Number 5

Ben and I are overjoyed with the news that we finally have a growing baby inside my belly.  It has been a long and difficult journey to get to this point as we've struggled through four miscarriages in the last four years.  I feel like we have seen countless doctors and have had every test/procedure/surgery possible only to find out that we have nothing wrong....at least not that would cause a miscarriage.

We found out about this pregnancy a little earlier than normal.  I took at test at what I thought would be two days before four weeks, but after looking at the calendar it was actually three weeks, three days.  I don't normally test early and some months I don't even bother testing.  But with my turbo senses, I just knew that this was the time!

Given our past experience, as soon as we find out I'm pregnant we make our way to the doctor to start labs to check my HCG counts.  My labs in the past always look great up until about week six.  I'm seeing a new doctor this time around so we did things a little different this time.  I only did labs up to week five and then had an ultrasound schedules for week six.  As you can imagine, leading up to the ultrasound was a very nervous time for both Ben and me although we tried not to vocalize our concerns to each other so not to get the other riled up.  We couldn't believe it when after about 30 seconds of the ultrasound tech searching my belly, she found a baby and a strong heartbeat of 116.  What a huge sigh of relief.  I was immediately brought to tears and I was so thankful to have Ben by my side doing our secret hand squeeze that means "I Love You" (it was actually his and his mom's squeeze first, but he taught me too).  This was the first ultrasound that we positively saw a heartbeat.  We did have one ultrasound with a previous pregnancy that tech said "I think this is a heartbeat, but we'll know more at the next ultrasound."  Although the strong heartbeat did put at us at ease, we both still had reservations about getting too excited.

We had a brief scare at 11 weeks when the nurse and the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat with a doppler, but they didn't let our concern last too long as they sent us to an ultrasound right away.  Once again, the ultrasound tech found a heartbeat of 174 immediately (174 was also the heartbeat at the eight week ultrasound). 

We are now 13 and a half weeks and were happy to hear, this time with the doppler, a heartbeat of 164.  We are so excited that this is finally happening for us, but we still have a long journey ahead of us as we learned that we are considered a "very high risk" pregnancy because of a very elevated risk of pre-term labor.  We'll see how things progress, but there is a good possibility that I will be on at least some form of bed rest at 25 weeks.

Please send Ben and I some good thoughts over the next couple of months.  We can't wait to meet Baby Ruley!

Let’s Talk Bananas

It’s seems like I’ve had A LOT of conversations about bananas lately; particularly, my crazy obsession about only eating a perfectly ripe banana.  Here is my idea of a perfect banana…

 A perfectly yellow banana with a tinge of green on top. 

I will eat a banana a day older than this perfection, but nothing more than that.  ICK!  I was actually recently asked if I wanted a “perfectly ripe” banana and when I saw the banana, I almost threw up.  See below, except the banana being offered was probably even a day older.

Bananas have ALWAYS been an issue for me and I go in spurts with eating them.  Sometimes the thought of eating a banana brings up so much dread and other times I can’t seem to get enough.  I had one of the said dreadful times during high school…..

I was all done eating so I stood up to throw my garbage in the trashcan.  On my way, I came across a chunk of a banana on the floor that looked like it had been stepped on about eight times….aka, nice and slimy and gooey and turning dark.  One look at this sent me sprinting to the garbage can to lose the lunch that I had just eaten.  (Hopefully it wasn’t Italian Dunker day because this would then be a sad story).

I recently had another awful banana experience and I think I’ve been on a hiatus from bananas ever since.  Ben and I were at the State Fair walking out of one of the exhibit buildings.  We saw two little old ladies (probably in their 80s) sitting down to eat a banana (not sure why they were eating a banana at the fair).  Anyway,  I proceeded to watch Lady 1 break off the top half of the banana and I’m thinking because it has the biggest, darkest bruise that I’ve ever seen.  Nope, she gives the top half to Lady 2 who proceeds to bite right into the nasty bruise.  I told this story to a co-worker just the other day and I’m not kidding, I nearly threw up like three times trying to tell the story.

No bananas for me for a while!

And that concludes my randomness about bananas.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

It’s a rare occasion that Ben and I are not “Up North” on a holiday weekend, but this year was a little different since I had tickets to see one of my top five singers (more on that later). 

If anyone knows me (or has read my recent blog/facebook posts), you know that I LOVE the Minnesota State Fair.  And by “love” I mean I would love to go multiple times each year.  Once to see stuff and eat and another time to sit on a bench and just watch people (and eat too).  It has been quite a few years since I’ve been to the fair more than once and this year was no exception, but I had one of the best times at the fair this year with just Ben and me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun with groups of people in the past, but it was so easy this year with just the two of us not worrying about what everyone else wanted/didn’t want to see.  We just did our own thing without an agenda.

We were a little concerned with how busy the fair would be going on a Friday this year, but it actually wasn’t too bad until about the last hour we were there…we left at 4.  We ate a lot of food and did A LOT of walking…22,000 steps to be exact.  Although our first food stop wasn’t on my list of things to eat this year, we thoroughly enjoyed the deep-fried Minneapple Pie (also sold at Target Field).  Wow…it was SO GOOD (< ---- that’s for you bff).  It was a fairly large portion and came with a scoop of ice cream for only $5.  Our next food was sharing a footlong corndog and French Fries.  It was a tragedy when Ben was taking a bite of the corndog and the batter on the last ¼ fell onto the ground.  I almost cried.  Not really, but man was I bummed….sad I know, but it’s like my favorite food at the fair.  I’m not sure of the order of the rest of the food, but we also enjoyed a gyro, mini donuts, sweet corn ice cream with honey butter bacon topping, deep-fried pickles with cream cheese, and a Dole whip.  Our only disappointment with our visit (besides the corndog tragedy) was that the largest pig had already gone home.  I was so exhausted by the end of the night and was eager to get to bed for another exciting day on Saturday.

It was another early start on Saturday for friend Amy and me that began with a  trip to Fleet Farm at 9 am to pick up some cowboy boots so we could be a little honky tonk (did I spell that right?) at the Carrie Underwood concert at Mystic Lake Casino.

Side bar: I’m realizing now that this post is getting long and I still have a lot to say.  Bare with me.

After we bought our cowboy boots that were on clearance for only $11 we made our way to Albertville to do a little shopping.  The shopping was pretty uneventful, but we both came out with a cool watch from Fossil’s clearance table.  I thought Ben would have some words with me since along with my tennis shoe collection I seem to have a collection of watches going, but all he said was “what, did you win the lottery?”  Little did he know that I only paid $20 and I LOVE it!

                                                           

We didn’t spend too much time shopping because we know what was next on the agenda….hitting the slots!  By the time we arrived at the casino, we still had six and a half hours before show time.  It sounds like a ridiculous amount of time to gamble but it’s awesome if your money is lasting.  Shockingly, we both did pretty well and by the time Carrie started we both had more money than we came with (a rare occasion at the casino).

I’m not sure how to rate the concert.  Carrie herself was awesome and she had great interaction with the crowd, but I must say that the outdoor amphitheater was a HUGE disappointment.  After paying $100 for “good seats” I was expecting a lot.  Not so much.  We literally could not see the stage from where we were sitting unless we craned our necks to see in between people’s heads and even then could only see a speck of the stage.  The seats didn’t have enough of an incline and the stage was set too low.  The 50 degree temps didn’t help either!  Her set list was pretty much the same show we saw at the State Fair last year, but I didn’t care because she is incredible.

Cowboy boots and flannels!

 

As if the six and a half hours of gambling before the show wasn’t enough, Amy and I headed back inside (with 8,000 other people) after the show for another hour and a half of gambling.  We both walked out even which is a huge win.  The drive home (at 1 AM!) was brutal since I’m known for getting heavy lids, but Amy did a good job of keeping me alert.

With such busy days Friday and Saturday, Sunday and Monday included a whole lot of nothing besides watching crime shows on the ID channel (best channel ever).  I can’t believe how sick and twisted some people are…creepers.

And that concludes my weekend.  If you made it to the end…thanks for reading!

Ben's Driving - 1 Lana - 0

Who would have thunk that water could be so unforgiving?  We had another great Sunday on the boat with some friends.  Thankfully the sun stayed out most of the day because it got a tid bit chilly when it was hiding behind the clouds.

Since I haven't been brave enough to try wakeboarding yet, my fun on the boat includes tubing (with a strict warning of "It's okay to whip me around, but no WAVES").  It was my first run of the day and Ben was doing a great job of following my instructions.  We hit a few waves because it was so busy, but no purposely made tsunami type waves.  A couple of the "whip-outs" were pretty intense, but my mighty strength kept me on the tube until one whip-out had me what seemed to be straight out on the side of the boat (far enough that I was out of view from the video camera).  When I could hold on no longer, it felt like I did about three flips and skidded across the water with a smack.  I managed to some how plug my nose during these acrobatics but when I came to the surface of the water, I was in so much pain (and in the weeds....grrrr).  I temporarily couldn't move my leg and could barely get back in the boat.  Here is the result....

This bruise is on the back of my leg and is about 4-5 inches across and still really swollen.  OUCH!

Is it weird that I'm glad that I bruised like this so people didn't think I was being a wuss?  By the way, Ben feels terrible that I got so hurt, but I keep reassuring him that it's not his fault.

Seriously Thursday?!

Seriously…I’m losing interest in blogging.  Mostly because I still don’t know what to blog about.

Seriously…I’ve finally officially lost 60 pounds.  I’ve been saying for quite a while that I’ve lost 60 pounds because I’ve been within two pounds of it.  I just didn’t realize how long it would take me to actually hit it.  Either way, I’m very excited – 60 pounds in 11 months.  I definitely could have done better, but I’ve been eating foods that I love and have still been +/- one pound from week to week.  Maintaining is perfectly okay with me.

Seriously…Ben and my five year anniversary is next month and he just booked us a trip to the North Shore.  Believe it or not, this will be our first trip together by ourselves (including our honeymoon).  The few trips that we have taken have been with large groups.  I’m very excited…to say the least.

Seriously…I know the State Fair is only a week away, but could it please come faster?  If it was up to Ben, we’d only go every other year, but he has to remember that he’s married to a gal that used to go multiple times every year.  No way in heck I’d ever miss it.

Seriously…I can’t believe summer is almost over.  The key indicators for me are that the State Fair is in a week and the fact that we took the boat out last night and I was cold almost the entire time.

Seriously Thursday?!

So I wrote most of this last week, but neglected to post it because I just thought it was too boring.  I still don't think it's anything too exciting, but I know BFF Andrea would be majorly disappointed if I didn't post again. 

Seriously…the cats neglecting to use the litter box and shitting in the basement has been solved.  All it took was putting back our shorter-walled litter boxes that were replaced by taller litter boxes.  It was that easy.  And here we were thinking that it was due to emotional/psychological stress to River since we adopted Percy or maybe Percy had attacked River while she was doing her business in the litter box so she was associating the litter box with hell from Percy.  I guess dealing with litter getting kicked out of the shorter boxes is better than dealing with shit…LOL, did I really just write a paragraph about cats and litter boxes?

Seriously…turns out the fish that wasn’t eating whose mouth was huge WAS actually carrying babies because all of a sudden the mouth was back to normal and it was acting like it had never eaten before…probably because it hadn’t eaten in a week and a half.  No sign of babies though.  They must have been eaten by the other fish.

Seriously...go check out thebloggess It's seriously one of the funniest things I've ever read.  This girl is amazing!

Seriously…if you want a great, quick read, get The Hunger Games.  Yes, it seems like it’s a horribly violent book with kids killing other kids, but the story is so “out there” and farfetched that it just didn’t seem as brutal as one would think.  I was able to read the whole book in a day and a half, but that could be because teenagers are the intended audience…not an almost 30 year old.

Seriously…I’m going to be 30 in less than two months.  YIKES!

Seriously…I know most, if not all of my readers are also my friend on Facebook, so this probably isn’t news to you, but Ben and I bought a “new to us” fish/ski boat last week.  Ben is a hardcore fisherman so the boat really needed to be setup mostly for fishing but have the power to pull a wakeboarder/tuber.  For him, this was very hard to find, but we found exactly what we were looking for at just the right price.  Our first time pulling the boat was two days after we bought it and wouldn’t cha know, some chic wasn’t looking and backed right into the boat/trailer.  Thankfully there was only damage to the fender on the trailer and a broken light, but still!

Seriously…why are flights so expensive these days!  It used to be no problem finding a trip to Vegas for $350, but now I’m having a hard time finding it for under $500 unless I want to stay in some no-name hotel off the strip.  No thanks!  Looks like I’ll be staying at the Excalibur again.

Seriously Thursday?!

It's that time already for Seriously Thursday?! with from Mrs to Mama.

Seriously…this must be the year of concerts and show for me.  I’ve gone to Chelsea Handler, Rihanna, Britney/Nicki and now I just got tickets for Carrie Underwood who is one of my top three favorite artists (along with Rihanna and Pink).  She’s coming Labor Day weekend and this will be my third time seeing her.  The only bad thing is that she’s playing at Mystic Lake Casino…well I guess that’s not so bad since gambling is pretty high on my list of fun things to do.

Seriously…I think we are about to have baby fishies floating around in our tank.  One of our African Cichlids has not been eating (although it seems perfectly healthy) and it’s under jaw has become quite large in comparison to our other fish.  I’ve read that some Cichlids are mouth brooders which means they keep the fish/eggs in their mouth until they are strong enough to survive on their own.  I don’t know though, we’ll see.  Cichlids are quite aggressive, so I’m sure if it is babies, they won’t last long in the tank.

Seriously…do not go camping without an air conditioner when the temps are 100+ with the heat index near or at 110.  Awful, miserable, and wet…everything wet!  Thankfully our friends had a speed boat that we enjoyed on Saturday so we could enjoy a nice breeze on the water.

Seriously…you need to check out www. thebloggess.com if you haven’t already.  Everyday this writer has something hilarious to write about.  Very talented!

Seriously…one of our cats has decided that it’s no longer appropriate to shit in the litter box.  We’ve had River for over five years and Percy for nine months.  What the heck could have changed?  Thankfully it’s only in our unfinished basement, but still terribly annoying…AND we have no idea how to correct the problem.

Seriously…can’t believe it’s Thursday already, but seriously excited for the weekend to be here.