Up North and Thanksgiving

We went up north with the Govern's early in November. It was so fun!

Here are the girls with an egg they found lying outside the hen's nest.



Riding KC. Ava even remembered his name!





Nothing like a dozen free freshly laid eggs! This was my highlight.



Ava on KC.



Nisha and Michelle working hard in the kitchen.



We probably had a dessert to person ratio of 4:1



One of the worst family photos in family history. (Except Ava)



At Dad's house. He cooked a turkey all by himself for us! Probably the last holiday at the house before he sells it in the spring.

Halloween

It was cold the day of Halloween. North had a bad cough. There was more dressing up at the YMCA party we went to.

Busy!

This is really what I've been up to for the past couple months. Mixing medications, injecting myself, learning how to assemble syringes. It's been a learning process. True, there has been Thanksgiving and Halloween, but fertility medications are super time consuming. I have to wake up at 6 am to get to the dr. (which is 30 min away) and wait to get blood work and internal ultrasounds done every other day. They then call me with the results and any adjustments to make with my medications. My response the first month wasn't that great, but the second month (this was early October) I had two follicles and Tyler's counts were great. So we gave it a great shot. The best we could do. But it didn't work. It's been a few weeks since we found out it didn't work. And I've just been settling in to what that means for our family and how it is going to grow. 

Really over the past few years I have "matured" but in a way I feel like the innocence of trying to conceive has been lost. All my naive notions of having an "oops" baby are gone. Laughing and being trite about how many children we have. Each one is a true miracle. I don't know how they got here to be honest. I used to cry every Sunday about trying to conceive. I don't anymore. All those emotions have been tempered. Which is good! This is a good thing!

Life goes on. It never occurred to me that some people when they can't conceive just say, "Okay, that's fine! Life goes on!" Wow. I am NOT like that. Or at least I wasn't. 

Now we are pursuing Foster Care and Adoption through the state. We have always known this was the plan for our family, we just didn't know when! So onward we go. I am not a quitter! No matter how hard it is!

Tree!

Our tree turned super early this year. I saw no less than four people stopping in their cars to look at it AND TAKE PICTURES! The girls had fun raking. (I have a picture of the tree that is still on the camera. I'll update this post later)

Hoot Scoot and Daddy Daughter Dance

The girls school is amazing. As they get older I realize how great it truly is. They are both academically doing VERY well. I am hard on Ava sometimes (well, probably too much) because I expect her to be perfect, but you know what I saw when I visited her class? She was amazing, and perfect. And so is Violet. Somehow they turned out wonderful.

Every year they have one fundraiser and raise over $20,000. Last year the principal had to sleep on the roof of the school. This year he is getting dunked in a dunk tank. The school has smart boards (the electronic version of a dry erase) and iPads in every classroom. Here are the kids running around outside. North and Oscar the Owl. And Daddy took his girls to the Daddy Daughter Dance. Apparently he was ditched by Ava the second he got there, but he still had his little Violet to dance with and meet some of the other dads.


This picture is a classic. Every time I look at it I laugh. :)

So blessed

I am so blessed. Here are some pictures with captions. Here's North asleep on a chair. He has gone through a really rough transition with the girls being gone. Finally he is sleeping and not just crying and flailing around all day.
 
 Shhhh. Don't tell my sisters. :) (Good thing my blog is private so I can post hilarious pictures like this)
 
The girls are both doing soccer. Tyler coaches Violet's team and assists on the other. It keeps us VERY busy on Saturday. The fall season is about 8 weeks long and it has been super cold. I have a feeling we are going to be wearing snow pants by the time the season ends Nov. 3.



North covering uncle Spencer with toys. I have no idea why.

 

 New clothes!

Another Month

Well, a few weeks have passed. Let me fill you in. I have been super busy trying to get pregnant but alas, not this time. This time we tried IUI. My response was just okay ... Meaning that my body is super slow at developing eggs. I had numerous blood draws every other day at 7 am that left me looking like a drug addict. Every other day I also had an ultrasound. In the end I only had one egg that was about 18 mm. The doctor likes to see them 20 mm. So tomorrow I will learn how to shoot myself up with hormones, and then on Wednesday I will begin. It is a full time job! Thanks to my friends and family for their support. I have really needed it. Hugs.

First Day of School 2012

Uh oh! Look who's in Kindergarten!\






 Here is Violet with her teacher, Mrs. Poelman (the same one Ava had last year. This is a really good thing!)

 Here are the girls SO excited:

 

 And my first grader who looks like she is turning 16...

 

And Ava with her teacher Mrs. Jones:




Violet reported to Ava that the "she was right, the teachers really were nice." Ava said all she did was color. And that I forgot her snack (but I didn't, it was just in a different pocket). They have the same recess, but when they went out it started raining (and it rained BUCKETS) so they had to go back inside. They get a solid A+ for the first day! Mom, on the other hand dropped the ball and didn't go inside to pick up Violet like she was supposed to, so Violet was one of the kids "left behind" with the student teacher. Poor thing. She didn't know it was a bad thing though so this is one of my free passes. Soon she will cry I'm sure, but hopefully it will not happen again.

In case you want to know what Ava and I wore for the first day of school click here. :) I'm sad my girls are away from me, but happy they will get to learn and have fun at school. It is also nice to know they are in good hands. We are blessed with a school that is in the top 20 in the state ... or as the principal says, "The NY Yankees of elementary schools!"

End of Summer

One of the things I really enjoyed this year was doing a celebration, or something really fun the "last" day of summer vacation. School will always start in Michigan after Labor Day, and since it's a holiday there are a lot of fun things going on. It was nice to have a real shift in activity one day to the next - and be able to anticipate that shift and prepare for it. All the school supplies were bought, bags packed, named, clothes set out ... so we had the whole day to have fun!

It was a hot one. And naturally the AC in our house died. Thankfully we got the AC in the van fixed last week, so we're running at a solid 50% average in the AC department. The weather is going to turn soon ... I know it! (This totally jinxes me ... we're going to have 80 degree weather through Halloween now ... )


We went to a local fair called the Renaissance Festival. There was giant food:



(Honestly, what's a paleo girl to do? I've always wanted to try one of those giant drumsticks and I had my chance)
Saw jousting and a sword fight:

 

 Some pretty gardens:

 

 And hugged some weird dragon thing:



He wants to be just like his sisters.



All in all, it was nice to have "an event" to look forward to and something big to do the day before school started, but I'm not sure if we'll go to that festival again. The people watching was much crazier than any amusement park I've ever been to. Tons of people were in costume, which was fun. But it also drew the tattooed and pierced crowd. And to top it off I saw a pregnant woman smoking. The SECOND one this summer. So sad. Breaks my heart. Michigan and smoking in general is so antiquated. Anyway, next you get to see the school pictures, so I'll stop this and move on!

North's 2 Year Photos

Took some today. Here is my little blessing! So thankful for him!



Still has baby hands.



Fake smile face.



These are edited. Definitely my fav's.









He definitely has my eyes, my nose, Tyler's skin tone .. but the rest is still a toss up. It will be fun to see what he looks like as he grows up.