worked out I still got in the graduate program I wanted!  So I knew that somehow the shoe would have to drop, how can a person get everything they have even wanted in life?  So anyways, for as long as I can remember I have a feeling that getting pregnant was not going to be easy for us.  i was right :( I stopped birth control (BC) in February, on my birthday actually and since then I have been slowly (well maybe not slowly) letting our trying to conceive (TTC) take over my life!  Every morning I wake up at ridiculous hours (3am, 4am...) to take my temperature.  I have to do it at this hour because you have to take your temp at the same time everyday and it has to be the first time you have woken up after having at least 3 hours of sleep. Well my husband works crazy hours and some days he has to wake up at 345am and other days at 6am.  So in order to try and keep it at the same time my subconcious wakes me up everyday between 3 and 4 and I take my temp.  No alarm, just my brain wakes me up.  Do you know how upsetting it is to wake up at 415 while on vacation to take my temperature.  And then it's not like I can go back to sleep. I sit there and ponder about my temperature.  Why is it so low?  Does that mean I did not ovulate?  UGHHH!!!! After an 80 day cycle with multiple negative pregnancy tests I decided if something wrong I am calling the doctor to find out sooner than later.  Typically they* say that if after a year of being off birth control you aren't pregnant to start doing testing.  Well why wait a year, I'm not getting any younger and my chances of getting pregnant get smaller and smaller everyday (I know I'm dramatic, at least I can admit it :D) So I called the doctor and she started me on bloodwork right away. So far we have determined that with the cycle I am in right now I ovulated late or not at all. I did the cycle day 21 progestrone test; which should show that I have already ovulated and would be elevated if I did.  That came back less than 10 and she said I either did not ovulate or have not ovulated yet.  So she had me re-do the test on cycle day 23 to see if my progesterone level is rising (still a chance of ovulation) or decreasing (no ovulation).  Looking at my BBT (temps), it looks like I may have ovulated on the day of the bloodwork... but wouldn't that have been reflected in the bloodwork??? So now I am waiting to hear back from the doctor to see what my trend is right now.

So that is my unleashing of so many pent up feelings.  I try to not talk to much about the TTC thing, I was only talking to my BF about my frustrations and it was even to much for her. She is the one who brought it to my attention that I am being a little obsessive about this.  It hurt my feelings a little but I appreciate when people tell you how you are acting when you can't see it yourself.  So I am trying to not bring it up during EVERY conversation just when something happens. That's why I began writing again on here.  This can be my outlet for "talking" about life's frustrations.