Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday. We've always had a pretty good relationship, but we've had our moments as I am sure every dad and daughter does. I am proud to say he's my dad... even if he does make me crazy every once in a while!

Chris is at a meet and my mom is out of town so the two of us went out to lunch. We decided to drive out to Wheeling so we had lots of time to talk in the car. It was nice to hear about his life and all of the jobs he has held. He has done so much in his life. I am hoping I will remember enough of what we talked about to write it all down later. I was able to even ask some questions and gain some insight into his life and my own childhood. It was a really nice day!

Lazy Summer Days

Well I am finally on full summer break! Summer school is over and I don't really have any plans for the rest of the summer. I am LOVING it! :-) I get to see lots of Chris since he is home during the afternoons for his "office hours" for the swim team. I do feel like I am doing a great deal of cooking and cleaning, but I guess that is what happens when you are home for three meals a day!

I have enjoyed lots of time to read... something I love but rarely have time to do in the school year. I am a big fan of chick-lit books and have had several of them on my bookshelf for months just begging to read them. I belong to a great site called paperbackswap that allows you to swap paperback books free of charge. You simply list all of the books you have that you are willing to send out and others do the same. When something catches your eye or is on your wishlist, the other member is contacted and then they agree to send it to you. The only cost is the media mail rate for postage. So, I have had all of these books sitting on my shelf just calling to me.

The most recent one I read to two days from cover to cover: Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish. It is the story of women who are charged with the task of disseminating a beloved friend's ashes across the United States at places that were important to her. Along the way these five strangers become close friends and learn more about themselves and their own lives. It made me want to gather up all of my girlfriends and have a roadtrip for sure! The book also highlights the strength and quirkiness of women today. I am looking forward to reading other books by this author.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had a great 4th of July. I walked the 5k much to Chris' dismay, but my knee is still not 100% and I had not been training for it at all. I need to get back into a routine for sure. Here is the "before" picture of Chris and I:

Chris finished just over 22 minutes. He wanted to be closer to 20, but is happy with this time. He is training for the Chicago Marathon again, so he is not really training for this distance right now.

We all stayed and watched the parade as well. Antioch has one of the LONGEST 4th of July Parades ever. This year my mom and aunt were part of the parade as part of the Lakes Region Historical Society. This organization was really important to my grandfather so my mom and aunt have kept a strong involvement since he passed away. Here they are in the parade:After the parade we went over to our friends' house for a barbeque. The kids were waiting for Coach Chris to get there for a water fight. He did not disappoint:
We later played washers and had lots of great food and fun! We ended the night with a last minute mad dash to the fireworks in Antioch. It is set to music so it is nice to be at the park. We literally set up our chairs just as the first fireworks were going off! Here is a photo of the finale:All in all it was great day. We are blessed to have some wonderful friends in our life!

Monday Perspective

Chris is home after his travel trip. He is a brave man! He took 28 teenagers to Minneapolis for a swim meet and the Mall of America. I was mad that he had scheduled the meet this weekend... one of my good friends from work had her wedding this weekend as well. I hated going to the wedding by myself, but it kept me from having to chaperone the trip! I don't like when he is gone, so I am always in a better mood once he gets home!

I didn't make any calls today. I did have lunch with friends and then had to "catch up" with Chris. There is always tomorrow, right?

I am planning to run... okay WALK another 5k on the 4th. Ever since Romeo decided to pull me down our front stairs, my knee has been bothering me. I tried to run on Saturday morning, but had sharp pains in my knee. Probably not a good sign. I have been walking, though. So at least I will walk the 5k. Chris has run this race every year so it will be nice to be taking part in it this year. Of course I won't be able to get the pictures I usually get though! I have years worth of photos. I may just have to talk someone into getting up early with us and taking photos. I am hoping that once I am done with summer school I can get into a routine of running/walking in the mornings before it gets too hot. By the time I get home from summer school I am just too tired... LOL. Only two more days of summer school, though! YAY!

Ok... off to watch the Bachelorette...

One of THOSE posts...

You've been warned. All three of you that read this. :-) This is going to be one of THOSE posts. One of those posts where I vent about infertility and our failed adoption. You knew one was coming soon...

We've been doing NOTHING in the infertility/becoming parents department for close to a year now. It's been more than 2 years since we were in active treatment. The last "treatment" was exploratory surgery in November of 2005. Surgery that once again showed that everything was "fine" Last night I spent several hours reading over all of my entries since 2003. We started "trying" in 2000 and serious treatment in soo2. It breaks my heart to go back and read my words and hopes.... especially since I know how the story ends... at least how each and every cycle ends. I don't know that I will ever be over all of the pain we've endured on this path to parenthood. I hope and pray that someday when we have the child we dream of, that I will be able to look into that child's eyes and know that all of my pain was worth it. In my heart, I have to beleive that will happen.. otherwise I am not sure how I can go on.

I am TERRIFIED to go back into treatment. I was well versed in all of the most up to date research and treatment plans in 2004. Now I feel like we are starting over. I really don't even know where to start. Do we go back to our last RE and see what he would suggest? Of course, my last memories with them are not pleasant thus the reason we've been on this "break" Chris feels strongly that we should exhaust all of our options with treatment before moving on. In my heart, I know he is right. I need some closure and I need to close this door- either with a pregnancy or knowing that we tried and it just wasn't meant to be. What doctor do I choose to hold my "golden eggs" the last shot we have at an IVF? How do I know I am choosing the right one? Looking back, my track record isn't so great when it comes to choosing doctors.

When we were entrenched in treatment before, I had an amazing network of online friends going through the same thing. I don't have that anymore. Most of those girls did get pregnant and have moved on. While I am THRILLED for each and every one of them, it still breaks my heart that I am still "left behind" even with my infertile friends. I don't even know where to begin to look for a new support network. I am a little too jaded for women who are just starting IVF. Let's face it, nobody wants to hear about the girl who has had four failures and still doesn't have a diagnosis when you are SURE your first IVF is going to work. My real life friends are great and have supported me 110% BUT they haven't been in my shoes. Many of them have gone on to have children and several more are now talking about starting a family soon.

So where do I go from here? I know I need to be proactive. I need to make some phone calls and do some research. Here we go....

Long time coming...

It's been too long since I posted here on the blog. Had to deal with the end of the school year. I can't say that I have EVER been more happy to see a year end in all of my career! It was a TOUGH one, but I am a stronger person as a result. I hope that I have learned from the year and will be able to be an even better teacher and friend in the coming school year.

Chris and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary yesterday. Hard to imagine that we have been married that long! When I look back at our wedding photos, we look like kids... and we essentially were!
It has not been an easy 12 years, but I can honestly say that I love this man more today than I did that day. We have grown into the adults we are today as a result of the challenges we have faced. We have our moments, and I am still learning to love the life of a coach's wife. I am getting there. :-) We've been blessed with 12 years to focus on our marriage and just the two of us. I know that there are many marriages out there that are not able to do that. They are blessed with children early in marriage, and the entire marriage is based on raising kids. We have built a very strong marriage that I pray will be a foundation for our family. My heart still breaks when I look into Chris' eyes and imagine what our child would look like.

We returned to one of our favorite places... the Lazy Cloud Inn. We LOVE this place. The owners have thought of everything and truly have created a romantic retreat for couples to reconnect. The best part of the weekend was having Chris all to myself for three whole days... that is a RARE thing due to his job. We relaxed and spent lots of time talking and laughing. Chris surprised me with beautiful roses, chocolates and a teddy bear. We also had in-room massages and a picnic basket dinner. It was all VERY romantic.

We were also entertained by the wonderful wildlife outside the suite. There was an amazing private deck where we sat and enjoyed the show. We saw many birds including a cardinal and blue jay and a few woodpeckers. In the morning we had these little guys to entertain us:

But then in the evenings, there were two of these masked bandits that emptied the bird feeder. They also got a little too close to the deck for my liking. We started having dinner out on the deck, but then moved inside because I was a little afraid of these guys. Silly for a country girl, but they just made me nervous!
All in all, it was an amazing weekend with the man I love. It was just the time we needed. We talked a little about where we are going with our infertility. We didn't make any solid decisions as it is still such a tender subject. But I feel that am ready to start moving forward. We just need to decide what direction.

I need to get into a summer routine and start to get some things done around here! I am hoping to get a plan into place soon. I am planning to run/WALK a 5k on the 4th of July. It will be mostly WALKING for sure as I have not been on a routine at all! That will start tomorrow....

LOM Update

I have been busy working on assignments for the Library of Memories class I am taking at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I am so in love with my progress so far. I am already feeling so much more organized and connected to my photos.

One of the big elements of the "program" are category drawers for your photos. I finally got some time to work on this over the past few days and am THRILLED with the way they are coming into place:
I am busy going through my photos and adding them to these files. I also have photos waiting to be printed at Snapfish. I am hoping to get my digital photos printed so that I can also add them to my files.

Break is almost over! :-( I worked on cleaning out the closet tonight. Chris is off at a meeting so I had the house to myself. I need to do a little more tomorrow, but that was the one thing IO really wanted to get done over break.

We have a wedding tomorrow and a pizza party on Sunday. Looks like I am back to work soon! :-)

Weekend Recap

The Shamrock Shuffle was the culmination of our weekend get away. We had a great weekend with our friends, John and Miriam Rinaldi.

On Friday we picked them up at their hotel and headed to the Health Expo where we picked up our packets for the race. There were many booths that had some freebies as well as a strange man who smelled really bad and wanted to sell us his version of under armour. We did manage to get a full set of glasses from Whole Foods:
We then had a beer at The Billy Goat at Navy Pier. Again, there was a strange bar tender there. :) He wanted to carry on a conversation about something or another. Who knows...

We finally headed to one of our favorite restaurants- Cafe Ba Ba Reba. We had LOTS of food, lots of SANGRIA (peach was our favorite)We also had LOTS of Deserts. In fact, we ordered one of everything except the coconut one:

YUM!
On Saturday we saw Wicked, which was AMAZING. None of us took any photos of that, though! We then had dinner at an Italian restaruant by the hotel Chris and I stayed at. The food was amazing and we enjoyed some wine with our dinner, too! We took a few cheesy photos to add to our collection:And my favorite... our wonder twin bracelets:
We wore these darn bracelets ALL WEEKEND and in the end, they didn't even check them at the beer tent after the race!

Sunday of course was the race. Here is one final photo of our group that ran the race: