My pregnancy

Step 1: getting pregnant

This whole journey started like most pregnancy stories do. Waking up one morning and feeling like your house is suddenly emptier than it was the day before...baby time:). We tried on our own for over a year and no dice. my OBGYN gave me a card to some reproductive center and that was that. We felt so lost it the mix of where to go and where to start. after almost another year of back and forth and doc's blaming it on my cancer treatment, but never looking into it further and not knowing where to send me, I was frustrated and ready for a break. My good friend from nursing school was working at an OB office that specialized in infertility. She got me into her doc who started me on fertility treatments right away and was really great. after 2 months of oral meds, shots, and daily ultra sounds still no baby. He said my best and probably only shot was IVF. So off to and IVF specialist. Our meeting with him was one I'll never forget. it was an hour of telling us he was the best there is, and that is why he is based out of LA and will only be here for us part time. he told us it is going to cost double what the other doc told us, not including the shots. Then eventually going through the process which came to a halt when he got to the egg freezing. They use a preservative called DMSO so freeze the eggs. this is a preservative that I know well because we use it in Stem cell transplantation, and I'm very, very allergic to it. When we told him that he said that there is no other way to do IVF and I will not be able to get pregnant any other way, so if i want to try any other methods he will send me to another doc, but not to get our hopes up. This experience was very sad and confusing for us both, I'm so glad I have such an amazing husband.
It was another 4 months before we would see our next doctor. We agreed to a much needed break and didn't say the word baby in our house or watch any shows with babies in it. in April I went to boston with 2 friends from work for an oncology nursing conference. It was so much fun and a trip I will never forget. One of my friends was 9 weeks pregnant on the trip and was sick. I found myself weirdly motion sick on the plain and in the morning too. we laughed it off as empathy sickness...it turns out it wasn't. 1 week after getting home we saw our new doc who was a breath of fresh air. We didn't know I was pregnant at that first appointment and am glad for that because that established us as his patient which has turned out to be great.
Before taking my first fertility medication that month I had to take a pregnancy test, which I threw away because I didn't believe it was positive. I took 3 of them before I ran to show Rick.
Moral of the story- Doctors don't know everything, I learned to never stop trying. Every experience we have is for a reason and part of a bigger plan.

Step 2: the pregnancy:
I don't know if it was because I was so excited to be pregnant, but I had more energy during pregnancy than I have ever had! I lot of it was also because my diet changed a lot. With 3 years of nursing school, graveyard shifts, fertility treatments, an ankle reconstruction surgery, and just getting lazy, I found myself Very out of shape! The responsibility of being pregnant hit me like a train! this was the one chance my baby had at properly forming a body and she was 100% dependent on me to get the nutrients to do that. wow. After a while of only eating healthy things, the thought of grease and sugar made me sick. I felt better during my pregnancy than i had in years
We found out she was a girl at 17 weeks along. We went to fetal fotos because we were too excited to wait. it took over an hour of me moving in different directions, going to the bathroom, and finally saying we would come back another day for her to finally show us what she was:). Rick was hilarious when we found out. He is such a sports guy that when he heard girl he didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't know what kind of toys to get or how he would play with her. this was short lived when he studied the toy isle and got her some cute sporty clothes. she is definitely his little princess and had him wrapped around her little finger from the day we found out she was a girl:)
My first kick i felt at 21 weeks while we were at the farmers market and I had a hand full of bear lake raspberries:)
She loved bath time during the pregnancy. she seemed to always be in my right hip so warm baths helped me a lot with that discomfort. during the bath I would watch my belly move back and forth. She still loves bath time:).
She also LOVES music. I would listen to music loud on the way to work in the mornings and loved to feel her dancing. Music still calms her down when she is having a rough night.
Around 27 weeks she established "dance off time" from 8-10ish every night turned into a dance off in my belly, even making me loose dinner a couple of times. She was pretty calm through the night after that. I was hoping this would continue after birth. It has to some extent, she is very active and talkative in the late evening and sleeps great!

Catching up

Wow its been 2 1/2 years since I blogged. Here is a quick run down of the last couple years. We bought our house here in day break and love it out here...way out here:)We both have new jobs. Rick now markets cheese to grocery stores all over utah and makes his own hours, which is a huge change from the 50 hr weeks he worked at whole foods in park city. My new job is still in Bone Marrow transplant, but it is more of an office job helping out our super busy PA's which whatever they need. I'm the first one to have the job so I wrote the job description and made it what it is...so we are all still learning:). We are both so blessed to have steady jobs that fit our crazy schedule and life style.
We now have 3 dogs...that right, 3. I still think I'm crazy whenever i say it lol. Mom that's what you get for not getting me a dog growing up :). It wouldn't have been so crazy if their ages were a little more spread out, but we basically had 3 puppies which was nuts for starters. Rocky, our lab, is our latest addition. we weren't sure if we were going to keep him. we got him to train him for a friend who decided against a lab and by then he was ricks best friend. he is our sweetest dog so we are happy. We were slow to get him snipped which led to him getting our weimerainer prego while we were out of town. She isn't fixed because we weren't sure if we were going to breed her. She had puppies in August which was an awesome 1 TIME experience that we loved.
We also had some house guests this year. Bobby and cat (Rick's bro and his wife) lived with us during the spring while they bought, and fixed up their house. It was a blast having cat here, like living with room mates again. My brother Jeremy moved in for a summer job down by us right after they left. it was awesome having the extra help with the new puppies while i was pregnant and working my new job, and rick was looking for his new job. The absolute, best part was finally getting pregnant. That deserves its own post:).

Time to celebrate!

So just a quick update. I graduated nursing school and passed my state boards...phew! Such a huge relief! Next week I will start working as an RN on the Bone marrow transplant floor and am so excited! The week before my boards were dramatic to say the leased. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to be busy, but am not the most organized person when i'm super busy. So I lossed my drivers licence right before boards (which is super mandatory to have) and was going to have to drive to casper WY (wherever that is) to take my boards! Long story short a spot opened up in Draper and the testing center showed mercy on a poor frazzled nursing student and let me use other forms of ID. The night before boards I was feeling exsausted from the unneccesary (spelling?) drama in my life and swore to Rick that i was going to cut the drama out of my life and work on having more balance. The next morning before 10:30 am I had taken boards (and thought i failed), found out that an offer we put on a house in daybreak was accepted, and that we had 2 weeks to close, find renters for our appartment, and move...Bring it on! All we could do was laugh. We are so excited to finally have a place to call our own! I will post pics of the house once we have a chance.

Update overload

I'm way behind on my updating. Here is what has been going on with us these last few weeks.
Rick has been working like crazy to organize an organic foods road tore up in park city.It finally came together a few weeks ago and was a blast! It was so fun to see all of the different vendors he has made friends with that traveled from around the country to come to his store and party with him in the parking lot. He had bands and a BBQ going the whole time, everyone there looked like they were having so much fun.
As he was cleaning up from the road tore he dropped a table on his toe. This was all in the middle of a series of night shifts for me so over about three days whenever he would say his toe hurt I would look at him half asleep like "go get some ice then and stop whining". Turns out his toe and foot are BROKEN in 4 places...yeah, wife of the year award over here.
We have been house shopping for a while and putting offers down on short sales...long process. Last week we decided to let things sit for a while and not rush anything. That decision has turned out to be a blessing for sure. Last week rick was notified of a job opportunity in Honolulu but brushed it off because I have a contract to work here for a year after school. Now that I'm out of my contract (IHC doesn't have a job for me because of a freez) we might have the opportunity of a life time since there is no nursing shortage at all in Hawaii. We will see how this pans out...but the thought of spending the next year working in hawaii and being with Rick more really gets me through these long night shifts.
Pete and Ashli came down for a visit and to celebrate cute Boston's first birhtday. It was so fun to have most of my family together. My family really grounds me and makes me realize how good life really is. Growing up my friends would comment on how genuine my family is with each other. life has gotten so crazy and keeps us away from each other a lot, so being together reminds me about how genuine all of them are. Thanks you guys for everything!
Ricks brother is taking missionary discussions and we have been sitting in on them. My favorite lessons in church are the ones that bring me back to basics. It is so easy to get caught up in all of the complications of life and quesions that we have. I LOVED hearing the basic plan of salvation lesson. Its so fun to have that experience with Rick's family. they are all such amazing people that I love to death. Carla saves us every sunday with an amazing sunday dinner. Rick and I have a serious cooking issue at our house...(I seriously need tips on good meals that last days so we can eat them on the run, this fast food thing is getting a little out of control.)Going to the in laws every week brings us back to reality and reminds us how important family is. I look foreward to sundays all week because we can really kick back and relax.
I cant think of anything else new and exciting right now. I'll post pics soon!

Nursing Shortage what??

Its 2 am on my last night of my preceptorship in Respiratory ICU, I'm stoked to be done, but super sad because I know I wont be working here due to the over excitement of nursing schools!! thats right, as of this week IHC can only hire from the IHC program until further notice! Both my plan A and plan B jobs were with IHC.My plan C is a nursing home I used to work at that I reluctently (spelling?) called a month ago just to say I had a plan C. can someone seriously through me a bone? This is really just my sleep deprived whining, everything seems so much more dramatic at 2 a.m.:)

Back to school!

Graduation....So close, but SOO far away haha. As I walk the halls of work, go to my families houses, and spend time with friends the topic of conversation has been "ten weeks till graduation". It has seemed so far away that ten weeks seems impossable to grasp. Even with my main classes over with, even with pete and ashli planning the trip to come down here that week (thanks you guys), and even with rick doing a happy dance through our house because he will have his wife back in two months(super funny and brightens my day). Everyone around me has been so great, but if feels like i'm in a coma, I look at a book to study and glaze over...its pretty bad :). Vacationing really helped but I couldn't put my finger on what was really the problem here.
So the other day Rick and I got home from work at the same time and he GROUNDED me like a 2 year old to our room for a nap haha! He is always worried about my sleeping habbits (or the lack there of), so I figured I would make him happy and try to sleep at 3:30 in the afternoon(not likely).
THIRTEEN HOURS LATER at 4:30 am I woke up to Ricks alarm clock. Since then, I feel like a new woman. I have realized in 2 short months I will have accomplished what I have always wanted to do! Its like a light bulb has turned on and I can focus, laugh, and yes... be SUPER EXCITED that soon I will be out of school and move on.
Moral of my story....We could all use a nap every once and a while!

Happy one year!!!!

WOW i cant believe it has been a year since we were married! It has FLOWN BY!
We couldn't plan any trips because this year our anniversary fell right in the middle of finals week. So what did we do....We went anyways!!!
You know you are despirate for a vacation when you get in the car to go "anywhere fun" and end up in YELLOWSTONE! We started out in barelake to see the beautiful scenery ( I LOVE how the rain has made everything so pretty) and found out that same road we were on would eventually take us to yellowstone (we didn't exsactly think of how long it would take). Even though it was the "scenic rout" and took us through speed trap towns the entire way, I had so much fun!! Rick is not only an amazing husband, but a super fun Travel buddy! Our camera isn't holding a charge so the only pics we got are from our phones.



Don't mind my "No make up because I didn't know we were leaving the state" get up. I should learn to be more prepaired with such a spontanious husband :)



this waterfall wasn't on the map. Ricks sharp eye spotted it out. When we were first dating I told rick how much I love waterfalls so he planned a huge day long date where we hiked to all of the waterfalls in the vally.(I thought he was trying to impress me, but I have learned that he just really loves to suprise me and see me happy..mushy I know) Going to such a pretty waterfall on our anniversary ment a lot to me.
Babe, thanks for the best year of my life! It has been such an adventure getting to know you and loving you more every day!! Here is to a million more anniversaries!!




I cant forget to thank Rick for our addition to our little family! Charlee (or "little dingo" as Rick calls her) was my birthday suprise and has added so much to our lives! I couldn't be happier about our little family and little life that we have!

Here are some of our fun pics from our big day!


Love!







YUMMY! too bad it wasn't long before this was in my face:)