Thanksgiving Week

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

Thanksgiving week was full of light and love, friends and family with my husband and mother-in-law (neither of whom made it into these pictures...my husband was feeling anti-camera and my mother-in-law had just had eye surgery), my parents, my dear friends from Santa Barbara days Jason and Danielle (and their dog Lucy, who they got during the short time they lived with me in the Cota house before moving to Seattle...Lucy is the coolest dog in the world and an old friend of Dexter's...so glad they got to see each other.)

One morning we went to the zoo, early, our first time there. We pretty much had the place to ourselves...

Fruit cup is a holiday tradition in my family...everyone helps to cut up grapefruit and oranges, grapes and pineapple. The twins helped too, Luke reaching for ingredients Danielle was putting together for dinner so there ended up being tomatoes and chicken in there (which my mom thankfully took out). There was also continual taste testing on the part of both of the twins.

Thanksgiving day there was lots of football with Grammy and Grandpa. The kids walked around saying "Football! Kick! Throw!" Grandpa also found pictures of peacocks on the web...with Luke especially, since seeing them at the zoo there has been a peacock obsession...

We went to one of the parks close to our house before the meal. Beautiful, mild day. Good to get some fresh air.

The sweater Zo is wearing is one my grandmother made one of my cousins...my aunt and uncle don't have any girl grandchildren and sent me several of their girls' sweaters when the twins were born. Means SO much to me to have those...

Jason and Danielle and Lucy had to leave on Friday. We were so sad to see them go...

\

Grandpa (whom the kids this trip started calling "Pa-Pa"...after he left they would wander around the house saying "Pa-Pa" over and over). Anyway, Grandpa cut Luke's hair while he was here. Luke's so chill about it...

One night, we went to the River of Lights at the Botanic Gardens. Beautiful. Kids loved it. We even found a peacock for Luke. :)

And lots and lots of hikes...there's this place we go back in the National Forest that is pretty much deserted every time. We made it to the end of one of the trails for the first time. And we found this:

There were a couple more hikes with my mom and dad and the dogs just outside of town.

Dexter is doing so well with his cancer, by the way...still hiking like a champ...so grateful for every day I get to have with him.

We're in full swing for Xmas these days. My husband and I got ALL our shopping done over the weekend (so proud of us)! And our fake white "disco tree" up (goes perfectly in the Daddy Lounge, which is what we call our upstairs TV room.) We're traveling to my brother's for the holidays, so trying to keep things somewhat simple around here. But I'm so glad it's the holiday season. Love this time of year.

XOXO

Grace in Small Things, San Francisco Edition (January 10, 2013)

A few lovely things that happened on my quick (48 hour) work trip to San Francisco (into which I tried to squeeze as much socializing as humanly possible). Oh, how I love San Francisco. I lived there for seven years, miss it every day.

1. Driving up from San Jose on the 280 early misty morning, having just spent a too-short evening/overnight with my college roommate Chris and his fiance Kim, love being around them, they always make me feel so incredibly welcome. (Years ago they even gave me a key to their house so I could come and go as I pleased whenever visiting the Bay Area.) Yesterday driving up to the city the light was just starting to come, the hills so green, the trees so lush...made me think of driving east on the 80 from Colorado the March I moved out to San Francisco, my brother Luke drove me, we left a foot of snow behind in Colorado and the green of the hills and the black-and-white cows, the warm humid air...I will never forget it.

2. Hiking and getting to see some of the art installations in the Presidio with Ryan (with whom I used to surf all. the. time.) So lovely to see him (and see where his family lives as they've moved since last time I visited...it's gorgeous)...and so nice to get out in nature, exactly what I wanted to do.

3. Seeing Wendy, whom I work with and who has a spectacular town home in Sausalito, so girly, so lovely.

[Insert confusing work meeting here.]

4. Getting to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge (twice). And reaching Ocean Beach before dark (which I didn't think would happen), so I could get at least a glimpse of my beloved waves. Cold and windy, wild like always, the feel and the smell of the air like it is only there...heaven...

5. Seeing my friends Stacey and Tobin, who live a block from the beach, you can hear the ocean at night from their house.

True story: We went for sushi last night (which was unbelievable. I'm never eating sushi in Colorado again.) Anyway, parking in San Francisco is INSANELY hard, for those of you who don't know. I lived on Russian Hill when I lived there, and in the evenings if it took you half an hour to find a parking spot and the spot was within a 10-block radius of where you lived, you were lucky.

Last night, there was a space right across the street from the restaurant. Tobin did a U-turn to snag it, and some other guy saw it at the same time, turned from the other direction and was about to take it. After they both tried unsuccessfully to wave each other away from the spot, Tobin got out of the car, the other guy got halfway out, each of them saying, "Hey I saw it first, that's my spot." This is the kind of thing that ends up in fist fights, right?

"Tell you what, why don't we flip for it?" Tobin said to the other guy. "That's fair, right? We both think we're right...this is a fair way to decide."

"All right," said the other guy.

The coin was flipped.

Tobin won.

Then said to the other guy, "You know what? It's OK, you can have the spot."

But the other guy said no, wouldn't take it--fair is fair--and we ended up with the spot.

Lovely trip. Missed my babies. I'm exhausted after a 4:15 AM wakeup to make a 6 AM flight. How did I used to travel 150 days a year?

Oh and P.S. any of my San Francisco friends reading this that I didn't get to see...soooooooo sorry! Don't take it personally! There wasn't any time! Next trip I PROMISE. :)

XOXO

Grace in Small Things, October 22, 2012

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

We went over to the other side of the state (Colorado's Front Range, which is where I grew up and went to college) this past weekend...here are a few of the lovely things that happened:

1) In Boulder on Friday, my husband otherwise occupied, I took the kids to the creekside park by the library...the library's beautiful...and you can see the Flatirons from there...and the kids saw ducks for the first time...they (the kids) were mesmerized...so fun. :)

2) Saw a bunch of friends, which was so great. Here's Sissy with Dwight...I used to babysit his two boys way back when (college) and the whole family...they've been such dear friends ever since:

Actually, one of my favorite memories ever...out on Cape Cod with this family (they have a summer home there), this is after I'd moved away but I spent a week with them and we drove out on the beach every day, cooler full of drinks and sandwiches, I taught the kids to surf that summer. Anyway, we'd gone to dinner at a friend's camp one night and the old army vehicle, open aired...there was no one on the beach and Dwight said to his 10-year-old son, "Do you want to drive?" and his son was so excited and Dwight gently coached him as he drove along the sand tracks on the beach, me and his brother and their sandy dog in the back, the night warm, the stars shining, our bellies full of lobster. Such a simple memory but so, so precious. I always think of that old Jack Johnson song with the line, "Stars were just the holes to Heaven" when I think of that night.

And here's Sissy with the daughter of friends of mine from San Francisco who now live in Denver: 

I have a great Jack Johnson memory with her (the wife), too, going to see him in concert at the Fillmore in San Francisco, one of the best concerts ever. At the Fillmore, they hand out posters after each concert and I have mine from that night framed, kind of symbolic of that and all our other fun nights out together (and there were many).

3) The kids traveled so well...4+ hours in the car each way, different beds each night, their routine totally messed up and barely a complaint...they are so amazing. Oh, and they are teething too...you can definitely feel a tooth coming in on each of them, and kind of see it...there's some discoloration in the area at any rate... They were such troupers...

4) As always so, so lovely to see my brother Ben. Actually, I had kind of a weird thing happen. He's been in Mexico and is all scruffy with a few day's beard growth, which I don't ever think I've seen on him. Anyway, one day he came around the corner and I thought for a split second he was our brother who died. That's the first time that's happened, and I think it was because of the scruff, which my brother who died sported often. My heart skipped a beat, but it wasn't really upsetting, just really, really strange...

5) This is the leading cause of traffic jams in Evergreen, CO, which is where I lived when I was little. Love it.

XOXO

Up In The Air

This has been a really hard post to write for some reason...I've started it like five times...but today I'm going to write it and hit "publish" so I can maybe quit obsessing over all that's going on...

My husband just graduated from college with an engineering degree (he went back to school on the GI Bill), and a few months ago we though he had found a job in Salt Lake City and that we were set. It was a great job, and I was excited about SLC because it's not far from my family and it's in the West where I feel most comfortable and there's so much great outdoor stuff going on (hiking, snowboarding, etc.)

Well, we found out right around the time the babies were born that that job is not going to happen. We were a lot less upset about it than we would have been otherwise, because we had just had two beautiful healthy babies and figured that's all that really matters, right?

So now my husband is job hunting. Which doesn't really scare me...he's got a great resume and I don't think it's going to be a problem for him to get a job. Plus we're living pretty cheaply right now and there's no financial pressure for him to start working right away. And honestly it's ideal to have him at the house at the moment 24/7...he helps sooooooo much with the twins....ladies who do this on their own, I am in awe of you...don't know how you do it.

So I'm not worried about the job part. The part that is freaking me out a little is the moving. My husband's looking in the town where we live, but it's unlikely that he'll be able to find what he's looking for (it's a small town without a lot of opportunity). He's also looking in Colorado and Utah, either of which would keep us close to family and so wouldn't be such a big deal.

But we're also open to moving away. Maybe somewhere I know I want to go (eg, Seattle). But more likely somewhere I've never lived (right now there's talk of Virginia and Minnesota).

I hate change in general and moving in particular. There's fear surrounding going to a new place. But the biggest thing for me is not living near my family. Especially with the twins...it's really important to me that they are close to my parents. I've actually got a lot of grief tied up in this...it's so hard, and also I don't want to hurt my mom and dad in any way. There have definitely been tears and sleepless nights on my part over this, and my husband and I don't even know what we're doing yet.

Anyway, I'm trying really hard to look on the bright side/focus on the positives, such as:

1. We might end up close by, in which case all this worrying is for nothing
2. My parents like to travel and will come see us (we'll make sure wherever we end up there's a nice place for guests)
3. We can come visit as a family, and I can come for extra visits with the kids
4. There's phone and email and iChat etc.
5. I was VERY close to my grandparents growing up, even though they lived in another state, because my parents sent me to stay with them twice a year (Seattle in the summer, Mexico in the winter) for weeks at a time...some of the best memories of my life...we can do the same with our kids
6. My husband having a job is going to be amazing. We've done fine while he's been in school, but it'll be nice not to have the weight of providing for the family on my shoulders
7. Him having a job also means I can work part time, which is huge, as all I want to do is be at home with the twins (I freelance/telecommute so I can work from anywhere, which is a blessing)
8. A new town/city is going to be cool. I like exploring new places
9. A new house to decorate will be super fun
10. Also looking forward to being somewhere where I can settle in and be a bit more sociable than I've been here. I've had a hard time making friends here, which has never been the case for me. Part of it is when I moved here, I was so overwhelmed with grief over my brother's death that I didn't want to be around people I didn't know well. Plus I traveled a ton for work and pleasure, and got to see a lot of friends doing that, so there wasn't a huge need to make new ones. And I had my parents to hang out with

Anyway, lots to look forward to with this next chapter in our lives, wherever it may take us. And wherever we go, it doesn't have to be forever. That's the other thing...I always worry so much about making decisions like this because I feel like I have to make the "right" decision. But whatever we decide, we can change if it ends up not working for us.

Just trying really hard not to stress about all this and enjoy the here and now, which is me and my husband at home (I have one more month of maternity leave), my parents close by, a beautiful spring-moving-into-summer, great opportunities on the horizon...

Thank You, Chickenpig! (And Some Cute Baby Photos)

Hi Everyone!

So one of my bloggy friends, chickenpig, knit these ADORABLE hats for our twins...love them, love them, love them! Thanks, chickenpig! :) (By the way, she's in the middle of an IVF cycle right now, and I'm sure could use some words of encouragement...you can find her blog here.)

And another cute photo showing off the babies' hair...love how Zoey has dark hair like mine and Luke is blonde like my husband...

Happy Tuesday!

XOXO

Baby Shower #1!

Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!

Thought I'd post a few pictures and stories from my baby shower last weekend! :)

First of all, there was snow, and lots of it. We live on the Western edge of Colorado and were driving over to Denver (4 hours away) on Friday. Were a little worried about the passes, but they were no big deal. But Denver itself had this crazy storm which essentially shut the city down.

We (my husband and I, my brother, my parents, my best friend and her husband who had flown in from Seattle) spent Friday night holed up at my brother's...he lives about an hour outside of Denver up in the mountains in the house where we both grew up. It was fun to be snowed in!

Oh and two super-cool things happened on Friday: First, when I first saw my BFF, she and I were wearing the exact same sweater, which for some reason made me so happy. And second, my parents had an envelope for me, which contained a TOTALLY unexpected inheritance from my grandmother, who died last summer. What a huge surprise. We're looking at it as a gift for our babies, as we're going to place the money in their college funds. 

Here are the icicles at my brother's Saturday morning:

Saturday started with light snow, but it stopped and the sun came out and the main roads all got plowed and it all worked out fine.

The shower was kind of a co-ed happy hour thing at my friend Betsy's Denver home. I know Betsy from San Francisco...we worked together at the ad agency and have worked together on and off in freelance capacities ever since. She's also a very dear friend and has been with me through a lot of this fertility stuff--from going with me to my initial diagnostic appointments, to even putting me up at her house and taking care of me while on bed rest for one of my cycles when my husband couldn't be with me.

She went all out with jungle-themed shower decorations...the whole house was so lovely and festive...unbelievably cute:

Here's me with my fabulous husband right before things got going:

And with my best friend Danielle (who co-hosted the shower with Betsy), and her husband Jason:

I know Jason and Danielle from Santa Barbara...Jason was in a punk band and best friends with my brother Luke, the one who died. After that happened, they (Jason and Danielle) moved in with me for a few months, and essentially took care of me...I was a total mess...I don't know what I would have done without them...

So many people came to our shower...between 30 and 40, with some of my friends even coming from out of town. It was so incredible to see everyone! And so nice to be celebrating something so good and happy. Some of my friends, when we did the "When was the last time we saw each other?" thing, the answer was my brother's funeral...my friends mean so much to me and this shower was so important to me because for a long time I felt like all there ever was around me was sadness...so wonderful to have something happy to celebrate. That's my dad in the middle:

Some interesting things were said to me at the shower. So many people told me I looked great pregnant, and while I'm sure it's mandatory to say that to the mother-to-be at a baby shower, it still made me feel really good, as I just feel so huge and frumpy these days. But apparently I'm not nearly as big as people expected, and am "all belly."

And on a different subject, one of my friends from college told me she always thought I'd be the first of everyone in our group to have children, she always saw me as a mother, said I was so nurturing and loving to everyone around me. Several people I know from my late teens/early 20s have made that same sort of comment, and it's interesting, because I SO wanted to get married and have children young...it just didn't work out that way for a number of reasons and there's no way to go back and change it....so just have to accept it, which is something I'm still working on...

Betsy's husband August made the most fabulous dinner ever (I wasn't even expecting a dinner...like I said, they went all out)...beef tenderloin and salad, cupcakes for dessert...so yummy. Here's the buffet table before all the food came out:

And the gifts...goodness...we got sooooooo many beautiful things; everyone was so incredibly generous. Here's my husband with teddy bears we received, demonstrating how he's going to hold both babies at once. Awww....

And here's Betsy (in black) at the end of the night, and our friend Habeeba who we also used to work with in San Francisco (and continue to work with now...it's so nice to work with your friends). Habeeba came out from Oregon and helped Betsy tons:

So really an incredible party and weekend all around. I feel so, so lucky to have such amazing people in my life.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for spending some time here this week. :)

XOXO

Update on 2012-02-24 22:38 by Buttercup

Here a link to my post about Baby Shower #2 for anyone who's interested...

2011: A Look Back

Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!

Hope you all have great New Year's Eve plans! We're laying low, which is fine. Unless we're traveling, I'm not a huge one for New Year's Eve, pregnant or not.

Like most everyone else, the end of the year is always kind of a reflective time for me. Thought I'd share some of what I've been thinking about:

January

We took a belated three-week honeymoon to Europe the end of 2010/beginning of 2011...spent New Year's in Prague (amazing...would do it again in a heartbeat) and the first few days of the year in Venice:

As soon as we got home, we got word that my husband's dad was very sick...we went straight to Las Vegas to be with him, and he died a week later. So hard, but I'm so glad we got that time together.

And then, straight to Denver for IVF #4.

February

The transfer for IVF #4 happened in February...AND we got a BPF! A good solid one, too...all my previous ones had been iffy and ended up being chemical pregnancies. We were so excited!

Didn't feel too bad for the first few weeks, and did some nice easy walks in the Colorado National Monument, which is super close to our house:

March

I was sick, sick, sick with the pregnancy.

We went to Vegas again to see and help my husband's mom. 

Spring started to arrive:

April

We lost our baby, a girl, at 11 weeks 5 days...so close to being out of the first trimester and "safe." It was devastating, but my husband and I were so sweet and loving and supportive of each other. We lay on the couch in the evenings and drank wine and talked and cried. And then when we couldn't cry anymore we watched episodes of "Wipeout" which is the most ridiculous TV show ever...have never watched before or since but somehow the stupidness and silliness was what we needed.

Family and friends were wonderful, too.

And got back to being active, with one quick weekend snowboarding trip with my brother (we took his snowmobiles out into the backcountry...he'd run me up a hill and I'd snowboard down). So fun even though the snow sucked as it was so late in the season.

I also started hiking, including an incredible day trip to Moab with my mom and dad.

One of the places I went a lot in those first few weeks after the miscarriage was Holy Cross trail. When I first moved to the area, I'd stumbled on this cross. Didn't learn until years later that I knew the woman who'd brought it into being, and it was for her lost child:

May

Tried to get my body ready for an FET...the D&C wasn't complete...another trip to Denver and our clinic was needed.

Worked hard to recover physically and emotionally from the miscarriage.

Life went on as normal for the cows across the street from my parents:

June

An absolutely lovely hiking trip with my Dad in Utah. We take a trip together every year...it is just the best:

And more "finishing the miscarriage" shenanigans and another trip to our Denver clinic.

And the start of our summer vacation, driving to the West coast to camp and hang out with tons of friends...so fun and exactly what we needed.

July

Summer vacation continued...from the start: Highway 50 through Nevada on the way out, California, Oregon, Washington, Vancouver, Salt Lake City on the way home. It was lovely. Here's my husband and I at a BBQ with my BFF, Lake Washington, Seattle:

We also went to Santa Barbara for a long weekend to attend a gorgeous wedding, and again got to spend time with lots of freinds...so wonderful.

And...back to Denver for the FET...stayed with my brother which is always great...had my birthday 2 days before the transfer, and on the last day of the month...another BFP! Yay!

August

Did a short camping trip with my brother, but for the most part sick, sick, sick. 

Learned we had twins!

My mother's organic garden was going crazy...

September

Camped again, this time with my whole family:

Still sick, but all was going well.

October

A fun trip to Denver to celebrate our anniversary.

Other than that, laying low with the pregnancy.

The first snow up in the mountains was so pretty (this is at my brother's house, where he and I and my brother who died grew up):

November 

Went with my husband to Mobile, AL and gulf coast Mississippi to check out a potential job. We celebrated his birthday while we were there...so fun, although traveling wasn't all that easy...

And later in the month, Thanksgiving at our house with lots of people. My husband and his mom did all the cooking! :)

December

Holidays at my brother's up in the Colorado mountains. Here's our boxer Newton playing in the snow:

My pregnancy at 25 weeks is still going strong! :)

So, all in all, a heartbreaking year with the loss of my father-in-law and our unborn baby. A year consumed with doctor visits. Lots and lots of travel (which probably won't happen again for some time). Lots of time with freinds and family. And the most joyous year ever, in that we are so close to bringing home two real, live babies--something I wasn't sure would ever happen for me.

A roller coaster year.

Praying that everything--two healthy babies, graduation for my husband and hopefully a good job offer, a possible move to we're not sure where--will go our way in 2012, which should be a year filled with happiness, but will also probably contain a number of huge transitions.

Happy New Year to you all! Blogging has brought me such joy this year--and your presence has been central to that. Thank you for being here, and looking forward to sharing all that will be 2012.

XOXO

Kristen

Grace in Small Things, November 11, 2011

Hi Everyone! Sorry for not posting yesterday...have been in a little bit of a funk, which is usually due to working too much (although I haven't worked much this week) and/or feeling sick (which is pretty constant these days, so not sure why I've been down the past few days in particular).

Anyway, what better time to take a look at what's good in my life, right? And so:

1) Minutes after I posted my list of baby stuff on Wednesday, my BFF called and told me I'm not going to be buying any of this stuff...that there is going to a baby shower and my friends will buy things for me (my friend Julie pointed this out too). Thanks girls! So excited about a baby shower! Makes me feel so loved! :)

2) My mom took me to see The Art of Flight the other night (the image above is a still from the trailer)...was screening at our little local college. It's a snowboarding movie where these guys essentially fly/helicopter into these remote places and snowboard sick terrain. Love watching this kind of thing. That's me in another life. And actually, now that I think about it, maybe part of why I've been down is I'm feeling sad about not snowboarding this year. I would 10,000 times rather be pregnant than have this snowboarding season, but it's not an either/or situation, right? I can be happy to be pregnant and still be sad I don't get to get outside. (I'm feeling especially sorry for myself because I missed last season due to a pregnancy [which ended in miscarriage] too. But two seasons for two babies is fair, right?)

3) My dad just got an iPhone and has taken to texting. He's out of state at a poker tournament and has been keeping me abreast of his progress. Fun...

4) Not working this weekend for the first time in forever (well, it's only been 3 weeks, but it feels like forever)

5) French cheesecake...which is lighter and airier than regular cheesecake. Have you all ever had it? Soooooo yummy...

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend. Thanks for spending some time here this week.

XOXO

Image Credit: The Art of Flight trailer.

Grace in Small Things, October 10, 2011

Snow at my brother's, southwest of Denver. He lives where we grew up...so cool...

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!

I'll be doing my usual weekly pregnancy post tomorrow...today there's a lot of good things I want to share! :) I usually list small happinesses here, but some of today's are big:

1. Spent the night at my brother's Friday night (he lives in the foothills outside of Denver), and woke Saturday morning to snow. And I wasn't expecting it at all. I felt like a little kid...delighted...it was magical

2. My parents had two dogs, Jack and Comic. Comic died a short time ago, from a freak illness, which made my parents sooooo sad, but they kept saying, "At least we have Jack."

Well, they went on vacation and left Jack with my brother (who is amazing with dogs, by the way). About a week ago, Jack went missing. And he wasn't wearing a collar/any ID. My brother spent so much time last week, and my husband and I helped this weekend searching for him...ads online and in newspapers, flyers posted all over the place, checking the shelters, going door-to-door looking for him, etc., etc., etc. No luck.

It hit me hard when we checked into our Denver hotel Saturday...we were planning to have Jack with us as we were going to bring him home with us when we came back (we live near my parents, my brother is about 4 hours away from us). The hotel is super dog friendly and had a little chalkboard that said, "Welcome, Jack!" and a dog bed and dog dishes and treats in the room. But we had no dog to check in with. I was feeling so sad. I just couldn't imagine my parents losing BOTH their dogs in such a short time, you know? 

But today--finally--Jack has been found! Don't know the details, but so, so, so happy about that news! :)

(By the way, if you want to make yourself sad, go check out the lost-and-found rooms at your local animal shelter. So many, many sweet, hopeful dogs looking up at you and wagging their tails as you walk by...I hope most of them get found...)

3. Closed down a hip Denver restaurant with good friends of ours on Saturday night (after visiting the coolest little bar [I am of course drinking non-alcoholic beer and water these days, just FYI])...you know it's been a fun night when you suddenly notice it's just you and the wait staff (we left a big tip, BTW).

4. Foo Fighters Denver show last night. Absolutely lived up to my hopes for it (and my hopes were BIG). What an awesome night. They played until almost midnight and there was so much good energy, the crowd was great, the band was great, they played every song but one that I wanted to hear (and that one's pretty obscure, so not surprising). Made me so happy. 

5. Have I mentioned I'm feeling better?!? It's like I was living in black-and-white and the whole world is now Technicolor. I didn't realize how much I was struggling, how down I was feeling just because I was so sick 24/7. Not being sick like that has had a HUGE impact on my mood, how I'm feeling about being pregnant, and I'm feeling like I can handle actual babies (it's hard to picture being any good as a mother when you can barely get out of bed.) I'll talk more about the medication I'm on tomorrow, but bottom line is it has made such a HUGE difference...

Hope everyone has a lovely week!

XOXO

P.S. Courtney, I promise to post pictures of the aspens sometime this week. :)

Minturn

Hi Everyone and Happy Friday!

Thought I'd share some pictures today from yesterday's little mountain getaway. I had such a good time! :)

I met a friend of mine, Donna, in Minturn, which is just outside of Vail, CO. It's the cutest little mountain town, with a totally charming Main Street (top picture). It's built right next to a little creek fronted by a park (bottom)...after lunch and a little window shopping, Donna and I sat on rocks by the creek and talked and talked and talked and talked.

I thought these flowers poking out from the fence were so charming. And here's Ms. Donna...love this girl. I met her when she was dating my roommate Chris in college at CU Boulder, and then she was part of the group of us that all moved to San Francisco after college was over. She and I have also done countless hiking and backpacking trips...she's super strong and along with my parents probably my favorite person to backpack with. 

Love the colors of the flowers with the blue trim outside one of the stores on Main Street (top picture). And I am in love with this cute little house (bottom). My husband and I could live here and I could snowboard in Vail every day, the kids could throw rocks in the creek in the summers and my husband and I could have date nights in the little saloon/Mexican restaurant down the street with the biggest fireplace I have ever seen...

Hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

XOXO

Julieta

Me and my childhood friend Julieta, Bahia Kino, Mexico.

So when I was little, my grandparents used to live in Mexico in the winters, in a little, not-at-all-touristy town called Bahia Kino. Generally, poor Mexicans lived in the actual town ("Old Kino"), and Americans (including my grandparents) and rich Mexicans in a long row of houses strung along the beautiful sand beach ("New Kino"). 

I used to go down from a very young age (8 or 9) and spend a month or two there each winter. (The fact that I could miss a month or two of school had more to do with the quality of our school system vs my intelligence. I did bring my books and keep up.)

My grandpa had made friends with one of the families in Old Kino...a mom and dad and 15 or so kids living in a two-room dirt floor tar-paper shack. One of the daughters was close to my age, and my grandfather asked if she'd take me to school with her each day, and home to play after. She said yes. This is how I met Julieta.

The money/class distinction never bothered me, never even entered my mind, really, I think because I was in her (Julieta's) world day to day. I would have been lost without her. In the beginning, I didn't even speak the language (no one in Old Kino spoke a word of English). Plus my parents (and grandparents) had raised me to be very open-minded.

The way I remember Julieta and her family is happy. Loving. No one went hungry (in fact, the food is one of the things I remember most fondly from that time. Tortillas patted out by Julieta's mother, charred on top of a rusted oil barrel with a fire burning inside and then you went over to the enormous pot of beans and scooped out what you wanted to go with your tortillas...absolute heaven). Everyone had what they needed. They lived right by the sea in this idyllic little village. And they were so nice to me...I have never had people be nicer or more welcoming.

I went to Kino every year through high school, and then didn't go back for many years. Julieta married and had her babies while still a teenager, just like the rest of the girls. She moved to the big city, a house with tile floors, she and her husband running a little convenience store on a corner on the edge of the city, near the airport, where the roads are still dirt and rutted, not paved.

I've been back to visit a couple of times in the past few years, and it's been awesome. One cold winter afternoon on my first visit, Julieta and I curled up under the covers in her bed, a little Spanish-to-English dictionary between us (my Spanish has hugely atrophied), talked and sign-languaged about what had been going on in all the intervening years, laughed and cried and it was like no time had passed at all.

Other than my two fairly recent visits, it's been really hard to keep in touch with Julieta...phone calls and emails...the technology for some reason does not work for us consistently. But I'm writing about her today because yesterday we became Facebook friends (yay!), and I have high hopes that that is going to make it easier for us to keep in touch. 

Our backgrounds and lives could not be more different. But she is without a doubt one of the people in this world most dear to me.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

XOXO

A New Friend, Italian Food and the Sublime James McMurtry

An almost-full moon rising over the hills outside Paonia, Colorado.

So part of my strategy for dealing with the endless waiting associated with IVF is to plan some fun things vs spending all my time moping around the house. Last night, as part of that, we went to Hotchkiss and Paonia.

Hotchkiss was to visit with a new fried of ours (a lovely woman my husband met in film class last semester)...she lives in a little cottage with a view of mountains and sky, a wooden fence carved out in twigs and birds, a huge screened-in porch out back and a tiny cabin on the other side of a lush green lawn that if I lived there I'd turn into a writing studio. Plus the whole house is furnished with one-of-a-kind vintage everything, photographs, the picture she's currently painting on a easel...she had snacks for us and glasses of wine for my husband and it was lovely to be in her presence.

After, we drove the short distance to Paonia, which is a little hippie town at the base of the mountains that go up to Aspen. We had Italian food in an outdoor garden with hollyhocks and a burbling fountain, nicoise olives as dusk fell and then we went to the tiny Paradise Theater to see James McMurtry, whose music I've loved since I spent a couple years in Austin, Texas back in the '90s. He was at his best when it was just him and his red acoustic guitar, singing "Ruby and Carlos"...the whole place was just spellbound:

"Holding back the flood, just don't do no good

You can't unclench your teeth, to howl the way you should

So curl your lips around the taste of tears and hollow sounds

Than no one owns but you, no one owns but you."

There's so much pain in the world.

And so much beauty, too.

Santa Barbara Wedding Weekend!

Happy Monday, Everyone!

I'm happy to report that Santa Barbara was fun, fun, fun! (More later on how the pain I've felt being there in the past just slipped away.) A few pictures for you:

1) Our room at the fabulous Presido Motel, with funky stencils on the wall and colorful paper cranes hanging from the vaulted ceiling. If I ever open up a motel, I want it to be like this.

2) Me on the beach at Miramar...not a surf beach, but one of my favorite places to take dogs to run in the sand and splash in the surf.

3) A mosaic mural at Hendry's.

4) These houses right at water's edge...what a dream it would be to live like this...

5) Our absolutely gorgeous bride and her father at the wedding rehearsal. Love the dress, Jules...you look amazing! :)

6) The wedding was held in Alice Keck Park...so lush and green...it was absolutely perfect.

7) Our friends Dave and Mel after brunch the morning of the wedding.

8) The bride and groom at their reception, Carr Winery.

Such a fun, sunny, happy trip.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week!

XOXO

Excitement and Trepidation and Trying to Let Go of the Pain

I'm going to Santa Barbara tomorrow, with my husband, for a wedding. And I'm SO happy to be going, so excited for my friends getting married, it's going to be great to see them and others, and it's going to be fun to be in Santa Barbara with my husband, because we spent a lot of time there when we were first dating, him coming down from Alaska and later Seattle to visit me the last months that I lived there. I know we're going to have a great time...everything about this trip is going to be happy and positive. 

But.

Santa Barbara's where I lived with my brother. It's where he was killed. It's a place I didn't want to leave, but felt like I had to. This is kind of hard to describe, but in a lot of ways, when my brother died, I felt like I died too, like we had both been exiled from this place and this life that we loved.

I've fought hard to build back a new life for myself, and it's a good life, but it's drastically different from the one that I had, and it's hard to be reminded of that old life, you know? I usually do a pretty good job keeping the hurt I still feel over my brother's death and the loss of Santa Barbara and my beach-y California girl surfer lifestyle under wraps. But going there...it can't help but come to the surface.

I keep thinking about this quote from the TV show Six Feet Under--I love love love that show, by the way...I'm going to do a post about it one of these days--that I read on the fabulous blog Mocking Bird over the weekend:

(David is talking to his dead father, Nathaniel.)

Nathaniel Sr.: You aren't ever grateful, are you?

David: Grateful? For the worst fucking experience of my life?

Nathaniel Sr.: You hang onto your pain like it means something, like it's worth something. Well, let me tell ya, it's not worth shit. Let it go. Infinite possibilites, and all he can do is whine.

David: Well, what am I supposed to do?

Nathaniel Sr.: What do you think? You can do anything, you lucky bastard, you're alive! What's a little pain compared to that?

David: It can't be that simple.

Nathaniel Sr. (putting his arm around David and pulling him closer): What if it is?

I'm trying to let the pain go. I swear. 

P.S. The last of our plans for the weekend just fell into place. I truly am sooooo incredibly excited to see so many people I love.

Back Monday.

XOXO

Ashland, Oregon, Day 4

Hi Everyone!

So after camping, my husband and I drove up the California coast (so beautiful! So great to see waves and cars with surfboards on them!), had an amazing fried oyster lunch in Crescent City (I don't eat a lot of seafood in Colorado...eating as much as possible while on the West coast), and then went inland to Ashland, OR. I have a wonderful friend who lives there (this is her backyard, above...I didn't realize how much I want to live in a place like this with all the greenery surrounding it until I went to visit her).

My friend and her husband barbequed for us, and then we went to see a free concert, sitting outside on the grass with the guys playing bagpipes and a digeridoo and hippies dancing, and we had ice cream, and played board games, and generally just had a lovely time. We also the next morning got skinny, skinny french baguettes with ham and thyme butter and took a litle stroll in Lithia Park, one of the loveliest urban parks I've ever seen, with brilliant pink azaleas blooming and the creek burbling through.

Love Ashland and was so awesome to see my friend! 

XO

Northern California, Days 2 and 3

This past weekend we went camping with a group of friends in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. So fun, and so lovely to see some of my friends from college and San Francisco days! Some cool things that happened:

• We got to the campground via CA-36, which goes right by Lassen National Park (volcanoes)...the most scenic drive imaginable but so twisty and turn-y and LONG...probably the only time in our lives we'll do that road, but the snow-covered volcanoes behind meadows full of wildflowers and blue alpine lakes were unbelievably beautiful
• Camping under the enormous redwoods was amazing. It smells so good up there, and the trees tower so high...it's amazing to tilt your head back and look. The wind sounds lovely blowing through the trees and sometimes the trees squeak like a squeaky door...
• There was a little path down to the Eel River, which had sandy banks and it was warm down there...cool in the forest...Saturday afternoon hanging out in the warm sand on the riverbank was just heaven
• S'mores in the evenings. Enough said
• And have I mentioned how much I LOVE campfires? I wish I could sit around a campfire every evening...
• Saturday afternoon we played tourist for a little while and drove down the road to a place where you can pay $6 to drive through a tree. It was scary to drive through a tree...there is not much clearance. Also at the drive-through-a-tree tourist trap, there were these little tree houses (above). I sat inside each in turn and I wished I was eight again and had one of these in my back yard. How cute is the little white bunny over the door of the one on the right? 
• In one of the redwood groves we stumbled upon a drum circle, and this is so cliche Northern California but it was actually really magical to be among these enormous ancient redwoods listening to drums. Amazingly cool

Hope everyone has a great week!

XO

Genetic Testing: The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

Really, how can you be sad when you come across cute little dogs in the nursery?

As most of you know, two weeks ago we found out that my pregnancy had ended in miscarriage. A phone conversation with my RE's office about an hour later:

Me: "What do you guys need from my local OB?"

Them: "The notes in your chart. The ultrasound. And if you can get genetic testing done, we want the results."

So the next day when I went in for the D&C, I had a list for my OB of what my RE wanted, including genetic testing if possible. 

We got the bill for genetic testing yesterday. Almost $3,000.00. Crap.

So here's the deal: I take responsibility for not asking why they needed genetic testing done and/or asking how much it would cost. But come on, I was grieving heavily, how can I be expected to think this through and ask all the right questions at a time like that? I don't understand why genetic testing was necessary. This was my first miscarriage. I don't even want to know the answers to genetic testing. I think it's going to make all this hurt worse to know if it's a boy or a girl. And if there was a genetic abnormality, I think that will be comforting in a way, because then the miscarriage was "nature's way of taking care of things." But if the baby was perfectly normal, what does that mean? I think it's going to make me scared to try again. I don't know, maybe there's a good reason to have genetic testing done that I'm missing, but right now I'm just pissed about the cost, and that I wasn't asked if I wanted to do it, I was just told to get it done if I could. 

And then I start thinking about how we're going to pay for it (if insurance doesn't cover it, which I'm praying they will). I can work more hours to get the money, but I'm so sick of working like crazy to get money to do fertility treatments that fail. And this is on top of all the other bills for this pregnancy (meeting my insurance's high deductible, all the blood draws for my RE that aren't covered by insurance), and we also need to get the money together for the FET this summer. Ugh. We can do it, but there is so much more I'd rather spend the money on (plus I don't want to work the extra hours needed to get the money).

And then I start thinking about how hard fertility treatments are to go through and how scared I am of our next round of this not working and what happens if in the end we can never have a family...ugh...just going to the darkest place imaginable.

And THEN, I have been having a terrible time working. I'm just now getting to the end of Monday's "TO DO" list on Tuesday afternoon. One of the things I do for work is put together websites, and we have a big presentation tomorrow and a website that doesn't have a headline...I called my Art Director (who's also a close friend) in tears earlier, I was so frustrated with my inability to write anything remotely usable. She talked me off the ledge and sent me thinking in a different direction and I finally, finally got it done. And then my mom brought me lunch and listened to me talk about my fears and took me to the nursery to buy some flowers for my garden this summer. This is all after my husband had me crawl back in bed with him early this morning and held me while I cried.

So the point of this long, rambling post is: I am just barely holding on, and something like a genetic testing bill can totally send me over the edge. But there are people to pull me back. And what do you do but tell the people you need that you need them, and then just try to keep soldiering on?

XO

A Little Break From All This...

These are the Flatirons outside of Boulder, where I went to college and was roommates with my friend who is visiting. I picked a picture with snow because I'm snowboarding with my brother this weekend...it's really late in the season so I'm trying to get in the mood... :)Happy weekend everyone!

An old friend of mine is visiting, which has been wonderful...took the day off yesterday and had fun running around town.

And today I'm headed up to the mountains to meet my brother. I know, I know, it's late April and not exactly snowboarding season, but I was so sad I didn't get to go this year, and for nothing with the miscarriage. It's going to be great to get out at least once. It's raining here so there should be snow in the mountains.

Back Monday...

Photo Credit: arielmatzuk.

Does Anything Good Come Out of All This?

My dad brought us daisies the day of the D&C...he brought me daisies when I was sick when I was little, so they have a really personal meaning. And my mom brought us this lovely little ceramic angel.

When my brother died, something a lot of people told me was you have to look for the good that came out of the situation. Like they would say, "If your brother hadn't died, you never would have met your husband," (which is a story for another post). I personally believe I would have met my husband anyway, but that's beside the point. Or they would say: "Think of how this has made you a stronger and more compassionate person." Well, I'm sorry, but nothing you gain is worth a person you love so much being killed at age 27. Nothing. Nothing made me madder than that comment.

And although I haven't heard that yet with the death of our unborn baby, I've been thinking about it a lot, for some reason. And while I'm still going to maintain that no good comes out of this situation, if I try to understand what the people who say this mean, I think it would be something like this:

People can be so kind, and you really don't always get to see that in day-to-day life. But you do see it when something bad happens. Like with my parents bringing us gifts last week and saying, "Let us know what you need, we're here for you." My friends listening to me cry and calling and texting to check up on me. My work and my husband's school making allowances for us. The kindness of the doctors and nurses the day we had the D&C. The love and support from everyone in blog-land. And back with what happened to my brother, all the people who helped the best they knew how--his best friends who moved in with me so I wouldn't have to live those first few months alone (my brother and I had lived together). My husband who I'd just met making sure I got the help that I needed. The 17-year-old who lived with me over the next year (another story for another blog post) helping me heal in his kind and gentle way. Etc.

Bad things remind me of the good in the world. Is it worth what you have to lose to find this out? No. But it is a nice thing to know.

PS. My brother seems to be sneaking into a lot of my posts lately. The anniversary of his death is next week, and right now he's pretty constantly on my mind...

FAQ Fridays: Missed Miscarriage: What Happened?

Q: What is a missed miscarriage?

A: It's where the baby dies, but your body doesn't recognize that that's happened so it doesn't expel the baby like with a "normal" miscarriage. Apparently, it's very rare.

Q: What happened with your pregnancy?

A: I had a positive beta on February 17, which rose nicely on February 19. I had an ultrasound where they saw the heartbeat and the baby measured right on track at 6 weeks 5 days (March 7) and another at 8 weeks 6 days (March 22). Went back to my OB at 11 weeks 5 days (April 11) and they told us the baby had died right after the last ultrasound, so somewhere in the 9^th week.

Q: Did you have any clue something was wrong?

A:  At 11 weeks 1 day (April 6) I had a tiny bit of bright red bleeding. My RE asked that my hormone levels be checked, and they were very low. They upped the medication and told me everything was fine, not to worry, there would be a lot of bleeding and cramping if something was wrong. My local OB said the same thing and that I didn’t need to be looked at…they’d just see me in a few days at my appointment. So with all that reassurance and the fact that I still felt so pregnant (nausea, exhaustion, etc.), I didn’t really worry. Maybe I knew though and was just trying to stay positive and not scare people around me (my husband, our families). I really wouldn’t let the thought that something might be wrong into my head.

Then on April 11, right before my appointment, I had my blood drawn and got the levels back. Still low, which made me really scared. And then my OB tried to find a heartbeat and couldn’t, and then looked on the ultrasound and told us.

Q: What did you do?

A: Went home and cried. Scheduled a D&C for the next day. Called my RE’s office, and they didn’t really have any explanation for what went wrong; neither did my OB. “These things happen,” is essentially what we’ve been told. 

Q: How was the D&C?

A: Awful, of course, but everyone was really kind, and it didn’t hurt other than getting the IV in. I don’t really remember it to be honest. After, my husband sat with me while I was monitored for about an hour, and when we got up to leave he hugged me and said, “We’ll never be in this room again.” It was such a sweet thing to say to me.

Mild cramping that day and the next. Pretty severe cramping that came in waves 2 days post-procedure. Feeling pretty OK today so far.

Q: How have you been since?

A: Beyond sad. Heartbroken. This is a really horrible thing to have to go through.

Q: Have you gone back to work?

A: I work at home, and have done a few hours here and there, but not much this week. Haven't been able to concentrate. My husband took the week off school.

Q: Were there a lot of people you had to tell?

A: Our parents knew we were expecting and are so sad as well, of course. We’d also told a handful of friends about the pregnancy, and they have all been really caring and loving and supportive about the miscarriage. One person where I work and my husband’s professors at school knew…they have all been wonderful, as well. We’ve gotten a ton of love and support this week, for which I am grateful. I’m also glad we didn’t tell more people than we did about the pregnancy so there aren’t a ton of people we have to explain this to. We were going to start spreading the news next week…so heartbroken we don’t get to do that.

Q: Do you know what’s next?

A: We’ll do a regroup with our RE, try to get a better understanding of what happened. We have frozen embryos--a fact that I am so, so, so, so grateful for--and we will do an FET as soon as they’ll let us…looking like July at this point. Pray that things work next time around.

Ugh, what an awful, awful week. So glad it’s almost over.