Annual Church Picnic

Today was the annual church picnic for our new church home. It is a large church for such a small town just over 1000 in attendance each weekend. This is a very kid centered church with great youth groups and activities. It showed at the picnic which right after the baptisms at the river turned into a kid carnival of fun. Lillian had a blast.

The service today was very emotional, 6 of the 80 people being baptized got on stage to give their testimonies. Normally every person that gets baptized gives a testimony but obviously with 80 people you would be there all day. I have given up wearing mascara to church and today it was a really good thing.

We enjoyed a nice lunch and then we were off to the fun and games, here are a few pictures of Lillian enjoying her 'paaarrtttEY" as she told her sunday school teacher. It was so cute the lady came up to me and said during service today Lillian kept telling us when her mom got back she was going to a PARTY all exaggerated and excited. To hear her say it is adorable.

Summer Fun

Lillian's one big fear is having water in her eyes so she is a bit leery with water. Overall she is a fairly cautious child but in the water I would say she is more than cautious and a bit scared. So we have been trying to let her 'swim' in her kiddie pool alot. She is starting to get more adventurous and not so scared though she does run out and wipe her eyes every time she gets her whole face splashed. If she is not better by the end of the summer there is a water babies class I will probably enroll with her in the fall, right now its so nice out the last thing I want to do is take her into the gym for the evening at the pool, especially when we already spend every tuesday night at church that would make for a busy week night.


Here is a link to the pictures of her most recent adventure and YES that is a frog you see swimming in her pool with her. Its her 'friend' and she seems to find the thing every day---well Nala finds it every day and Lillian rescues it. She then continues the poor creatures torture by carrying it around and making it swim with her before finally depositing it into its 'home' the garden which is fenced off and safe from Nala. You would think the darn frog would learn but every day he makes his way back under our porch where Nala finds it. The swimming with a frog is kinda gross but all well, we have to balance out her love for painted nails, 'twirly' dresses, and high heels somehow :-)


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Making Bird Feeders---dog snacks

I read a cute craft to make home made bird feeders for our little friends (that seem to be invading our hous this year). You use pine cones, coat them in peanut butter and roll them in bird seed. This sounded like an easy fun thing for Lillian to do and she could hang them by the bird house that I reconditioned after bringing it back from my grandparents property up north. The bird house reminds me of my grandfather since he made it.

I explained to her how the birdies would eat them and we hung them at the top of our 6ft privacy fence right around the bird feeder. Luckily she forgot about them because much to my dismay two days later all that remained on the fence was red shreds of ribbon and no signs of the pine cones. Both of our dogs love peanut butter and one of them used to be able to jump really high----I guess she remembered how! So much for feeding the birds.

As for the invasion. I have a bird that must be really really slow because for the past two years it has tried to build its nest in the top corner of our front porch, there is not enough room there and so I keep getting mud and debris all over my porch and swing every couple days as the stuff falls down. I try everyting to keep that bird away and it only works for a short period of time. I finally hung a wind sock there right by the corner adn it worked for all of about 2 weeks now there is stuff there again.

Well it must have been late in the season for this poor bird not to have a nest because now she has roosted herself on the ledges of our upstairs office window under the air conditioner. I finally figured out what was going on yesterday because guess what---there are babies and they are LOUD!! On top of the loudness the bird hits the bottom of the A/C occasionally when coming in for a landing. After a half hour of constat chirp chirp chirp I went over to investigate, knocked on the AC and sure enough out the mom flew to a nearby branch and I imagine she was giving me the equivalent of a bird scowl as she stared me down only to return a few minutes later.

I have also seen her flying around the AC in the downstairs window---I am pretty sure this is the same 'not smart bird' so maybe she gets confused on where her birds are? I dont know but up until the past couple days I was thrilled when I heard birds chirping now I just hope they hurry up and grow up and fly off as the chirping is CONSTANT! And of course Lillian just wants to 'see' and the dogs are sniffing non-stop all around the A/C--its not enough they had their 'snacks' now I think they are more interested in the birds themselves.

Grandma Gene

Lillian has grown fond of a lady that lives on the next block but just one house between us. Her name is Gene, she is a real sweet lady that we met last year. When we met her last fall she was so very friendly and wanted us to come back and see her again and so we have. Lillian can see her house from our yard so when all else fails (in trying to get to go somewhere/do something) she says she wants to see Gene, she also wants to stop whenever we walk past etc. Since she has white hair Lillian instantly started calling her grandma Gene which of course thrills Gene even more. We visit her probably a few times a month. Gene is totally crazy about Lillian. She has a great grand daughter Lillians age but she lives far away so I think she uses Lillian as her substitute.

A couple weekends ago Gene turned 100 YEARS OLD. That is so hard to even fathom turning 100 and here she still lives on her own and refuses to do otherwise. She is pretty quick still too, she forgets some day to day things but has details on families, stories about the community and other things down pat. She gets around with a walker and someone comes and does a good portion of her housework for her and of course buys her groceries etc. I enjoy taking a meal down to her whenever we are eating something I think she will like and I used to get scolded for this but finally I won her over using the Bible and telling her it was a commanment to love thy neighbor. Sooooo that finally got me off the hook. Her family comes and stays with her on some weekends and other bring her food too but I dont like it when I open her fridge and see swanson dinners. She always appreciates it and it is fun for me to cook for others, especially someone so easy to please---who eats so little anyway that it is no trouble at all.

Gene's family came down and invited us to an 'open house' as she didnt want a party i.e gifts. I printed out a happy 100th birthday in block letters from the printer and I put in a picture of Lillian so on bottom it said from and then her picture, Lillian colored it and of course Gene loved it and it hung on the cart where everyone got their beverages from etc.

On the day of the party Lillian had a frog she had caught so we built her a 'frog house' since she was trying to keep the dogs from eating the frog--it was a bucket with a piece of screen tied over it. Well of course Lillian refused to be separated from it and had to carry it with her everywhere---including the party. I planned to leave it on the porch but some of the ladies saw it on their way in and thought it was an absolute hoot and assured me it would be "the only one of those she woudl be getting to see today" so in the frog house went to make its rounds at the party---pooor frog.

Then it was back outside for mr.frog while we all ate cake. Gene got a framed large placard and hand written note from the govenor which I thought was really neat. It was probably a good thing we arrived when we did because Gene was up walking around greeting everyone and offering them her chair. I wanted to get a picture of her with Lillian so she was finally willing to oblige us and sit so everyone was giving me the thank you wink. I about had a heart attack when Gene must have decided that havign Lillian stand in front of her wasnt enough and she hoisted all 27lbs of Lillian up onto her lap before any of us realized what she was doing!! It was a very nice party, Gene had all her collected cards up around the living room---well what would fit, she later told me there were over 70 of them from as far away as Japan!

Here is Lillian and her adopted 'Grandma Gene'

Another on the way?

Jared and I are trying to get pregnant again, hoping to give Lillian a brother, sister, or both. Jared has been wanting to try again for some time but I have been dragging my feet a bit. The second baby part I am thrilled about and while overall I like the idea of being pregnant and there are some parts I enjoy the actual day to day pregnancy was not a bowl of cherries for me. There is about a 10% chance of twins coming into play and about a 40-50% chance of success of one.





We did in vitro fertilization the first time and we had 11 remaining frozen embryos. This time we did what is called a frozen embryo transfer which is where they follow a similar process to last time but then instead of retrieving the eggs, inseminating them, allowing them to become embryos and transfering those back they just transfer back two of the embryos that were frozen last time.





This time things went well and the emrbyo's looked very healty again, unfortunately they had to thaw 4 in order to get 2 to transfer back as the first two did not survive the thaw. We had frozen two or three that were not great quality so I would anticipate that the first thaw was two of those. Here is what everyone looks like when they are two days old, one is 4 cells and the other is 5, Jared is affectionately referring to them as 'the twins' not surprisingly he is a little more eager to for twins than I am. Although I would love to have twins I would be worried for their health and safety during the pregnancy.

We have been very open about how we have obtained our family. I think there is alot secrecy around these things often because you think you are the 'only one'. When we decided to be open about it we found out we know ALOT people who used some form of fertility treatments. I have many friends at work that used the same doctors as me, I find that because I am open about it others have sought me out when undergoing treatments. My hope was to be able to help someone else and I have been able to do that so its really wonderful. Jared works with a guy who has twins that used the same doctors we use, one of my good friends at work is using the same doctors and we actually both have been trying this month.

This time the 'protocol' was much less intense. In April I had to go for a test to make sure my tubes were open and that everything looked ok after giving birth. Then this time I just had to do a low dose of one injectable medication to help make a high quality egg. While that egg isnt used they want to make sure you have one. Fortunately I respond well to meds, unfortunately I respond really well to meds meaning I had two big/good eggs and about 16 others--yikes. The hormone flux that puts me in makes me really ill.

We transferred the two good quality embryos on May12th and then we waited to see if they implanted which is torture. For me being so impatient is really really torture. You never really know why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. I think its in Gods hands and it is not about my timetable its about his. Some people think that doing fertility treatments evades Gods planning and while I respect this and can see why they believe this I feel when it is used to overcome a medical obstacle it is just like treating say my cystic fibrosis and allowing me to overcome that and live. The treatments allow us to overcome the medical obstacle that makes it difficult to impossible to conceive whether or not it works is not up to medicine/science. I do believe fertility treatments are abused by many and there are some irresponsible doctors out there but that is a topic for another day.

Unfortunately for us this time it didnt work. The process is not really easy for me and I would like to enjoy my summer and focus on getting back in shape so we will try again in the fall with two of our 7 remaining frozen embryos.