School Has Started Already?

School started last Thursday. Need I say more?

Even the beginning of last week is a blur. I took Meghan shopping to get her uniforms for school, I had back to school night for my students, and then I got to do it all over again the next night as a parent for Meghan. That is definitely going to be an adjustment. I have found it's not as easy to stay after school and get some things done since I have Meghan with me and she can't keep herself busy as easily as I hoped.

Meghan is adjusting to our new school schedule pretty well. What was really nice to find out is that I have the same lunch period as Meghan. I get to go into the lunch room every day and visit with her for a short time. I actually ate lunch with her on her first day of school. I still can't believe she is already in Kindergarten. I took a picture of her on the first day of school:

Audrey, on the other hand, is another issue. Poor girl. She is used to going to the same daycare as Meghan and she is definitely showing signs of missing her big sister. On the first day of school, she had Jason call me three different times on my way to work because she wanted to say "goodbye" and to be reminded that I still love her. I was so impressed with Jason, though. He decided to take it upon himself and make it a routine that every week he takes Audrey on a little date. That is so precious! My girls are so lucky to have such an amazing dad. This is exactly what Audrey needs right now. Especially with the baby coming in February.

Speaking of the baby, all seems to be going well. I got to hear the baby's heartbeat recently, and my doctor said it seems to be healthy. I won't be having my first ultrasound for another month or so which is when we find out the gender of the baby. I did express my concerns to my doctor about all my nauseousness. I don't necessarily know if it is as severe or more severe as my other pregnancies, but I think that my greater struggle is that the more tired I am, the more nauseous I feel. Even with more than 8 hours of sleep a night, I am still feeling nauseous. I told my doctor that I was concerned about my ability to perform my job at that capacity I need to even with having to deal with nauseousness. She totally made my day when she sent me out with a prescription for anti-nausea medication. I have been on it for over a week now, and it has made a HUGE difference. I still have to be careful with getting enough sleep, but it has definitely helped out with my ability to survive the day.

10 1/2 Week Update

The other day, I started a new post to my blog until my computer decided to turn itself off in the middle of my blogging. I was too tired to fight it, so I decided to finish it later. Later then turned into several days, and now it has been nearly a week since I last tried to blog.

Looking back on what I had originally planned on posting, I just sit back and laugh at how inaccurate it is from where I stand today. All last week I was feeling good. I didn't have any struggles with nauseousness at all last week and I was feeling great. I was very encouraged at how I was feeling since I started back at work last Monday. The teachers at my school are given about 2 1/2 weeks of training and time to prepare their classrooms before school starts. At times I get annoyed just because it cuts so far into my summer, but since I am new to this school, it is nice having this extra time to prepare for the new school year. The downside to all this is that I have yet more time to worry about all the odds and ends of how I am going to structure my class and curriculum.

These past two days, however, I have not been quite so fortunate with the nauseousness. I am not very tolerant these days, and every day seems like a struggle. What makes it more difficult to deal with is that I have somewhere to be. I can't decide not to come in just because I am feeling nauseous and I am most definitely not contagious. The only thing that keeps me in perspective right now is when I remember one of my friends who just recently had a baby of her own. Poor girl, she struggled with nauseousness her ENTIRE pregnancy. She had it so bad that she wasn't just on anti-nausea medication, but if she missed one day of her medication, she was violently nauseous and sick the entire day.

Aside from the nauseousness, I am so tired. Actually, I have discovered that the more tired I am, the more nauseous I get. So, I try to get LOTS of sleep each night, but that doesn't really allow me much time to work at home on some school things that desperately need to get done. Many of these things get pushed to "later." Don't ask me when "later" will be because my days are completely filled with various seminars and I don't have much time to get more settled and organized with my class...which perpetuates my lack of productivity and exhaustion. I am very ready to get past this and to start feeling "normal." Whenever that will be.

Right now I try my best to take things one day at a time....or one moment at a time. It's not easy. Especially when I've felt pretty lousy all day, I end up bringing home two crabby girls who won't stop bickering and fighting, I have to try to fix yet one more dinner when I can't stand the smell, sight, or thought of food out of fear of throwing up, and all I want to do is sleep and blink my eyes and the house will magically be clean while my classroom will be perfectly ready for the new school year, and my family will be wonderfully tended to and everyone is perfectly happy and content with life. It will all happen as planned...later.

8 1/2 Week Update

Well, it's been a week since I announced the big news about the baby.

Obviously being so early in my pregnancy, there really isn't much that has changed in the past week. I go to my first prenatal appointment tomorrow morning. I am excited to meet my new midwife and to hopefully hear that little heartbeat. I decided to continue with a midwife because I had a midwife for both of my previous pregnancies, and I have nothing but positive things to say. I would recommend a midwife to anyone. They are fabulous. I know several other women who have had midwives and all have great things to say.

I am still struggling with morning sickness (or all day sickness as it happens for me this time around). I was reminded of that the other morning when I set my alarm because I had to be somewhere early the next morning. When the alarm went off, I jumped out of bed like I always do, and I headed straight for the shower. Big mistake. I can't jump out of bed like I used to. I have to ease into my morning. I guess it's a good thing I found out now and not once school was starting, or I'd be late for school. I was fighting nauseousness for the rest of the day.

I was telling Jason the other night that at times it doesn't seem as severe as it did with the other pregnancies, but it is so easy to forget sometimes. I have found that the similar tactics I used in the past to cope with nauseousness still seems to work. I am still confronted with overwhelmingly horrible smells that quickly send me to the other room just to keep from throwing up all over the place. There have also been quite a few nights where Jason is left to figure out dinner on his own because I can't even think about eating when it's time for dinner. Sometimes the thought of food just makes me sick. Really, if I wasn't at a point where it was necessary to eat for the sake of a healthy baby, this could be a great diet...not very nutritional, but I'd definitely lose weight if the thought of food didn't repulse me so much.

I really appreciate Jason's patience as I muddle through this. I am optimistic, though. I don't think I'm going to have to endure much more of this, either. I do consider myself lucky. I didn't start feeling any sort of nauseousness until I was about 6 weeks along. I better not be jinxing anything by being so optimistic.

The other thing is that I have been super TIRED lately. I remember the fatigue, but it seems so much worse when you are running after a couple of kids, too! Thankfully I have been able to take a good nap in the afternoons when the girls nap. That won't last long. I have teacher orientation that starts next week and it goes until school starts. Last Thursday and Friday I had to report to orientation for the new teachers to the school. I was SO tired afterwards! It really hit me on Friday. It hit me so hard that I was in bed by around 8:00 when we got the girls to bed, and then I didn't wake up until 7:30 the next morning! Boy, did I feel refreshed! These next couple weeks are going to be a bit bumpy when it comes to the early pregnancy fatigue, but it should get better once school starts. I'll be in my second trimester by then, and I'll be ready to start the new school year with a bang.

I know it sounds crazy, but I am REALLY excited for school to start. I know there will be quite the adjustment period, but I am so excited to be at a school where all the teachers there seem to be just as excited about what they do as I am. I feel so excited about the administration, too. After all I had been through at my old school with the administration there, I am excited to be working for people who not just say they are on my side, but I actually believe it. The proof is in how many teachers stayed over the summer and how many positive things they all have to say about the school and the staff there.

I was wrestling with when I should share with the administration about my pregnancy. Some people said that I should wait until my first trimester is over, but I felt that doing so seemed like I would be hiding something which I have no reason to hide. After feeling things out, I felt it was in my best interest to be straightforward and tell them sooner rather than later. I told both the principal and the assistant principal and each of them were thrilled. They were very happy for me and they were pleased that I had shared this information with them. I told them that I am an open and honest person and that I felt that it was important for me to tell them now because I felt that it would be hypocritical of me to keep it a secret any longer. I know that through my actions, they saw that I expect open and honest communication from my students without fear of any sort of backlash. I walked away from that conversation feeling quite relieved and definitely a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

God has definitely taken care of things. Looking back to where I had been a year ago, there is NO WAY I could have predicted all this to have happened. God had blessed us so much, and I am so grateful as He continues to lavish blessings upon us.

In Case You Were Wondering...

Yup. It happened.We are expecting our new little one at the end of February. For the first few weeks, I was feeling fine and nothing out of the ordinary. For a short time there, I was starting to feel a bit guilty and was wishing for just a slight tinge of morning sickness just so I would be absolutely certain it was true. (Like the positive pregnancy test wasn't enough or something.) Stupid me. What was I thinking? I had it so good before, and now I am just nauseous all day. The worst part? This is just the beginning of it. Thankfully it hasn't progressed to much more than nauseousness, but it still sucks. Now here I am sitting and wishing for those days before where I felt absolutely nothing at all. The good part? I should *hopefully* be done with all the nauseousness by the time school starts. Unless I am one of those unfortunate ones who have to deal with the constant urge to vomit their entire pregnancy. Kinda makes teaching a bit more challenging.

Considering this will be my third baby, I guess you can say I am a veteran to all the pregnancy ailments. Not really. It is so true that EVERY pregnancy is SO different. I just hope and pray that this one goes just as smoothly as my other two. Just like my other pregnancies, I can't stand the taste of crackers. So my food of choice to combat the nauseousness is: It's light enough to keep me from making a fast run to the bathroom, but enough to make my stomach think it's had something to eat to keep from making me take yet another quick run to the bathroom. The heartburn has already set in, so it's my normal routine to just pop a couple tums as I'm getting into bed each night.

The girls are pretty excited. They are thrilled to be welcoming a little brother or sister this winter. We'll see how quickly the novelty will wear off once the baby arrives.

The funniest part was how my parents found out about the baby. We were all camping over the Independence Day holiday weekend. One of the days we were out there, I was stranded in my sister's RV with my mom because of the rain. We were in there playing cards while Meghan, Audrey, and my nephew were playing to pass the time. While we were in the middle of a card game, my mom overheard my girls telling their cousin about the exciting news.

Audrey: "We're going to have a little brother or sister!"

Meghan: "Yeah! Our mommy has a baby in her tummy!"

My mom then looked at me in utter shock and disbelief and desperately looking for answers. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just laughed. My uproarious laughter then caused my sister, who is deaf, to be very confused and absolutely frantic and desperately wanting to know what was so funny. My mother then told my sister what she heard and then I had two sets of eyes staring me down and intent on finding out the truth. While still laughing, I just shook my head, "yes." They were quite excited. Seriously, who wouldn't be excited?

Considering we hadn't quite figured out how we wanted to tell the grandparents about the baby, I think that turned out well....and quite memorable.

Wasting No Time

We have wasted no time getting settled into our new house. These past few weeks have been full of lots to do and much fun to be had.

We have installed a new microwave:

This was actually quite easy considering we had done this before, and we were able to use the holes that were already on the wall!

We bought a new table for our kitchen since the other one is being used in the dining room:

We have eaten JUMBO marshmallows that are bigger than any I have ever seen before:
We have read plenty of stories and have had lots of fun reading stories to others:
We got to spend some great time with cousin David on several occasions:

We've gotten some much-need cuddle time while watching "Veggietales":

Daddy got to ride with us in the back seat of the van:

And Jason is in the midst of quite a great task of putting together our new desk in our den.

When he's done...sometime within the next several hours, it should look something like this:

Considering I only have about two and a half more weeks left of my summer, we've had a great time. Other than having the unfortunate experience of having broken a tooth recently that requires me to get a bridge to repair the problem, life is good. We are going camping over the holiday weekend with my parents and my sister, so that should be full of great memories.

Until next time...

Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming!

I'm actually in my new house. I can't believe it.

A whole week later and many unpacked boxes later (and many more to go), I finally have the normal necessities I have grown so accustomed to...except for my dinner plates. Those are still proving to be quite elusive. I was getting so tired of eating off of little kid plastic plates that I went to the Dollar Tree the other day and purchased some dinner plates. They aren't all that bad for spending only a dollar per plate.

I just now got my Internet set up or I would have posted sooner.

Our closing went VERY smoothly. Almost too smoothly. We were in and out of there in less than an hour. I take that as God's final blessing to reassure us that regardless of all we had been through with the banks and underwriters, He wanted us to have this house in the end. Boy, was this whole ordeal quite the headache. There were a few times throughout this whole process where I was starting to doubt whether or not we were supposed to get this house after all. Looking back to how things were for us a year ago, I NEVER would have guessed in my wildest dreams that we would end up here in this city with these jobs and a house that by far exceeds my expectations on what we could qualify for. God has been so good to us.

My parents were such a great help for us during the move. They took the girls for the entire weekend so we could move without worrying about the kids being underfoot while trying to get things moved into the house. One of the most exciting things about all this was being able to go through boxes of stuff that we hadn't seen since last October! That might also be the reason why I can't find my plates. We did have to move quickly, so we weren't really thinking about putting things in boxes and in ways that would be easy to find.

It was so exciting bringing the girls back home to our new house. Jason and I were looking forward to that the entire weekend. We just couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces when they saw their rooms with their beds set up, and all their bedding freshly washed and waiting for them.

Most of my week this week has been consumed with various unpacking and cleaning. I was so overwhelmed with all the unpacking. I didn't seem to be making a dent in anything; after all, I did rearrange my closet six different times this week! I decided that yesterday would officially be "do nothing" day. We ran a bunch of various other errands, but with regards to unpacking or rearranging, I did not do it. It was a nice break. The one thing I have been dreading most is getting the girls' stuff in order. They have SO MANY TOYS! It seemed like a lot when we were living in the basement, but that was the basement. That was 1/4 the size of my whole house now! Now they have TONS of toys that they have recently rediscovered that were hiding in storage for the past eight months.

That has actually been a blessing in disguise. The girls have been so well entertained by toys they haven't seen in months, that they are so consumed with playing that I don't hear from them for hours at a time! That has been nice when unpacking, but they are also leaving quite the trail of various toys behind them. We'll have to re-train them to keep their toys in their rooms instead of strewn all over the house.

Today Jason decided to take the day off work and help me out with the unpacking. We also got a lot of other things done, too! We bought an over-the-stove microwave, and we even got to install it. We also got a great counter-height table for our little nook in the kitchen. We needed a little something for the girls to eat breakfast there instead of going into the dining room to eat. This table is so cool. I'm going to have to take a picture of that and the microwave and post them for next time.

We are also in the middle of our painting project. The family room was pumpkin orange when we bought the house, and now we are in the middle of painting the room in normal colors. What took so long was painting the walls with primer first so the orange doesn't bleed through and altar the color of the new paint. I will have to post a picture of that too when we are done. This has definitely been a busy week, but I am so grateful to be here now. Now this whole move, eight months later, seems real.

Beyond Frustrated

We still haven't closed on our house yet. Our close date has changed four different times! This is ridiculous!

We were supposed to close on May 21st and then they pushed it back to the 25th only to find they needed more time and pushed it back to the 28th. We got notified a couple days before the final date only to find that we have to push back our close date ONE MORE TIME. The worst part of it all is that the bank that currently owns the house is not willing to push back a close date any more. If we get notification that the underwriters need yet more time, we are going to lose our house, and I am going to flip my lid. I already lost it last week when I found out that they were pushing us back to June 11th. Poor Jason. He got the brunt of all my rage. Being the passive-aggressive person that I am, I will flip my lid but I will never direct it at the people who are most deserving of such circumstances.

All that I have endured recently regarding the house is all the fault of my bank. I am so annoyed with them right now. The woman who is handling our loan has had since the beginning of April to process our loan. I know our file has been sent back and forth several times with underwriters, but the worst part is that she didn't submit all of our information to the final underwriters and everything got sent back to the bank to finish before the final processing.

When we expressed our frustration with the bank, our mortgage broker gave a long list of "excuses" as to why she hasn't been able to process our information in time. I'm sorry, but it's your job. You get paid to ensure people get to close on the houses they are qualified to purchase. We are more than qualified to purchase this house. The more excuses I saw in that email, the more unwilling I was to accept her reasoning for the delay. One thing I would say to my students when they are giving me excuses for not turning in their homework is, "The more excuses you give me, the more I'm going to think that you are not willing to accept responsibility for your actions." That's totally what it seemed like to me. All I know is that I better get this house to close, or...or...or...I'm going to be REALLY mad. Not to mention we'd lose the tax credit.

The thing that adds to this situation is that one of our cats have gone missing. When we found out we were moving, we knew we would need a safe place for our cats to stay for a while, so Jason's mom was more than willing to help us out. Jason took a weekend and drove out to Utah while his mom drove from Sacramento and met up with him so he give her temporary custody of the cats. We got a call last night to let us know that Paisley has been missing for about a week. What makes this so hard is that Paisley is the most loveable cat I've ever known...and he's considered the girls' cat. We haven't told the girls yet. We're just hoping he turns up sometime before Jason goes out to pick up the cats. Poor Paisley. He's just so cute. Here's a picture of Meghan and Paisley right after we got him. He was a little stray that some kid found in the school parking lot and I decided to take him home. He is the best cat. He is so gentle, he loves everyone, and the girls love to play with him. I hope he comes back safely. And we get our house.