We spent a few days at the Country Club Plaza in KC with our friends Darin and Darla. Aaron went to school with them in Mount Ayr and Darin was in our wedding. We really enjoy getting together with them. We all turned 30 this year, so we thought we'd take a weekend and celebrate! Here are a few pictures of our fun weekend together.


Darin, me, Aaron, and Darla. We had joining rooms at a beautiful hotel called The Intercontinental on the plaza.


We went to eat at McCormick and Schmicks for supper one night. Here is Aaron and I at the restaurant.


Darla and Darin


The four of us outside the hotel.


Darin has a love/hate relationship with Northface clothes. It was pretty funny.


Chillaxin with the statues


Darin and Darla at the Royals game


Aaron and I at the game


Good seats!

We had a great time and hope we can all vacation again soon!

I didn't post all of this at the time, but I'm enough past it that I want to post it here. This has become my journal and I just didn't feel right leaving out this important part our fertility journey.

In April we decided to go ahead with another round of fertility treatments. We were doing an injection cycle (lots of shots to make my follicles grow and get more eggs to produce) and then an insemination in the end. We've done this before and we thought we'd try again one more time and see what happens.

All through the month things were going just as we wanted. We go in for appointments every other day near the end of the cycle in order for them to see how the follicles have grown and make sure we are on the right track. They do an ultrasound and blood work to make sure we are doing well. We were nearing the end of the cycle and the nurse started to look concerned. We were thinking we'd do what's called a trigger shot that night and do insemination a couple days later. The trigger shot makes my body ovulate and then they can time to the minute when to inseminate. Then we wait to see if it took. So we were waiting for the go ahead for the trigger shot. The nurse said she's going to have to consult with the doctor and let me know what our plans are. This is unusual, so I knew something was wrong.

Later in the day the doctor called us and said that I'd produced more follicles than he was comfortable with. If we went ahead with the trigger shot they could not guess how many of the mature follicles would ovulate. Therefore, they wouldn't know how many could potentially fertilize. Meaning...we could have multiple multiples. The doctor was not comfortable going ahead with this plan. So, he gave us some choices. We could:

1. cancel the cycle altogether and try again another month.
2. go ahead with this cycle, but be prepared for "embryo reduction", which basically means abort some of the babies if too many fertilized in order to have a healthier pregnancy for myself and whatever other babies were there.
3. switch to an in vitro cycle where they take out the eggs from me and only transfer back one or two of the best embryos and we could freeze the rest.

And we basically had to decide within the next few minutes what it was we were going to do. Talk about a big decision!! Aaron and I had already talked about a lot of those choices during the day before the phone call. I knew the nurse was worried and I pretty much already knew what our choices were. We knew we couldn't do choice 2. Neither one of us were comfortable with embryo reduction. I'm not saying it's a bad option for some people. There are very legitimate health reasons to do something like that in the fertility world. I just didn't think I would be able to do that after trying for so many years. I also was not okay with just canceling the cycle. We'd come so far already! So, we made a quick decision to go ahead with in vitro (IVF). We have said all through our fertility journey that we would not try IVF. Mostly because it was so much more invasive and more expensive. But when we had to make a quick decision we just knew we had to do it.

So, we had to run to des moines to get more medications to prepare for the egg retrieval. A couple days later we went in to the office. They put me under sedation and went in and got the eggs. They got 8 eggs and were very happy with this. They said they'd call us in a couple days to let us know how many fertilized.

A couple days later I got the call that only one fertilized. We were really hoping for more, so we were a bit disappointed. The dr. told us that they got 8 eggs, but none of them were mature enough. The one that fertilized was the most mature, but it still wasn't quite where they'd want it. So, they were going to watch it for the next 5 days and see how the cells multiplied. If all was going well in 5 days they would transfer it back into me. Then we'd wait two weeks to see it had implanted and see if I was pregnant. They decided at this point (since there was only one) to call me daily and let me know how it was doing.

So, I waited daily for my call about my embaby (what I called it). It was such a surreal feeling. Most people would have NO IDEA they were pregnant at this point. And yet, I knew I had a fertilized egg that could turn into our little miracle. It was so strange! The dr. called daily and let me know how many cells it had divided into and we'd just have to wait until the next day. Near the day of transfer I started looking at things online.

The dr was telling me the cell number, but not really saying if this was good or bad. I looked online and quickly realized my little embaby should've been further along by this point. The dr had not indicated that transfer may not happen, so I needed to know what was going on. I called the office immediately and asked how things were going. The nurse told me it's not exactly where they'd want it to be and she told me to be prepared to not have a transfer. Of course, I was upset. But I also had a feeling this was the case. She was going to call me in the morning of the scheduled transfer to let me know if it was going to happen or not.

They called that morning and let me know it had not divided like they would like and we would not follow through with transfer. Aaron and I were heartbroken. But we also knew if it was meant to be it would've happened for us. I think the hardest part for me was knowing we'd started a life in those cells that did not survive. Again, most people would have no clue they were pregnant at that point. But we knew. It was very hard to say the least.

We had been expecting that would be our last fertility efforts. After going through some of IVF we knew we couldn't let that cycle be the last. We had to do a full IVF cycle (there is much more involved normally) and see if it could work. The dr learned a lot about us from that cycle and knew things he'd do differently if we were to attempt it another time.

So, we will do that at some point. We're taking some time off again to just get our bearings. But at some point we will start it all up again and start IVF. It's been quite a deal, but we finally have some hope.

This weekend has been a good one so far. Aaron's concert band had their district contest today. They played well and got a I rating! They didn't do a lot of contests this year and this was a great experience for them! Everyone was very excited.

Aaron and I decided to celebrate by going to the new Star Trek movie. I have to say, I'm not much of a fan of Star Trek in general. But Aaron has been super excited to see this movie. Turned out it was really good! I'm sure I missed a lot of jokes, since I know next to nothing about the show. But I was pleasantly surprised with the movie. And it's the first time in a long time Aaron has walked out of a movie and said "that was awesome!"

I'm thinking a lot this weekend about those of us who are struggling to be mom's. I love my mom and, of course, think of the mothers and mother figures in our lives on mothers day. But it is also a holiday that is hard for those of us who are struggling to be mom's. So, I've spent the weekend really trying to send good thoughts to those people who have lost children and those who want so desperately to be mom's and are unable for whatever reason. It's a tough place to be in. I wish for everyone to have the families they've always dreamed of!

This week I had a lot of good news and some fun times at school.

I was told on Tuesday that I will be moving to Kindergarten for next year! I'm super excited about this move. I've been teaching third grade. I've gotten along fine in third grade, but I have always missed the young ones. I absolutely love being the one to introduce them to reading/phonics/counting/patterns, etc. We are lucky in our school that we have a pre-school program. So, most of these kids have already been introduced to some of these things. But I absolutely love the little ones! I honestly can't wait. This is kind of my dream job. I absolutely love my district and my school. So, now it's even better now that I'm in the grade I want to be in. I've already started looking at the curriculum and talking with my teaching partner. I think she and I will get along great! I can't wait to get started!

Next week starts MAP week for us. The MAP test is our standardized state test. We have done so much to get the kids ready and I'm really excited to see how they do. We just held a really big assembly to kick off MAP week this afternoon. It was really fun and I had my rapping debut! Yes, you heard right. I was in a rap. It was quite funny and my friend Lori snapped a few pictures. We made a rap to motivate the kids on the MAP test. It basically said things like, eat a good breakfast, get a good nights sleep, read the question first, etc...







One of the teachers always says to her kids "How do you feel about the MAP test?" And her kids always chant back "WE LOVE MAP TEST!!!!!" That has been our mantra this year for this test. We want the kids to really be excited and feel prepared and come in with a positive attitude. All the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade kids all picked up on it as the year went on.

So today at our assembly she asked how they felt about the map test. ALL of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders all screamed "WE LOVE MAP TEST!!!!!" It seriously brought tears to my eyes. It was so awesome to hear that from them. Then the younger grades lined the hallway and cheered us back to our rooms to get us ready for the test. We've done all we can do, so we'll see what happens now!