Unrelated stuff I needed to post about

• Friends of ours need your prayers. I posted about them a while back. Their ordeal is not yet over, and their hope dwindled dramatically a couple days ago. Without going too much into detail, it involves an adoption and possibly losing the baby. They need a miracle at this point. PLEASE keep them in your prayers, that God's will may be done and that He may hold them close to Him if things do not go in their favor. My friend is so strong and so faithful, and I just hope that she continues to see God in all of this if the worse does happen. It just makes me so upset that someone would have to go through infertility, then have this happen. It just doesn't seem right, but my friend is convinced it is still part of God's plan for her, no matter what happens. She is an inspiration to me. Thank you for any prayers you can offer for them.




• We had our infertility support group meeting yesterday and it was great! Two women came (plus me and my friend L), and it was really a chance to minister to others going through this struggle of infertility. Speaking with them also reminded me how blessed I am that I discovered the PPVI. There are so many women out there who are treated by a local ob/gyn, RE, or fertility specialist and are not getting the care they need and deserve. Not that all these doctors are bad, but I've just heard so many stories (and experienced it myself as well) of doctors doing the wrong tests, looking for the wrong things, or not looking for anything at all. Some women give up all hope of conceiving, or move on to ARTs, when there are actually things left to try! Not to mention sometimes the underlying disease needs to be treated whether you want to have children or not. If only NaProTechnology could be more widely known. It will be one day, God willing!



• The Mets season is over. We are in mourning here.




• The Bills are 4-0! Woo hoo! (But to show how upset we are about the Mets, the Mets' loss is determining our mood more than the Bills' win)




• Right now my cat is laying on me like a baby. He has to have his arms around me whenever he is laying on me (and he is ALWAYS laying on me). Putting his head on me isn't enough, he has to hold me with his little cat arm just like a human would. This often annoys me, but then I remember how friggin cute it is! (Okay, sorry, that was not one of my pre-determined bullet points!)



• I lose another pound. I'm up to 31.6 lost, 3.4 more to go. It took me over three weeks to lose this pound, mind you.




• Tonight while praying at the abortion clinic, I met a really pretty young woman who was also praying the same shift. We got talking at the end and somehow I ended up telling her that I was infertile (I swear I don't try to do this! The questions always lead me there and I don't hide it). It turns out she was adopted and talked to me all about adoption and her awesome experience with it. I, of course, think the Holy Spirit was involved in us talking for sure. I needed to hear from an adopted child that she loves her parents as if they were biologically related.

• I finally won an ebay auction for an Infant of Prague statue. In the past month I've lost a few auctions, found out one I ordered online was out of stock, and have just had the hardest time finding a statue. Everything kept going wrong! After statues I was bidding on and watching started going for over $200 I got nervous I'd never find one, but I won one tonight for only $40. And it's just like the ones that went for much more, and in great shape as far as I can tell. He's beautiful. I can't wait to have my Infant of Prague here to pray in front of! Now when the novena refers to Him, I will have something to gaze upon. I'll have to post pictures once it arrives.

Again, thanks so much for your prayers for my friends. Have a great Monday!

Our two-daycation

Well I apologize ahead of time if this doesn't make sense. I've only slept a few hours today after getting home at 5 a.m., but I really can't complain because my wonderful husband drove the whole way and went to work at 10 a.m. and we had to take a huge detour after all lanes of a portion of 95 were closed for an accident overnight.

We had a great trip, although busy and a lot of it was spent traveling (i.e. the car to and from NY, the train to and from NY, the car all around NY). Yesterday was especially difficult because we happened to be driving around the vicinity of the U.N. right as all the leaders of the whole world were meeting inside. Not smart. We could have avoided the area, except for the fact that I desperately wanted to visit St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'm not even sure why, as I don't typically stop in there each time I'm in town. But I made it, and I said prayers for everyone (including all of you!) in a few specific spots - the Eucharistic Adoration chapel, at the shrine to St. Therese, and at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

My food experiences the past couple days were also awesome. The first day I had amazing whole wheat pasta at an Italian restaurant, and yesterday we had pizza on whole wheat crust that was very reminiscent of pizza we had in Italy last year. Delicious and G.I. friendly!!

And to top it all off, we actually saw the Mets win for once! It was an awesome game and we had a lot of fun.

Here are some photos to chronicle our trip:

Taking the train from Ryan's brother's house:

Let me explain this one. So ever since Ryan got his new iph.one, he likes to send mobile uploads of pictures of what we're doing to face.book. So since his i.phone doesn't have a flash, here I am actually shooting my camera simultaneously so that my flash would go off. Lo and behold, I thought the picture that my camera took while doing that came out kinda cute! And it makes it look like we have friends with us:

The restaurant where I had my yummy whole wheat pasta with organic vegetables, in the meat packing district:
We decided to go to the top of the Empire State Building because we'd never been at night:

Here's one of the few pics we have that isn't of one or both of us posing (sorry, I just noticed we tend to do that a lot!):


At Shea. The new stadium is in the background:

Our seats were the first row of the upper deck, which surprisingly, made me a little nervous. At one point I took my engagement and wedding rings off because I was scared I'd cheer and fling them to the seats below!

Another shot of the new stadium behind me:

A guy ran on the field and caused some excitment.Here, he is trying to get away from them for like the third time and they resort to dragging him:


Mets win!



Saying my good-byes to Shea. It's the last time I'll be there before it's torn down, unless they make the playoffs and there ends up being a game five in the first round. We have tickets to that game, if there is one:

Road trip

Well we're off tonight for a little two-day trip to NYC. It's kind of for our anniversary, which was earlier this month. And being big Mets fans, we wanted to get to Shea stadium before the end of the season, so we're going to the game Tuesday night. We usually go several times a season, but this was our first baseball season in VA so it was tough. It will be even tougher if they lose on Tuesday!

We leave tonight after my husband is done with work, which is around midnight. We'll be staying at his brother's house, which is outside of the city, but free of charge. We're really looking forward to this mini-trip because New York is one of our favorite places on the planet and it's been a while since we've spent any time there. I've been busy this afternoon looking for exciting restaurant options that offer whole wheat bread, pasta, etc. I'm not cheating on this trip, so I've got to be creative.

Have I mentioned that I've hit a plateau with my diet? I can't really complain because my plateau happened to fall right as I reached 30 lbs. and as I'm comfortably fitting into a size 6. So I am constantly reminding myself of this when I start to get upset, and how as recently as April I would have told you that you were nuts if you said I'd lose 30 lbs. by September. This summer my "goal" became to lose 35 lbs. by my next doctor's appointment on Oct. 6, so I probably won't be reaching that. But since I just randomly picked that number, I shouldn't be too upset.

Alright, time to pack and hopefully get a nap in as well. And I have to drop Sophie off at a friend's house where she will be having a little vacation of her own (both the friend and Sophie are very excited). Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures from the next two days to share when I get back!

Update: I am excited to announce that Sophie Belle has her very own blog! She will be updating it while we are away so we know what she is up to at her friend Matthew's house.

A great day

The last 24 hours have been a whirlwind of emotions for me.

To start things off, this time last night my husband was just getting home from work and we were starting to watch one of our guilty pleasures, Big Brother. Well, let's just say things didn't go the way I wanted them to during the episode and I actually cried. Yes, actual, real tears. I think I might have said something like, "Why can't things ever go my way?"

Not my proudest moment. But I share this with you just in case you might sometimes get the very wrong impression from my posts that I am more in touch with God than I actually am. I think this example speaks for itself on that issue.

That being said, I do blame some of my behavior on hormones. I have to, right? Who cries during Big Brother, other than when a house guest gets a call from home, or a letter from their kid? And even then, you'd have to be REALLY into the show and maybe PMSing. If it's not hormones, than I am truly a crazy person.

Anyways, we went to bed a while later and let's suffice it to say that it was one of those nights when, according to my chart, certain behavior was required. That pressure can sometimes lead to a fight, and in this case it did. A long one. I think I fell asleep sometime after four a.m.

About six hours later, I was awoken by my screaming husband. Like, at the top of his lungs screaming. If I remember correctly, I think he was saying, "He picked her! He picked Palin!" At first I thought he was going to say he picked Eric Can.tor. That's our local congressman, a friend of ours works for him, and Ry.an might have been able to follow him on the campaign trail if he was chosen. But when I heard "Palin" I was in utter shock. I heart Sarah Palin.

I think I was giddy all day long. I was just on cloud nine. I mean, she walked out to the theme from Rudy, people! Her 5-month-old baby boy with Downs Syndrome, who she is still breast feeding, was in the arms of her oldest daughter. I cried. I still get chills when I watch it on Youtube.

Okay, so today's political news put both of us in great moods, although both of us were extremely tired from our lack of sleep. While my husband had to go in to work for a couple hours, I got to nap. When I woke up, we headed off to do some shopping and to go out to dinner (the day just kept on getting better!). My plan was to go into J.Cr.ew just to see what size I am this week. No, I might not be able to eat fried food, but I go down sizes as quick as I use to put back a plate of chicken tenders. (Sorry. That's just me trying to convince myself. I want bad food REALLY bad right now.)

So I tried on a size that would have been a crazy dream size just a few months ago. Now it is officially my size. I tried on several pants and capris in that size, and all fit. To put this in context, you have to understand that I've spent years in denial about my true size. Trips to the fitting room would go something like this: Find clothes in size smaller than I really am, because I don't want to admit my real size. Hold up clothes and think "I'm not that big, am I?" Take clothes into the dressing room. Try clothes on and can't pull them up. Get upset. Leave store in bad mood. Curse all clothing stores, myself and skinny people.

Back to the shopping.. I then tried on a pair of capris in a size bigger than my current size because they didn't have my size, and they're big but comfy and on a major sale so I bought them ($18 isn't bad!). I then tried on a pair in the same style a size down from my current size and decided to buy those too. So I now own a pair of capris in a super-bizarro-beyond-crazy dream size. (A thought just came to me - this is one way infertility has truly blessed me. I would NEVER have lost nearly thirty pounds if it wasn't because of this. Well, maybe that was a little obvious, now that I think about it.)

So I left the store extremely excited and we went to a great restaurant and had a great meal. Then we came home and watched the Mets game we had DVR'ed. Um, amazing! With two outs in the ninth, they came back from behind with a grand slam and won. And the Phillies lost! First place by two games!!

Well, that's my day in a nutshell. And what a great one it was! When I was wallowing in self-pity early this morning and telling my husband he doesn't care about me, I didn't have high hopes for the day ahead. But life is full of surprises!