An Unbiased Perspective

It's been a year since McKay and I moved into our house, and we've been steadily remodeling things in our house.  Our living room, which is the first room you see when you walk into our house needs a lot of work.  It's a long rectangle room and McKay and I could never agree on how to decorate the space.  McKay grew up thinking everything has to match and he likes more traditional/modern design. I'm the totally opposite.  I love eclectic spaces with lots of textures, colors, because that's how I am. This was becoming so frustrating to me because now the baby is due in August, I have a goal to get this room done, because I know I won't have the time, money, or energy to tackle this with a newborn.  

I found this blog called Third Floor Design, the designer is named Kimberly Moore.  I really liked the spaces she designed and decided I wanted her to give McKay and I an unbiased perspective on how we should design our living room.  Kimberly was great to work with, we did everything over e-mail, this saves a lot of money!  When I received the mood board, I loved it. It has a perfect balance of McKay's traditional and modern and with my eclectic mix.  She also gave me plans for where to place our furniture, examples of how to arrange art on the wall, paint colors, and a guide to where I need to purchase these items, she created my personal pinterest board with her inspirations.  If you're struggling with designing a space, like McKay and I were, I would recommend going this route.  It's a lot cheaper doing an e-design, where you send lots of pictures of the space, measurements, and a list of things that you need and want in the room.  It's going to take us a few months to get this all together, but when I do, I will post the pictures here.  

How it came to be

I have to be honest, it's been pretty hard keeping this a secret from everyone.  Being married for five years  finally took the plunge.  Well, it was a little more difficult then just deciding to take the plunge.  We experienced some set backs, one was dealing with some infertility problems.  Infertility runs in McKay's family, so this was something that kept coming up in our minds after a year and a half with no successes.  So we thought we would get some help to make sure there wasn't anything wrong with us.  

Thanks to my good friend Alicia, she gave me a good recommendation of a doctor her and her husband went to when they struggled with infertility.  Dr. Heiner from Reproductive Care Center in Murray was so great.  Our first visit, we sat down in his office, I felt like I was on one of those pharmaceutical drug commercials where the patient talks to the doctor in their really nice office.  He spent over a hour with us, asking about us, our health history, our goals in life, questions we had, and gave us some really good advice.  He did this experiment that made me realize that getting pregnant is a complex process and if one small thing is not in sync, your body won't allow itself to get pregnant.  Dr. Heiner drew six houses on a piece of paper and says, let's pretend this is your neighborhood and these six households are trying to get pregnant.  He asked us which house we wanted to be.  Of course we picked house #1.  He told me to roll the dice.  I rolled the dice, it was a number six.  He then says, ok so house #6 got pregnant.  Rolled again, a three.  I rolled again, a five.  No joke, it took me 24 times to roll a freaking one.  He then told us a healthy couple can try up to 23 times and not pregnant, and on the 24th time can.  It's all about probability.  This made me feel like there's hope and that I just needed to be patient.

Dr. Heiner came up with a plan.  He ordered a bunch of blood tests and an ultrasound for me, and McKay had the easy part of doing a semen evaluation.  I told McKay to not feel embarassed about the semen test, he can check it off his bucket list.  McKay's test, my blood work and ultrasound all came back looking normal except my thyroid level was really low.  I was put on a small dose of thyroid medicine.  I was given a calendar, that would help me track the days I was most fertile.  Ten days after I had my period, I took ovulation tests (you can buy these at the store) until I got a positive.  Then that next day is when you're suppose to "try".  After doing this recipe for two months, I got pregnant.  My period has been out of whack since I stopped using birth control.  From what I read online about timing, everything was telling me to try two weeks after my period.  I didn't realize how out of whack my periods were until I took the ovulation tests.  The first month I tracked this, it took me three weeks to get a positive ovulation sign.  I seriously think the combination of my thyroid being really low and not having the timing right was what was making it hard for us.

How I found out I was pregnant.  The day after Christmas, I had a feeling I should take a test, I knew my period was suppose to be coming within a few days, but I was starting to feel some of the early symptoms of pregnancy.  I took the test, didn't think much of it because I've taken so many tests in the past and they always came out negative.  When I looked at the test, it said loud and clear "Pregnant".  I sat there and looked at it for like 10 minutes and I didn't really think much.  I thought to myself, "well if its true that would be awesome, but I don't want to get my hopes up."  The next day, which was the 27th and our 5th Anniversary, I decided to find out for sure, so I told McKay I was going to take a jog, I jogged to the local Smith's and bought another pregnancy test.  Don't ask me how I carried it home, it's pretty embarrassing.  I got home, took the second test and it came out again "Pregnant".  I sat there for another 10 minutes, and just thought, "huh, this is going to be funny to tell McKay on our Anniversary."  I wrapped up both tests in a little Nordstrom silver box and put a big bow on top of it.

We went snow shoeing up in Park City that afternoon and took dear old Winston with us.  Later that night we decided to go to a local Mexican Restaurant.  While we were waiting for our dinner, I gave the little silver box to McKay.  McKay would not open the box.  He thought it was something naughty inside and didn't want people to see it in the restaurant.  I kept on telling him it wasn't naughty and to open the box up.  It took him a few seconds to get the courage, when he did and saw the two tests, he looked at me in confusion and said, "Are you serious?"  I said to McKay, "no I'm not, I found these tests in our neighbors trash can and wanted to Punk'D you."  He couldn't believe it.  He was really excited and asked me when I found out.  I told him, I found out the day after Christmas.  He was impressed because he knows its hard for me to keep my mouth shut especially when great news are involved.  I wish I got a picture of his face, he had a grin from ear to ear.  He couldn't believe it.  We had a great dinner and mostly sat there and talked about how our lives are going to change for the better, how Winston is going to get another sibling, how this will be the first grandchild on both sides of our families, and how we wanted to wait to tell friends and family.

We had our first OB appointment where we were able to see an ultrasound of the baby.  It looked like a little tadpole, but you could definitely had a heart beat.  It was so tender to see it.  I'm due the end of August and it will be a hot summer for me, but that's ok.  McKay and I feel really lucky and blessed to be parents to one of Heavenly Father's children.  I just hope I don't mess them up!

Keeper of Bees

McKay and I are pretty nerdy.  We really enjoy watching a mind melting, educational, and historical documentaries.  Friday night, we stayed home and watched this documentary about Vanishing Of The Bees and how bees are disappearing due to the use of pesticides and homogenized farming in the United States.  Afterwards, McKay and I decided that it would be really fun and interesting to have a beehive.  It would make our garden more beautiful because of pollination and I can use all of that honey to make baklava, kills two birds with one stone.  So we spent the rest of the night doing research about being a keeper of bees.  I'm excited because it will be a fun hobby to do together and one day be able to pass down this hobby onto our kids.      

Courtney, Science Fair Judge

Tuesday morning, I had the great opportunity to be a judge for the local elementary school science fair. My work got a call asking for volunteers to judge. I thought it would be fun do I decided to sign up. Being at the elementary school brought back memories of playing at recess, trading pods, and playing with my Tomagatchi virtual pet. 

                                    

There were a handful of good science projects I judged. One of them was a sixth grade girl who loves nail polish. We got a long really well. Her science project was about testing different brands of top coats and seeing which one lasts longer. She tested three types and for the variable she didn't use a top coat. To my surprise, what lasted the longest was not wearing a top coat at all!  What!?!?  I thought her science project could be useful in our world today, so I gave her a good score.  

After we judged the school fed us a cafeteria lunch. Lunch now is a lot different then it was when I was a kid. Who ever heard of wheat and you never saw anything green. I was impressed with lunch, it was tasty. 

                                    

Snow shoeing

Saturday morning I woke up to find a lot of snow on the ground. The first thought that came into my head was, "I'll be able to use the snow shoes I got back in November!"  I took little Winston with me and we saw some beautiful scenery. Memories of the great windstorm in November were brought back when I saw so many trees that got knocked down up Adam's Canyon.  We had fun.  Winston made it about a 1 1/4 way up and started crying because he was so cold.  I had to carry him all the way back in my coat.  Just trying to break him in a little so he can get ready for this girl's active life.

A big tree fell down over the trail, we had to climb over this tree.  Winston started barking because he was scared of the tree.

You can see the stream flowing through the canyon.

Frustrations

Today was a day full of frustrations. I felt: disappointed, failure, misrepresented, and upset. I'm really grateful for a husband who drops things at work to talk to me during my bad day and a sister who knows exactly what I went through today. And I thought this magnet was funny.

Lunch Break

Yesterday I went home during lunch to let Winston out. It was such a beautiful and sunny afternoon. We ate our lunch outside. If winters in Utah are like this all of the time, I would be ok with this. The sunshine made me happy.

Getting caught up.

Our holiday season in a nutshell. 

1. Ran the Farmington Turkey Leg 5K on Thanksgiving morning with the entire Craig family!  It was perfect weather and I finished 87th overall, 5th in my age group and at 27:27. 

2. Had Thanksgiving dinner w/the Killpacks.  Because the extended family is so large we had it at a church in Orem.  McKay's family made it very elegant looking for a basketball court.

3. Melanie and Andrew came up for Thanksgiving and I took an entire week off to spent it with my sista.  We had a lot of fun!

4. Endured the craziest wind storm I've ever experienced in my life.  We both survived and thankfully so did our house without any damage.  

5. Finished the biggest part of our kitchen remodel: the cabinets, back splash, counter tops, sink and faucet. 

We did the back splash ourselves.  It took us three days, a lot of tile spacers and patience.

I'll get another picture up once it's all decorated.

6. Got a new office at work!  I have a window that looks out to another window that looks out to a window outside! 

 

7. Got a dog for Christmas, named him Winston and we heart him.

Festive Winston

McKay practicing his clarinet for Christmas, Winston not far away.

The first night we got him, he slept all night long.

 

Sweet Winston taking a nap on me.

7. Returned four fake Christmas trees to Home Depot because McKay wasn't satisfied with their artificialness and the lights went out after using it for three weeks.  We had really bad luck with Christmas trees this year.

8. Had a great Christmas with both families. 

9. Celebrated our 5th Wedding Anniversary!  To celebrate it we drove up to McKay's parents cabin east of Park City.  Our car struggled getting up there because of the icy roads.  We had to park 2.5 miles down the road and walk the rest.  It a perfect winter day, it was sunny.  Once we got to the cabin, we turned on every space heater in there and started to watch a movie.  We got half way through the movie and it was already 4:00 p.m., we had to leave soon after that so we could get to our car before it got dark.  We went out to eat to this little Mexican restaurant in Farmington called Francisco's and it was really good.  I saw three people I went to high school with, that's what you get for living next to where you grew up.

McKay keeping Winston warm during our hike up to the cabin.

10. Had a 60's mocktail party with some of our friends for New Year's Eve.  We had good food, a lot of specialty drinks from World Market, Just Dance, and close friends.

 2011 Family Picture

 

 Even Winston gets a drink.

I don't remember what we were laughing at, but I love this picture.
 

 McKay and I playing Just Dance, we did pretty good.

11. McKay had 11 days off and I had three, boo!