Life Right Now [October]
Hello friends! I hope you are having a fabulous fall (if you are in the northern hemisphere) and are surviving all the Halloween festivities! We have officially entered the stage at our home where Madic and Emma have clear ideas about what they want to be for Halloween. Gone are the days of being able to go to the local thrift shop and find a cute, used costume in their size. I must say I am grieving those days. Perhaps it is because both kids, after buying costumes, decided they wanted to be something else. Luckily, after weeks of cajoling (literally) I was able to convince them to wear the original costumes I purchased.
Other than that, the month has been packed full of Halloween and fall festivities.
Ring of Fire Eclipse
For those of you who don’t know, on October 14th there was a partial eclipse. We chose not to make the trip down to southern Utah to see the full effect because we were watching my friends’ kids. Unfortunately, it was cloudy in northern Utah but we were still able to catch some glimpses of it.
Overall it was a fun day having two extra buddies. We went to a viewing party at the library for the eclipse, went to McDonald’s, and then the kids spent the rest of the day playing in their Halloween costumes, watching a movie with popcorn, and roasting s’mores.
Family Party
My family has an annual Halloween Party. Every year we get together and eat my sister-in-law’s famous sloppy joes, check out all the grandkids’ costumes, and hit a pinata.
Pumpkin Patch + Carving Pumpkins + Donuts + Apple Cider
Over the last few years, Dustin and I have started our own annual Halloween tradition with our kids. We go to the pumpkin patch to play and buy pumpkins. Then we come home and I make homemade donuts and apple cider and we carve pumpkins. It has become super fun as the kids have gotten older. Madic carved his pumpkin almost completely by himself.
Annual Scary Movie
I don’t love scary movies, but once a year I make an exception and watch one with Dustin. However, I have very specific criteria about what I will watch. It can’t be demonic or gory. I am fine with things that are about aliens (because I don’t believe aliens exist) or movies that make you jump. So far we have watched “A Quiet Place” and “A Quiet Place II”, “The Sixth Sense”, “Signs” …you know the kind of movie that most people don’t consider to be scary. This year we are going to watch “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”.
And of course, we are looking forward to trick-or-treating next week on Halloween night.
What fun Halloween traditions does your family enjoy?
Switzerland
In other news, it is finally time for Dustin and I to get our tickets for Switzerland!!! So for those of you who don’t know, my husband – Dustin returned to school at the age of 33 to work towards his Bachelor’s degree. He started when Madic was six months old and will finally be done in December some 5.5 years later! I am SO proud of him. Working full-time while going to school part-time has been rough. He has had no summers off and he is the first person in his family to receive a college degree.
Because of this HUGE accomplishment, I told him we could go anywhere he wanted to celebrate and he chose Switzerland. Because it is extremely expensive to travel to Switzerland I then had to figure out how we could afford it. That is how I got into travel hacking. I will talk more about travel hacking in another post but in essence, it is where you use credit card points to redeem free travel. So for the past year, I have been racking up credit card points and it is finally time to put those points to good use. When redeeming flights with points it is best to book your flights 9 months in advance! We plan to head to Switzerland at the end of July so that means in a few days I will be booking our flights. We have been planning and dreaming of this trip for so long that it feels crazy that it is finally time to start booking. We are beyond excited. We will be going for two weeks and my two sisters (who are literal saints) have agreed to watch our kids while we are gone.
Next month I will let you know how booking the flights went and give you a sneak peak of our travel itinerary.
Infertility
So this part of my month recap is going to be a bit more personal than usual. I am typically a very private person and feel presumptuous in sharing details about my life unless asked, but I felt impressed to share the following with you. I don’t know if it will help any of you…but here goes.
I have decided it is time to share with you my infertility journey. In all honesty, I have been in denial up to this point that we have been struggling with infertility. It hasn’t been until the last few weeks that I have really come to terms with this fact. I think this is due to the fact that we already have two beautiful children. I will admit, it did take us a while to get pregnant with Madic (our first) though I chalked that up to us not timing things right vs. actual infertility. I think that is why I figured this time around it was just another simple and fixable error – a lack of paying attention. But as the months have become years I have finally had to call it what it is. We are struggling with infertility.
The Back Story
Dustin had to really talk me into having a third child. You see I had an extremely difficult postpartum period with Emma, so much so that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to have any more kids. I had always planned on having more than two kids but I just wasn’t sure if I could do it. However, Dustin persisted and I finally agreed to start trying at the beginning of 2022 and we were blessed to get pregnant soon after.
The First
I soon went in for my 8-week ultrasound and found out that the pregnancy was most likely NOT viable. However, to be on the safe side they made me go through a variety of ultrasounds to confirm their diagnosis. It was actually rather surprising and interesting at the same time. You see there was no baby. I had what is called a blighted ovum – meaning things didn’t line up correctly so no fetus was created; however, my body did create a placenta and was producing pregnancy hormones. Once I realized there was no baby, it took me a minute to process that in my brain. Call me naive but I just assumed I would never have a miscarriage. Once I wrapped my head around the fact that we would not be having a baby I found I was actually okay emotionally. However, I underestimated what resolving the miscarriage would entail. I chose to go a less invasive route and took medicine to help my body complete the miscarriage!! I won’t go into details but let’s just say it was AWFUL and it took me a couple of months to recover physically from the experience.
The Second
After that experience, we decided to wait a while before trying again. We gave my body all of spring and early summer to recover and went back to trying around June. Once again we got pregnant fairly quickly. This time there was a baby and we were so excited. However, this pregnancy felt different than my other ones. I had no morning sickness (not that I’m complaining) and I experienced sporadic heavy bleeding which was alarming. I was so worried the pregnancy wouldn’t work out. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed when I miscarried at 16 weeks in the ER.
I had friends and family ask me if we were going to try again and I knew the answer was yes. There were a lot of reasons why I wanted to try again – but the main reason was I just didn’t feel like it was time for us to be done trying.
Clomid
After my most recent miscarriage, my cycle became irregular. I had a friend recommend I try tracking my temperature. Once I started doing that I realized I wasn’t ovulating every cycle. Assuming that was the problem I paid a visit to my midwife and she started me on Clomid. I did three rounds of Clomid. The first cycle was 50 mg – I ovulated but no baby. The second cycle was 50 mg – I didn’t ovulate. The third cycle was 100 mg – I ovulated but once again no baby. The cycle following my last dose of Clomid I was lucky enough to ovulate on my own (without medical assistance) but once again no baby.
These repeated attempts and failures have helped me accept the fact that our inability to have a baby was not going to be an easy fix. It hasn’t just been bad timing or a lack of ovulation. It has helped me accept that, yes we are in fact dealing with infertility.
My Current Thoughts on Infertility
As I have spent time thinking about this experience and what I find difficult about it I realized that my biggest challenge is feeling like I won’t know when it is time to be done. Obviously, if we get pregnant then we would be done, but it is very possible we will not be able to get pregnant, and then what? I worry about reaching that point and not having closure or feeling regret, remorse, or guilt for deciding that our journey needs to be over. While obviously, it would be difficult to not have our family grow I feel like it would be even harder to not feel peace about the way things ended. I honestly don’t know how our story will end – but as I have thought about and processed these feelings I have realized that this is too big for me to carry and if I am expecting to find peace on my own, I most likely won’t find it. I need to turn to the Prince of Peace. Not only so He can do what He came to do – carry my burdens, but so that I can find peace in the unknown.
I am not telling you all of this in hopes you will feel sorry for us. In fact, that is the last thing I want. I am sharing it because I know that many women struggle with infertility and sometimes it helps to know you are not alone.
2024 Mom Retreats
On a lighter note, I gave my email subscribers a sneak peek into what retreats I have planned for 2024. Here is a quick overview of those retreats, in case you missed the email or aren’t subscribed to my newsletter.
Eden, Utah
February 7th-10th
Skiing/Snowboarding
Snowshoeing
Hot Spring Soaking
Registration Opens:
November 6th (email subscribers)
November 13th (everyone else)
Escalante, Utah
May 8th-11th
Hiking
Canyoneering
Star Gazing
Registration Opens:
February 5th (email subscribers)
February 12th (everyone else)
Cannon Beach, Oregon
September 4th-7th
Surfing
Hiking
Tasty Local Eats
Registration Opens:
June 3rd (email subscribers)
June 10th (everyone else)
Which retreat are you most interested in attending? What questions do you have about the retreats?
Happy Halloween
I wish you and your family a safe and fun Halloween. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for more details about our February retreat. I will be sending more information to my email list beginning the first week of November, as well as posting some blog posts. Until next time, happy adventuring!
Yes we are saints!