Rough few days

Wow, as I sit down tonight to write this post I have to admit it’s not one I figured I’d write.

When Joel got offered the chance to switch to 3rd shift I thought it would be great for our family. Amazing in fact. He would be gone while we slept, and there when we all woke up. He can run on little sleep most of the time and so I knew we’d have him in full swing participating with us by lunch.

It’s true that he’s run on little sleep the past 4 days. But I’m totally worried about him. Constantly. Worried that he’ll be to tired to do his work and get hurt. Worried he’ll be too tired to drive home and fall asleep at the wheel. Worried the kids won’t be quiet enough for him to get some sleep. Just plain worried.

He’s been a real trooper. The kids have been not too bad good for the most part.

Me, well I’m doing okay. I feel horrible most of the time because I’m not letting him get enough sleep. And to say this is easy, would be a lie. I’m not used to having my husband home all day. Every day (normally) I look forward to 2:30. I then have a purpose to get stuff done, and have the house in order. The kids and I are used to having our days, and having daddy get home at 2:30. I forget that he’s here. I forget that I need to check with him before we make any plans.

We’ve been fighting quite a bit this week. It’s been tough on our marriage to say the least. This has tested us.

In the last 4 days I’ve realized this is NOT a blessing. This is NOT something I want full time. I want to have something to look forward to every day.

As I was writing up this post Joel text me. After a bit of confusion on my part I called him. I was blessed to find out that starting Monday he’ll be back on regular hours. I’m THANKFUL! Not only for the fact that we’ll have our routine back, but thankful because earlier tonight my dad informed me of his hours for the next few weeks. You see, my dad works at the same factory Joel does. My dad’s last day of work will be the 1st of July until the 14th of July when he returns.

I’m saying extra prayers tonight, and thanking God that he is looking out for us. He realized I couldn’t do this another week but at the same time he realized we couldn’t do this another week. Financially and martially.

Happy Father's Day

Well Father's Day is already almost over and I'm just now getting around to posting! Seems that's how it goes!

We had a great day. It started with Joel getting to sleep in, since he stayed up most of the night. We then headed out to church where we attended the blessing of a new parish hall. The hall is beautiful! We're so blessed, our children will have a safe, nice place to attend catechism and learn about our lord! It was a nice lunch with great friends!

After a quick trip to town for a new coffee pot (I accidentally broke it last night) we came home and took a 3 hour nap! It was so peaceful. Thankfully I was thinking ahead and super was cooking while we napped!

posted from Bloggeroid

Ever have a moment?

When you wish there was someone in the room just taking pictures? Or to even be a “fly on the wall?”

I had one of those moments on Saturday. We’d just gotten home from a long day at softball tournaments (well Joel and the kids were at them, I was at work until the last game!) and everyone was cranky. Joel and I laid down on the bed with our legs dangling over the sides. In came the girls, soon MacKenzie had made her way on top of me to cuddle. For no reason whatsoever Kaitlynn started to cry, and all she would say was “mooom-mieeee.” Eventually I got her to crawl up on to our bed and climb on top of me (after some persuasion to MacKenzie to move.)

It was one of those moments when I KNEW everyone was going to crash within moments. I summoned Dahrran into our room and told him to lay down. Within 5 minutes everyone was asleep except myself. Even Joel was snoring. I laid there and thought to myself, it would be so awesome to have this moment on film. To just have us all as a family, and laying here.

I then decided I wasn’t going to let this moment go. I slowly worked my way out of the pile and took a picture. I was laying there underneath Kaitlynn. Such a precious moment!

Spring Game Fun

We’ve taken the kids to other spring football games in the past, and kind of decided the last couple of years to not go. This year we’d thought about it, but just decided to not go again. That was until a lady Joel works with offered him 5 tickets. We really didn’t have anything planned that day except hanging out at home so we thought why not!

MacKenzie wasn’t really excited at first to go to a football game for her birthday (oh forgot to mention it was scheduled for her birthday!) but when we told her we had decided to go out for supper she was all about it.

The week leading up to the game was cold, rainy and even threatened snow in April!!! But thankfully come game day it wasn’t too bad. By the time the game started we were sitting on our coats! I’d made these super cute dresses for the game, and they did get to sport them for a while! (even though I don’t really have decent pictures of them, hopefully it’s a post for another day!)

 

We also decided to just get a motel in Lincoln with a pool for MacKenzie’s Birthday…….but of course by the time we got to the motel BOTH my camera’s were dead! :(

Happy Birthday miss MacKenzie!!

Bowling – a Date night

Joel and I don’t usually do “date” nights. I mean we’ll go out for supper, and then come home. To me that’s not really a date. It’s supper, which I would’ve had to fix anyways. I love going out doing “something” instead of just sitting down for a meal. So a moth or so ago when we were trying to work on things we decided to go Cosmic Bowling, basically the lights are off except the fun, funky black lights. Everything glows and it’s really fun!

There are pink balls, green balls, all these funky colors and they all pretty much glow in the dark. Unless you find a regular ball instead (like Joel did!) He has to be the difficult one! :P

 

Most of the games ended up like this one. You wouldn’t know it but I was beating him by almost 40 at one point! He always comes back to kick my rear!

While we were out I tried to get cute pictures of each of us. His all turned out good, most of the pictures he took of me turned out like this. Not ONE of them was a good shot of my face, most of them were blurry. Oh well. At least my butt looked good in those jeans!

 

In the end we had a great night, and even ended up with a decent picture of us together!

Wordless Wednesday

10 on Tuesday

1. This is going to be quick because there are random thoughts running through my head right now and it’s already 11:33pm! It’s been such a long week, and it’s only Tuesday!

2. Two sweet friends text messaged me yesterday making sure I was alright because we’ve just been running so much this last week that I wasn’t on twitter all weekend! It felt soo good to just have friends who know when I’m not around, and that’s totally not like me! I love getting to know people on twitter and the adult interaction is amazing. Just the friendships I’ve made are amazing!

3. On a last minute whim I decided on Friday night that I was going to head out to Earth Day Omaha to meet up with Jessica Quick from Top to Bottom Baby Boutique. I figured heck why not! I’m so glad I did. Jessica is so sweet. I mean I knew she was, because of all of our late night conversations, but she’s even sweeter in person! I had promised Joel that I’d be headed home around 4pm because it was a 2 hour drive home. Come 6:30 I was still in Omaha helping Jessica pack up! At that point Joel told me that Kaitlynn & I were on our own for supper. So I decided I needed to go see the Diaper room over at Jess’s house. Jess was nice enough to give me the grand tour of her house and neighborhood. Since I was on my own for supper, we decided to head out for supper then too! It was so much fun!

4. Just a few pictures from Earth Day Omaha. You can see more of them here.

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5. Dahrran had his first baseball practice tonight. It was so much fun & he had fun! Joel is coaching this year, and so that is a huge step for them both. Last year was a trying year to say the least and so we’re hoping for a more laid back learning, having fun, type of year!

6. Joel’s been working so hard to just get us enough kids for a team. Thanks to the coaches we’ve had for the last two years we’ve had a lot of families leave our town to play in other towns. He got the call last Thursday that we were going to have just enough kids to play. He was so excited, and I was excited for him as well!

7. I’m so far behind on blogging right now I’ll never catch up!!

8. So who misses Favorite Fluff Friday??? I DO! I feel so bad because I haven’t had the time to get them up and posted! So as of right now I’m not sure if I’m going to run a couple together or what I’ll do! But what I do know is that I’ve got 3 great products in the line up, with a couple more in the future!

9. Part of the reason I’ve been away and not blogging? It’s been beautiful outside! We’ve spent quite a few days at the park. In fact just this weekend we went 3 days in a row.

  

10. Joel came down stairs just a few minutes ago. He didn’t look pleased that I was still awake, and on the computer! Which means I’m off to bed! Night all! :)

The Hard Subject

Ever have something you don’t want to talk about, but know deep down you have to talk about it? Yup. I’m having one of those HEY WAKE UP and talk/listen idiot! Life is here, and it’s smacking you in the face!

What the hell am I talking about? Work. NOT being a SAHM anymore. Something I don’t really want to do, but it’s finally possibly the right time in our lives for me to go to work Full Time. You see I work part time, every Saturday morning I put in my two hours at the Post Office. I LOVE what I do! Honestly I love it, I love the people, I love the challenge of finding people and connecting them with that long lost card from Grandma. Did I mention that I love the people and interacting with them?

You see there is a chance for me to go full time in July 2011. By then Kaitlynn will be almost 4, and headed to preschool in the fall. BUT for me to get there, I’ve got to put in full time hours for less than full time pay. I need to find a full time sitter that won’t charge me an arm & half my right leg to let me drop the girls in at a day or two’s notice! Because really that’s what’s stopping me. . . .

Or so I thought. As Joel and I were talking about it tonight, I realized. That’s not what’s holding me back. Heck look, I did it for 6 weeks, and then another 6 weeks, and then yet another 6 weeks before I was finally able to stay home full time. That’s when it hit me that it wasn’t daycare that was holding me back.

It’s the possibility of us having another baby. Possibility. You see because right now I’d love to believe that God has another baby in his great big plan for us.  But I’m not certain. Uncertainty is what holds me back. I deeply WANT another baby, I would cherish one with open arms, even if that baby wasn’t physically/mentally healthy. I just  long to hold another baby, MY baby in my arms.

At the same time, it’s time. It’s time for me to get a job, and help support my family. Times are hard, and jobs like this don’t come along to most people. Straight out of high school, with no college education, and I could make MORE than my husband. Who by the way went to College for two year, earned his Associates Degree.

For the last 7 years I have been a Stay at Home mom. I’ve welcomed 2 more babies, cried over the loss of one, and well enjoyed every stinking minute of it.

But we’re in a time when the Economy SUCKS. And that’s nicely put. Along with whatever the Obama new healthcare bill will do to us, I’m scared. I’m scared for where our family will be in 5 years. Because in 5 years I’ll have a 12, 10, 8 year olds. Two ALMOST teenage girls. We all know what that will mean. Name brand jeans, shoes, hair & makeup.

We’re at a point in our family life that we could really benefit from a two income family. We could save, actually save money, instead of living paycheck to paycheck. We could pay for our children’s college…and YES I do insist they go to college.

So I’m torn, what to do. Because really if I go for this job, I’m probably going to say good bye to the hopes of wanting another baby.

What would you do?

Sale Day

Today is the day. The day Joel has been waiting for since January 2, 2009. You see this is the day we see if our cattle are worth something to anyone other than ourselves. If you’ve been around this blog since the beginning, you will know that we once had a similar day a few years back.

Today we will find out where Wall-E will find a new home. Where he will make some cute little Gelbvieh Babies.

Good bye to our sweet little pet!

 

To the one we could lead on the trailer with an empty bucket!

 

Good bye sweet W01 – Wall-E

 

Boys will be Boys – Wordless Wednesday

And in case you were wondering….yes that is mud.

And he wasn’t the only one in the mud. So we came home, made them take showers, and made Pizza.

We decorated Cup Cakes the next day before it was time to go home.

The whole Story

We found out we were pg October 27. My grandma had just passed away the day before, and I was tired of Joel begging me to take a test, when I knew my period wasn't due for a few more days. We'd been trying for 6 months with no success. I took the test shortly after lunch, and it said positive. I was so excited, but was bound and determined I was going to tell Joel in a FUN way. So knowing I only had a few hours until he got home MacKenzie and I headed to the basement to make a shirt for Kaitlynn. We painted and labored away, and before I knew it Joel was on his way home. Kaitlynn was still sleeping, so we had to wake her up, and unfortunately she was running a temp. She wasn't in much of a mood to wake up let alone change shirts and go to her daddy.

When Joel got home I had Kaitlynn meet him at the back door wearing her shirt that said "Big Sister in Training" and holding the test. I kept telling her give it to daddy. He just stood there shocked. Staring at her. It was priceless, and I'll never forget it. This was the first time I've surprised him. *With Dahrran I just told him scared, b/c I was still in HS he was in College. With MacKenzie I told him over the phone b/c I was so excited/scared, we were supposed to be getting married, and she was due 1 week before our wedding date. And well with Kaitlynn, he told me. I'd taken a test and it was negative, so I threw it away (after a year/months of trying I was tired of neg test) 2 hours later he goes in and takes it out and it was positive.*

Things went smoothly and we decided to wait until Thanksgiving to tell our families. This was the longest we'd ever waited to tell anyone. It got easier as the days went on, except when I wasn't feeling well. The pg hormones were kicking in and I was feeling more pg than ever. We told our families on Thanksgiving, and everyone was excited. At this point I still hadn't went to the doctor, but had taken the required OB class through the hospital so I could see my doctor. Everything was going good, so I wasn't in any hurry to get in. My dr doesn't usually see you until you were 10-12 weeks along, so I scheduled my appointment for 11 weeks.

At my dr. appointment on December 15, Joel & the girls went with me. My Dr. had a medical student working with him, and she came in first. She tried to find the heartbeat, but couldn't. We figured it was just because I'm a heavier girl, and she is new. When my Dr came in he went ahead and looked for the heartbeat first. After 15 minutes and still no heartbeat, he decided maybe baby was just being uncooperative and maybe after some messing with me during my PAP would help. He send DH and the girls out and we did all the girly stuff.
Dr. said my uterus was tilted (which I still know nothing about and why it's like that) and that he after better feeling he thought baby was in a certain spot. He went ahead and tried to find the HB again. After a few more minutes he said to me "It's early, and so I could just not be able to find it yet. We can have you come back in two weeks, you'll be 13 weeks then and it should be easier to find then." He went ahead and went out so I could get dressed and sent DH back in. When I got dressed, and he came back in he said "If you guys don't mind, I have one more patient, and then we could go down and do an u/s just to make sure things are okay." Of course we said yes, and waited.

We went in for the ultrasound and my bladder wasn't very full, and he couldn't see anything but the Gestational Sac. We were given the option of an internal ultrasound or eating lunch and coming back. Having the girls with us, and it being 12 (apt time was 10:45) we opted for lunch and filling my bladder. An Hour & full bladder later, we still couldn't see anything. They sent the girls out while we got the internal u/s ready and let the girls come back in. We then could see the little one. Baby was measuring 8w4d, and I was 11 weeks. Dr said well maybe your dates are off. I was 100% certain on my dates b/c I'd written them down.

He turns on the heart rate thing where they listen. Nothing. No heartbeat. Just whooshing. Nothing. Then he turns on the colored part where you can see the heart. Nothing. No color on the baby.

He goes ahead and tells me let's schedule another u/s in two days with the u/s tech and go from there. He was still saying something about my dates being off, but it was possible I'd miscarried. I was unsure what to do/say. We walked out and tried to schedule the appointment when he wanted it but couldn't b/c they were booked. I took the soonest appointment to when he wanted me there and left crying. A nurse from the clinic called me about an hour later and had set up and 8am appointment on Thursday December 17.

We showed up 10 minutes early for the u/s and waited. I had a full bladder but the u/s tech couldn't see anything but the Sac again. We opted for the internal u/s again, and then saw the babe. Baby was measuring 8w6d. So we had hope. The baby had grown in two days, and we had hope. Until we turned on the little color part. There was still no color. The u/s tech ended the u/s then, and said I'm so sorry, patted my knee and told me where the things were to clean up and to leave the door open when I was done.

Just like that.

I was sent home, and told my doctor would call. Joel & I didn't say 5 words the whole way home.

When he called he told me that after looking over my numbers it was certain that I was miscarrying. He prescribed me Cytotec and told me how to take them and what not. He told me the things I needed to do, and I vaguely remember what he said. All I knew is I was supposed to take these pills, and within 24 hours it would be over.

It’s now been almost 3 weeks since we first knew something was going on. It’s been hard. It’s been rough, but at the same time I thank God because I’m alive, and this too shall pass. God knows my path in life, and knows which road I should take even if I don’t believe him right now.

I’m not going to try and be a downer this New Year. I’ve got some fun posts about our Christmas, and such coming up so please stay tuned. I mainly wanted this here for reference. So I don’t ever loose it!

Happy 5 year anniversary

 

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Sorry I’m not going to say much else. We’re facing a tough time right now, and unfortunately it deals with our newest family member. We found out on Tuesday that baby #4 had no heart beat, and we’d lost him/her around 8 weeks. Thank you ahead of time for the thoughts and prayers.

I won’t be posting again before Christmas, and probably won’t be blogging much from now on. At least for a while. If you still want to keep in touch with our family, let me know here, and I will email you my Facebook name/profile/whatever you call it.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you and yours! Hug  your families all you can!!!

My little ghouls and goblins

We weren't sure if we were going to be able to trick or treating.  Dahrran started running a temperature the weekend before, and was still not in school on Thursday. The Kaitlynn started running a temp on Tuesday night. By Thursday morning (her temp spiked Wed evening) we decided to take her in. After holding her down and a swab up the nose she was a confirmed H1N1 case :(. Not that I was surprised, it’s been running ramped like wildfire through Dahrran’s school.

After getting Kaitlynn started on Tami flu we saw an immediate difference in her, and by Friday evening no fever was present! It didn’t show up again on Sat, and so we were free to go Trick or Treating. The kids had so much fun, but I think Kaitlynn had the most!! She didn’t want us to carry her, and even threw a fit when I tried to empty her bucket and make it lighter. Towards the end though “Carry Me” could be heard.

Dahrran the Baseball player, and the girls as Ballerina’s

I had all intentions of the girls being little fairies, wings and all. When MacKenzie saw me making their Tutu's she insisted that she was going to be a ”dancing girl”. Guess who won? I had all hopes of finding Jews that you Iron on that said I (heart) Dance, and putting them on their shirts, but I couldn’t. So instead I got Iron on Glitter letters and planned on putting them on both the girls shirts. After getting home I decided I didn’t like that Idea for MacKenzie’s shirt, and Kaitlynn’s didn’t lay flat! On Kaitlynn’s shirt I just put Dance down one arm, and will probably put “Just” on the other. (someday) With MacKenzie’s, I decided to go a different route. After seeing Crystal’s shirts, I knew I wanted to try this out!! So I did! I love how it turned out!!!

Love how each one of them has their own smile….

…if you can’t tell it’s Kaitlynn’s new smile!

 

Before heading out we had to dance like a ballerina as well! Thank goodness Aunt Jess was able to show her how!

 

Picking Pumpkins

I didn’t take my kids to a Pumpkin Patch this year. Oh, who am I kidding, I haven’t ever taken my kids to a Pumpkin Patch. Don’t get me wrong I’d love to take them, but the cost keeps me away. I’d love to take them, but I know they’d want to pick out a big pumpkin, and I’m sure it would cost an arm and a leg. Not to mention the cost to get in, and the cost to do this and that!

Another factor that keeps us away is the drive. It’d take us an hour or more to get to any Pumpkin Patch around here. So we improvise, we usually just head to our local Landscaping store to pick out a pumpkin or two, or even grow our own. The last few years we’ve been fortunate enough to have grandpa (my dad) grow pumpkins.

This year though, Great Grandpa had some pumpkins. Grandpa didn’t plant a garden, and neither did Great Grandpa. One day when Great Grandpa (my grandpa) was mowing the lawn he came across a pumpkin plant. He went ahead and let it grow and just mowed around it all summer.

When Grandpa called and asked if we wanted to come out and pick them, we agreed! Of course by the time we got there it was almost dark, and I don’t play with my camera enough to figure out how to work it right at dusk. (If you have tips on using a DSLR at dusk please email me!!!!)

 
Dahrran & MacKenzie searching through the weeds to find them!

Grandpa had his lawnmower cart and so he brought it over so we could put all the pumpkins in it.

      The girls showing off their pumpkins. Grandpa was great, picked himself a few out, and then sent the rest home with us!