Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Start trying now they said, it'll take nearly a year they said...

One of the first conversation Nick and I had when we met, like literally the first night because I was just coming out of a relationship with someone who didn't want a family, was how important starting a family was. We both agreed that we wanted kids and couldn't wait to be in a position to get started. Obviously after getting married, buying a home and having good careers the conversation about kids came back up. Spending time with my sister Lindsy's amazing kid Jax kinda sealed the deal for us, we can do this! So we decided 2014 was the year to start. We'd have time to pay off some house debt and plan for everything. Well as most people know it takes about 40 weeks to grow a baby so we thought maybe start trying around the holidays. After telling some friends and family about our plans we were promptly told that it could take months, even years to conceive. Being that I am 32 years old and throughout my life have never had anything near a close call this advice started to get in my head...oh god..what if I haven't accidentally gotten pregnant because I actually can't get pregnant?! Nick assured me that he had super sperm and no matter what a baby would happen, lol. At any rate, the night of our wedding we decided to forgo the birth control and just let things happen naturally. 4 weeks later I was 4 weeks pregnant!

I knew I was pregnant right away, but I needed to wait for that magic missed period to be totally sure. So the day it didn't happen I ran out to the drugstore and got a test. I was on my way home from work, I didn't want to false alarm Nick so I went straight to the bathroom when I got home figuring if it was negative, no big deal, I wouldn't say anything and just move on with life (but who are we kidding I've never kept anything from Nick because I can't seem to). I brought a book thinking it would be awhile before the results were clear. No sooner did I put the cap on the stick did those two blue lines show up and tell me what I thought wasn't possible! I went straight to Nick and told him I had to tell him something. I handed him the stick and he looked at me in disbelief. His range of emotions in the next 3 minutes was probably the fastest I've ever seen anyone go. He hugged me and said he was excited, went into his "I told you so's" about his super sperm and then started freaking out about money. First we had to sell the house, then he'd have to get a promotion at work, maybe go down to one car. After I reminded him that the reason we bought a home was because this is what we wanted and that everything was going to be ok he calmed down and immediately hopped in the car so we could drive to his best friends house and tell him the news!

So here we are. I am 21 1/2 weeks pregnant with our baby girl Evelyn Rose. We had originally only chosen a boy name (actually we picked it like over a year ago) because we both really wanted a little boy to camp, hike and climb with. I was worried when we found out it was a girl that Nick would be disappointed but on the contrary, he can't wait to have a little girl to take care of. Only the best for his lil Ev, she's already got him wrapped around her little finger. Its really fun to work on the little changes in our lives that having a baby is doing. Even more so that my husband is 100% all hands on deck into everything!

Here's the facebook announcement we made. It was supposed to be a shot of our shoes, the dogs feet and Ev's shoes but the look of total disappointment on the dogs faces was too priceless to not include!

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

WE GOT MARRIED!!!




In light of my back issues Nick and I decided to get married early and add me to his much better health insurance plan. That and we just couldn't freaking wait to get married. Wedding planning is daunting. I tried on dresses and went to expos and honestly all this wedding crap was just that...crap! Its never been my dream to get all fluffed up in a white dress and having all my friends and family staring at me and then drink all night long (not to mention spending literally all of our money to have this event!). When I realized we could just marry each other the way we want to, when we want to and have a celebration of the event with friends/family later. Once that hit me, I relaxed and started planning it the right way.

So we were going to get married at the courthouse on our 2 year anniversary. It was good timing because I like our anniversary date and my sister was going to be in town visiting. We were telling Nicks friend Jon about the plans and Jon says he's actually ordained (online) and can marry us for free! YAY! This suddenly opened up so many possibilities. So we decided to make our wedding a little more meaningful.

Nick actually formally asked me to be his girlfriend when we were first dating. I thought it was adorable, I'd never actually been asked like that before. We had hiked up a mountain that day and were enjoying the sunset and he told me he wanted me to be only his. Since our wedding options had opened up recently, we decided what better place to get married than the spot it all began on the 2 year anniversary of the day it happened? Nothing could have possibly been better.

We hiked up North Mountain in Phoenix with my sister and nephew, best friend, Nicks 2 best friends and our officiant. It was so windy up there! When we got to the spot, we held hands and Jon read some beautiful passages, we said our I do's and it was done. Beautifully done. After hugging and taking photos, we all hiked back down and celebrated with sushi dinner.

The photos can be found here

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

My Back.

For the last few years I have had some issues with chronic back pain, numbness and tingling in my back and arms. I never went to the doctor (because that's just what I do..or don't do) just assuming it was a mixture of being a bit overweight, sitting at a desk job, having scoliosis and having large breasts. I got really sick with the flu a couple of months ago so while I was at the doctor having that looked at I mentioned my back issues. She decided to schedule me for an x-ray to see what was going on. The Xray showed my scoliosis and possibly some issues with my disks so I went for an MRI. The MRI was only on my neck and just below but what they found was something called a Syrinx Cavity causing a condition called Syringomyelia. So far, the disks in my C-spine are completely desiccated (gone) because of it. My doctor had never heard of it before and did a terrible job of explaining the condition to me, she literally printed out some medical dictionary stuff and told me to go see a neuro-surgeon.

I'll be completely honest. I'm terrified. I don't even want to go see this doctor because of a million what-ifs. I'm somewhat relieved that I know there's something actually wrong and I'm not just in pain because of my weight or posture. But I don't want to go to this doctor.

Nick has been the epitome of support. I can't truly express how much I love him and all that he does to take care of me. He started calling the doctors for me when he realized I was putting it off, making my appointments and faxing in all the diagnoses, he even contacted the Mayo clinic just in case I do need surgery. He got me a massage and offers to schedule me one whenever I want.

So yesterday, finally, all the paperwork was sent in to the neurosurgeons office. They are looking over all the tests now and will call me for an appointment. I really like how the office does things, they read what I've had done already, then decide where to go before ever meeting me. So they don't walk into the appointment blind. I'm anxious but I know no matter what happens I'll be ok :)

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Food, food, FOOD!

After the holidays Nick and I decided we needed to make some changes to our diet. We talked about what we could and could not live without and how we could make enough reasonable changes to help ourselves eat better without sacrificing the things we love. For me it was sweets like ice cream and chocolate and for him it was pizza and pasta. For awhile we worked on portion control, which was nice but in the end we would just pig out and undo all the good works we'd been doing. So for the first couple weeks we weren't doing so hot.

Then, we decided to try a "cleanse" 5 days on juice, soups and veggies. It was just what we needed to kick start our healthy life. We bought a juicer and found an awesome meal plan and stuck with it for 5 days. Granted we choked our way through some of the recipes, for the most part we enjoyed it. Then, we decided to keep the juices and add in some whole foods. Since then we've transitioned to a "paleo" diet. I use the term loosely because I'm sure there are things here and there we eat that aren't completely paleo in that we still eat rice, used some processed spices and things like that. And we also have occasional cheat days or times when we indulge, like on Valentines day we went to a fancy schmancy place called Prime Ocean. I had a steak and carrots but topped my meal off with peanut butter pie. I think knowing that I am allowed to do that when I want makes me less likely to want it because aside from times like that when I crave sweets some fruit or a juice suffices.

Health wise this new lifestyle has really helped me. My skin looks and feels great, I have much more energy and of course I'm losing plenty of weight. I went to the doctor a while back for a pretty nasty case of the flu and she had me take some blood tests since it had been awhile since I'd been to the doctor. My blood pressure was crazy high, my cholesterol was so bad she gave me a prescription to lower it and most of my vitamins were really low. No surprise, I was eating like crap and it finally caught up. Instead of taking drugs to regulate my body, I decided to let food do the work.

As if our relationship needed any improving, doing this diet has really made Nick and I closer. We're able to take a real look at why we're doing this and what is important to us. Not just because we want to be healthier but the things we learn now about eating right are things we'll be passing to our kids someday. We shop together, cook together and plan our meals out. And, we get to share our successes as we go!

There are some awesome resources that have really made this process easier!
Of course, all of the awesomeness that is Reddit: /r/Paleo and /r/juicing
TheFoodee.com is the single most awesome website for building meal plans and making grocery lists
MarksDailyApple.com
and Reboot with Joe

And a super special thanks to our great friend Otlyn whole is providing guidance and support as we learn how we're actually supposed to be eating!