A Health Update

Well it has now been just about 4 months since I started this crazy hormone filled journey!  I am happy to report I almost feel like a brand new human being!  We have made much progress in a short amount of time.  Both the doc and I are pleased!  Not everything is at optimum yet, but it is definitely a major improvement from where we started.  I feel full of energy and motivation most days and I don't wake up feeling so groggy.  Another plus....my cramps around that lovely time of the month are so much less severe!  They aren't gone, but then, I don't think you can ever eliminate them entirely, but at least I don't feel like I'm going to die from them!

I won't lie, this process has been VERY HARD for me.  The changes in diet and lifestyle aren't horrible, it's just not what I'm used to.  It's hard sometimes to balance what I'm eating with medication and I feel frustrated.  I keep reminding myself though that this is what will make me better and will be what helps us have babies someday and usually that's enough to help me keep going on days that I really would just rather give up and give in!  We have many sweet family and friends who have prayed for us and we are so so grateful!  We are truly blessed with amazing friends and family.  This has been good from me from both a health standpoint and a spiritual stand point.  I have spent a lot of extra time working on myself, I spend a lot more time in prayer than I did before and it has helped me feel so much inner peace.  My faith and confidence in my Heavenly Father have been strengthened immensely.  Even on days where I feel discouraged, if I just take a few minutes to pray, I feel like He has it all handled and I feel peace again.  There have been many tears.  I won't deny that.  Sometimes I do have days where crying feels like the best option, even though I know it's really not....but sometimes you just need to!  It's usually when I'm alone in the car and I hear a song on the radio that is speaking to me in that moment.  It happens often when I hear the song "Need You Now" by Plumb.  The chorus says "How many times have you heard me cry out "God please take this"?  How many times have you given me strength to just keep breathing?"  While it doesn't seem like much, it is so true for me.  On hard days, I have just broken down and begged him to take away the pain and the hurt and the dissappointment.  For the record, His answer hasn't directly been "NO" but I know this is meant to strengthen me and make me better.  I know that this is a trial and a lesson I need to learn to help me, my family and others.  I'm not sure that everything I am learning is clear yet, but I do know that this is what I need even though I don't particularly like it.  And I do know, that no matter how many times I break down, He will always give me the strength I need to keep breathing, keep pushing, and to keep climbing.  He's pretty awesome at that.

Things have been very busy as we continue to prep for the arrival of Uncle Rob and Rhonda.  I'm frantically trying to organize everything to accomadate two 1200 square foot houses worth of stuff into on.  I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of stressed out about it.  We are still dealing with clean up from the giant remodel.  There seems to be a never ending supply of drywall dust and mud and who the heck knows what else.  We are thankful that we are done with the big ugly part for now.  We are still hoping that we can do the floors in the kitchen soon, but we are thinking it just won't happen before Rob and Rhonda get here.  That's okay though, because they can always be done later!  I don't think we'll be able to paint the rest of the living room like I wanted either but that's okay too, because I'm sure we will get to it at some point before the end of the year so we'll still make my goal!

We have finally saved up enough money to get gravel for the yard!  So we'll be able to put that in very soon we hope!  We're thinking since the next few weeks are crazy busy, we won't get it done til the beginning of March, but at least it will still be fairly cool at that point, any later and we'll probably just hold off til fall so we don't die in the heat.

That one time we built a wall and no one died

 You might believe that I died after my last post....fear not.  I am just really lazy.  In fact, this post was actually a draft that I started a week before I ever wrote the post about my sleeping husband......but I never got around to finishing it.  Oops!  Here it is now though!

I don't know if you know this about me yet, but I kinda really suck at documentation through pictures so this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense, but I'm going to go for it anyways..... Our backyard sits way lower than any of our neighbors.  The concrete footing for their fence is a good 3-5 inches higher than our highest point of dirt in the yard.  It's kinda really ugly and there's kinda not a whole lot we can do about it.  The yard already slopes downward toward the house, so we don't want to make it worse by just adding mounds of dirt that will also just run toward the house in the event of extreme water (monsoon season people, i know it only rains here twice a year, but it's too much for my little yard to handle.) So we decided that the best option might be to build a little fence that could double as a planter or seating or whatever we decide we want it to be!  We had no idea how much this would cost us, but we knew it had to be relatively cheap.  The initial thought process included a regular cinder block, 8 inches wide, 16 long and 8 high.  Those turned out to only be about $1.15 a piece, and we only needed 70 so that wasn't too bad.  Then when we got to the store, we discovered that they had some that were 4 inches wide, 16 long and 8 high and they were only $.78. Being half the siza AND nearly half off, we decided that we'd go with those instead.  Less digging, less money, less lifting.....Beautiful.  So we loaded up 70 of those suckers and brought them home-they are still heavy, they are still awkard but it was only one trip!

 

 

  

The next day, Josh's best friend from high school came over to help us (you guys, it was seriously 27 degrees outside at 8am this day, it was seriously the coldest week in the history of this state......it was horrible.  it got up to 36 the whole day!).  He hangs out at our house after church every week, so this time it was just working instead of hanging out!  But he is kind of a freak and he thinks that yard work is incredibly fun....he was seriously over excited to start this at 8am in the morning.  But whatever, we love him and his weirdness about digging holes and laying brick.  He's seriously the world's biggest help and he has a vast knowledge of random things after working for years at Lowe's.  We love him.  So we dug down a few inches all the way along the patio.  Here you see the part they are trying to dig out by the fence.  It's hard to see, but at the back of the picture, you can see the base of the cinder block fence, it looks like a tiny shelf holding dirt.  It's not very obvious that it sticks out above all our other ground since we just dug up everything and dumped it on top, but trust me, it does. 

Here is the first row of bricks in the ground, pretty darn straight for being amateurs.  Speaking of amateurs....we forgot to pour a footing for this. Oops.  They are about 4 inches deep and we reinforced with rebar, but it's usually best to pour a base of concrete to set the blocks in....oh well, if it was a real fence it would be an issue, but it's not, so it's all good!

So here's the part that coincides with the title.  As evidenced by this photograph, they boys rented a concrete saw to complete this project.  Seriously you guys, it is a miracle that no one died doing this okay?  they just threw the block out into the yard, and just started cutting it by eyeballing (we are obviously really serious about measuring around these parts.)  So one of them would stand near the fence, in front of the block and the other would hold the saw close to the tile, and then the guy at the wall would yell at him if he went crooked.....mostly this worked out fine, and they even had minimal crookedness!  I don't know if you are educated about blocks of concrete at all.....but concrete is mixed with sand and small rocks when it is made........okay so everything was mostly fine about their system until one time on a cut, Josh hit one of said small rocks just right and sent it whizzing right into the dead center of Kyle's forhead.....the whooping and hollering and laughing that followed was HILARIOUS.  I felt horrible for laughing cause he had a nice little welt, but thank goodness he didn't lose an eye (he shouldn't have anyway cause he was wearing safety glasses...but you never know).

           

 

              

So this next picture is both hilarious and sad.  At the end, we were one brick short....so it meant one more dang trip to Home Depot for one stupid brick.....at least it was only one! We spent another $.36....

 

At about 9:30 pm we finished up all of the mortaring process, my hands were so frozen and dried out..

 

 

 

 

 

The above photos are Josh torturing the poor beasts..... he thought it would be extremely funny to put them in the wheelbarrow and cart them around the yard....they did not agree and hopped out as soon as he let go.

 

And here's a Pano view of the wall and our dirty back yard in the daylight!  Hooray for projects that only cost $140! 

 

Up very soon, I will document all of the kitchen remodel!  Lots has been changed.  Even this cute little wall we built got a stucco layer while all of the remodel was happening!