For the full list of 30 days of truth, click here
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
This is one of our engagement photos. Hubby has been the light of my life for the past three-plus years. He loves me unconditionally, even when I'm crazy. Which, if I were honest, I would have to admit that it was most of the time. When I'm feeling stressed he figures out what will calm me down and works hard to make sure thats done. When I feel like crying he makes me laugh.
More importantly he still looks at me the same way he did when he first met me. He never tires of telling me how beautiful I am, and with someone who has a history of low self esteem, that's oober important. He looks at me like he is amazed.
He is my best friend and my rock. He helps me be strong when I just want to break down and cry.
I love you Hubby!
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
wow. This is like what's your deepest fear and I feel somewhat exposed. But I promised the truth, and the truth is what I will give. To tell the truth about this I have to go back before I was even born.
I have two older sisters. Kendra is the one I know. She is an awesome big sister. The other one, Dionne, we don't talk about much. She only lived for about six weeks. When I was younger, I remember celebrating her birthday with angel food cake, because she was mommy's angel. My mom's heart stayed broken. She was always there for us, and was the best Mom in the world. Still is. If I'm feeling broken down she's there for me. But, I always wondered what would be different if my sister had lived.
So the thing I hope I never have to do is bury a child. I can't imagine the grief my mother went through. I mourn because we are having a hard time having a child and I don't know if I could handle having a baby in my arms, and looking at her angel face and knowing that they are mine, and having that child just gone. No parent should have to bury their child. I have a couple of friends who are angel mommies and I see how much they hurt. I pray that I NEVER EVER EVER have to bury a child.
For the full list of 30 days click here
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Wow the list goes on and on with this one. There really isn't enough hours in a day (or a week for that matter) to give a complete answer to this one. I hope for a lot of things.
My biggest hope right now, the thing I want most to do, is to be a mom. Not just to be a mom but to be a great mom. A mom who is at all of her kids performances, or games, or meets or whatever.
I want to be a soccer mom. I want to be there cheering for the little toots, and I want to be there when they get home from school and be able to help them with their homework. Except math (can we say tutor?) I want to read them stories and sing songs with them. I want to take them to church and teach them about Jesus, and about the wonderful plan that our Heavenly Father has for us.
I hope to be there when they say their first word, and take their first steps. All the wonderful firsts and even the crappy ones. I want to be there for them when they first have their heart broken, and when they first fall in love. I hope to be there when they find that one person who they want to spend eternity with. I WANT them to tell me they hate me (isn't that how you know your boundaries are working?) I want to be there every step of the way for the little nudgers, and I want it more than anything I can think of. I want it so bad it's hard to breath sometimes.
It's not something I have control over so I just have to be patient, and do my best to do my best with what I have. For now, I will be a loving aunt, sister, wife, daughter, cousin and granddaughter to those amazing people I call my family, and keep holding tight to hope.
For the full 30 day list click here
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
I'm a grudge holder. I hate to say it. I hold on to grudges as hard as I hold on to friends. So join in my friends circle, and stay off my bad side.
This being said, there are a lot of things that I need to let go of, a lot of things I need to forgive.
I can remember exactly what was said in one instance, that cut me to the core. Two of the most popular boys in school were having a contest to see who could have the most girlfriends. One of them asked me out and I said no. They asked why and I said "Because I"m not stupid" meaning I thought they were making fun of me. I was eating lunch later that day and they both came to sit by me and began discussing this contest (like I wasn't there) and one of the boys turned to the other (the one who had asked me to be his girlfriend) and told him that he was obviously the winner because he couldn't even get 'her' to go out with him. Like I was low, desperate and pathetic.
Yeah that was in middle school, and I'm still holding on to this like it was this morning. Why do I do this??? They don't know. They probably don't even remember that conversation. It doesn't hurt them, they don't care. It only hurts me. That's how it is for most of the stuff I need to forgive. Letting go is a lot harder than holding on. It takes a strong person. I'm not strong. I'm just me. BUT I can become strong. One lost grudge at a time.
For the full 30 days of truth list click here
I NEVER said it would be 30 consecutive days did I? HA! so I'm busy....and tired.
Something I have to forgive myself for.
PCOS. It's not my fault, it's something I have to deal with and something that my body has. Yet I feel totally responsible for it. I don't know if I've always had it, or if my weight gain has caused it. You'd think that if that were the case, it would go away with weightloss.
News Flash. PCOS doesn't go away. On top of that it makes it almost impossible to loose wait, and very difficult to conceive. It's a vicious cycle and something I have to look myself in the face and tell myself over and over, this is not your fault. Forgive and move on. Do what you can to make things better, or make things work as best as you...no I can.
It's not something I should HAVE to forgive myself for....but it is something I NEED to forgive myself for. Infertility sucks, especially when you know it's you.
For the full list of 30 days of truth, Click Here
Day 02
HA! I bet you thought I'd already forgotten. Nope, this is one of those things that is really hard to do. you see it's easy to pick on yourself, not so easy to brag about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Something I love about myself....
I love my loyalty. I am not an easy person to get to know. There are a lot of walls and I am quite guarded. I let very few people in entirely, but if you do manage to make it into my circle of trust, you have to do something pretty intense to get out of it, and even then it will probably take me years to realize that I've been damaged by it.
I'm not one who lets go of friends easily, and if I grow to love you I will fight for you until the day I die. I will protect you with my life. If I love you you are no longer just a friend, you are family, and NOTHING is more important to me than my family.
So I'm a little intense. It's part of who I am :) Deal with it. Or don't. It's up to you.
Click here for the entire 30 Days of Truth list.
Day 1
Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Something I hate about myself....my insecurity. I hate that I can't be confident. I NEED validation. I can't just think, hey I wrote this story and it's pretty awesome. I have to show it off and have everyone tell me it's good before I believe it is.
It's not just my writing though. It's everything about me. My looks, my voice, my value as a person and a woman. I've had a lot of people tell me I'm beautiful. Hubby tells me at least twice a day. And yet I look in the mirror and I don't see it.
I see every flaw I have. Every pimple, every stray hair, every GRAY hair, every extra pound of Fat. It's like I have an ugly mask on and I can't see this person everybody keeps telling me about.
WHY is it so much easier to believe the bad stuff than it is to believe the good?
Maybe I should take a hint from Selena Gomez....
My friend Kim over at Live, Laugh, Love Your Guts is doing this. I thought it was cool, and since I'm a follower, I thought I'd follow suit. 30 days of absolute truth. I will tell you exactly what I think, and you can get a pretty good idea of who I am. If, after the 30 days you decide we are to ideologically different, I will not be offended if you unfollow me. unless you are family. Then I will be DEEPLY wounded. I may never recover.
Because I am going through progesterone withdraw (don't worry it's doctor prescribed) It's been a rough week with a lot of emotions and pain has ended up with me curled up in the fetal position crying more than once.
Adam has been so amazing to take care of me. His teasing has dropped to a minimum, which is hard for him, I know. I haven't had to cook once this week. When I dropped my mango pineapple smoothie and lost about 2/3 of it he offered to share his shake with me. Now Most of you don't know this, but Adam has pretty much give up sweets entirely. He hardly ever even drinks soda, but he indulged yesterday. And because I was about to cry because I was just that frustrated, he was gonna share his treat with me.
Because of everything, I'm not sleeping well. I wake up and walk around the house or take a bath two or three times a night (a hot pad would be awesome right now) and I'm so tired when I go to work I can hardly keep my eyes open. This morning it was even worse because I had to get up early to make sure I got everything done before I went into work. Well I woke up and showered and went to get some clean clothes out of the dryer and I saw a Krispy Kreme "Doughnuts Hot Now" sign on my door. I first thought, that's such a mean thing to do. Because Adam once told me that he would happily get me pictures of a doughnut. So I walked by in a huff, and then remembered all that he's done this week so I detoured into the office and found some fresh as you can get them at 7:30 AM Krispy Kreme doughnut holes on my desk. I went in and kissed my sleeping husband on the head.
I got cross with him the other day and told him he's not the one who has to take all the pills and go through all this garbage to have a kid...He looked at me really sad and said "No, I just have to watch you go through it, and there's nothing I can do to help"
How did I end up with such a sweet, kind, loving, supportive, fun (I could go on and on) and HOT husband???? (you should see his muscles.....drool) I am truly blessed.
Adam, you are an amazing man to put up me like this. Thank you. And I love you for ever and ever and ever and NEVER EVER STOP!!!!
For those of you who don't know Adam and I have been trying to have a baby pretty much since we got married. We haven't had any success. A great thank you to my Doctor, Jill Faatz, MD, I was finally dosed with Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). So we had somewhere to go. A path we could take. I was also diagnosed, you may or may not remember, with type 2 diabetes. So to kill two birds with one stone we started on Metformin (glucophage). So my blood sugar quickly improved (with the help of diet and exercises), but the Metformin wasn't giving us the results we wanted. So back to Dr. F. She gave me a choice this time. My blood sugar is good enough that she asked if I wanted to start on clomid, or if I wanted to keep going with the Metformin.
Well, if you know me, I'm patient, but I've been waiting a long time. I shyly begged for the clomid which we filled yesterday. But before we can get to the clomid we have to go through the (dun dun dun) progesterone phase. Not everyone understands what this means. Let me tell you. It turns a perfectly lovely, normal, fun to be around person from this:
Into this:
Ornery, sensitive, bloated, cranky and generally unpleasant to be around. Sorry Adam, I do love you. Doc told us this would happen, and I should cut myself some slack. Who's gonna cut Adam some slack? He's told me that he's going to carry around twixes and open them like a grenade and throw it at me, and then run, if I got too ornery. I laughed...and kind of hoped he was serious. yummmm chocolate. So if this all goes down the way it's supposed to, Adam will still be alive, and fairly unscathed, I will have my chocolate and we will come out the other side with a cute little human addition to our family.
Wish us luck!
Family Reunion 2011 just did a quick video.
Hope you enjoy! If you want any of the pictures (family) then let me know and I will email them.
I found more of my pictures. This is mostly for my fam, this is from the temple grounds and the park. Family, if you want any pictures just let me know and I will email them to you.
I have not always been a huge fan of me. Sometimes, I am really hard on myself. I'm not thin enough, not all of my hair got dyed, my house isn't clean enough, I hardly ever wear makeup the list can go on and on. But why do that to myself. What's the point? It doesn't change anything. In Fact, most of the time it makes things worse.
I have at LEAST as many good qualities as I do bad. I am an awesome aunt, a good daughter, a loving wife. I am an excellent photographer, I sing and act well. All in all I'm a pretty cool person. I love laughing. So WHY is it, that for so long, I dread getting up and looking in the mirror? I sit and sulk cuz maybe I haven't been to church in a few weeks?
For so long I have been told I am not good enough. And I let myself believe it. Can you imagine?? I let other people dictate how I feel about myself. How lame is that? Who is in control here??? So I'm done. I'm done with hearing the bad and letting it sink in. I'm done with being guilted, because I don't look a certain way.
For the first time in my life I am proud to be me. I'm proud that I have lost 19 pounds. I'm proud that I'm doing it without the aid of herbs or radical diets or pills or anything. Me and Hubby are doing it. Portion control and exercise. I'm proud that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'm proud to be smart. It is something that I should celebrate, not hide to make others feel more comfortable around me. I want to make one thing very clear. I am not losing weight to conform, because I don't want to look like another robot. I enjoy being different. I am losing weight because I need to be healthy. Period. The end.
This journey, the one I'm not only taking with food, but to love myself...I've learned somethings on this path. Some awesome things.
It's been an amazing few months. (gac! months!) So I wanted to post some pictures and tell everybody how awesome my family is. These are from a hike we took towards the beginning of our family reunion. I got lazy with my camera but it was fun. There was swimming, and hiking and pictures and boy was there food. It was amazing. 
There was also my anniversary last month. Three years. The wonderful, hard, happy, fun blissful years with the man I love more than anything. He's so wonderful. He tells me day after day how beautiful I am and how much he loves me. He is special, smart, talented, kind, caring and soooo many other things. We spent the night in Midway at the world mark and had all kind of fun and food. I love that man!
So in March we had a family reunion. It was fun we spent a few days in Saint George.
I have been posting a lot of negative stuff lately. I wanted to just take a moment to say how happy I am. I feel better than I've felt in a long time, and I am VERY happy. I have an amazing husband, a good job and a supportive family. I love my workouts and I'm really grateful that I have been able to become the person I am. While I know I am imperfect, I believe I am a good person. That is due, in no small part, to the trials I've experienced, so I'm even grateful for those. In Short....
Well I did go to the doctor on Thursday and it went really well. One test said I had mild diabetes, and the other said I was pre-diabetic. I know that doesn't sound like good news, but it is. Because if I lose weight it will most likely go away. I will of course have to be careful the rest of my life, and when I finally do get pregnant I will get gestational diabetes, but I can live a normal life. I can beat it! It may have been the only way I could have ever found the motivation to lose weight. This is the last of the posts I will write here about this, until I am declared non-diabetic. If your interested in my progress then you can head over to my weight loss blog:
There are things that happen throughout your life that alter your course. Things like marriage, death, birth, moving, losing your job, getting a new job and....diagnosis. One of these things happened to me today. Guess which one.
I went into the doctor as a followup since they changed my medication. For those of you who don't know, I have clinical depression, due to a chemical imbalance. Dr. F. Changed my medication because what I was on just wasn't working anymore. She's awesome. We talked about getting me on clomid, so that we could usher in another life changing event. She decided to start me with Metformin, or gluophage, since that's what they generally start people with Polycystic Ovarian Sydrome (PCOS) on to induce pregnancy. I'm not diagnosed with that but she said she wanted to treat me that way. This must have got her thinking. She said she wanted to test my blood sugar and asked when the last time I ate anything was. Dinner last night was the last thing I ate and I told her so.
So she asked me to jump back on the table and had the nurse come in and prick my finger and take a few drops of the precious blood that keeps me alive. She took it and spun it around, and did I don't know what all. We waited for about 10 minutes and Dr. F. came back in. I held Adam's hand and she told me I have Diabetes.
The world stopped for three heartbeats, and the words rang in my ears. Tears just started rolling down my face. She gave me a second and then started asking some questions. She wanted me to get some blood work done, just to confirm her diagnosis.
So now.....we wait. I have another doctors appointment on Thursday to get some more information, and get a final diagnosis. Right now I am just full of fear. All I have are questions. Thursday can not come soon enough.
Ok, so I try to keep my blog positive, and my personal life, well....personal. I'm feeling a little...pressured. You see, I turn 31 in a few days. I have taken stock of my life several times. I realize that I have an amazing life. I have a sweet dog, and an amazing husband. I have a comfortable apartment and TWO amazing families that love me, both mine and my husbands. I have the gospel, and a job that pays the bills. I realize that's amazing, and I realize its WAY more than a lot of people have, and don't get me wrong, I am completely grateful.
In all this amazing wonder that is my life, I feel like there is something missing. A very small something that would change my life in a very big way. A very tiny...more of someone than something. I am watching people my age with four or five kids, and women younger than me, on their second or third. I watch everyone around me growing their families, and I feel....stuck. I feel like I'm being left behind, like I'm not whole. It's hard. People who have never struggled with infertility can not possibly understand. Everything is about families. Everywhere. It doesn't seem to matter what it is, the advertising business is even capitalizing on the fact that families seem to be growing. Everyone, except mine. I am so excited when I hear about people who are having babies....I really couldn't be more excited for them. But I get so envious sometimes I get sick to my stomach. My heart is broken. I know there are others in my same boat, but sometimes it feels like I'm drifting on a raft in the middle of the ocean. There's no way to steer, and it feels like the ocean stretches on forever, and the horizon just holds more ocean. At least I have someone in this big boat with me. Thanks Adam for being my life raft.
I was thinking, as I so often do, while I was lying in bed, trying desperately sink into the sweet oblivion of dreamless sleep. I was thinking about that first Christmas and the angels and the shepherds. Mostly about the angels. Their song and how joyful and triumphant it must have been. How loud and engaging it must have been. Then I had to stop and think, if it was really as many angels as I imagine, it would have been a song that rang around the world. How could people not hear it. How could it not be heard by every ear...and my thought was disrupted yet again. Every ear. You must have ears to hear and a heart to understand. That song, that I imagine rang around the world, would have been heard by those with a believing heart. Those who heard the song, that sweet song of triumph, were paying attention.
That led to more thinking, yes I think a lot at night, what sweet songs of the angles am I missing, are we all missing, because we are distracted. Distracted by our search for money, or recreation or ANYTHING. I feel like if I"m not doing three things at once, I am wasting time. At work I have music playing in the background, while I do three other things. Even right now I'm watching a moving, chatting with my husband, surfing the web and writing on my blog. Where is the time for silence, for listening to that quiet voice. You know the still small one that tells you right from wrong and gives you direction. We..I need to set time aside for quiet meditation. For listening. For reading peacefully. For my Heavenly Father, so I don't miss out on any more choirs of angles singing, and heralding the miracles of our day.
Wonder where I'm at with this?
