Dig in and Work Hard

Over the last few weeks/months, I've really had the opportunity to look at myself and reflect on where I am and where I want to be. Some days are filled with optimism and focus while others are filled with despair and tears.

To truly reach those goals requires hard work and deep commitment. So this past week I finally dug in and committed to something that has been looming in front of me for a long time, my overall health and fitness, which really means: weight loss.

I recently joined the gym Chuck has been at for the past few months and what this gym offers is what I need, guidance and accountability. Each member is assigned a personal trainer. Chuck and I share the same trainer Kelly. At the beginning of the month she assigns a workout routine an at the end of the month we are assessed. It also helps that this gym isn't full of a bunch of hard bodies showing off their physiques, but they are real people with the same type of goals.

Day 1 kicked my butt. 5 stations and almost two rotations later (I didn't exactly make it to the last station second time around) I was puking in the bathroom and wanted to cry. Frustrated and feeling the worst about myself I returned home to a smiling husband who was so proud of my new path. This was the last thing I wanted, but probably needed. I sat in the couch grumpy as can be until he left for work and then the tears came. Going to the gym for the first time in a long, long time brought to the surface every feeling of inadequacy, self doubt and utter disgust I had hiding inside. After my cry session I felt a relief and knew what I was doing is what I need to be doing.

Almost a week and two more visits to the gym later, it's become a little easier and I'm leaving the gym happy. The trick now is to keep it up. That's why I am putting this out to the world, so I have an extra layer of accountability and pressure to keep me going. Hopefully in 3 weeks I will have some exciting results to share after my first assessment.

Update: Day 4, completed 3 rotations and 5 minutes on the elliptical, would've stayed longer but someone else over exerted themselves and was done ;)

Perseverance, do or do not. There is no try.

Today I'm feeling a little down. I haven't had a down day like this in a long time, but I feel like my heart is being squeezed and my mind is racing with what-ifs.

I received some news today that came as a set back on our journey to have a family and I'm taking it a little rough. I knew when we started our current course of action that it wasn't going to be easy or come quick, but as I ponder on the bad news it is hard to remember that.

I keep thinking that there is more I can do, well I know there is more I can do but I don't or haven't yet. I don't understand exactly what is holding me back. Am I complacent and too accepting of the status quo or am I too afraid of failure that I don't even try. It probably is a little bit of both and some more on top of that. One of my biggest problems is that I get too much inside my head. I think to much about things sometimes to the point where I don't sleep well sometimes because my mind is racing with thoughts or ideas.

As I was writing this, I sent a quick email to Chuck about how I was feeling and no more than 15 seconds later I got a call from him while he was at work. Not even enough time for him to see my email. You see when Chuck is at work he doesn't have much time to call me and it's not really appropriate for me to call the prison (unless it is an emergency) so we email each other.  In the four years he has worked at the prison, I think I can count on one hand how many times I have called him. It was good to hear his voice and it helped calm me down a little and become distracted with his stories from the prison, like the officer  who was locked in a cell by an inmate. Nights at home can be lonely sometimes while Chuck is a work and I'm at home so it is good to talk to him or receive a love note via email. It makes me feel special and I know that I'm loved.

So let me wrap up my pity party for now and refocus my thoughts on the positive and remember what I do have to be grateful for which is so vast. A friend of mine received a necklace as a gift that had the quote, "I can do hard things" and I feel like that can apply to me too. I just need to keep looking forward and remember that, although it it can seem to tough to handle, I cannot afford to give up.

The Life of a Puggle

What is a puggle you may ask? Only the cutest darn dogs you ever did see! A puggle is a cross between a pug and a beagle. We have two and they are integral members of the family.

Minnie is our oldest and we adopted her when we were living in Utah, she is almost 5 years old. Funny side note, the family we got her from was right down the street from where my dad grew up in Providence.

Buddy came to us while living here in Arizona. We were wanting another female when adding a second dog, but after driving all the way to North Phoenix (about an hour from home, at least) we found out they only had males left. Apparently the kid who was sent to check the puppies genders when we called to ask didn't know the difference between males and females. We love him just the same (or even more) than we would have loved another female dog. Buddy and I share the same birthday! He is a little over 3 years old.

Who could resist this cute face?

Each of our dogs have distinct and opposite personalities. Minnie is quite the contradiction. She is sweet, but she will put Buddy in his place. She is the alpha dog. She is independent and likes her own space, but loves to cling to us (on her terms, especially when Buddy is getting attention). Minnie is smart, but very stubborn. She is a little high strung and likes to watch tv to bark at any animal on screen. She protects the family from any audible threat and knows when to cuddle and comfort us when we need it. A puggle kiss really helps when you are having a hard day. She can be a bully to Buddy when he gets in her way, but when they play she loves to roll on her back while they wrestle and then chase each other around the house. 

Buddy and I cuddle while he naps.

Buddy is a sweet boy. On the surface Buddy may not be the smartest dog, but that is not the case. While Minnie does tricks, Buddy could really case less. When something is important to him he focuses on it, usually that is food, treats, toys, or "journeys" (we don't dare say W a l k around them) He knows when it is food time and does he will spin in circles with excitement when we're headed into the kitchen, then he will paw at the food container as if to say "here's the food, this is it, I'm hungry!" Buddy loves people. When people come over he will howl with excitement which may come across as 

aggressive, but really he just wants to meet you and be your friend. He is our puggle shadow and will follow us around the house. We call him our "Most Loyal Buddy"

The dogs really live a rough life

Chuck's Green Thumb*

Around the house we have spent the last couple of weeks doing a little yard work here and there. We've been killing weeds, pulling up dead plants, and even planting some seeds and plants. We've also had to work on our drip system a little bit too (now you know why we had dead plants). Our sweet little puggles like to chew off the heads on the drip line and we had quite a few geysers shooting all over the place. Rather than fix them right away, I turned off the drip system and a lot of our plants started dying. Well we finally got around replace the drip line heads and also plugged up any line where bushes no longer existed.

Our Dahlia Seedlings

If you know a little about Chuck, you'll know he spent most of his childhood living up in the mountains of California. He didn't grow up with a yard that had a lawn or had many plants to take care of. His yards were mostly pine needles. When we moved into our house 4 years ago, it was his first time ever using a lawn mower and he took ownership of it. ( I made the mistake of mowing the lawn one day and he wasn't very happy that I stole his job)

This is what they should look like

So a couple of weeks ago we decided to replant the planters in our front yard. We decided to go with seeds of dahlias, forget me nots, poppies and I don't remember the forth one. It seemed like it was taking forever for them to sprout and in our impatience we decided to plant some actual plants.

As it came time to plant our flowers, Chuck turns to me and asks me how to do it. I chuckled a bit and remembered he has literally never done this before. I showed him how and to our dismay as we dug up the dirt, little seedlings had been growing and they just hadn't broken through the dirt yet.

Gazania, our full grown plants

We decided to check our other planters to see if there were any signs of life and to our surprise the other three planters all had green sprouts peeking through the soil. Hurray! Now we just need to keep them alive!






*Not to be confused with Chuck Green's thumb (who is Chuck's uncle and namesake)

Mother's Day Blues

With Mother's Day nearing, I have been thinking about what to write in this post for awhile. Thinking of what I want to say and how to say it. Things that have been on my mind for so long. So here goes nothing...

Mother's Day has got to be the toughest holiday to get through for me. I have some great women in my life worth celebrating like my grandmothers, my mother in law, aunts, and especially my own mom.      I love each of them individually for all they have done on my behalf and for the examples they are in my life.

For me, Mother's Day is the one day a year I want to shut myself in the house and say let's move it along while waiting for the day to end. Call it wallowing in my own self pity or call it focusing on the negative, but it is the day I just feel overwhelmingly sad. As long it isn't my everyday mood, I think I deserve my own little pity party every once in awhile.

I try to seek comfort in the fact that I'm not alone and have faith that I might endure to the end. I find solace in the scriptures knowing that there are many godly women who have walked the path that I now find myself on. Women like Hannah, Elisabeth, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel were all women tested in their faith and patience and the Lord healed them according to their faith. I have faith in my heart that the Lord will heal my pain of infertility one way or another and it may not be in a way I expect.

With that being said, there are some things I need from you. I found and article that speaks to a lot of the things I feel on how to talk about infertility. There are some basic etiquette guidelines to follow:

-Don't tell me to relax. Relaxing in and of itself does not make one fertile.
-Please don't minimize my problem and tell me to develop talents or explore new hobbies.
-Don't tell me worse things could happen.
-Please don't tell me that maybe I'm not meant to be a parent. Believe it or not, some people are that
  insensitive.
-Don't ask me why I'm not doing IVF.
-Don't try to be funny with crude jokes. We don't need sex tips, thank you very much.
-Please don't complain about your own pregnancies.
-Don't try to be a biology teacher and assume I'm ignorant about my issues. I know a lot about the
 female reproductive system at this point, believe me.
-Gossiping with others about me and my struggles just isn't nice.
-Don't push adoption (yet).
-Let me know you care.
-Please remember me on Mother's Day.
-If/When the time comes, support my decision to end any treatments.

With all the heartache that childlessness brings, there are many things I am grateful for that have been a result of our struggle with infertility over the last 4 years or so. One of the things I am most grateful for is my relationship with my husband,  I love him dearly. Having celebrated our 5th anniversary a few months ago, I look back at all the good quality time we have been able to share with one another. We have had the opportunity of really getting to know one another and it has strengthened our friendship and deepened our love for one another. We have fun together and enjoy each other's company. We have had the chance to go on some really fun vacations and see different parts of the country and world.  Often I get the comment that Chuck and I seem to go on vacation a lot. Though I don't ever say it at the time, I think "What would you suggest we do with our time off and money?"  We make memories with that time and I would not want to give that up.

So Happy Mother's Day to all those women out there, especially to those who have walked my path and haven't had the opportunity to realize motherhood.  You are a child of our Heavenly Father who loves you with or without children of your own.

National Infertility Week

Today marks the final day of National Infertility Week, this one week every year is dedicated to educating and bringing awareness to infertility throughout America. 1 in 8 couples experience some form of infertility, which means more than 7 million Americans have trouble getting pregnant. We are one of those 8.

To say that out loud in such a blunt, matter of fact manners has been one of my biggest struggles in life. To come to grips with my diagnosis and stand face to face with my adversity is no easy task. It is a pain that so many have no degree of understanding and for me it has been a pain that I have attempted to cover up, ignore, or pretend it just doesn't exist. The "why me" and "what if" questions races through my head over and over. It's been tough to wrap my head around it all and doing nothing was the easiest thing for me to do for a long time.

"Going to a fertility specialist is, on some level, accepting that there is an issue, so many women don't want to do that," says Roshini Rajapaksa, M.D., an internist at NYU Langone Medical Center (known as Dr. Raj) and TODAY show contributor. "But the longer you wait, the lower your chances are of having a successful outcome, even with the best technology."

Read More http://www.ivillage.com/fertility-guide-helps-couples-get-pregnant/6-a-447565#ixzz1tPVIESye s

I read the results of some study on infertility somewhere out there of the internet and one of the questions asked and the most common answer to it struck me. I don't even know where I read it and don't exactly the entire context of the study. But what hit me the hardest was the question "If you knew what you know now, would you have sought medical help sooner (in regards to infertility, pardon my horrible paraphrasing). The answer was overwhelmingly yes and I would certainly lump myself in with those women as well. Dwelling on that question though and going over the "what if's" does me no good now. I need to focus on the future and I need to focus on moving forward, making progress.

With purpose in mind, we are finally moving forward. Where direction had started, then slowed and eventually stopped has now restarted and we are not looking back. Faith in a Heavenly Father who knows me and knows my abilities and capabilities helps me move in a positive direction. I know it won't be easy and I know there will be more heartbreak and heartache along the way but I cannot stop now, I will not stop now.

Do Over

I've decided to start over. It was well over a year ago that I started a blog. I was motivated. I had clear direction and I wanted to let it out to the world. Then road blocks pop up, doors close, and those windows that should then open aren't to be seen. Motivation starts to slow and direction, not so clear anymore. I'm starting from scratch and calling a do-over.

Here we are over a year later and some things have changed and some things remained the same.

I am feeling motivated. I do have a direction, though not always clear, but it's progress. I have hope.

I realize this is all completely vague and you are wondering what is she talking about or is she okay? Hopefully I can keep up blogging and expressing all those deep down feelings that I keep bottled up and use it has a source of healing, helping, and overall strength of spirit. I was never good at keeping a journal, I would start one and keep up for a couple weeks or months if I was lucky. Wish me luck with keeping up with this digital journal, I think I will need it.