Friday, November 30, 2012

Biggest Loser

I'm thinking of writing a book.  I'll call it, "How to Lose Weight Without Even Trying".  It will be a very short book, though.

But things are getting a little better.  I say that, feeling nauseous at this very moment, but I'm not as bad lately as the previous 7+ weeks have been.  It's almost tolerable. :-)  I stopped taking the anti-nausea medication over a week ago - it was creating more problems than it solved some days.  But really, I'm glad I'm starting to be a little less sick because that's the only reason I CAN go unmedicated.  I really, really hate this phase.  I don't know how my Mom did this FIVE times!!!

The plus side is the weight lose though.  Finally, FINALLY hit my post Brennan/pre-Asher weight, perhaps going a tad less.  I was on my way there before this pregnancy, but had plateaued shy of my goal.  So this is nice.  While it lasts, anyway.

Sweet

I was getting Hollyn and myself ready to go out the door this morning, when I couldn't hold it any longer - I had to run to the toilet to throw up.  Hollyn joined me and started fussing and trying to push me out of the way, I assume for a better look or a turn of her own or something.  :-)  She shoved me for a minute, then stopped.  Then I suddenly felt her hand tenderly land on my back and she began to rub it gently.  It was so sweet!

So I lifted my head to thank her, and she jumped on my lap to have her own turn at the bowl. Hahahaha.  Parenthood is nothing if not interesting.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Chuggin' Right Along

I know, no pictures for a while.  The camera needs new batteries.  What a drag.  Also, just not in picture-taking mode these days.

Life got better after that one bad week.  We did have ANOTHER truck issue, and even more repair bills.  Ugh.  In some ways, life is harder than it's ever been for us, but we seem to be handling it better than we've handled similar trials in the past.  The Lord has and continues to bless us in so many ways, we just keep pressing on.  And despite the many stresses hanging over our heads, our days are happy.  And the good news is that things can hardly get worse, so we have pretty much nowhere to go but up. :-)

I made it to the gym this morning, after about 7 weeks off.  It's really hard to plan on that the night before, because nights are when I feel my worst.  And waking/getting up has never felt good either, so it's hard to know if I'm suffering morning sickness, or just general unhappiness-to-be-woken-up sickness when that alarm goes off.  But I made it today.  *Go Me!*

We had a great Thanksgiving.  The usual good food and good company.  We stayed in town and went to Mom and Dad's.  We'll be sticking around for Christmas too.  I feel bad that we spend so little of our holidays with Brian's family.  They have fun traditions, and we always miss them when we're not there.  And I feel guilty about the lopsidedness of whose side we spend holidays with. (Self-imposed guilt.  Brian's family would NEVER even imply...)  But such is the case when you live next to one spouses family and rather far from the other one's, I suppose.

Not much else to say, I guess.  The kids are all going great.  Hollyn is getting so grown up, it breaks my heart, but what'cha gonna do?  She's starting to add a lot of words to her vocabulary, although if I try to get her to say some for you, she won't. :-)  Brennan's doing well in school and is a great help to me.  7 year olds can do SO much, for which I am very grateful.  He's totally obsessed with the computer game Minecraft though.  I need to start putting limits on his play.  It's sad for me, to have to do that.  Why can't he stay little and obsessed with legos and toys?  Asher is enjoying preschool and makes his teachers laugh all the time.  He's still really into drawing, although he's started spending a lot of time playing in his room these days.  And when he plays in his room, he literally bounces off the walls playing some elaborate fight-scene.  From downstairs we can hear him, "Bump!  Thud! Crash!..." from the bed to the wall, to the door.  Making all sorts of battle sound effects. Really, really loudly.  I suspect this is where the bruises on his legs are coming from.  It's pretty funny to hear though.  What a crazy kid.

Anyway, that's the Stevensons... :-)

Friday, November 9, 2012

What a week!

Man do I hope this week and all it's surprises is finally over!

Staring Halloween Wednesday, everything seemed to go wrong.  I had a health crisis that day.  It was horrible.  Started the night before which left me awake all night.  Brian took a personal day (what a great boss he has!) to take me to the Dr.'s, then watched the kids all day while I rested, barfed, and tried to recuperate.  I'm so thankful for Brian!

The following 2 days we had different housing inspections.  Blah.  You can imagine how much housecleaning I was able to get done.  And this was after a month of morning-sickness - meaning very little had been done in the way of, well, anything, for weeks.  So our house was a disaster.  Yay.  How great of me to be on my deathbed during the day I was supposed to be cleaning.

Still, we survived, and following the Friday inspection I headed out to Portland for Time Out for Women.  SOOOO fun.  I was hesitant to go, but darn-it, I really wanted to!  I slept on a rollaway in the hotel which was a mistake.  Not really noteworthy, but just one more annoyance in the week.

I got home, picked up the kids from the Stake Center and Mom's house since Brian had been doing Stake Conference stuff ALL Saturday, and got home to learn that Brennan had thrown up the night before.  Brian had done some cleaning, but I still had to finish up and remake the bed, while feeling very nauseous myself.

Sunday was busy, as I had a job at Stake Conference myself, plus Brian had his.  Otherwise a fine day though.  The calm before the storm.

The next several days nothing worked to keep me from feeling horrible and throwing up everything.  I even have expensive prescription anti-nausea medication, and it didn't help at all.  Hollyn threw up too on Tuesday night, so I'm thinking I probably had a stomach bug on top of morning sickness.  Fun stuff.  But it gets better.

Wednesday night I hurried home after a late appointment wanting to make something for dinner other than cereal.  (Yes, the poor kids have been basically living on cereal lately.)  I prepared some muffins first.  But apparently there was a mess in the oven, and apparently messes like that can catch on fire.  So that was fun.  I had trouble getting the fire extinguisher to work, as the fire raged on.  Finally got it taken care of though.  We couldn't do a lot of clean-up until the oven cooled down, so the kids had cereal for dinner afterall.  Lol.

Later that evening, Hollyn was messy and we were out of diapers, so Brian ran to the store.  He was sick with a head-cold, but ended up with the better end of the deal, because right after he left Hollyn threw up all. over. the. floor.  It was awful, especially since I was already nauseas myself, and the fumes from the fire experience weren't helping.  Neither did the vomit smell added to it. 

I tried to clean up that mess, but she threw up again.  I rushed her into the bath, asked Brennan to get out of bed to watch her (he was still awake and happy to do something besides lay in bed), cleaned up the vomit, and finally got the muffins to the neighbor's house to cook.  So that was a fun night.

We hoped the worse was over, but the next morning, yesterday, Brian had truck-problems on his way to work, which meant the truck in the shop, repair bills, and rides at inconvenient times.

But, today seemed to be fine.  I think the storm has passed.  We survived 4 different illnesses coinciding, a fire, an unhappy election result, car repairs, and a very messy house.  Please tell me this week is over!




Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Happy Halloween!

 Yes, I know Halloween was SO last week.  In fact, the kids' candy was gone within about 24 hours, thanks to them preferring to dig in after one round of trunk-or-treating instead of filling their bags as much as possible.  But who was I to point out the long-term consequences of their immediate greed. :-)  Anyway, I was pretty sick the last week, so it took me a while to get to this.

*Note, neighbor friend Wyatt, who practically lives here these days because his family doesn't have Minecraft and we do, weaseled his way into all the pictures of the kids.  Love you, Wyatt. :-)

Couple of Ninjas

Bumblebee Transformer, again.  I love that he was content to do that... And a ninja

Little Puppy-dog.

 Brian didn't dress-up this year.  But Mom did.  We call this costume...












There's a Bun in the Oven.


The Bun