God Said, "No"

This was drafted back at the beginning of November, but took a while to think about actually publishing this post. If you haven't read the previous post, you may want to do that first.

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We told very few people, but Friday, October 28, was the day we'd find out if we would be parents of 2 or 3. This happened to fall on the exact same day we had been planning, with our missional community, a neighborhood pumpkin carving party in our back yard . The whole day I was flipping out. Poor Frank, every time he looked at me, or asked me to do anything, I would burst into tears. The crying started the night before. I knew from the last time that this was going to be the kind of day I was going to have. I stayed pretty busy with the boys and getting ready for the party. I think the worst part was knowing that several of the people coming over knew this was the day and if it was bad news, how in the world was I going to hold it together every time someone new walked in. However, I knew God had me and He would carry me through.

It was 4:45pm on the 28th, the party started at 5pm and a couple from our group was already here helping us set up. Frank ran upstairs to do something and I was outside with the boys when the phone rang. A very happy lady asked me if I was ready for the news. Then she tells me that the embryo is still there, but it is not alive and it tried really hard to make it. I was trying really hard to not to fall apart and was doing a good job. I was looking around for Frank, but couldn't remember where he said he would be. I passed two people who knew I was not ok, but I had to find Frank first. I finally hid and called him to find out where he was. He was upstairs. He met me at the top of the stairs and I fell apart. A few minutes later Jeremy runs up the stairs because people started arriving and he doesn't do well in big crowds. So Jeremy and I snuggled upstairs for a while. He kept checking on me and hugging me and somehow making me laugh.

I knew I had to go down and mingle, but every time I thought of it, I'd start crying again. I finally forced myself and Jeremy downstairs, with Frank leading us like a body guard. I hit the bottom step and I was ok. There were no tears left and a peacefulness rested on me. Throughout the night I found out there were three other people there who had been crying all day. God put us all together on the same night to comfort each other when none of us would have done it on our own. In my mind, getting the news, good or bad, couldn't have landed on a worse day. Thankfully God is in control and not me. I was so blessed that night by my neighbors and was so in awe of Gods love, strength and faithfulness. I was telling a lady I had only met once before, about what God had done for us concerning the embryos. She said that God is always that present and physical in our lives, He just chooses to let us see a glimpse of it once in a while. That has had me in awe, once again, all day. I knew it in my head, but not in my heart, or maybe I just didn't know what it looked and felt like.

I spent today loving and playing with my little miracle, crazy haired boys (as Kelli calls them). I am so blessed to get to be their mom. God is so faithful and loving. What a week!

God is Awesome

This post is from October 19, 2011 and has been sitting here as a draft. Took us a little bit to look it over and finally hit publish...

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Some of you know that after doing IVF for the boys we had 3 embryos left. They were frozen and we had to decide what to do with them. We have had 3 years of praying and searching for an answer. We finally decided to try again. A burden we've been carrying was wondering what to do with any embryos left over again. We didn't think there was any way, physically or financially, that we could have three more children. If we try again and there are is "someone" still left over, we would probably have to donate them to a couple looking for their own little blessing. This was beyond ours strength and courage, but we knew if God wanted us to do this then he would supply the strength and courage we would need daily. We prayed for the potential couple that might be out there and could be receiving our child. The thought of someone who does not try their best to love God and repeatedly run back to Him after failing or teaching our child about Him is incredibly painful. Another prayer was something like this: Father, we pray there was never any life on hold, frozen, waiting, because of desires to start a family 3 years ago...may all three embryos not be viable. Finally, another prayer went: Father, we pray the first two are not viable, but the third is and whatever happens from there we will be completely at peace knowing either way You made this happen for us. Ultimately, we did not have to decide on donating. Especially since we have always felt that adopting may be part of our future. We knew this was a huge burden on us, but I don't think we knew just how big it was until this wednesday.

Wednesday we went in for the transfer. We knew this was the only transfer we could do because our insurance would only pay for one more. There is no way we would be able to cover all the expenses on our own. So this was it. They were going to "defrost" our embryos one at a time. If the first one looked good, they would implant it. If it didn't work and we had embryos left then we would have to donate before our family was full. The possibility of the implant failing and still having to donate was our biggest fear. Next was that we would have to donate at all. Third fear was having twins again. Three years ago we decided to double our chances and had 2 embryos implanted. They knew we only wanted one put in this time, so they'd only be thawing one and there was a good chance of having embryos left over.

We were in our room waiting for our doctor (fantastic woman, she is) to arrive. Things finally started moving and the embryologist came in to tell us how the unfreezing went. He started to tell us the "bad news" that the first two embryos did not make it, but the third was beautiful and he handed us a picture of the little guy, or girl. Frank made him stop to repeat it because he thought he was imagining it. The man apologized and said it again. Frank and I could not hide our goofy grins. God had taken our burden from us. God placed the embryos in order for us. If they would have thawed the third one first, we would have never known what was to be of our donated embryos. We no longer had an impossible decision to make. We were able to just enjoy the ride and see what God had in store for us. We do not know if we are going to be pregnant in two weeks, but right now we are. Our family is complete, no one has to leave. We are sending our love to this little one as long as we get to. No matter what happens God's hand was in this 100% and we are so glad.

Pumpkin Carving

 We had a neighborhood carving get together last night, but we were too busy cooking hotdogs and talking that we never got to carving our own pumpkins. We took care of it today though! The boys wanted  "pooky" faces, spooky faces, on their pumpkins. They've been carrying them all around the house the past two days. Luckily pumpkins are pretty tough and even a tumble down the stairs did no harm.

Holly went all out on her design. When she saw the pumpkin with the stem bent down like a nose, she decided on carving "Ellyvan," a character from Jungle Junction. It came out really good.

I decided to carve "Jack" from Nightmare Before Christmas. Wasn't sure it would work out when I started carving out his mouth and it was really thin. It seemed to work out okay though.

Happy halloween folks...may your trick or treats yield a bounty of Snickers, Twix and peanut M&M's. No smarties!

Automated call

Last week, Holly was made a call to fill a prescription and got connected to an automated phone system. She gave her name and then said the numbers for her prescription. The automated system repeated random numbers that didn't come close to what Holly said. She had no idea where the system was coming up with these random numbers, until the third try when she realized Jeremy was behing her yelling out numbers with her.

And now for a random fishing video from last Apri when we still had water in our neighborhood creek...

Halloween Craft Day

It's my favorite time of year for crafts. We had our second anual neighborhood halloween craft day this week. The turnout was great this year, 8 adults, 13 kids. Everyone chipped in to bring snacks and crafts. The kids loved it but, I think the Moms had more fun talking and relaxing. I am so blessed to have such amazing neighbors.

One of the crafts was a snack time craft. Angela brought pumpkin shaped sandwiches and boxes of raisins for the kids to put together and make a face. Jeremy took it a step further and paired it along with the apple mouths with peanut teeth, that Jennifer brought, to make a very scary pumpkin sammich.

For hi-res photos, check out our Kodak Gallery album here.