Opening Day of Footbal Season!!!

Hey guys!!! I have a fun post for you tonight, as opposed to all the sadness from our recent infertility treatments. So without further ado..... Meet our friend Maureen. Sweetness and I went over to her and her husband's amazing house on Saturday for the opening game of Clemson's football season. We watched it with the Clemson Alumni Association. It was so much fun!

Here are the men.... Web, Matthew, Sweetness and Scott (Maureen's Husband). Notice they are all sportin' the purple and orange!
Just another shot of the guys hanging out.

Oh hey Sweetness. I know you are so happy watching your tigers!!!

Maureen went all out, and was an amazing hostess. She made these divine cupcakes and even painted the Tiger Paw on them! Soooo yummy!

Maureen likes to collect (ALOT as you will see in a second). One of the things they collect is Clemson paraphernalia. Here is a fun helmet used for chips and dip etc.

Oh, and then I took some pictures of their DIVINE home! Here is picture of the outside. Not too shabby eh? (Notice the Clemson flag flying !)

They have 3 cats, and they are so beautiful. They look like this..... like little furballs.

Among some other things she collects are real Indian memorabilia. This is just one of the MANY beautiful arrangements of the Indian theme. This is a neat display, lit up and inset in the wall.

The whole house (all 4 floors) has beautiful real hard wood floors throughout. She said it is a bear to keep clean, but so gorgeous to look at. Here is a shot looking at the stairwell that goes on all four floors.

And lest I not do this house justice, they even have an ELEVATOR in the house! I was so floored! They must have thought I was an idiot, or never get out, but seriously how many people can say they have an elevator in their house? SO jealous!

This is a pic of just one of their 4 balconies- this one is right off the kitchen and has their grill and such on it!

And remember I told you she likes to collect things? Well you have never seen a collection until you see her Coca-Cola memorabilia collection. I mean Wowsers! The entire first floor is her Coke collection. If you blow these pictures up you can see just how many treasures she has, some are worth a mint!
And her mini Christmas tree. So cute- it even has metal bottle caps strung together as garland. Too cute!!
This is not even half of her collection. She has a bathroom and bedroom also here on the first floor all decked with Coke stuff. It really is quite neat to see someone enjoy collecting so much!

And then the last picture I took was of this very unique guest bathroom. The sink is made of a copper like material. As you can see the Indian theme runs throughout!

They did give us a tour of the bedrooms and such on the other floors, but I did not want to take pictures of their bathroom and look like a total gawker! But their master bathroom is to die for! Stone shower and tub with a flat screen TV to watch while being warmed by the double-sided fireplace between the bathroom and the bedroom. Just so neat to see how the other side lives :) He He

And then , a shot of Sweetness and I in our Clemson regalia!! (Notice her beautiful Indian painting behind us).

Thank you so much Maureen and Scott for allowing us to come into your beautiful home and share the love of football with great friends!

We have a had a very nice day today at church and then hanging with my parents. Now I must get our house ready, as we are hosting about 15 people from our life-group for a Labor Day cookout tomorrow!

You know I will take pictures and show you guys all our fun! Hope all of you are having a very relaxing and restful Labor Day weekend! Blessings!

Our first call about adoption.

Yesterday we made our first call about adoption! I still am having some mixed feelings about adoption, but I want to explore it and see what may come of it. I don't want to close off any door that may lead to the child God has for us. They are sending lots of information to us, and we start by attending an informational meeting on Sept 21st.

I asked about the time frame, and she said for a white baby- the wait is about 18 months; for a mixed or black baby- the wait is significantly less. So we will let you know how all this goes. We want to start our home study and try to get the clock ticking now because we know this is a long process.

No we are not completely done trying to get pregnant with our own biologic children, but we also don't want to wait until that is all done and THEN begin the home study. We are ready to be parents, any way that the Lord makes it possible.

Thank you for continuing to pray for us, our hearts, and our family in waiting.

Oh and PS- Earl was a total dud! Just a rainstorm, nothing else. All that hoopla for nothing!

Preparing for Earl to pass through....

Well ladies, I am still here, I know some of you were wondering if I am ok. The answer is yes and no. I mean life always goes on, the world doesn't stop for my broken heart. So in one sense I am fine; but in another sense I am so broken, so depressed, so over feeling like this. Why Why Why???? I guess I will never know this side of heaven, but seriously, this literally grieves my heart.

So when the doc called with the beta results, she said she is so puzzled, that they can see NO reason why I am not pregnant yet. Really? Well something is up!? She said in two months we can do a FET with our 3 frozen embies. Then if that does not work, we will do our last fresh IVF cycle and shoot for a 5-day transplant. I have never had a 5 dt but I know so many that have gotten pregnant with a 5 dt. So in the meantime, we wait..... and we live our life!

Onto other news, you know Hurricane Earl is baring down on us here on the east coast. So the prediction is it will start raining by 6pm tonight, then it will get really bad from 3-8am tomorrow. So I moved my class from starting at 8am until starting at 9:30 am - hopefully that's enough time for them to call school for the day or not. I could really use a 4 day weekend with my Sweetness.

And again let me just say, that I am so thankful for my amazing husband. He truly is SO wonderful. I know many women must feel that way about their husbands, but I mean he is almost too good to real! I am so thankful for his support, his love, his friendship and his spirit! I love you Sweetness!! Thank you for loving me through all of this....... how could I ask for more?

BFN

Yep, just as I said, the blood test today was a B F N

There just really are no more words right now.....

A very hard weekend....

I'm not gonna lie- this weekend was so tough. After the realization on Thursday that we have lost yet another 3 babies, I have been just crushed. I mean Thursday evening, I literally had a breakdown. No one can grieve for my babies but me- but they were MY babies. We have now lost 8 perfect babies. I guess one of the hardest things to think about right now, is that there is a very good chance these babies or any baby that we lost, would have survived if put into a working uterus!
Yes we do still have 3 more attempts that we have paid for, however I don't want to get to end of it all- and have no embryos left and no live baby! So we have tentatively decided to begin looking at surrogacy and/or adoption.

My sister-in-law Laura has offered to be a surrogate for us, but she lives in Pennsylvania and she is older (47 I think). So we are exploring some other family that might do it for us as an incredible gift. In my heart I would have loved for my life-long best friend Kate to be a surrogate for me. However 2 months ago today, we parted ways. It really hurts some days when I want to talk to her, but then again she was never available when I needed someone to talk to, and very secretive about everything. It evolved into something that was no longer a BFF relationship. I know that this has been for the best- emotionally I am much more calm, but you still miss someone after you are so used to them being in your life.

So tomorrow is the official beta- but we already know the outcome. It was suppose to be today, but today was the first day of school and I could NOT be late. So I will mosey on in in the morning, and have blood drawn just to receive the dreaded call tomorrow afternoon.

My soul just aches to hold my baby. When will it be my turn Lord, when??????

I would die for that

This video really says it all for me. Every word of this is true for me- we all know some who have chosen abortion, and we CAN NEVER understand why? We would give anything to have what they had. We have all known people who would make extremely great parents, and the Lord does not bless them with a child.... we just dont understand what God's plan is.

This video is my cry today. Lord please hear me! This ache is so great, I feel like I am being crushed underneath the weight.

No second line....

So.... there was no second line on the strip this morning. Yeah I feel depressed, angry, hopeless, confused and just plain tired of all of this. I know a baby would be so worth it in the end, but this is so hard on my body.

I am sure by Monday I will have totally accepted my fate, before the beta test. Thank you for the prayers and well wishes, it helps to know someone else is on this terrible road of infertility too.

I am trying not to loose my faith, but man this is THE hardest thing I have ever gone through. I DO believe He has a reason, and a purpose, but when your heart aches so badly you could just cry at any moment, you wonder what is so good about this purpose??? One day I hope to find out....