QOTD: Quote of The Day

One of the first keys to a successful Marriage, is Communication; The first key to successful Communication, is Listening.

-Husband and Wife for Life

I HEART MixBook

I often joke that my family is forever looking for a reason to bake a cake.  We celebrate something just about every weekend.  Unfortunately, I miss a good deal of these simply because I do not get back to TN as frequently as I'd like.  I average about once every two months or so and A LOT can happen between my visits!  But I do try to make it home for our "big" holidays.  One of those is definitely Easter.  After church, we all gather in Granny's front yard for "PICTURE TIME!"  I literally run around singing "It's picture time, it's picture time, it's time to get your ready for your pictures!" sung to that "Crayons and your pencils" ditty.  After the pics, we try to have our annual Egg Hunt just before sitting down to a proper Southern Sunday dinner :).

In recent years, the popularity of our Easter Egg hunts have tapered off a bit simply because we didn't have any younguns.  But thanks to a recent baby boom that has us blossoming with new babies, we've been able to bring back the family tradition.  This year marked the first hunt for one of our youngest grandkids.  Here he is just after getting caught stuffing eggs in his pockets!

After the hunt, two of my all-time faves snuggled up on a lawn chair for a chat:

 

I absolutely love this pic of my Sweetie and my Granny.  After I took this, Granny got to fussing about how much she hates digitial cameras.  "I never gets to see pictures since they came out with those thangs.  Y'all don't never print pictures off anymore!"  I cracked up!  But she's right. The most we'll do as far as sharing goes is to post them on Facebook.  So she does miss out.  That got me to thinking...

Ding! Ding! Ding! 

I'll make her a MixBook of these pictures for Mother's Day!  She'll love that!  Since not all of my own pics turned out well, I collected pictures from my relatives who were there that day.  I even snagged some off of Facebook.  Two of my uncles couldn't make it home, so I had them email me pics of their families.  Once I had all of those together, I used the "Classic Easter" template to build a photobook and had it shipped directly to her.

It arrived a week early and before I had a chance to tell her it was on the way.  So when it arrived, it just had the shipping address with no indication who sent it.  She was blown away.  She told my mom, "Look at what somebody from CA sent me!  I don't know how they got a hold of these pictures or how they put this picture book together but I sure am grateful they did it.  I just love this!"

After a good laugh and some splaining, Mama tolder her that I was the culprit and that the book was her Mother's Day gift.  She was tickled pink.

Major. Score.

I highly recommend this as a surprise for your older or less-than-tech-savvy relatives :).

Excited to see Hubby??

Do you get excited to see your husband when he gets home??

Remember Ricky Ricardo used to announce himself to Lucy???

Maybe it's the newlywed stage, maybe I love me some him. But I really do get butterflies when I hear the keys in the door! My baby is HOME!! I go up to him and hug him! it's really so corny, but I LOVE IT

Is it just me??? LOL

E=DC2

Runners, take your mark!

I meant to post this on 5.18.12 so my references to "tomorrow" are actually in the past.  Sorry :)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had the UFE surgery last September.  This was our first strike against our arch nemesis: da broids.  I immediately saw an improvement in my quality of life.  My cycles jumped on a normal 28 day schedule and the heavy flows were gone ending my chronic anemia symptoms.  We timed the surgery to allow me plenty of time to recuperate before the wedding & honeymoon.  So as soon as the dust settled from the wedding, I found a gynecologist who specializes in treating "moms-to-be-with-challenges".  I knew going in that we had several strikes against us:

1. I'm getting a little long in the tooth.  I'll be 40 this December.  My eggs are not getting any younger!
2. Though dead and significantly smaller, the aforementioned broids are still in my uterus.  I still have some shrinking to go; it's something that continues over time.  But until they are all shriveled up, they are still taking up precious cargo space.

So one of the first things my new gyno wanted to do was establish a baseline on my fertility.  She ordered two routine tests to give us a snapshot of what we were up against.

The first test was a simple blood test to measure my Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) blood levels.  This substance is thought to be a strong indicator of a woman's "ovarian reserves" or egg supply for short.  The experts have established a chart based upon a woman's age, uterine history and AMH levels to gauge her egg supply.

CHALLENGE #1: My AMH levels are below normal suggesting that I have a low egg supply.  Awesome.

The second test was a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to determine if my fallopian tubes were up to the task.  During this test, a radiologist shoots dye into the uterus and tracks how the dye travels through your pipes.  Ideally, the dye should fill up the uterine cavity, flow through the fallopian tubes and spill out into the abdomen.

CHALLENGE #2: My left fallopian tube was blocked by some mass (not a fibroid).  Wasn't nothing flowing over there.  Even. More. Awesomeness.

With those results, my gyno ordered me straight to a reproductive endocrinologist.  I didn't get to pass GO!, collect $200 or pick up a 'Get out Jail Free!' card.  She was done with me.  How exciting!

Tomorrow's our first meeting with the repro man.  I'm not expecting much from this session besides orders for even more tests.  I'm hoping these will just call for blood samples cause my uterus is still a little salty with me over the HSG (a common side effect is "uterine discomfort").  So I'm surprisingly calm as I write this with our session just hours away.  Week before last week was a whole 'nother story.  That's when my gyno first delivered...rather ungraciously...the news (She SUCKS so I'm planning to find me another gyno as soon as I can).  I was incredibly upset, completely overwhelmed and pretty sad about my outlook.  But the initial shock has worn off plus, I've since had a chance to speak to a nurse with the dern decency & patience to explain my results and possible resolutions.  More importantly, I've been praying...ALOT.  So I'm ready to face this thing (well, at least tomorrow) head-on. 

Plus, my sweetie will be by my side.

Lady Hawk

Let's play a little catch-up

The other day, Donnica sent me a link to a Life.Love&Marriage blog post on fibroids. After reading Faith's post, I left the following comment.

I have battled fibroids for 10+ years.  More than a dozen of the boogers have pitched a tent in my uterus.  I'm sure you know by now that the qty of the invaders doesn't really matter.  What matters is their individual/collective sizes and positioning.  Have one sit on your bladder or bowels and the pain can drop you to your knees.  But have an innocuous one in your uterine wall and you may never know it's even there.  With that, some women are fortunate enough to have broids and never experience a single side effect - either during their cycles or pregnancies.  My broids were such pests that I dubbed myself the modern day "woman at the well".  They triggered monthly cycles that ran every 3 weeks & came along with the heavy sloughing, cramps etc.  I've had more accidents, mostly really public, and missed more days of work, more celebrations, more outings, etc. than I care to recount.  The excessive blood loss also meant that I had to get regular iron infusions to deal with the chronic anemia.  I've had two myomectomies and one really scary ER visit in 07 that brought me within days of an emergency hysterectomy.  I literally couldn't walk for 2 weeks: my broids were so swollen and so painful that my abdomen completely spazzed out on me.  I thought my pelvis was gonna split in two.  Fortunately, I had some serious prayer warriors on my side and was blessed with a reprieve.  For about 2 years, my cycles were normal, at least for me, and the pain was gone.  But then they flared up again last year...engaged but childless, I began reviewing my options.  Another myomectomy likely would not have given me long term relief. Wanting to try for kids, a hysterectomy was out of the question and an ablation was just as bad that.  Lastly, the magnetic resonance was too unproven to consider (plus, it wasn’t covered by insurance).  Luckily, I knew of uterine fibroid emobilization (UFE) and Dr. John Lipman, http://www.atlii.com/index.cfm.  I'd considered it off and on for years but never pulled the trigger.

Thankfully, I got my life back on September 29th, 2011.  A few well-placed micro particles starved off the monsters in my belly :).  My periods returned to a normal 28 day cycle with NO pain, NO sloughing and NO excessive flows.  Even better, I haven't needed an iron transfusion since before the surgery.  My energy and overall health went through the roof!  My DEEPEST regret was that I did not pursue the UFE when I first heard of it, probably in 06 --- I hesitated time and time again.  I urge you to visit the site and consider this option.  You don’t have to go through the crap that broids bring. They can seriously TAKE. OVER. YOUR. LIFE.  The babies will come but you need to be able to enjoy your life and your new marriage.

Writing that seemed like the perfect intro to bring our readers up to speed on what I like to call "Da Quest".  Da Quest is quite simply Team Hawkins' plan/hopes/dream/faith-driven quest to build a family.  As this journey will be my top priority over the coming months, I've decided that I'm going to share the experience here.  I'm hoping doing so will help me cope with the physical, mental, emotional and hormonal roller coaster that I'm about to jump on (I was a complete wreck 2 weeks ago but more on that later).  I'm hoping that sharing will help me sort out my feelings and fears.  I'm also likely to VENT about the countless people who bombard me with the "when are you getting pregnant?!?" questionsDEMANDS...sheesh.

Please know that I have absolute faith that God's good and perfect will for our lives and our family will prevail in this situation.  But I'd be lying to you if I didn't admit that worry sometimes consumes me.  When it does, I've found that prayer and submission has been my sole comfort.  I've accepted that this situation is in God's hands and totally beyond my control.  So I hope you don't mind hearing about this from time to time.  I promise not to get too sappy! :)

Lady Hawk

QOTD: Quote of The Day

”More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse”

~ Doug Larson

God's Plan for Happy Marriage

Yes, God really does have a plan for marriage. Here is a great FREEBIE that goes over a few of the things that God purposes for us in marriage.

Click here to download the free PDF or ebook version.

Have you thought about what God's plan is for your marriage?

E=DC2

Hawkins Affair Recap

Hawkins Affair Recap

Here is it, a few days past my 6 MONTH anniversary and I'm STILL slacking ont the recap! 

For shame! 

You, see, what had happened was...the photographer sent our wedding pics on 2 CDs.  The ceremony was on one and the reception on another. 

Well...I lost the ceremony CD.  I know.  WHO does that?  Who plans for months, gets married and then loses their pics!?!? 

I do, that's who.

Worse yet, I totally stalled asking her for a new one just hoping that my forverlosingsomething self would remember what I did with it.

NO LUCK. 

So I finally sucked it up and asked her for a copy.  It arrived broken.  And somewhere along the way, I have managed to lose the CD with the reception pics.

So you see, I'm in a bit of a quandry here :)

But never fear, I'm working on a 3rd copy of our pics and am pulling pics from the guest photos.  Hopefully, I'll have things sorted out before our 1 year anniversary :).

Lady Hawk

Blog Name Change

We's MARRIED NOW!!!!!!!! :)

Now that we are all married we are no long FIGHTING BRIDEZILLA!! Whew...thank goodness! That was almost a losing battle LOL

Now we are...


DRUM ROLL


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CHASING EVER AFTER!!! :)

What do you guys think of the new name?? :)

E=DC2