June 2014 Archives

Infertility

Little Happies: Great Television and New Friends

June 9, 2014

Howdy folks! This week it’s back to me for the Little Happies of the week.

Thinking about little happies this week is vital since I had a emotional breakdown about infertility a few days ago. This is nothing new but it had been a while. For the first time possibly EVER in our marriage, I ovulated last cycle. Finally!!!! But of course, no baby. For the 32nd cycle in a row. I didn’t really have hope…until I saw about 100 Facebook pregnancy announcements and decided maybe I could let myself hope.

Wrong again.

OK, done being negative. It’s too exhausting.

Even though we aren’t experiencing the blessing of parenthood, God is still faithful and good to us. That will never change, despite our circumstances. He truly does send little blessings our way each day for which I am truly grateful.

–one–

Yes, that is Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.

Don’t judge me.

This past year I have been watching Dr. Quinn season by season on YouTube. I love this series, as cheesy as it may be. I find myself relating to Doctor Michaela Quinn quite often. Maybe it’s her love of medicine. Or her inability to keep her opinions to herself. Perhaps it’s her tendency for drama and her stubborn nature. All I know is that we would have been friends…had she been a real person and/or we lived in the same time period.

Do yourself a favor and watch an episode soon.

–two–

We are in the adoption paperwork home stretch!!! Above is a photo of us sitting down to write up our Autobiographies!!!! WHAT?!!??! I never thought I would be writing one of those.

As we wrote it out, I sort of thought it would probably be great if ALL parents had to do what we’ve had to do for adoption. It can be tedious but it’s really forced us to think things through, analyze our motivations, reflect on our past, and anticipate changes in our life. Good stuff for parenthood prep!

Now we need to print a few documents, gather a couple more signatures, and we will be done! We will be waiting on the FBI background check to clear which could take 4-6 more weeks but at least we’ll be ready when they’re done.

Also, we are also SUPER excited about a fundraiser we will be launching soon. Stay tuned! 🙂

–three–

I am privileged to work for FOCUS Greek, a ministry to Fraternity and Sorority students within the apostolate of FOCUS – Fellowship of Catholic University Students.

Currently many of our FOCUS staff members are in Ave Maria, FL at our New Staff Training – NST. Above is a photo of staff receiving training on working with students in Greek life on campus. I myself wasn’t present, as there were many qualified and stellar staff already in attendance at NST in Florida who offered to train others on behalf of the FOCUS Greek department. They did a super great job and seeing this photo made me happy! 🙂

They also threw a ‘Murica themed FOCUS Greek All Staff Party. Of course the first theme party at New Staff Training would be sponsored by FOCUS Greek. We do parties with Jesus better than anyone else.

–four–

We started watching Band of Brothers.

Really intense but well done.

It’s a little happy but at the same time enraging. Anytime I think about WWII I get infuriated over the loss of life. That’s an entirely different blog post though.

–five–

We have a closing date for our town house! We close on June 30th and take possession on July 3rd. Anyone in Denver with a servant’s heart who wants to help us move that weekend, let me know! 🙂

–six–

This week I made some new friends on Google Hangouts.

I am part of a Catholic infertility support group on Facebook and one gal had a brilliant idea to form small groups for us to “meet” online with gals in similar situations as ourselves. I was actually having a rough day, as mentioned earlier, until I “hung out” with these ladies on Friday evening. They really made my day and I am so grateful for their new friendships in my life.

Thank you technology!

–seven–

Last but not least.

Since we are moving and need a few items for the town house (while in the midst of saving for adoption) we have been selling a LOT of stuff to offset house expenses.

Call me the queen of eBay and Craigslist because this past week we sold about 15-20 items for roughly $900!!! Woohoo! With those proceeds we have bought a few items already and gotten some really great deals. As Jonathan talked about last week, we will devote an entire post as to how we did it! 🙂

Have a great week!

Uncategorized

Little Happies: BY JONATHAN

June 2, 2014

Time for this week’s Little Happies, and I thought I’d take a turn recalling some the things that made me smile this week.

-one-

Memorial Day. We office was closed and we spent the day with another missionary couple.

We spend the day by:
Playing Bocce (lost and then found 2 balls in the last round!)
Grilling burgers and dogs
Playing Dominion.

A good day.

-two-

What’s better than a 3-Day Weekend? (thanks Memorial Day!)

A 5-Day Weekend.

Not sure what this smells like, but it smells good.

Not sure what this smells like, but I’m guessing top notes of fresh laundered pillows and maple-topped pancakes, followed by a base of playing cards, with slight under notes of sweaty runs. Mmmmm!

Working at the FOCUS office has some cool advantages. Among those are a chapel, daily Mass, fun coworkers, and days off. We get a certain number of days we can use when we’re sick, vacationing, or just need a day to chill. The policy governing these days states we must use 10 days per year. The FOCUS fiscal year runs June-May (aligned with the academic year), so the year ended this week. Turns out I had only used 7 days so far this year. If I didn’t use 3 more, I’d lose ’em. So, after being at work one day (Tuesday) I took the rest of the week off.

And I’m glad I did, because we have a MOUNTAIN of paperwork to do as part of our adoption process. Thanks to the time off, we have most of it done. I also had a great time hanging out with Amanda a ton. A lot of our adventures lately have been related to Happy #4.

-three-

Running again.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKRHW-6M3zQ

I love running. I was a sprinter in High School, but got lured onto the cross country team with the offer of delicious brownies after practice every Friday. To this day, Coach Berkowitz’ wife’s brownies are the best I’ve ever tasted. By a long shot. Anyway, that turned me into a runner. The weather started getting nice around my birthday at the beginning of May, but then I got sick for 2 weeks, then it snowed, but now it’s sunny and I feel great, so I laced up my shoes (a great pair courtesy of our mission partners at Greg Baum’s Flying Feet) and hit the road. I downloaded a new running app, Zombies, Run! which is an audio story that unfolds between songs. I am “Runner 5” and I go get supplies for our base. Of course, throughout the missions, I encounter “Zombs” and have to increase my pace 20% for a minute or so to outrun them. It’s really fun, AND it can run at the same time as Nike+ (which I’ve been using for years to track my runs) and Stitcher, which I use to stream podcasts.

-four-

SWIMMING!

The complex in which we currently live HAS A POOL. We finally took the plunge and visited the pool. You might think we were hesitant, but regarding this decision, we jumped in with both feet. Aaaaaaaand that’s all the pool puns I have.

Anyway, it’s been really hot this week in Denver, and it was quite refreshing to take a dip in the pool. Our friend Lindsay came over so Amanda, Lindsay and I hit the pool. We hung out at poolside, swam around a bit, and then when the girls went back to lay poolside, I grabbed my kindle in it’s waterproof case (A.K.A. a ziplock bag) and read IN THE POOL. I started reading Zero to Maker, a book that chronicles a man’s journey from passive consumer of technology to active maker and co-creator of openROV, an open-source underwater robot project. After that, I paged through an Arduino project book, Make: Simple Arduino Projects to get some ideas for my next project.

Pool Books:

-five-

DEAL CITY.

As you may have seen in some of our other posts, we bought a townhouse and will be moving in about a month. As of late, we’ve been doing our best to sniff out deals for furnishing the new house. Hunting for these deals has been a lot of fun and the bulk of our fun adventures lately. I’ll hold off on most of the details because we’ve got a full post coming up explaining “How We Furnished Our New Home for Only 1/X the Cost!” It’s felt like a game trying to get that fraction as small as possible. Each little success there has certainly been a happy, but I won’t share them all and ruin the upcoming post.

But, since you asked nicely, here’s one (very) small preview:

We wanted a sectional for the basement. We found one on Craigslist that would perfectly fit our smaller space down there, so we jumped at it. Here’s what it looked like on Craigslist:

And here’s what it looked like when we finally got it in the small SUV we borrowed from friends to haul it home:

It fit! Kind of…

We made it safely home and the couch is chilling in our garage (along with a number of other sweet deals waiting until they move into their (and our) new home.

Thanks for checking out my week! How was yours? Leave it in the comments below.

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