Friday, December 10, 2010

When Mark Babysits........


You can expect enough horsie rides to wear you out completely!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments


We had a blast making Christmas ornaments last night...and they smell great!

1 c applesauce
1 c cinnamon
1 T elmer's glue

Mix well, roll out and cut out with cookie cutters! We used a straw to poke holes for hanging the ornaments. We also baked them for two hours at 175 degrees in order to speed up the drying process. *hint* because there were so many of us, we quintupled (is that even a word?) the recipe and since five ups of cinnamon is craxy expensive, we subbed in wheat flour for half of it! You can paint these after they are dry if you wish, but I like the gingerbread rustic look!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Melancholy

I have been struggling recently with a bit of a melancholy spirit. I am so torn on whether or not to continue fertility treatments. It is true that we have only completed a cycle and a half and are currently in the middle of our second two week wait. I realize that this is nothing to many of those out there that have been pursuing treatment for years. It's just that I can't see us ever being parents, I used to be able to, but after seven and a half years of trying, it just seems so insurmountable. I feel as though there is no hope, and as though we are simply wasting money, time and other resources on something that will never be. Mark wants to keep going with the treatments, but I just can't seem to get the drive.....or desire to do so back.
I am hoping that this is just a funk that I am going through, because I feel the same way about school right now. However, if this is just the winter blahs, I have a long way to go before I am going to be over it!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Cycle Two

We will be beginning cycle two of infertility treatments any day now. I took my last dose of progesterone a few days ago, so now it is simply a waiting game until I begin taking the clomid again.
Infertility is all about waiting. You wait to get pregnant, you wait for the doctor to see you, you wait for test results, you wait to take meds, wait for ovulation, wait to be able to test, wait for test results (again!), wait, wait wait. Have I mentioned how bad I am at waiting? I am not a patient person, so waiting rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps there is a reeason for all of this......but, you would think that there would be an easier way to teach me patience!

Celebrate good times!

We have been quite busy in our neck of the woods. October was celebration packed! It all started with M turning five and wanting a cake with strawberries....



She was certainly excited about some of her gifts!



The following week was fun as S turned four.....


Can I just say that I have decided that it is nearly impossible to take candid photos while dodging the heads, arms and other obstacles when dealing with a small room filled with twelve people arounf our dining room table!

S was overjoyed with recieving lots of new dress up items to replenish the dress up box...just in time for Halloween!



S was also very happy to share her birthday with one of her favorite people...Ashley!



Ashley surprised us all at the birthday party by officially announcing her engagement to this guy....



....my dear brother in law, Martin! I have to say I am glad that he proposed....because it was a little odd when he gave her an orange for her birthday...



We then had to celebrate Mark's birthday the following week (it was late by a week, but we try to do all birthday parties on Fridays!)



In some of these photos, you get to see our birthday cakes...let me just defend ourselves and say it just simply was not our month for cakes! We had two layer cakes crack and break creating sagging finished products. We had a cake overflow in the oven and fill the entire house with smoke and more than a few fingerprints in the frosting!

Then, the next week we celebrated Halloween with Dinner in a pumpkin!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Update

Well, this cycle resulted in nothing but a big fat negative. I even have to use the horrid progesterone again. I am really disappointed. On the upside, the progesterone is now on Walmart's $4 prescription list, so the entire cycle will only cost $21 between the clomid, progesterone and metformin!

In other news, I have a job doing private care for an elderly lady in Salt Lake. I am not sure how long this position will last in that I am having an extremely difficult time getting homework completed and I am a little nervous about driving so far in the dark and snow! So far it has worked out well, so we will just have to see.

Mark is still looking for a job and taking classes. His history class has a very intense amount of reading, something that he definitely does not enjoy. He has been really great since I started working in doing little projects around the house.

I will post again later because I have great news about engagements, birthdays and the like, but those posts really do deserve pictures!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Things I learned ....

from this year's vegetable garden.

1. Raised beds are awesome! So sometimes it is better to think within the box.
2. Roasted beets are the best...but for the quantity we will eat, I would rather not grow beets. Somethings truly are false economies.
3. No one really wants to eat nasturiums and marigolds, but they are pretty to have in the garden, and sometimes pretty needs to win over function.
4. The Glanville kids will eat green beans and green tomatoes straight of the vine, proving the good things sometimes come to those that do not wait.
5. Carrots are so not worth growing....they're cheap and don't taste any different.
6. We need to plant winter squash next year. Mmmmm, butternut squash, proving that new experiences enrich our lives!
7. More lettice and sugar snap peas, we never got enough!
8. More green beans are needed...see #4.
9. Zucchini and yellow squash are good in everything. Tacos, lasagna (instead of the noodles!), sloppy joes, soup, cake, cookies, mashed potatoes, meatloaf and so much more. However, even with all that variety, you still get sick of it and begging only makes your neighbors take so much off your hands.
10. Brussel sprouts are like people. We have grown them year after year and some years we have beautiful plants and some years the plants are small and scraggley, but that is not an indication of which will reproduce. This year we got exactly zero sprouts off of eight plants. Poor barren brussel sprouts.
11. Sometimes life surprises you. Like when your rhubarb plant comes with a hitch hiker in the form of a pumpkin plant that completely takes over your strawberry bed and driveway.

What did you learn from your garden this year?

Monday, September 27, 2010

BBT charting


As most infertiles do, we are now charting Basal Body temperatures! Yay! Fun! No more sleeping in, no more staying up all night and no more avoiding waking up to a foreign object in my mouth. Mark Has been wonderful in the charting in that the alarm goes off, and he turns off the alarm, pops the thermometer in my mouth, waits for it and charts the results. I rarely even fully wake up during the process. However, this morning, Mark forgot to turn the thermometer on and as he reached to turn it on, I thought, in my mostly asleep state, that he was taking it away. So I let go, and so did he. I had no idea that I could almost swallow a thermometer whole! Anyone else have charting snafus?

And time marches on......

I have finished my first progesterone prescription and also finished off the clomid. I had all the labs completed and time is marching on. I also now have an "official" diagnosis of insulin resistant PCOS. Truthfully this gave me a scare as we were reaching this conclusion. Dr. Get me Pregnant accidentally ordered the wrong glucose test which made it appear as though I was a full blown diabetic when the results came back in. Luckily Nurse Fabulousity caught it, reversed the charges and got the Dr. to order the correct test. Which means that I had to drink that disgusting glucose stuff a second time. The second lab came back only slightly abnormal, and hopefully the metformin will be enough to put it to rights. The other labs showed low estrogen, high androgen and left me with baseball sized bruises up and down my arms.
Mark's labs also came back slightly abnormal but the Dr. thinks that there is a good chance it was a fluke. He is supposed to see a Urologist to be retested in a few months, so we will see how things go. Want to know a secret? A small, and I do mean small, teeny weeny, part of me hopes that Mark's test results were not a fluke. Part of me wants to not be the only one with issues, wants to not be our only impediment towards parenthood. I'm awful. However, a much larger part of me hopes that the results really were just a fluke.
Surprisingly, the side effects of the clomid have been none existent for the most part (so far). The progesterone was another story. Two days after finishing the treatment, I honestly was wishing for death I was in SO MUCH PAIN! I have never experienced muscle aches,cramping and emotional loss of control like that in my entire life. I am really hoping that I will not have to go through that again next month!
I can't seem to function except in terms of fertility treatments. It has invaded every aspect of my life. Activities are planned around when meds need to be taken, or when ovulation might occur. I can't focus on school and my grades are suffering from it. I really need to buckle down. I know I should be realistic and accept that this will most likely not be a successful month, but that fragile, paper thin hope is there. Terrifying. Exciting. Exhilarating. Horrifying.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

So.....I saw my drug dealer today...

.....err, I mean I saw my fertility specialist today. As of today we are officially undergoing fertility treatments. So far its relatively painless. I take a few pills on a complicated schedule of progesterone here, clomid there and a little metformin thrown in in for good measure. Tomorrow I go in for a fasting blood draw and a glucose test (which I am already dreading!). Wish us luck!

I agonized over whether or not to reveal our treatments and what we are going through but a few things made me decide to blog about it. First, Dr. Get me Pregnant urged me to find a way to vent and connect with other people in the same situation and I'll admit I have been known to search out blogs about infertility. Secondly, DR. Get me Pregnant encouraged me to be open with friends ad family so that when I am in a hormone induced rage over who didn't put the cups on the table exactly three inches above the plate, they would forgive me. Lastly, I wanted, no, needed a place where I could vent, cry, rage and express my fears. Sometimes I tend to overwhelm Mark with the strength of my emotions, so having a place to work through them will be good for me.

So here is the breakdown of the good, the bad and the ugly of fertility treatments.
*the cost of fertility treatments has been surprisingly low so far. The prescriptions were only $70 or so and the appointment was about the same. This was even without insurance. Mark and I still have labs to do however.
*Dr. Get me Pregnant and his wife struggled with infertility for several years so he understands where I am coming from
*So far I have taken my first dose of progesterone and metformin and no hormone induced rages have occurred.
*I'm terrified of not getting pregnant
*I'm terrified of getting pregnant
*I have school to distract me

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Swimming at Payson Lakes

We had a blast swimming at Payson Lakes with the Glanville family, despite being burned to a crisp by the glaring summer sun! We had the most fun feeding the baby groundhogs and ducklings!


The Scottish Festival





We may not be Scottish, but that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the sound of some wee bag pipes and watching a few highland games!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Hiking on Mt. Timpanogos


We took the Glanville kids out to hike Scout falls this morning, we ended up not making it to our destination, but we still had fun hiking on Mount Timpanogos!




Bathroom reveal

I posted awhile back that we were working on a small scale bathroom remodel. Now, after new counter tops, new paint, crown molding, plumbing repairs, smashed thumbs, new hardware and lots of sanding, we have finished!

Here are our results!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Camping at Fruita Campground, Capitol Reef


We spend a fun weekend camping at Fruita, in the midst of Capitol Reef National Park. The highlights included a great water fall and swimming hole



We did have a few disasters within the Glanville family, M got burned on a dutch oven, and S almost had her front tooth knocked out. On top of that Mark ended up with a compression skin tear on his foot from jumping the cliffs and Nathan tried to cut off his finger and nearly passed out as a result! All in all though, we made it home more or less in one piece!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Montana again!

Ahhh, the joys of small town life! We once again went to anaconda to visit my family and were confronted with what small town life means. In the past we have been enchanted with the possibilities, but this trip left us feeling....dissatisfied.

First, it rained way too much while we were there, and we were sleeping in a tent in my parents front yard. However, it was not enough rain to keep the neighborhood raccoon from coming and investigating us in the middle of the night. Mazie didn't like that one bit!

Then when we went to take the boys bowling, we found that the businesses in town have some weird hours, like not being open until six thirty at night! So we went and fed the fish at the hatchery



and ducks



and tried to get some nice photos at a park, but the boys were often not cooperating...neither was the rain!




All in all it was a good trip, but it made me realize two things. First, I miss my brothers tons and we need to do more to stay in touch. Secondly, my husband has a horrible sense of direction, he accidentally took the wrong exit near twin falls Idaho and didn't realize until we had gone almost four hours in the wrong direction. We now simply say that we took the "scenic" route!

Another Photo Shoot

I spent an afternoon doing another photo shoot of the G kids and just wanted to share some of the great photos that I got!

First up, J. with his "cool" pose.
Then we have the kiddos all being loopy...as a side note the wagon they are sitting in was mine as a kid!

Then we have D, our pretty young lady

Now we have R in his dirty face glory!

and our sweet S, stopping to smell the roses...err, peonies!

Family Reunion



We had a blast with all of Mark's family at the reunion. It was a ton of work to plan, and I ran into a few snags, but for the most part it was a success!

It was a week filled with cars stuck in the mud, unplanned hikes through the aforementioned mud, pedicures, massages, fancy chocolate and meals eaten of garbage can lids! In other words, it was a blast!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Out of the mouths of babes......


As much as I love my husband and my brother-in-law Martin, I often see them doing things at the dinner table that make me roll my eyes in disbelief. When they see this, they good naturedly tease me by saying "yes, Amy, we were raised in a barn". With it being something that we tease about back and forth, I wasn't too surprised when we when out to dinner with the Glanville family a few weeks ago and this happened:

Mark was sitting next to Jacob, who is six years old, and was trying to help him fill the time while we waited for our food. So Mark scrunched up his straw wrapper and dripped water on it to make it creep across the table. Then Jacob looks up at Mark and with utmost seriousness asks, "Is that something you learned when you lived in the barn?"

The look on the face of the waitress was priceless.

Spring Semester is over!



So I survived another semester! I have one more final on Tuesday, but other than that I am finished...for a whole three weeks
Summer semester is bound to be a hard one for a few different reasons. First of all, I am now officially a commuter student. I will be driving six hundred miles a week to go to and from school this summer. I am also taking some crazy classes!

Spanish 1 year 1
Spanish 1 year 2
Information Technology
Information Navigator
Math 1010
Math 1030

Crazy, right? I am lucky that the school has started doing new hybrid courses that can save me a lot of money. My math class is a hybrid. Basically, I register for the lower math class and work at my own pace. If I finish it, I can move on to the next class and if I complete it, I get credit for both. This means I basically get the second class without paying for it. I'll take 4 free credits any day!

Monday, March 8, 2010

In progress.....

I think that anyone that has ever embarked on a home improvement project has realized that one project ALWAYS leads to another. This time, it all began with a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond in search of a pasta maker for Reecie's birthday gift.
While there, I happened to find a bathroom cabinet that was exactly what I had wanted, and had been trying to find for the past year. The best part? It was 75% off the original price. However, much to my dismay, upon getting it home, it was quickly discovered that it would not fit. Luckily, I have a wonderful husband that is also very handy and found a way to make it work. So of course, installing it resulted in needing to install a bathroom fan.......and a new light fixture. The mirror that I had set aside months ago to replace the old medicine cabinet is next to be installed, painting is also on the agenda. We also have plans for a new sink and vanity, but have to look at flooring solutions first! of course, I once again forgot to take before pictures, but here are some pictures of where we are right now, in the middle of the project.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Friday Night at the Carney House






We quickly learned that a small dot made by a marker ends the questions of what hand to use!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Afternoon nap

This afternoon while R was downstairs napping, S couldn't seem to be quiet so I set her up with some books on the couch. When I checked on her later, this is what I found.



Aren't fur friends great?

crazy kitty

We recently moved our stereo from inside the entertainment center to on top of it because we couldn't keep little fingers away from it. Now we have an entirely different issue.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Yummy peanut butter bars

1 cup butter or margarine, melted
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup peanut butter
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
4 tablespoons peanut butter

Directions:
1. In a medium bowl, mix together the butter or margarine, graham cracker crumbs, confectioners' sugar, and 1 cup peanut butter until well blended. Press evenly into the bottom of an ungreased 9x13 inch pan.
2. In a metal bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave, melt the chocolate chips with the peanut butter, stirring occasionally until smooth. Spread over the prepared crust. Refrigerate for at least one hour before cutting into squares.

Oh my gosh! These were super easy and fast! I was able to make these with kids underfoot in less than ten minutes, which included crushing the grahams! They were so good that they were gone in less time than it took to make them!

Posted at:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

School's in!

Oh my! It looks like I am in for an intense semester! My classes include:

English
The family in stress
Drug abuse prevention
Human behavior and the social environment
Philosophy
Animal diversity

Crazy, Crazy! A full eighteen credit hours! I may not be able to post as often as I like, but at least you will know what I am up to!