Friday, June 29, 2012

Making that money

So I will have a more up to date, and detailed blog about this later....but I am begging you all for ideas and suggestions.

I need to make some money.

We got the offical from Jason's urologist last week......it is a for sure thing that we will have to go with IVF-ICIS to have a baby until he can lose the weight to have the surgery.

So, besides getting a job, which is in my near future (know of anyone hiring?).....I am making denim skirts (upcycled from jeans/pants)  and hairbows that I will be putting on Etsy.com soon.
After that....I am looking to do a dessert drive/bake sale....and maybe a garage sale or two....but other than that, I HAVE NO CLUE how to raise the money I need to have this procedure.

Anyone have suggestions? Fundraisers are soooooo much easier to execute when it is for a church event....personal monatary needs are everywhere, everyone needs money.....how do I get the money I need when I need it. ha ha....isn't that the ultimate question??

So if you have ANY suggestions on fundraisers, please please please either comment here, or email me at layla.weaver@yahoo.com.

Thank you in advance!!!

UPDATE (July 6,2012)
Several people have asked about an online donation for our IVF, and so I set up an account with gofundme..... http://www.gofundme.com/ty3qs
this is pure donations, and sorry it is not tax exempt!

There is also a link on my side bar......

Angels Embrace.

The last few days before Ainsley left I made sure to get many many cuddles. Sadly, I spent most of these cuddle times sniffiling and crying. My heart hurt so much for this little girl.

 Nikolas and Victoria spent the night that last night as well. So Ainsley got to play with them. And Nikolas L.O.V.E.S. Ainsley. She would walk into the room and he would bum rush her. He didn't know his own strength and would pretty much almost knock her over. She loves him too.

 I was getting her changed from play clothes to nicer clothes so we could go out to eat. And she said to me "Layla I love you SOOOOOOOOO much" then she would hug my neck. She plastered her face against mine and said "Now take a picture". Ha. The first one was her being sad because I told her that she was not going to see me anymore after she told me she was going to California.... Then the next picture ws us laughing because she said she would hide in my closet and stay here.....then the last picture is her "sweet" smile....
 I asked Ainsley where she wanted to go for breakfast. And she specifically asked for Cracker Barrel. It was a mess of a brunch (we got there about noon). I had breakfast, she wanted a hamburger, but by the time we were done eating, she ate most of my bacon and a lot of my pancake. At that point, it was all I could do not to cry every second, so I would have given her just about anything she wanted!

After we ate we went and bought her whatever she wanted from Cracker Barrels shop. She ended up with a bubble gun, a sucker of Texas and a harmonica. Ha.
While we were waiting for Jason to finish picking up the check, we were standing by the Willow Tree figurines. She saw this one figurine of an ange holding a small child and she said, "Look Layla it is just like me and you"
and that was the exact moment....
my.heart.split.

We checked out, and left.
On the way down the road, I told Jason what Ainsley had said about the figurine, and without asking me, he turned the car around and went back to the restaurant. He then told me not to argue with him, and to go inside and buy the exact figurine.
I got inside and bought it.
I read the description of the figurine, and realized, it was perfect.

Angels Embrace : "Hold Close That Which We Hold Dear"

While waiting for Will (her future step dad) to pick her up to leave town, we did a few things. We went outside and played with her bubble gun, popped little pop-its (she loves them) and then we also played with sidewalk chalk.
In the picture on the right (to see the actual figures turn your head to the right slightly!), she told me she drew me and her, she pointed to the figure on the left and said "this is you because you have a big head and two feet" and then she pointed to the one on the right and said "this is me because I have a small head and I like to hold your hand"


After playing outside, we came in, and sat on the couch together, as we hung out she fell asleep on me. So I lifted her up, and held her. I spent the next hour and a half just like this...

This is the sweetest way for me to think about her. Our last picture.

Right about 4:00pm Will came and picked her up. I thought I was going to be all big and tough and hand her over and walk them out and small talk as if they would be over again tomorrow. But as soon as Will walked in, my heart sank, the tears rolled and I couldn't physically hand the sleeping angel over. I felt like someone was taking my own flesh and blood from me. I passed her sleeping body over to Jason, waved goodbye and ran to my room. At that point I cried harder than I think I ever had. I was heart broken.

Since June 1st, I have talked to Ainsley once on the phone. I don't cry as often (maybe once or twice a week.....tonight because I have to see her stinkin' face all over my blog) and I still miss her like crazy. It is funny the little things that remind me of her....and it is way more than just seeing her little face in pictures...

Today is day 28 that I haven't seen her...

sigh.

The one thing I have learned in this process is, I do not think I could ever be a foster parent. I fell so deeply in love with Ainsely, and she started out as a "craigslist job".....that I do not think I could go through that kind of heartbreak again.

We are trying to plan a family vacation out to California to visit her. Please pray for our finaces to be able to get this trip planned and executed!!! I need to see her soon! I might jump a plane and go out to see her before an actual vacation....missing her hurts so bad!!!

Ainsley's Going Away Party

A long time ago, I had a few minutes to kill and so I thought I would take Ainsley to Chuck E. Cheese, and while we were in a line longer than a black friday at walmart, the CEC employee said that people who were in line had about a 30 minute wait. I didn't have the time to wait and then let her play, so I had to tell her something. So I told them they were going to be closing. Ever since that day, everytime we passed CEC Ainsley would say "Oh no it is closed".
On another occassion she said she wanted to go on a date to Chuck E. Cheese. And every time a commercial for Chuck E. Cheese would come on she would tell me that she wanted to go on a date.
So the day before she was going to be leaving for California, we got a handful of people together from church and our personal lives and we all got together for a huge date at Chuck E. Cheese.

 We got Ainsley a "going away" cake. She even got treated like royalty at Chuck E. Cheese. When she got to pick a friend to go into the ticket blaster, she picked Derrick, the person who just a few weeks before this she kissed on the cheek and held hands with at church, ha ha, puppy love.
 She played all sorts of games, and had fun with all the guests.
 Here is Ainsley with Katrina, she was Ainsley's Sunday School teacher. The top picture is A.J. and the bottom picture is Derrick and Jordan. These kids were together in all their church classes. Ainsley was just like "one of the guys". ha ha.
 The Starling girls and Ainsley.....they love her just about as much as we do!
 from left to right : Jessica, Stephanie, Kristen, Brandon, Natashia, Tracy, Shayda, Porche, Brittany each one of these people have had a special connection with Ainsley. There were several other people there that night, but I didn't get pictures with everyone...
 Julie was a wreck at the end just like me...and DRay and Ainsley had a special bond...she is such a sweet sweet girl!
and here we are The Weavers LOVE LOVE LOVE Ainsley, as if she was one of ours.

Emma Jemma Update!

 04/07/2012 Two days after birth - It broke my heart to not be able to hold her, and to know how hard she was struggling to be alive, all those tubes and sensors, ugh.....it still brings tears to my eyes!

 04/19/2012 - Emma Jemma was lifted up in prayers so many times by so many people! Just 2 weeks after birth (would have been 31 and 1/2 weeks gestation) she was off of all the monitors most of the time. She had a few breathing issues, and had to stay on her feeding tube for a while, but everything else was gone gone gone.
 04/19/2012 - Our first picture together. yay!
05/14/2012  This is the day she got to come home! The day after Mother's Day! Such a sweet heart. I got to watch her this day so Julie could go get some rest. Alyssa and Ainsley were not able to go to hospital's NICU to see her, so this is the first time they got to mee Emma Jemma.


05/17/2012 - I got to babysit her while Julie went to Jasmines field day at school. Ainsley was with me, and loved helping take care of Emma Jemma.
 05/18/2012 - Sleep deprived Julie had us come over to snuggle Emma Jemma while she got some sleep, poor tired Momma!
 06/14/2012 - We came over to Julie's house to help her do a few computer things, and so I took advantage and snuggled my girlly squirrly!

06/25/2012 - LOOK AT THOSE CHEEKS! She is now almost 3 months old, but weighs only 8lbs 6oz. She technically was due on June 17th, so she is at the right weight for her "gestational age"....yay! Such a sweet little angel! I love her!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

A Fun Afternoon with the Girls.

On June 20th, I had the fun privilage to go and hang out with two of the sweetest young ladies I know, Katrina and Ellerie.
They invited me to get pedicures and then grab a bite to eat.
I didn't decline.
I was soooooooooooooooo overdue for a pedicure. I am telling you, I was pretty sure the pedicurist was going to decline my business because my feet. are. that. bad.
We went to a local salon, enjoied some pedi time. even though the following happened:
  • I was asked if I was Katrina's mom she is only about 10 years younger than me... (ugh, I guess I am not as young as I once felt, ha.)
  • The water initially was SUPER hot in the tub, but she may have been disinfecting my feet, I am telling you they were B.A.D.
  • I sliced my thumb wide open right before I left, and it hurt all afternoon. I was cutting onions.....ugh
  • I was seated a chair away from the girls because the sink was messed up, so I didn't get to be too chatty
  • I laughed out loud, even though I HATE to be tickled...I knew it was for a good purpose, and boy did my feet need the scrubbing.
  • I couldn't understand a word the lady was saying, and by the time she finished, I unknowingly agreed to $15 worth of services (each costing "only $5 more) - Reminded me of Anjelah Johnson's stand up comedy clip
  • The poor lady had to get the heavy duty tools out to clean up my feet.....
Let me tell you, with the mess my "dogs" were in, it is AMAZING what the lady did to my feet! I will definitly go back to them again!
 The before and after pics....I am telling you, it's like day and night! ha ha ha And a week later, they still don't look to bad!

Afterwards we went to Chik-fil-a for lunch then back home to the daily grind! I had a good time with my girls! YAY for an afternoon of relaxing fun!

Monday, June 25, 2012

Miscellany Monday Link Up - AKA Random Thoughts

So as random as this post is, it is all pretty much things I am dealing with, doing, working on, and probably unneccessarily stressing myself out with.
  • So I am pretty sure I am about to spend 1,983,894 hours uploading the 45,746,323,543,323.9 videos I have taken over the years, onto youtube. Why you ask? Well mostly because I might want to blog about something, but also there is my 87 year old grandmother who has just fell in love with an ipad she got for her birthday, and there are lots of videos she has never seen, and or would love to sit and watch. So I am basically trying to give her some guilty pleasures, ha.
  • Today I will be driving the older youth from our church down to Lufkin to the camp grounds to a week long "senior camp".
  • Tomorrow Jason has his follow up appointment to his urologist. Exciting? to you, probably not....for me, not sure there is much to follow up on, ha, Jason still needs to lose weight, and go through the steps, however I think this is to see how his medicine has been "correcting" his low Testosterone....
  • I still need to make an appointment with the IVF doctor....just for a consultation.
  • I am still believing God can provide several miracles.
  • I know several people who are in need of healings, mind, body, and spirit, please keep K,T,R,K,J,A,M,C in your prayers. They are very unspoken, very different needs, but all very urgent!
  • I volunteered (why do I do this to myself???) to teach the 4-5 year olds in our Olympic themed Vacation Bible School in three weeks.....if you have ever put together a vbs classroom, or have any pointers, I am VERY open to suggestions....
  • Again, I volunteered (still, why why why???ha) to help with the researching and fundraising for choir robes for church.....again, I will gladly take any suggestions for companies with great prices, great EASY and SUCCESSFUL fundraising....
  • Do you know that my awesomely wonderful sweet and loving husband has done 90% of the daily cooking at my house for the last two months. Now, don't get me wrong, I love cooking, (I just hate the clean up! ha) however we bought a grill a few months ago and ever since then, we have grilled just about everything, and by "we" I mean "HE" ....we have now decided that we LOVE his steaks a million times more than we love anything from a restaurant. As a matter of fact, I might just be a steak snob now. Just saying.
  • With the grill, we have purchased our weight in asparagus, as a matter of fact if we don't have any in the fridge (like right now) we feel like we don't have anything to make.....don't get me wrong, we have a pantry full of veggies, and a ton of frozen veggies, but that doesn't matter, we just don't have aspargus.
  • I am still working on be accountable for the list of topics I wrote on this post.
  • I started this post at midnight last night, and all of the thoughts were random to last night....here are a few for today.
  • IT IS HOT......UGH.....This is pretty much the time of the year I hate.....Texas Summers are horrible. I need a summer house at the North Pole.
  • I signed up for care.com and have already had someone email me because they are interested in my babysitting services...I am pretty desperate, I need a job. I have a baby fund to start saving for.
  • Speaking of baby fund, is it goofy to say, I am doing "Cans for Kids" and by that I mean I am going be requesting people to save their aluminum cans so I can cash them in for my baby fund.
  • Speaking again of baby fund, I am going to start an etsy account of the denim skirts I make (convert jeans into skirts) and hairbows and such, so I can use that money for baby fund also...
  • I have an awesome husband, he is sitting next to me, and it is all I can do not to snuggle up to him and melt into his arms.....ahhhhh thats my favorite places...
Okay, so thats all pretty random, and now that I have a few other things to blog about, I will close this post up....yay, I am sure you are finally excited for that! That is if you made it that long through my randomness.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Lapband and a gain. GAG

Lapband, my dear dear friend.
Ugh.
Maybe more of a love/hate relationship as of late.

On May 3rd, Jason and I had an appoinment to get fills. At this point, I was down to 271 lbs. To give you a frame of reference, my starting weight before lapband was 307lb. So for those who can't or don't want to do math in your head....means I was down 36lbs. Sounds good, right...but seeing as I am a year and a half out of my surgery date, it is pretty pitiful. Just sayin.
I weighed 271, and at this point had not had a fill in 10 months, which is lapband laziness (you are supposed to go at least every 4-6 weeks for a fill/upkeep.
I get into the room, and the Medical Assistant tried to give me a blind fill (she is doing it by the feel, and not under XRay) she couldn't catch my port, so after a little bit of digging, she took me down to do a barium swallow and XRay....
When I got under the XRay, they found out that my pouch (the new stomach that is formed once the lapband is placed around the smallest part of your stomach) had been stretched.
UGH.
I am the worst lapband patient EVER.
Basically it stretched because I do a HUGE lapband no no.... because my eating habits are not timed right, I typically am eating dinner close to bed time. And because the food can't not go through my stomach as fast as normal, the majority of the food I eat sit in the little pouch...and when I lay down before it is processed, the food just sits there most of the night, and does not get passed through until I sit up in the morning.
With this they took half of my fill out. This would allow my pouch to rest, and not have the restriction in my lapband that would require the use of the pouch. And then I can come back to get another fill and be back on my way to weight loss.

So I go home, hungry......lapband unfill makes you feel HUNGRY quicker, and worse than if you are filled.

I can eat ANYTHING.

it was AMAZING.
but HORRIBLE
all at the same time.

I had things I haven't been able to eat in a long long time.....a whole sandwich without picking off all the bread....Pizza with crust and everything.....I mean EVERYTHING. I had a food bucket list going, ha, see told you I am big. lol.

With all this new hunger, and ability to eat, I gained weight. ew.

Today I went to get my fill put back in. I unfortunately weighed 283lbs. In my ability to eat anything, I gained 12 lbs. YUCK!

The M.A. who was putting me in today, took me straight to the XRay with the nasty barium swallow...she checked my pouch and told me it looked good, she put in 3cc in my band, so I am back up to 7.3cc's in a 14cc band.

BUT.

As we were talking about my current health state, she was concerned.... I had told her that I have been battling indigestion this past month. I told her that since the unfill I had been able to feel all the acid and it has been so bad that I have been taking lots of Tums. She said that typically getting an unfill will reduce the acid reflux, and she is concerned that my unfill caused the acid. She now wants me to go back to the surgeon who preformed the surgery for a scope, they will check if my lapband is at the right place, and look for anything that might be wrong internally.

Now my thoughts are this..... I would think that the lapband would BLOCK acid reflux because by the time your food hits the stomach acids, there is not enough space in the band to allow the acid to go back up, thus causing less to no acid reflux. And when I got my unfill the space to allow the acid to go up, was bigger, and thats why I felt it so much....

but I am no doctor....

So I will try and be a good patent, and go do the scope and hope that everything is ok.

My next scheduled fill is on July 16th, and that is just in time for me to go out of town to a wedding....so I will only be able to nibble on some wedding cake! ha ha.

I will keep you posted if I have any great weight loss!

Friday, June 15, 2012

So, we have infertility issues, what does that mean for us?

As I stated in an earlier post... we are dealing with male infertility issue of bilateral varicoceles" and low testosterone.
There is a surgery to correct the varicoceles, however it will take time. The doctor predicted anywhere from 2-3 years. It will take some time for Jason to lose the required 100 pounds, and then once the surgery is done the doctor said that it could take anywhere from 6-9 months for Jason's body to correct itself.
So pessimistically if it does take 3 years, that puts me at almost 35, and Jason 41 almost 42. And that is before I have my FIRST kid, not to mention if I want to have more later on down the road. I am not liking these numbers. not at all. (not to mention, Aaron will be 18 and Alyssa 14.....eeek)

The doctor did tell us that most couples who are facing this kind of deadline want to go ahead and have medical intervention done for the first kid, to get the process going, and then once the problem was surgically corrected, conceiving naturally isn't an issue.

So what does "medical intervention" mean to us?

Sadly, he said our only option at this point would be In Vitro Fertilization. YUCK!

It is the super expensive fertility treatment.

and exactly the treatment he said would be best is ICIS.

According to about.com here is the info on ICIS IVF.

What is ICSI?

ICSI, which is pronounced ick-see, stands for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. ICSI may be used as part of an IVF treatment.
In normal IVF, many sperm are placed together with an egg, in hopes that one of the sperm will enter and fertilize the egg. With ICSI, the embryologist takes a single sperm and injects it directly into an egg.

Why is ICSI Done?

ICSI is typically used in cases of severe male infertility, including:
  • Very low sperm count (also known as oligospermia)
  • Abnormally shaped sperm (also known as teratozoospermia)
  • Poor sperm movement (also known as asthenozoospermia)
If a man does not have any sperm in his ejaculate, but he is producing sperm, they may be retrieved through testicular sperm extraction, or TESE. Sperm retrieved through TESE require the use of ICSI.
ICSI is also used in cases of retrograde ejaculation, if the sperm are retrieved from the man’s urine.
ICSI may also be done if regular IVF treatment cycles have not achieved fertilization.

What is the Procedure for ICSI?

ICSI is done as a part of IVF. Since ICSI is done in the lab, your IVF treatment won’t seem much different than an IVF treatment without ICSI.
As with regular IVF, you’ll take ovarian stimulating drugs, while your doctor will monitor your progress with blood tests and ultrasounds. Once you’ve grown enough good-sized follicles, you’ll have the egg retrieval, where eggs are removed from your ovaries with a specialized, ultrasound-guided needle.
Your partner will provide his sperm sample that same day (unless you’re using a sperm donor, or previously frozen sperm.)
Once the eggs are retrieved, an embryologist will place the eggs in a special culture, and using a microscope and tiny needle, a single sperm will be injected into an egg. This will be done for each egg retrieved.
If fertilization takes place, and the embryos are healthy, an embryo or two will be transferred to your uterus, via a catheter placed through the cervix, two to five days after the retrieval.

Okay, so with all that stated....we are now in the process of trying to figure out what we want to do. Jason says if I want to we can do the IVF, but we have to adjust our budget, and I will more than likely have to get a job so we can start saving. I was babysitting, and making roughly $800 a month, but now Ainsley is gone, and Veida has her kids being watched by Shayda, I am not bringing in the income I was....
So off to find a job I go. Anyone know of someone hiring for a at home job where I can sit and data entry from the house and get paid bazillions of dollars.....ha ha.
No for real, you know anyone hiring?

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Infertility, the male kind.

I didn't elaborate really when I mentioned Jason had the infertility issue, what the abnormalities were...so here is a quick recap for those of you going through something similar, and you want to compare numbers....

For his sample of a volume of 5.2ml:
Concentration: 6 Million (Normal 30-40 million)
Rapid Motility 12% Slow Motility 18% (Normal Rapid ≤ 30%)
Total Motility 30% (Normal Total ≤ 40%)
Viscosity Slight (Normal Viscosity Normal to Slight)
Round cells < 1 (Normal < 5/ml)
Normal Morphology 0%
Total Normal Progressive Sperm 0.00 Million

And the notes state:
Sperm had mostly amorphous and tapered heads.

So basically, the jest is ..... he has a very very low sperm count, out of those sperm, about 12% are actually moving normally, and out of those, less than 1% are shaped correctly.

So on May 29th we went to the Urologist.....
Jason hated it.
The male doctor did things to Jason that he would much rather forget! ha.
But with that said, we have a few answers to some questions that were building....

What is male infertility, and what does it mean to us?
Apparently we are facing "bilateral varicoceles" and low testosterone.
Basically like you and I can get varicose veins in our legs, he had developed the same kind of veins in his testes, and with that, it causes a pool of blood to sit there, heating the region and causing damage to the sperm as well as the amount of it. With this, as well as him being overweight, and working in a sitting position, as well as close to a laptop that produces heat, there is a ton of extra heat killing off and damaging the sperm...boo.
So the doctor said there is a way to fix it. Once Jason loses 100 pounds, he is able to get a surgery and have the veins corrected. And from there, after about 6-9 months there would be an increase of viable and properly shaped sperm.

It was assumed that because Jason had a kid before, that there was nothing wrong with him. In fact the doctor said that the varicose veins Jason has developed had been around since probably he was a teenager, and that he might have been super fertile 15 years ago, but this is a progressive issue and your fertility decreases over time...again boo.
The low testosterone is also complicating the amount of sperm, and with that the doctor put Jason on Clomid, to make his body feel like it has more estrogen, and thus causing his body to produce more testosterone and also to prevent major estrogen spike he is off setting it with an estrogen cutter of sorts, ha.....called Arimidex. Jason had a hard time at first taking these medicines especially because they are directed towards women..I took Clomid during my fertility treatments. He has since gotten over his issues and accepted it.
But what is basically happening, is that he is making his body feel like it needs to step it up in testosterone production....this is a safer way of doing this, because the only other real option was to put him on testosterone gel, and the side effects with that were a decrease in sperm production, which would be counterproductive in our baby having journey.
Jason will be having another appointment on June 26th to get another blood test, Semen Analysis and another visit to the doctor to see how this medicine regiment is working for the "boys"...yay!

Pinterest Crafting, so far.

 I have done a few recipes I have got off pinterest...but these two crafts were the only two I had done so far. And we all know that pinterest is the mecca of all crafts. If I had the money and time - ok well if I had the money, I would be doing crafts daily...however, I am not always that inspired.. sometimes it is easier to just pin it and procrastinate than it is to actually DO it.
So here are the two items I have done that I found on pinterest.....

1. I converted 4 matching picture frames into chalkboards. My aunt had given me 4 pictures, and the prints were of a house, and it had the four seasons represented on each print. They were lovely pictures, however, they did not match the theme/motif of my house. They got filed into the garage. Perusing through pinterest I noticed a lot of people were turning things into chalkboards....and ah ha, the idea was born.
I bought spray paint, and chalkboard paint from Michael's, then I separated the glass from the frame. I spray painted the frame, and as it was drying, I put 3 coats of chalkboard paint on each of the glasses. When everything was dry, I reassembled and tada, I had picture frames. YAY!
The picture above is a shot from my dining room wall. I am collected blue willow plates as well, and at this point I only owned these two. And the center chalkboard came from a antique store here in Grand Prairie, but sadly they just closed the place....I think I might have teared up because of it.

2. Bow holder. Well, Julie had a baby shower for baby Emma, and I knew that since Julie was a pinterest addict, she had seen and pinned a few "bow holders". I saw a few of bow holders at hobby lobby for about $20, but none of them were in the pink and zebra that Julie was decorating with....so....I looked on pinterest, gathered the supplies and went to town.
First I spray painted a picture frame I got from Hobby Lobby for $8 (it was 40% off with their coupon) then I hot glued pink and zebra/pink grosgrain ribbon onto the back.....and voila.....a bow holder. She was excited to see it at her shower, and I was glad to get her something she really really wanted.
Jason took these pictures, and he was sure I would be a bit embarrassed, but honestly, I could care less, lol....maybe I should though, ha ha.

This is right after I spray painted, and was about to attach the ribbon.

This is at Julie's shower, it is my niece Katelyn and my Mother in Law Sheila organizing all the gifts for Julie.
What it looks like with the bows on it - I made these bows for Miss Emma Jemma.

Hopefully soon I will be holding a "Pinterest Party" for some of my friends who have found it to be addicting as well....
You can follow me if you would like....
Follow Me on Pinterest

Daily Blocks.

So every day I visit this site...
Every day I hit "compose"....
Every day I have the intention of writing....
But as soon as I put my fingers to the keys, I get writers block.
Suddenly everything I wanted to write, disappears. Even the subject I wanted to write about....poof.

So to prevent this from happening, I am going to write down a list of things I have to catch you up on, or want to share with you....and as I write them, I will come back and link the subjects with their matching blogs...how is that for having some accountability! yay!

So there it is, a set of things I HAVE to write about.....I HAVE to because now you see it and you will expect it...and since you are a loyal reader, I have to not disappoint you, so here I am.....now having to do something to keep you happy! :-) ha ha.