Preparing for Halloween

So tonight we had a great FAMILY night. We got the pumpkins out and carved them to prepare our house for halloween.  Kiersten had a great time getting the seeds out and painting her pumpkin.  Here are photos…

Must Have been a Busy Summer.

It looks like the last post that I made was back in JUNE, Hello June, that was a long time ago.  So here I am catching up once again!  So since June was the last month, I’ll start with July.

July we went camping down to Warm Lake like we do every year.  Its always a great fun week long getaway! First we went to Horseshoe Bend and watched fireworks and then the following Monday we headed to camp! I want to say thanks to my In-Laws for always making this a wonderful week.  It something that I hope we get to do for years, I hope its something Kiersten will remember forever!  While we were there the guys fished and it was a great time. I landed my very first Salmon, wow they are fun and really pull!  It was a great trip, here are some pictures:

Then Later in July we had Kiersten’s friend, Sophia’s birthday party.  She got to ride her first pony at the party and she loved it.  Now she wants to see the horses whenever they are around.

Thanks to www.Beautyisphotography.com for the last picture of Kiersten on the horse. Rachael you do amazing work.

September,  Kiersten Rode her first motorcycle.

We started out this month going to Greenbluff farms for the first time.  It was a great place and we will be going back I’m sure for every festival!  It was a great time with family.  If you have never heard of Greenbluff, its basically a community of people that own farms. Each farm has a store on it and you can go in and buy fresh fruit or you can go out onto their farms and pick your items yourself.  We went up for the pumpkin festival and we went and got pumpkins out of a pumpkin patch.  Some of the farms are bigger than others and some have fair type things set up.  Lots of food and fresh garden stuff and good family fun.  We got to to go our in the patch and Kiersten even picked a pumpkin of her own.  I’m sure she only picked that one because there seemed to be a pile of dirt next to it that she could play in!  She really is my little tomboy girl!  And the photos from the adventure

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NEW SCHOOL

So in September Kiersten started a new school.  The new daycare, which we call school is called ABCD daycare.  I had a hard time switching Kiersten because I knew she liked KMC kids but the number one reason we changed was because of cost and we had heard great things about ABCD.  So she started there September 7th and it was very hard at first.  It has taken a good month for her to get used to it.  The first few weeks were horrible, they had to peel her off of me in the mornings and I felt horrible as a parent.  However, she got to go back to KMC one day a week for the first month and she said she like KMC better because “she gets to see her friends”  So my goal for her is to make new friends at ABCD and then that will make my life a little easier in the morning!  It has gotten better with dropping her off, the last few times she has even walked herself in, Most of the time I have to carry her.   Either way the last month has been so great for her education.  I had heard wonderful things about the education they do there.  She has a schedule at “school” and it has been so good for her.  She has to be there by 9:30 on the days she is going to go because they start teaching. In the month that she has been going she already knows her numbers to 10, all her colors, and her ABC’s.  Here is a video of her singing her ABC’s with daddy!

Kiersten Singing her ABC’s

Post Falls Days

Okay so my new camera needs new batteries so i pulled out our old camera. And I found this great picture of Kiersten and Digger.  Wow how they both have grown…

Just thought I would share and old photo.  Now on to new stuff!  This weekend is Post Falls Days.  During this they do a parade and then a little fair down town at the park.   I had to work this morning and the parade was at noon. So dad took kiersten by himself… he said she didn’t watch…all she wanted to do was “walk”  so they walked all over town and then back to George’s pickup before coming home.  It must have worn Kiersten out because she slept for almost 3 hours during her nap.  After I got home from work Kiersten woke up and we went down to the fair in the park.  Kiersten just wanted to run around, throw rocks in the river.  She through a big fit when we left the river, but what she did next was the best part of the day.  We went to the petting zoo and she loved it.  She saw horses, camels, llama,  a pig, a bunny, a baby cow, and many many goats!  Here are some photos:

And here is a picture of Kiersten’s smile while sitting on daddy’s lap.

Difficult time.

So lots of you may have heard something about what is going on up here but not details. So now that the ordeal is pretty much over I will fill in the details for you.
So May 4th, 2010 I started having some abdominal pain. Mostly my pain was on the right side of my belly. But i didn't think much of it because I had started going back to the gym the same day. The pain was intermittent and not horrible, although i was taking Tylenol and ibuprofen for it at times. Saturday and Sunday the 8th and 9th my pain was much worse. Sunday I started taking higher doses of ibuprofen and Tylenol around the clock because the pain would almost have me doubled over holding my stomach. The OTC pain medication helped but the pain was still very present. That weekend we were down in Orofino, so when we got home on Sunday night, I decided before I took my next dose of Ibuprofen I was going to take a pregnancy test, just to rule out the idea of it.
I really wasn't expecting the test to be positive because I still had my IUD birth control in place and they say the chance of getting pregnant with it are 0.01%. But sure enough, the little stick came back posative. I instantly freaked out. I was shaking terribly and wasn't quite sure what to do. (can you say wow, unexpected news on MOTHERS day of all days) So i called the doctor that was on call for my OB office. When I got a hold of him, I told him that i was having severe abdominal pain, which was tolerable at the moment, I still had my IUD in, which they had put in 2 years ago, and I just took a positive pregnancy test! His first words' "Hmmm, are you sure" I laughed at that and said, Yes I'm sure. Then he informed me if my pain gets worse go to the ER and if it doesn't then come to there office in the morning! The pain got better, so I waited and went into the office in the morning.
My nurse practitioner confirmed my positive pregnancy test, checked my IUD to make sure it was still in the correct spot and it was, and then sent me over to have lab work and and Ultrasound.
My ultrasound came back inconclusive. They couldn't find the baby by ultrasound. Then my lab work came back and my HCG results were only 470. So this i was informed meant the possibility of two things; one the baby is viable and in my uterus but just to small to detect, or i have a tubal pregnancy and it just isn't very far along.
I was not ready to be a mom for the second time however, i was praying for the first option. I would rather be a mom again a little bit earlier than planned rather than having to deal with tubal stuff. so once they did the ultrasound they took the IUD out, because either way if I was having a viable pregnancy, it had to come out and if i wasn't, i wanted it out anyways!!
So then the waiting game started. I had to wait 48 hours to find out any more news. The pain still came on strong at times. 48 Hours later i had to have my HCG level drawn again. For a viable pregnancy...my hcg levels would double, tubal or non-viable the levels would stay the same or drop. My levels dropped. So at this point we knew we weren't becoming parents again, and we were just praying that it would go away and i wouldn't have to have surgery.
After the pregnancy was determined Non-viable, we had a few options, we could wait and watch my levels without any drugs and see what they did. (my doctor said this would be rolling the dice, however i highly considered it since he also said, "but the dice have been rolling your way so far") The other two options were surgery to go in and make sure my tube was okay and take the tubal pregnancy out of the tube, or take a shot of a drug called methotrexate which is a chemo (cancer drug). He said he would try the drug first. The idea of the drug is that it kills rapidly dividing cells, like cancer and in my case a fetal tissue) Realize at this point, the baby isn't viable, it can't grow in my tube so I wasn't killing my baby. Anyhow after much discussed I decided it would be safer to take the shot, and save my tube for the next time we do want to have kids.
So Friday the 14th, I got my methotrexate shot. It wasn't horrible. I was expecting a lot of nausea. I did get slightly nauseated and very weak through out. Just kinda felt crummy but for only a few hours and then it passed.
Then I had to wait a whole week to see what my HCG levels did. Thank goodness the shot has worked so far. My hcg levels yesterday were 20. They have to less than 5 to say for sure that everything is going to be fine, but for now the doc said we are probably not going to have to do surgery!! We did do an another ultrasond to make sure there wasn't blood pooling in my abdominal cavity from a ruptures and there wasn't... So that was all good news!
After all that... he said so we could wait a month and put another IUD back in, I just laughed, and said probably not!! I'll go with something else!!
So thanks everyone for all the messages of concern, and support. Sorry I didn't fill everyone in with all the details. I wanted the ordeal to be over before talking about it to EVERYONE!!