Changes

Out of the blue I discovered the need for a job change. Yesterday started as any other day. Then my employer (boss) and I had a disagreement which erupted into him yelling at me. Which was followed by me spending the day crying. In the end my husband and I decided that I needed to turn in my two week notice. I am scared by this decision. In some ways this was the perfect job. It is very close to home. I was able to put the younger girls on the bus in the mornings before coming to work and then home right after they were. If an emergency came up I could take off no problem. My younger girls have came into work with me before and my second to the oldest girl even works here part time for extra money. And once the baby arrives the plan was (at my bosses request) for me to just bring the baby to work. And to top it all off when we moved to Wyoming the plan was for me to still be the book keeper (got to love technology). But there were a few downsides to working here. The biggest, my bosses temper. I have spent the last year plus walking on egg shells. It has been challenging to say the least. So where do I go from here?
I'm working on my resume but know that I will probably end up just getting a 'fill in' job. I need to know that I can have time off when our baby is due. I do not want to risk missing the birth. And I have been inducing lactation (I'll have to do a post on that sometime, very interesting subject) so being able to breast feed is important. I'm not sure what will happen. Chances are good that once the baby arrives I will not work at all. Financially I don't know how we can handle that while living here. When we move to Wyoming our plan is for me to stay home but the mortgage we have here makes that difficult. I'm trusting that everything will be fine in the end. Just feeling a little nervous/scared today.

Update: Boss came in and apologized. I am still leaving here but I agreed to stay on until a suitable replacement can be found with the understanding that if anything like this ever happens again I am out the door at that moment. This choice does give me some relief. 99% of the time this is a good place to be. It is the 1% of the time that is hard to handle. Now I wonder how hard it is going to be to find a replacement for me. Apparently it took 3 months of looking for them to find me... Scary.

Budgeting and menus

I am a planner. I like to plan anything and everything. Sometimes my plans work out and sometimes they don't.
One thing that we really needed to do to help us with our surrogacy journey was to get our finances in order. So I developed a plan for that. The first thing that we did was make a budget. I know that the word budget is a scary one and believe me I resisted having a budget for a VERY long time. But now that we do have a budget it has taken so much pressure off us. I love that I know what our money is doing. When we started budgeting we weren't sure how to go about it. I looked for info on the internet and found Dave Ramsey. His principals are what we loosely follow for our finances. We have a basic budget that we use each month and then tweak as needed. And one thing that I love doing is seeing how much under budget I can come in. My favorite budget category is food (okay so to be honest that is my favorite category for most things. I love food). We have a set amount of money each month for me to spend at the grocery store. I like to see if I can actually have money left over at the end of the month. Some months I do, some months I don't but it is a continuing challenge to myself.
I make menus to help me with my food budget and my time budget. I work 40 hours a week outside the home so I really need to have a plan in place for things like meals. We eat what I call simple foods and I make alot of 'rubber meals'. These aren't meals made out of rubber or tasting like rubber (not usually anyway) but meals where I start with one item and turn it into 2, 3 or even 4 more meals. Such as a Pot Roast. My Rubber Pot Roast might look like this:
Meal 1- Pot Roast cooked with potatoes, carrots, celery and onions.
Meal 2- Shredded beef and cheese enchiladas served with 'spanish' rice
Meal 3- Beef and veggie gravy (the leftover beef and veggies from meal 1 put in a homemade stroganoff like gravy) over egg noodles.

All of the meals would have a salad or a green veggie (or both) added to them and often times slices of fruit too and occasionally homemade bread or rolls.

I have been using rubber bean recipes alot lately too. This blog http://lentilsandrice.blogspot.com/ has been a huge source for me for her stretchy beans recipes. http://lentilsandrice.blogspot.com/search?q=stretchy+beans. This week we are using some of her garbanzo bean recipes. My family loves garbanzo beans (I grew up calling them chickpeas). Tonight we are having curried chickpeas with naan (fancy word for flatbread). I've made it once before and actually had to cut my husband off at his fourth serving! Tomorrow night is my version of falafels.

I post the weekly menu on the fridge. Hubby and the kids know what is for dinner and the younger girls even help me with cooking it. Tonight DD#3 will help me by rolling out the bread she does a great job at that task and it gives me some time alone with her.

Newbie Blogger

I've thought about starting a blog for a while now. I'm the type of person who gets all excited about something and goes full steam ahead for a while and then... Nothing. I avoided starting a blog for that reason. I've entered a few post in the blog section in myspace (which I'll copy over below to catch you up) but for the most part my thoughts just float around in my head. One of the reasons I'm starting this now is to have a record of our life events. We have so many things going on right now.

Event #1: We are expecting a baby! Having a baby is a wonderful event. This will be my husbands first child and my fifth child. We are very fortunate to be able to have this baby. We are only able to have this child thru the help of a surrogate. Our surrogate is 16+ weeks pregnant and we believe that the baby is a boy. My other children are all girls and our surro has only had girls before (4 also) so having a boy is new territory for both of us! We'll hopefully know for sure at the next ultrasound on August 15th.

Event #2: We are planning a move. We currently live in the Pacific Northwest. Next spring we intend to move to Wyoming. Big switch! I'm looking forward to this as an adventure. We have an offer in on a piece of property. A beautiful 2 acres that we will either build a house on or put a new modular home on. It has a view of Casper Mountain and Casper the city. I love it and we hope to hear soon that our offer was accepted.

Event #3: My DD#2 is moving out. This is a bittersweet event for me. She turned 18 in June. I'm amazed at what an incredible young lady she has become and am very happy that she is taking this step. But I'll still miss my little girl! DD #1 will continue at college in the fall as a sophomore. Only change is this year instead of living on campus she will live with my parents. It is very good that they live close to the college. I am a little (okay alot) sad that when we move to Wyoming both of the older girls will be staying here. It is hard for me to realize sometimes that they are now adults and are building their own lives. I'll get better at accepting this as time goes on (I hope).

I guess that is it for big events. Many little things. Such as continuing to work on our 1900 era house to get it ready to sell.

What will I write about in this blog? Many things. I will probably tell you about surrogacy, my children, moving, my attempts at cooking, working on the house, plans for our new house. You name it. In my mind everything is fair game.

Here are copies of my previous blog posts.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Waiting...
We are currently in what is referred to as the 2 week wait. This is the time when we are waiting to see if the attempted conception has achieved a pregnancy. I would like to tell you that it is a fun time but I would be lying! Joe and I have been through quite a few 2 week waits (2ww) now. We have found that working on our house helps us pass the time. But it still drags on and on and on and on. You get the idea.
Ours is not a normal conception. In order to have a baby we need the help of a surrogate. Our surrogate is in this 2ww right along with us. I know for a fact that this 2ww is just as looong for her as us. And she has the added temptation of pregnancy tests. I am sure that as I am typing this she is thinking about pregnancy tests and using one (we will in the future refer to this as POAS). Stay strong girl- stay strong!
By this time next week we should know how this 2ww turned out. In the mean time, Joe and I are going to rip the icky tile ceiling down in the living room, dining room and kitchen. That should keep us busy!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunshine!
I love the sun coming in my window. Many of our days are dark and rainy here. So a sunny day is something to celebrate. Of course, my wimpy Oregon eyes can barely handle the brightness!
I've lived in Oregon for half my life. I never really noticed just how much it rained until I married my sun loving husband. Last winter he was getting very sad about all of the rain. I kept promising him 'wait until summer, honey, it will be beautiful'. Well, it was beautiful but it was also the wettest summer that our area had seen in years! I do understand better his loathing of the rain. He spent his life doing things outdoors. Here we go outdoors but it isn't the same. Going hiking in the rain is no fun, going boating in the rain is no fun, picnics in the rain- not happening.
There are things that I will totally miss about here. The rain makes everything very green. It is beautiful. There is alot of water here (duh). We live across the street from a slough, 1.5 miles from the Columbia River and just over a half hour from the Ocean. In the winter the Ocean is amazing. I love watching the waves hit. Of course, my favorite way to watch them is from a hotel room in front of a fire with a glass of wine!

Friday, February 22, 2008
Friday!!
I like Fridays! I'm sure that most people like Fridays. Thing is I have a pretty good job that I enjoy going to (most days). But there is something super wonderful about the weekend. Some weekends we plan something special but most of the time it is just home time working on our house.
One of my favorite things is Saturday morning. Joe gets up usually a half hour or so before me. By the time I get up the coffee is ready and he has cleaned up the kitchen including mopping the floor. I usually do the main kitchen cleaning each night before bed (flylady.net says to shine your sink every night- so I do) but I intensely dislike mopping. Joe knows that so he does it. He is for sure a 'keeper'!
This weekend we have demolition planned. We are taking down ceiling tiles, pulling up flooring, taking out an old wood stove and taking down fake brick. I only wish I could use a sledge hammer for one of those jobs. Weilding a sledge hammer sounds like fun. Maybe I can talk Joe into taking a wall down. hmmm....

Sunday, February 24, 2008
Pregnancy tests are evil!
I have come to the conclusion that pregnancy tests are only evil teases. They tease you into thinking positive thoughts only to crush you. I think I might start a campaign to have pregnancy tests removed from the store shelves. My thinking on this is as long as they are available for purchase the temptation to buy them and use them is very great and in some women has even been known to cause an addiction. Yep, it is true. It is an addiction known as Peestickitis. It is a horrible condition. The only known cure for it is pregnancy.
Our surrogate suffers from Peestickitis. I sure hope she can be cured of this condition in the near future.
This 2 week wait is almost over and it doesn't look like we have achieved a pregnancy. Sadly, we will not be able to try in March so our next attempt will be April. That would give us a baby due around New Year's. A New Year's baby would be just fine. Bear (my oldest) was born on the 3rd of January and she will be 20 next year. A 20 year age difference- WOW!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Done waiting
Yesterday afternoon our 2ww came to an official end. Our surrofriend was teased by faint positive pregnancy tests over the weekend only to have reality hit hard. Joe and I are sad but at the same time very hopeful. Faint positives is the closest we have come to having a baby on the way. Our way of thinking is that faint positives mean something was trying to start. This has been a long road for us and now to finally have this hope is such a good feeling. I don't think that I've posted that we had a surrogate before. We insemmed for 5 months with never a glimmer of a line on those evil pee sticks. This was our first real month with our surro J and to have so much hope was wonderful.
We had thought that we would have to miss trying in March. Joe and I had planned a ski weekend with my girls as part of their Christmas present. (Actually, it is more of a present for me since we are going to be moving soon and Bear and Angel won't be going with us I really wanted to do something special with everyone.) The weekend we have our trip planned is the time in March that would be the correct time for insems. As it turns out J was able to adjust her schedule so she and her daughter can join us. We are very happy about this. My girls are looking forward to it also since they haven't had a chance to meet J yet. WhooHoo!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
About that time
We are close to time to try for a baby again. This time we are doing what is called medicated intrauterine inseminations commonly called IUI. Our surro took an oral medication for 5 days that caused her lovely side effects including hot flashes and moodiness and tomorrow she will go in to have her follicles looked at. Hopefully, after that we will know when the IUI's will occur. We live about 12 hours from her so will drive down when it is time. We are hoping for one or two nice looking follies which will end up being one little baby. Stay tuned!

Tuesday, May 06, 2008
It worked! Current mood: chipper
After 9 attempts we have a positive pregnancy test (okay, actually we have several tests since our surro loves to test)!! Joey is still in disbelief but it is true. He will come around soon. We have actually started talking about baby names. Joey wanted to name the baby Seven. What kind of a name is that? I'm putting my foot down on that not happening. lol

Friday, May 30, 2008
Looking Good!
Baby is looking good. J has had a couple of ultrasounds and everything seems right on track. Of course it is still very early and baby Bubba doesn't really look like anything more then baby Blob right now but soon he/she will look just like a tiny baby. Our due date is early January to mid January. We are very excited of course!
We drove 10 hours to go camping for Memorial Day Weekend. It rained most of the weekend. It was fun but I'm still exhausted.
DD11 and I have finally finished planting the garden. We have a little space left so I'm going to pick up something else to add in. Not quite sure what. We have tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, spinach, radishes, zucchinni, ruffle squash and cucumbers. We are going to plant flowers in a the flower bed and on the hill behind the house this weekend. Hoping to have some very nice color by mid summer.

Thursday, July 24, 2008
Baby News
Baby is doing good. We are approaching 16 weeks. Our surro went to the doc on Monday and everything is right on target. Doc did an ultrasound and thought he might have saw a little something. A little something that indicated we may be expecting a boy. How wild would that be? Me mom to 4 girls getting a boy. WOW. That is something I am working on wrapping my mind around. Either way (boy or girl) would be perfect for us. Next appointment and ultrasound is August 15th. We plan on being in attendance for that one.