Lately my day to day life has been insanity. Just constant all over the place need to do this need to do that… all.day.long. I’m a work at home mommy who was blessed with an extraordinarily good baby who -loves- her sleep..but I’m so overtaken by my business that there still isn’t enough time in my day. I have days where I feel like I am really losing my  sanity because I am just so tired and still have about 342 things on my Lilly to do list!

Like I said above my daughter sleeps ridiculously well. We’re talking 12-13 hours every night and two naps during the day that last anywhere from 1-3 hours a piece. Thank god for that because my business has been SO backed up with orders lately that I really need that time to write back customers and work on their orders. Don’t get me wrong..I’m SO thankful business is good and I also get to stay at home with my baby girl. I know it’s because I work from home that we were able to splurge and get a pool and privacy fence this year on top of going to the ocean again for a week in August so it’s totally worth it. I do sometimes have to toss around the idea of hiring someone either to help me with my orders or watch Lelia a little bit while I get some work done but we will see. Right now I’ve been lucky enough to have my mom come on Wednesday for the past couple of weeks so that totally helps. Especially since we are planning on hosting Lelia’s blessing at our house in less than a month and need to get the house in order as well.

On a completely different note I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 a ton for designing things for my biz and came across a really annoying issue where I would send an item to print and it would print the wrong amount of copies. Let’s say I’d send job 1 to print with 4 copies, job 2 to print with 1 copy and job 3 to print with 2 copies..well job 1 would print whatever my last job’s copy request was..job 2 would print 4 copies..job 3 would print 1 copy and so on. Basically the printer is always one job’s # of copies behind..completely screwing up my print outs! I tried to check out the adobe forums but the adobe technicians are a waste of energy. Apparently this is a common problem for Photoshop CS5 with many brands and builds of printers and has been for over a year now but the techs blame it on printer drivers despite it happening with many different printers and only one application (CS5). I  found it crazy that not only is the problem still lingering this long but the one tech (ahemChrisCoxahem) had the nerve to be a douche-canoe to a customer looking for help. Fix your shiz!! For those of you who came across my blog because of this problem I did find a workaround that works for me in the meantime and may work for you as well. When you go to print make sure you click “print settings” and change the number of copies in that dialog box instead of changing the copies in the initial adobe print box. (I have to click the advanced tab within this settings box but your printer settings may be different.) I’ve found when I do this and then send to print the jobs print as they should. I don’t know why..but it works for me! So give it a try so you don’t waste a ton of expensive paper on copies you didn’t intend to print! 🙂

That ends my whirlwind of a blog post for now because the hubby just came in with hot dogs from the grill (and baby Leel’s is fast asleep!) Dinner time!

Now that I can drink caffeine again I had to attempt making my own copy cat frappucino (like Starbuck’s!). Especially since it’s hot out now and the usual hot coffee isn’t always so appealing. I looked around online and came up with my own concoction of things compiling a few recipes. It turned out delicious! I figured I would share since I came up with it myself so you won’t find the exactly recipe elsewhere. (At least..that I know of? Heehee)

Lilly’s Homemade Frappucino Copy Cat Recipe (Iced Coffee)

Ingredients –

2 tablespoons of flavored coffee OR a flavored K-Cup (I put 2 tbsp of Wegmans White Chocolate truffle into a reusable K-Cup filter)
4 tbsp heavy cream
2 heaping spoonfuls of Splenda
2 tbsp caramel syrup (I used Gloria Jean’s vanilla caramel syrup, purchased at their store in the mall!)
Just over 1 cup of ice

Instructions –

1. Brew your coffee on the iced coffee setting. (If your brewer doesn’t have this setting just brew it strong (5-6oz cup). If you don’t have a keurig you could probably just brew 2 tbsp of coffee with 5-6oz of water). Basically you want a strong coffee base!

2. Put ice in blender.

3. Add 4 tbsp of heavy whipping cream to your coffee. Stir and then pour over the ice in your blender.

4. Add 2 heaping spoons of splenda (or sugar if you aren’t watching your weight or hate artificial sweeteners).

5. Add 2 tbsp of caramel syrup.

6. Blend until smooth and frothy.

7. If you want to get a little crazy you can add some whipped cream on top now..I didn’t but I’m sure it would taste fantabulous. I just figured my thighs wouldn’t agree! 😛

That’s it! Mine turned out so yummy.

I am going to play with the recipe a bit and see how it turns out with some skim milk swapped in for the heavy cream to save some calories. I think the total calories for mine was 290 calories which isn’t too bad. Sometimes that’s all I have time for in the morning with a 6 month old so it ends up being my breakfast plus energy boost with the caffeine!

If you have any ideas or tweaks feel free to share them in the comments!

I tried to listen to the new Incubus single yesterday afternoon but had to stop halfway through because it was making Lelia cry. Guess it’s only the music of Baby Einstein for mommy and Leels! She absolutely loves the Baby Noah DVD. There is a part where two blue hippos sing some wacky song while a cracked out elephant dances insanely across the screen and interrupts. She LOVES that part. It usually gets one of her scream squeals. (She has morphed into a cross between a pterodactyl and a velociraptor the past week or so..so happiness equals headache inducing squeal screams.)

Baby Einstein is actually what is giving me a free minute to blog right now! She got her four month shots yesterday and is a little grumplestiltskin. I tried her play mat, her jumperoo, her changing pad (she usually marches on it to ocean songs) and even walking around with her..but all she wanted was baby einstein. She is now cooing away happily at all the puppets and animals on the screen! She should be back to normal in a few days…hopefully. I miss her smiley face!

I finally threw in the towel when it comes to nursing yesterday. I struggled with a low supply since she was born despite her having a fantastic latch from the get go. She barely gained anything her first month and I was forced to start supplementing with formula since she was “failing to thrive”. I tried fenugreek, mothers milk tea, oatmeal, keeping my calories around 2000-2500, drinking tons and tons of water (like 100oz a day!), power pumping, and even the prescription Reglan. Nothing worked to increase the supply though. (The reglan only made my small bout of post partum depression worse. The ppd cleared up almost completely once I stopped taking it!)

She was no longer interested in nursing since she would pop off and stare at her waiting bottle to “sad talk” so I was pumping and storing. I was only pumping about 2 oz a night and then that dropped to 1oz a night so I decided it was time I just came to terms with the fact that breastfeeding for a year as planned just wasn’t going to happen. I am proud of myself for withstanding the first 6-7 weeks of horrid nipple pain to give my daughter mommy milk..even if it only ended up lasting till she was 4 months and 1 week old. She is now thriving and couldn’t be healthier..weighing in at 14.5 pounds and measuring 25 inches at her appointment on Monday. She’s my healthy little chunkasaurus! I felt (and still feel) guilty for giving up on the pumping but in the grand scheme of things her getting 1-2 oz of mommy milk a day along with about 30oz of formula wasn’t going to make a big enough difference to keep up the struggle. I have a bunch of frozen milk I can thaw and still give to her for the next month or so too. I did my best and that’s all one can do right? (I am extrmely jealous of all the mommies who have no issues breast feeding…I reallllly wanted to exclusively breastfeed the first 6 months..but oh well.)

Now that I am no longer nursing I can at least start eating and drinking more normally without worrying about restrictions! I had my first cup of caffeinated coffee this morning and I was wired with energy. It was nice to feel nice and awake for a change! Hahaha. I am also going to make my mom’s recipe for chili tomorrow in the crockpot which I am super excited about. I have had to avoid all red sauce/tomato sauce items when nursing her cause it would make her spitting up worse. Now that I am no longer nursing I can make that chili! 😀 I even grabbed some sirloin beef chunks from Sam’s Club yesterday that I am going to brown up and add to the chili to do a little something different. I bet it will be yum! (And then I can make taco salads with leftovers..even more yum!!) I am hoping to make spaghetti next week as well since I have been craving homemade spaghetti and meat balls (loaded with parmesan!) for months now.

Well Baby Einstein is wrapping up so I better get back to work on some orders before she gets pissed again. I just wanted to check in! New post soon about fitness and weight loss goals now that my punkin is out of my belly (and I have about 10-15 more pounds to lose to be back to pre-pregnancy weight!)

Well I promised a couple months ago that I would post my full birth story for all to see. Like I said before I loved reading birth stories when I was pregnant, especially being a first time mom, so I could get an idea of what to expect when it was my turn! I will post the entire story (with all the gory details!) so if you are easily grossed out then don’t bother clicking the read more option! 😉

I hope my story helps some of you expectant moms out there..especially those hoping to go natural. Believe me if I can do it you can. You just have to be determined and prepare beforehand! 😀

Continue reading →

Well she has arrived! Early, actually. Lelia Noelle made her appearance when I was halfway through my 38th week on November 29th, 2010 at 12:47 pm. She came out weighing 7 pounds and 11 ounces and measured 21″ in length. I was able to get the med-free birth I studied and planned for too (using Hypnobabies Home Study Course)..which was fantastic!

(I will have a detailed birth story very soon in an upcoming blog post but you will need to click the “Read More…” link at the bottom of it. Beware though..I will be going into gory detail so if you get squeamish hearing about the entire birthing process don’t click! I wanted to share in detail since I really appreciated reading other women’s blogs about their natural med-free births when I was pregnant and preparing myself. Stay tuned! I am going to try and type it up and post it within the next week or two.)

Anyways, my gut was right and it ended up being a girl! For some reason as soon as I saw that barely there pink line (tilt in every direction squinting in the sunlight coming in the bedroom window, not too positive if it is there but I think it is, a line is a line, faint barely there line) the day before Easter last year I just knew in my heart it was a little girl. Then when I finally pushed her out on November 29th and heard Ryan announce “It’s a girl” my gut feeling was confirmed. She is so beautiful too. I know..I am so very biased and I know it. But she melts my heart completely. She has me completely worn down with exhaustion and the pain of breast feeding but when I look at her little face…Let’s just say she is very lucky she is so cute or there have been a few times in the past 6 weeks where she might’ve ended up outside in the snow (not really).

Like I said before I accomplished what I consider the biggest accomplishment of my life when I managed to go med free when I had Lelia. I planned for over 10 weeks using the Hypnobabies Home Study Course which is a book and stack of CD’s that basically teach you how to completely relax so your body can accomplish what it was created to do. It really helped me lose the fear of giving birth and learn that it is completely natural for a woman to have a baby and you just need to allow your body to do what it was built to do! Every night (well..MOSTLY) I would lay down in bed and listen to one of the Hypnobabies tracks and learn how to put myself into a state of hypnosis (relaxation) and practice scripts and sayings that I would say to myself when actually in labor to help with the pain. Relaxation is supposed to help since if you tense up from the pain and fear the body takes a lot longer to do what it needs to do (which equals more contractions) than if you can make yourself relax and let the body do what it is supposed to.

In the end I was so glad I did it because I made it to 9 centimeters before the pain became really hard to deal with. Each contraction I would just close my eyes, finger drop myself into hypnosis to go limp and repeat to myself to “relax, deeper and deeper with every breath I take” while focusing on my uterus pushing the baby down and my cervix dialating. It really sped up the birthing process because I was 4 cm when I got to the hospital at around 5am. (Thanks to the woman answering the phones at my gynos office at 3:30am on November 29th. You can’t just go to the hospital around here..You need your gyno’s office to give the ok first. We called at 3am and were told they would call right back but they didn’t call back at all! An hour later my husband was on the phone (pretty irritated at this point as one can imagine) while his pregnant wife was moaning loudly through contractions that were 2-5 minutes apart practically begging the hospital to let me come in so he didn’t have to deliver the baby on our futon. They made us call our gyno office again and finally got a call back and the ok to go in like 20 minutes later.) I was 9 centimeters at about 10:30-11am and then we stalled out a bit.

I have to say that I was in pain but it was tolerable up until 9 cm. When I hit transition I could no longer relax or focus through the contractions anymore. They were just so intense I had to just moan it out… In so much pain sometimes that I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I had the urge to just flail every limb about and scream bloody murder through some of those final contractions. Luckily the only scream I ended up letting out was when Lelia emerged in which my scream sounded so pained my brother who was waiting outside said that scream will forever be engraved in his mind. I still wouldn’t change a thing though. I expected it to be painful and it was more painful than words could describe. I was pleasantly surprised though that the first 9 centimeters were definitely more tolerable with my hypnobabies than I’d have thought they’d have been. I let them break my water at 9 centimeters so that may have been what contributing to the increased pain during that last centimeter as well (Something I may not allow them to do if I have another child.) I would definitely go med-free all over again though (with hypnobabies of course!).

You may be wondering why I wanted to go med-free in the first place. I had a few reasons! One being the fact I was on blood thinners so it is a little more risky to get an epidural. The combination is supposed to make the chance of paralysis increase. I don’t know about you but I decided I’d much rather go through a day or two of mind numbing pain than risk spending the rest of my life in a wheel chair. Plus I have heard a lot of stories where the epidurals didn’t work anyways. Which leads me to another reason. Research shows the more intervention you allow in labor the more likely it is to lead to even more medical interventions. This means women who are induced are more likely to need of an epidural and a c-section or women who get an epidural are more likely to get a c-section than those who chose to let nature just take it’s course. So the less intervention for me..the better! Especially when I really wanted to avoid the c-section. Lastly and most importantly I wanted to go med free because it is just healthier for mom and baby. All pain killers cross over to baby when in labor and I wanted my baby to come out unmedicated. Period. It’s the least I could do for her and I’m so glad I did. She was completely alert and took right to breastfeeding like a little champ! (It was mommy who had some issues with alertness after the last hour and a half to two hours of labor!)

Now she is here and we feel completely blessed. Our world has been turned completely upside down though. When people say having a baby changes your life..they couldn’t be more right. When people say the first three months you will be tired…THAT is an understatement. I never imagined I could be so very exhausted and still need to function (Half of the time I am so tired I am slurring my words!). I don’t know how something so tiny could be so exhausting but she is! Sometimes I question what is harder: the med-free labor and delivery (physical pain) or the past 6 weeks of exhaustion and some post-partum depression (mental pain). It doesn’t help I pretty much get 2-4 hours of sleep a day right now and am also dealing with breastfeeding issues (low-supply). My day consists of breastfeeding her every 2-3 hours, then offering her a bottle, then pumping to try and get some milk to give her and stimulate more of a milk supply. By the time all that is done she is ready to get her diaper changed and breast feed again. I barely have a minute to scarf down oatmeal and get a nap let alone have any kind of time to myself. It is craziness..but I keep telling myself it will get better once we get past these early months. It has to! 😀

Well I think I reached the limit of what someone is willing to read in one blog post awhile ago so I will stop here for now. Stay tuned as I plan on posting my detailed birth story and blogging about everything else I have been going through with breastfeeding, etc. very soon! I am transitioning my site away from the whole cam site and really want to focus on having a place to talk about my daily life as a wife, new mommy and home business owner… With everything ahead of me I am going to need somewhere I can voice my opinion, vent about current life things and just have someplace to put it all down “on paper”. It is relaxing for me. My only problem as it stands right now is finding the time! (The little goob is swinging peacefully asleep in her Little Lamb Swing right now which allowed mommy to finally sit and relax for a few minutes.)

PS – I am uber excited because we just booked our return trip to Topsail Beach NC about an hour ago for the end of August. Returning to the Oceanfront home we stayed in for our first anniversary trip in July 2010. SO psyched to return! I will have to blog in the future about our July trip with some photos. I was in absolute heaven there..and got to see my wild dolphins as well! 😀

I have been MIA..I know, I know..You’ve heard this on and off since I opened this site almost 10 years ago. I have a really good excuse for a change though!

Hubby and I are expecting our first little one in mid-December (12/15 or 12/16)! I’m in my 4th month now (14 weeks tomorrow) and so far everything is going really smoothly. We’ve seen or little bean on ultrasound twice now and he/she (my gut says it’s a she) has been strong as can be and growing ahead of schedule. Heartbeat at the first ultrasound was 183bpm at 8w6d and 165bpm at 11w6d. Whenever we pick it up on doppler it’s still going strong at around 160-165. I’m not showing a whole lot yet (mostly just bloat at night) so it doesn’t feel quite real yet. I’m not sure it it will feel real when I’m feeling it move or if I will have to wait til he/she is in my arms this December. Now you know why I’ve been silent. I just couldn’t blog without including this huge news so I wanted to wait till I was closer to or in the 2nd trimester before I let the cat out of the bag. 🙂 Crossing my fingers for a happy, healthy, full term December baby!

I’m completely ecstatic to be expecting but so far I am not enjoying the whole being pregnant. Because of my blood clot last summer on my honeymoon my doctors upped me to a high risk pregnancy and have me on nightly lovenox (blood thinner) shots to ensure I don’t clot and clots don’t harm the baby. I’ve been on the shots for just over 2 months now and I’m soooo over being stuck every night. My tummy and thighs are all bruised! I just look at my ultrasound pics and remind myself that’s why I am taking them and that it’s worth it cause I get my own little present at the end. I’m stuck on the lovenox till mid November and then they are switching me to Heparin twice a day till the baby is born and then back on lovenox for another 6 weeks..so I’ll be on shots basically till January or March. Yucky yuck. As for the other usual pregnancy stuff that is at least lessening now that I’m at the 2nd Tri mark. I had some pretty bad constant nausea and sleepiness for awhile there. I was basically living on all carbs because it was all I could stomach. Let me tell you that does not help with weight gain :/ Ah well. Just more to lose when the baby is out!

On a different note we are already coming up on our first wedding anniversary on July 4th! We booked a vacation down the east coast to celebrate and I can’t wait to go! We leave June 30th and make 3-4 hour drives with stops at hotels (Binghamton, Maryland and Virginia) along the way until we reach the beach house we rented for a week on Topsail Island in NC.  Then it’s back up the coast again with stops in Virginia, Delaware & Binghamton (I think?!). Can’t wait! A couple weeks of time together with hopefully some nice weather is much needed before the craziness begins at the end of the year. I can’t wait to see the ocean again ( and maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see some dolphins!). Woohoo!

Nothing else really beyond the usual day to day stuff. Running my biz and just recently my nesting instinct has been kicking in so I’m cleaning, cleaning, cleaning! Busy, busy bee! 🙂

Is it really 2010 already? Have I seriously been married over 7 months now..? Wow. Time gets faster and faster as I get older.. It needs to slow down a little! (Or maybe stay fast until spring..and then slow down so I can enjoy the very few nice months we actually get here in Rochester!) You last heard from me in September.. So I better give you a quick recap of the past few months. (I can’t say they were very exciting though.. 🙂 )

I’m now off of Coumadin/Warfarin (since the beginning of October) and I am SO glad I don’t have to take that poison anymore. I know…technically it helped me by keeping my blood thin enough for my body to break down the DVT (deep vein thrombosis or blood clot in my calf)..but it made me feel sooo sick. I was feeling nauseous on and off throughout the day and was losing a ton of hair. (Luckily I have pretty thick hair to begin with so it wasn’t visibly noticeable..despite literally combing out a handful or two every day.) I got my hair cut and colored a week or two after going off coumadin and my stylist could not believe the amount of hair she was combing off my head. It was crazy (and a little embarrassing..lol), but I explained it was from the meds I had been on and she understood. Now the only thing I take every day is my supplements (Prenatal multi, B6 & triple strength fish oil!). No, I’m not pregnant..but hope to be maybe sometime this year so the prenatals are just a preparation thing!

I’m trying to get back into working out on and off now but I’m trying not to be psychotic about it. I have a problem with almost becoming obsessed when I get into some kind kind of workout regiment and I am trying to avoid allowing myself to be that way. It becomes a chore and I hate how I start to think when I’m in that mode. The only way I can try to explain it is almost as if I was thinking like an anorexic but still eating. I’d make sure I ate between 1200-1800 calories on weekdays (and then eat what I want on weekends..fast food..ice cream, so yep NOT anorexic!) BUT when it came to exercise I’d NEED to make sure I did it at least Mon, Wed and Friday. That’s not a big deal I guess but I would have this voice in my head saying I had to do more than the last time, better than the last time…and if I missed a workout I’d really beat myself up over it. My workouts would end up lasting longer and longer (to the point where it probably wasn’t making a difference) but my mind insisted I still had to beat the last workout. Then I dread each workout and eventually feel so overwhelmed in my head that I stop working out altogether. (Ya…I’m slightly nutty. It’s my insecurity.. I never look in the mirror and feel happy about myself. There’s always something I can fix..always something that’s too big..Something that’s crooked..ACK!) I think that’s why I get that way..and my tendency to be a perfectionist about everything. (I’m a big list maker..It calms me..hehe!) When I was on coumadin I wasn’t even allowed to workout because the doctor made it sound like she was worried the clot that was there might break loose..so my working out since October hasn’t been as regular as it probably should be. Now I’m trying to just ease back into it. I’m doing whatever cardio sounds like it would be fun at the moment and I limit myself to only doing it for 35-45 minutes and then I switch to my strength training. I’m hoping if I keep up with making sure I don’t get into the obsessive mindset I’ll keep with it and enjoy it more. I really hope it works!

My business has continued to do very well for me so I am very happy with that. It slowed down a little bit when all the brides to be were focusing on the holidays but since January first it has been picking up like crazy and keeping me very busy. Between that and our tax return we were able to pay off my hospital bills from this summer, some of our credit cards and almost half of the new bedroom set/mattress we got in December. We got a new carpet for the master bedroom too..and pretty blue paint (Cosmos from Sherwin Williams..used in the living room of HGTV’s 2009 dream home!) I’ll share some pics in another post.. This one is already a bit winded!

Lastly I had a hard couple of weeks because I have been so busy and I’ve had to deal with the death of two my my little furbabies less than a week apart. My holland lop rabbit Tutter passed away on Tuesday, January 26th..completely unexpectedly at the age of 4 (he would have been 5 on Feb 28th). The Thursday before that we noticed he hadn’t ate all day when we were heading to bed so we rushed him to the Emergency Vet at midnight worried he possibly had gastric stasis which commonly leads to death. The woman there didn’t really know rabbits so she didn’t really know what she was doing. She guessed it might be stasis as well and put him on a med that was supposed to help get his digestive tract moving again. We couldn’t get an appointment with our regular vet until Tuesday so from Thursday on we focused on giving him tummy rubs, meds, syringing him water and tempting him with hay, carrots and banana. By Monday night he seemed to be improving..We were so excited because he had started munching on his hay here and there and was picking up his water drinking a lot. We brought him into the vet Tuesday morning and she worried it was an illness but said it could also be his teeth or stasis (blockage). She said in order to diagnosis him they would need to put him under and get xrays of everything and then do blood work. We signed him over and left..only to get the sad phone call a few hours later that he went into cardiac arrest after being put under anesthesia.  🙁 She came to the conclusion that she thinks he had cancer and that’s why he stopped eating. Soo..we lost our little blue lop way too early. He broke our hearts when he left us and will always have a piece of it. Our hamster Crinkles followed him 6 days later on Monday from cancer as well (he had a tumor and was too tiny to operate on). Another little cutie that will always have a piece of our hearts. Now it’s just Ryan, me, a maltese, a turkish van and a fishie. Hopefully they won’t be leaving us anytime soon! <3

(Oh..and my wordpress was hacked. I spent all afternoon/night Saturday reinstalling and fixing it. Lesson learned? Always keep wordpress up to date. Theend.)

I know..I know. I’ve been totally MIA lately. I also know you’ve heard this one before..yadda yadda. That’s life!

So what has been consuming most of my time? My business! It has been kind of snowballing in growth since it’s official start in February and seems to be consuming more and more of my time every week. I am actually starting to throw around the idea of needing to hire a family member or friend to come over once in awhile and help me get out orders when I get backed up if it keeps growing like it has been. So yes…very busy! But good busy.. 😀 The more busy I am the more money I have to pay down our debt. The more debt we pay off the better off we will be. Once I’m off coumadin if the money situation is looking up we may be able to start tossing the idea of having kids around at the end of the year! Woohoo! Plus Ry has been uber successful at his job and recently got a raise..(with another possibly around the corner!) So proud!

Since I started typing this blog..3 new orders. Ugh..see? I can’t even blog without a slew of new orders coming into my inbox! Craziness. I’ll have to cut this shorter than I wanted to!

Anywho..married life isn’t much different than life before we got married. We still live together..We are still uber happy and in love..Pretty much just legally tied now! It feels nice to call him my husband though. All the single ladies were jealous of him looking all pimp in his suit at my cousin April’s wedding Friday night. Sorry ladies..he’s off the market now! 😉

Healthwise I am doing better! I am still on the coumadin pills every night but I’m almost 2 months in now. I am hoping I’ve got a month left to go and then I can be done. I’m still getting the occasional nausea and dizziness but it has subsided a ton since getting off the lovenox shots. I still haven’t been given the ok to work out though…I’m hoping when I talk to the nurse tomorrow after bloodwork she may give me the thumbs up for that. Although I don’t know if I’ll be able to find time to do it anyways right now. *sniffsniff..ugh. I love when my dog farts on me..grimace*

We made our first trip to Bed Bath and Beyond this weekend to buy some goodies with gift cards we got for the wedding and ended up grabbing ourselves a Keurig platinum. It makes single serve cups of coffee, tea and cocoa..I AM IN LOVE WITH IT.

I have my pro wedding pics now as well….I’ll post them soon! 😛 foof.

Well it has been a week and a half (or so) since I got back from our honeymoon so I figured an update was due!

I guess since the wedding worked out so perfectly that it just wasn’t in our cards for our honeymoon would be as well. As a whole it ended up going alright since it was about 10-11 days away but the beginning of it..not so much. As most of you know already the plan was head to DC for a few days before heading to our ultimate destination which was a beach house rented for a week in the southern outer banks of NC..followed by a stop in MD on the way back up to break up the drive. Wellll..due to me being on the pill for about 8 years and being in the car for 7 hours+ driving down from NY to DC I ended up getting a blood clot in my right calf. We even stopped about 3 times through the drive to use the restrooms and let Zoe walk a bit and empty out. Still got a clot though :(. I didn’t realize it until the next day either! See, we got into DC probably round 7:30pm-8pm and my legs and butt both hurt and ached but I figured it was normal since I had been in the car most of the day and shrugged it off. The Sheraton Suites of Old Town sent up a  delicious cheese and fruit platter free for being on honeymoon so we munched on that and some local calzones for dinner before heading to bed with hopes of seeing DC the next day. That, however, didn’t happen. I woke up basically unable to walk on my right leg because whenever I would stand up sharp pains would shoot up through my calf and it felt like heat and blood was rushing to my calf. The last thng was thinking was that it was a blood clot so when Ryan ran to grab so groceries I told him to grab some muscle rub and a bandage to wrap my leg to attempt to still enjoy the trip. While he was at the store I called my cousin who is a registered nurse and she insisted I go to the ER because what I was describing to her sounded like a blood clot. Went to the ER round noon and was stuck in there till that Saturday diagnosed with a blood clot in my right calf. We were supposed to make second half of the drive down to NC that Saturday but instead got another night at the hotel to recoup. The hospital allowed me to make the trip Sunday as long as I stopped every hour to walk (more like limp!) around and stretch..and take nightly blood thinner injections to prevent the clot from moving to my lungs and killing me. (Fun huh!)

We got to NC safely and by the end of the week when it was almost time to leave I was starting to walk normal again and got to see and walk in the ocean, see the wild horses on shackleford banks and collect some neat seashells before heading back to MD and home.

Needless to say I enjoyed being away from Rainchester and experience summer for about a week but could have done without spending the first third of the honeymoon in a hospital bed on an iv with blood draws that were happening almost constantly. I still enjoyed NC though..(Well, mostly. I can do without the prehistoric sized bugs that are there since they don’t really (if ever?) get snow.)

I’m now trying to get back to normal with my business and taking care of the house but I’m struggling a little because I’m on so much medication from the clot that I feel like ass all day. My primary doc still has me on nightly injections of lovenox which is an instant blood thinner into my stomach (given by my doting husband <3) and coumadin pills which are a gradual blood thinner with almost daily morning blood draws to check my blood thinness. Stillt rying to get the blood thin enough to be in what they call a therapeutic level which is between 2 and 3. On Wednesday it was at 1.88 and I had a draw this morning..I’m hopinh when I get a call (any minute now) it’ll be above 2 so I can stop the nightly shots. (They burn like hell!)

It really sucks because even with insurance the medical bills are adding up to cost more than our whole honeymoon even did. We have to stick to a tight budget now just to make sure we can cover my doctor bills. Ugh. Suckage. Oh well. We will pull through on top in the end..We always do. It’s just the in between struggle that sucks!

Here are some honeymoon shots… 😀

Well I’m officially a Mrs! The day went perfectly..The weather..the food..the ceremony…the reception..EVERYTHING! I couldn’t be happier 🙂

We are leaving now for our honeymoon (DC for a few days and then a beach house in NC Outerbanks for a week!) so I will have a better update when we return. In the mean time watch my flicker for honeymoon updates!!

<3 <3