Our new home

The front view. I love the porch. And you can't see it but our red door is so cool! It matches the shutters.
Entryway. I have turned this into such a nice, little reading area. The bookcase is so great because it holds all our favorite books and family pictures. The walls are a little bare because I am still deciding what I want up there.

Our kitchen. I love the floors. They are so easy to clean and to maintain. Eventually we want new countertops and cabinets but I think it looks nice in there now. We also want a new fridge.
Longer view of the kitchen and how it flows into the living room. The door you see on the right is our doors that lead to the backyard. I love how open the space is here.

The office. I couldn't get the other wall in the picture but it contains a bookcase for the rest of our books and our bill center. This space really works well for us because it is right off the living room. .

Our living area. I love this area of the house. I love the armoire and how it hides our TV so that it isn't the center of the room. I also love our two brown storage containers (for Nathan's toys) and how they match the brown accent wall.
Close up of the fireplace. That statue was bought in Hawaii on our honeymoon. It is very significant to both of us.

The laundry room. Brandon painted this room! It turned out great. I love the color. It is so peaceful in there. It is really organized in there now too. The cabinet on the right contains our ironing board.

Our bedroom. The other wall just contains a dresser. I love the high ceilings in here. It opens up the space nicely.
Nathan's room. I love the painting in this room! It really makes me happy to walk in here. Notice that Nathan's bed is in our room. But there is plenty of space for it in here when we are done co-sleeping.
The other side of Nathan's room. My nursing corner and reading area. My aunt painted the artwork on the right side of the wall. Can't see all of it but it matches the room perfectly.
Our spare bedroom. This is the same paint that the previous owners had up. When we have our second baby this will be his/ her room. We will decide what to paint it then. For now, the room holds the dog's crate and my scrapbooking area.

Our backyard. One of the best aspects of the house. This area of the backyard is surrounded by a privacy fence with a opening on both sides. It is really nice to have this quiet, private area. Out of this picture is my porch swing. I love sitting out here.
Some of the pretty flowers in the backyard. I took some great pictures of Nathan next to these today. I will post them later in the week.
The other side of the backyard. The rest of the yard is fenced in as well. This area is so nice. Nathan loves the little red swing and the slide.

We also do have bathrooms in the house, but those are pretty standard. :)

So there it is! This is our home!! We really love it here. It is amazing to walk through the door of your very own house. I feel so at peace here. The space is so clean and organized (I did a major decluttering before we moved and I feel amazing about that). The garage is spacious as well. Basically everything about this house is perfect. It is truly our home, sweet, home!

It is done!!

We are now homeowners!!!!!

Closing went perfectly today! Everything went as planned and we are so elated to move in this weekend! I can't wait!!

Thanks for all the support throughout this trying process. It was all worth it for this feeling!

Busy July is never ending...

We have been so busy. It is crazy around here!!

We made it safely to Baltimore and back for the wedding. We had a nice time, but were very happy to get back. I will upload some pictures tomorrow.

Our poor house is in shambles! Literally, there is nothing put away. Which is driving me crazy!!! We are in the middle of packing up the house and there are boxes every where. And I am normally a person that likes everything in its place. So needless to say, I am stressed out just looking at the place. Thankfully it won't be like this for very long, we close next Monday on our house!!! We are VERY excited!!!

In TTC news, we have moved on to cycle 6. :( I am actually too busy to be too disappointed right now. I am sure that it will hit me when everything is more settled.

Nathan is doing really well. He has fun "helping" me pack. By helping, I mean taking every item out of the box right after I put it in. He is been doing something really cute the past couple of days. He tries to put the leash on the dog and leads her around the house. It cracks us up!

Anyway, I have been a bad blogger lately. Hopefully things will improve once we are moved.

Sicky McSickerson

My poor baby. He is so sick. He has a horrid case of diarrhea and some vomiting. Poor little guy. Thankfully the cloth diapers are making this easy on his bum. And I am even more thankful for nursing! Breastmilk is the only thing that he can keep down. My supply is going crazy with all this nursing. :)

In house news, dear Lord, I hate paperwork. We have been signing things left and right. Brandon is attending our home inspection today. So hopefully we get good news from that.

That is pretty much it for us right now. Taking care of Mr. Sickerson and trying to jump through a bazillion hoops for our house.

Home, sweet, home...in a month or so...

We found our house!!!!!!!!

We love it. We walked in and it is perfect. It is so beautiful. In a wonderful neighborhood and right in our price range! We put in an offer this morning and it was accepted!!!!

YAY!!!! We are so thrilled! We will be busy for the next couple weeks with banks, paperwork, and lawyers. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and we will be moving in at the end of July!!!

:)

So what's new?

Things are still pretty hectic around here.

We are STILL house hunting. UGH! We have seen around 15 houses so far and we have hated them all. We can't seem to find anything that we like. I am starting to get worried. Brandon starts his new job on July 7th, so it looks like he will have to commute for awhile. We are looking some more this week, so hopefully we can find something.

Nathan went on a nursing strike last week. He didn't nurse for almost 24 hours. It totally had us both stressed out. Thankfully that is resolved and we are back at it! However, the strike really opened my eyes to the fact that I am not ready to lose my milk supply due to pregnancy. Therefore, we won't be doing an IUI cycle in August. I really just don't feel comfortable with him weaning yet, so we are waiting until October to start our IUIs. Which I think, is the right choice. It allows Nathan to have more nursing time, allows us to get moved in to our new house, and allows us to save up some more money for the procedure. We are still going to try the old-fashioned way (we have moved on to cycle 5) but we don't expect too much. :)

I think that is pretty much it for right now. Houses, houses, and more houses.

Trying to figure out what to do...

Thanks for all the support concerning our big upcoming move!

Honestly, I am kind of freaking out about the whole thing. We looked at houses yesterday and hated them. One was too small, one was too outdated, yada, yada, yada. In the car on the way back, Brandon and I realized how hard it is going to be to find our dream house. We really just wish that we could pick this house up and move it. So we sent a very specific list back to our realtor saying the exact things that we would need to see in a house. She said that she would search some more. Although honestly, I highly doubt that she will be able to find it.

So, Brandon and I are talking about just building our own house. We have no idea if this is even possible on our budget or where to begin. But we just realize that it will be so hard to find a house that we like. And we want this move to be our last for a very, very, very long time. So we may just have to build our own. I am going to contact some more realtors and contractors tomorrow. See where we should go from here.

So what does this do to our TTC plans?? Honestly I have no clue. I will say that if we are building a house, I probably won't be doing an IUI cycle in August. We will probably wait until we know when the house is going to be finished before doing a cycle. Mainly because I will be having a homebirth next time and will want to birth in our new house.

So, not really much of an update. I am just writing everything out to help us decide what to do.

Thanks for reading!

As far as TTC goes right now (the old-fashioned way) I am at CD 15. Got a peak on my monitor yesterday! :)

Curve ball...

Just when you think that you know what is coming....

life throws you a curve ball.

Brandon has been offered a new job. **insert shocked face here** We really can't believe it!! It is with a great company with amazing benefits (they pay all premiums). The downside is that it is in a different town. So, we will be moving. Obviously, there are pros and cons. We love our house here and don't want to move, but the town we would be going to is nice. It is a small town closer to my mom and it is a great place to raise a family.

Honestly, I am a little overwhelmed right now. So much to do in so little time. He would need to start his new job in the middle of July. So we have one month to find a new house, buy it, and move in. Not to mention the fact that we are swamped with previous plans right now. PRIDE is next weekend. The weekend after that is a wedding in Southern Indiana. In the middle of July, we have to go to Baltimore for another wedding. YIKES!

To start with we need to contact the owner of this house and stop moving forward with the purchase of this house. Hopefully he lets us out of our purchase agreement. We are going to visit the new town this weekend to look at some houses with our new realtor. Hopefully we fall in love with one.

Busy, busy, busy...and seeking some sanity...

Some updates...

First of all, thank you so much for the kind thoughts and prayers related to my grandma's passing. We really appreciate it. We are doing ok here. Taking each day as it comes. I miss her a lot. The hardest part is seeing my mom like this. She loves her mama and is lost without her.

In other news, my mama is graduating tonight! She has worked so hard for this nursing degree and I am so proud of her.

In house news, we are still waiting. Waiting on paperwork from the bank and the seller. I will be so glad when all this is over.

We keep getting closer to Nathan's birthday! Only 3 more days! We are very excited for this! His party is scheduled for May 17th. We are looking forward to it.

As far as TTC goes, the loss of my grandma has really got me back into the TTC spirit (currently CD 13-Fertile phase). I just know (in Kathleen's words) that she is up there picking out the perfect brother or sister for Nathan. Our family needs joy now more than ever, so Brandon and I are really excited about TTC. We have created a timeline for our infertility path. And after much consideration, we have decided to do some IUIs (intrauterine insemination) before doing IVF. There are pros and cons to this obviously.

Pros:
Less expensive!! Only cost around $300 per cycle. IVF is $15,000.
We can start sooner!
No meds for me that could harm my milk supply for Nathan. Big Pro!

Cons:
The success rates aren't as good for IUIs. However it is not impossible! We have gotten pregnant before on our own (with Noel) so anything could happen!

Our timeline:
May, June, July--Trying the old-fashioned way. :)
August--IUI #1
September--If IUI #1 fails, we will take this month off.
October--IUI #2
November, December, January--If IUI #2 fails, we will take these months off for the holidays.
February--IUI #3
March, April, May--If IUI #3 fails, we will take these months off to get ready for IVF.
June--IVF

We are really excited about our plan! It makes sense to us and we are looking forward to it. We just know that Grandma is up there watching over our baby-to-be.

Busy, busy

I have been so busy the past couple of weeks. Brandon was out of town this week so Nathan and I went to my mom's to visit. It was such a nice time and Nathan loved seeing Grandma!

Other than that, we have been outside a lot! The weather is so nice here and we are out walking every day. I really enjoy it, although my allergies have been acting up. BOOOO!!

We are busy planning Nathan's birthday party!! I can't believe that it is almost here! We are having a BBQ on the 17th of May. I am really looking forward to it, but kinda sad at the same time.

As far as the house goes, we are waiting (always waiting) for the owner to approve our purchase agreement, then we can move forward with the loan stuff. I will be glad when this is over!

On the TTC side of things, I am on CD 27 and 11 DPO. I will be testing on Sunday. But I am not expecting anything from this month. We just didn't give it our best effort (if you know what I mean). :) I am just really not into the whole TTC thing yet. Can't seem to put my heart into it because I have a feeling IVF #2 is around the corner. We shall see!

House and TTC updates

The offer on our house was accepted!! It has been a long time coming. We felt like we were going to never reach an agreement! But we did! So now our plan is to get everything worked out with the contracts, paperwork, and loan stuff. Who knows how long that will take, but as of right now the house is ours!! I am trying to not get too excited until we actually sign the paperwork though. ;)

As far as TTC goes....it feels like that has kinda taken a backseat to all the house stuff. We have been so busy with all of that, that TTC'ing has been kinda tough. Brandon and I actually talked about it last night and agreed to take this month as it comes. We agreed to try not to stress out about this. At least I know that we will have IVF to fall back on. So we shall see what happens!

CD: 16 (Fertile phase)

House, job, and TTC update

Thought I would just post a quick update!

Brandon has decided to not take the job offer. They ended up offering more money but Brandon decided that it wasn't worth it to move jobs. The new job would have been farther away from home. Which translates to more gas money and less time at home. Those factors really played into his choice. He seems happy with the decision to stay at his current job for now.

We received news of how much our house will cost last week. We have been debating back and forth and have decided to submit a lower counter-offer. We are also searching for homes in the area to make sure that we will be paying an appropriate price. We also want to make sure that there is nothing out there that we could possibly like more than the house that we are in now. So basically, we are taking our time and moving really slowly. We will submit a counter-offer next week and tour more houses next weekend.

Today is the beginning of Cycle number 2. Brandon has been taking his special fertility vitamins for 3 months now, so we are hoping that these will increase the quality of good sperm. I will also be using my fertility monitor this month in hopes of catching my ovulation days. I am feeling pretty good about our TTC chances. But I am also being realistic. Trying to have hope, yet not getting my hopes up too high. It is tough to balance.

It's Spring and big news at our house....

Although I think someone forgot to tell the weather. :( It is still cold and rainy here.

My mom sent me a text message from the beach yesterday! She is there on a cruise with my brothers for spring break. I wanted so badly to be there! The water looked so clear and blue and the sun was shining so bright!

So, I have really been searching my heart as to whether I should share the following news with all of you. I have debated in my head. But I have come to the conclusion that this blog is my way to communicate with the big world out there and if I weren't completely honest with the details of my life, then what is the purpose? Not to mention, I will need all the support I can get.

So our news....

Brandon received an offer for a new job. It was a pretty good offer. We would have liked to have seen more money but it was still good. Brandon is going to contact them back to see about offering more. So we shall see how that goes.

Either way though, Brandon and I are buying our house!! We currently rent it right now, but we really love it here and we don't want to move. So we are talking with the guy that owns it and the bank and we are buying it!!! I really hope everything works out ok.

If it does, we are getting the house loan for $15,000 more than what the house costs. We are using that extra $15,000 for another IVF cycle!!!!!!!!!! EEK!!!!!!!! We won't be doing the cycle right away. We plan on waiting until Nathan is done nursing (or really slowing down), but we will have the money in place for whenever we want to do it!!!!!!! Most likely it will happen late this year or early in 2009. This is huge news because before we talked about buying our house, we would have had to wait until our first IVF loan was paid off (2010). I really didn't want my kiddos to be 4 years apart! So we are thrilled and nervous and excited all at the same time!!

I think , I am more excited about the IVF cycle than I am the house! I am just really looking forward to having another little one, having a homebirth, cloth diapering a newborn, and breastfeeding all over again. But I can wait for sure. Nothing is more important to me than Nathan nursing, so we will wait until he is close to being done (because the IVF meds decrease milk supply). My ideal situation is for us to wait until Nathan is at least 18 months and only nursing a couple times a day. We shall see though! Its up to him!

So in related news, Brandon and I are officially trying to get pregnant the "old-fashioned" way. We are so hoping that, by the Grace of God, we get pregnant naturally, but we aren't expecting too much. So thus begins my new journey to trying to conceive (TTC: I will use this abbreviation a lot) a second little one. I plan to be really honest about this journey and as upfront as possible because I really want to have this record to look back on.

I think that it takes a lot of courage to try again. We have been through a lot on the infertility road. But now I know how amazing the reward is. Nathan makes every tear, every prayer, every heartache worth it. He is the light of my life and I can't wait to do it all over again.

And so blog-readers (if you are out there) welcome to the start of an amazing journey!!

Today is March 20th, I am on cycle day (CD: I will use this abbreviation a lot too) 21. I am 5 days past ovulation (DPO: again with the abbreviations) and I will be testing on Thursday March 27th.

Thanks for reading!