The Reed's Gettin' Down for Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A friend and fellow blogger had done this on her blog and I couldn't resist!

AAAAHHHH, So Much Better!

Wow, what a good night's rest can do. My neck is feeling 80% better. I'm still trying to be ginger with it, but a far cry from yesterday! Grandma came out of surgery well. The Dr. said it was a really bad break. It took them a couple of hours to set in a rod and pins. She is in much more pain, especially when they get her up to walk. I couldn't believe it either that they would get her up to walk with no cast, nothing. I'm sure she uses a walker, but wow, walk on a broken leg. She is really down about the whole thing especially when there are no visitors. I hate to say it, but I dread calling her cause I know she will a)talk for an hour or two, b)she'll again ask about the boys and what preschool they are in, to which I will reply that we are homeschooling, to which she will reply with disgust. With that said, I know I should call her, but I am waiting for the time and courage to do so. I did send flowers and an email to her though. I couldn't believe it. You can send emails to patients now. The hospital prints them out onto cards or something and gives them to the patient, how cool! Best part is, the service was free!!! Well, I am going to get more cleaning done.

Cleaning with a Crick in my Neck

I absolutely hate it when I wake up with a sore elbow or knee. Even more so when I wake up with a crick in my neck. Since Ryan is working 1st shift till Christmas I am able to get a lot more housework done, but boy is it tough with a sore neck. Even worse is when I forget that it is sore and I turn it just a little too far and get a stabbing pain shooting down my spine! OWWWWW! I can't wait to go to bed and wake up to a better feeling neck. That usually does the trick for me. I am getting a lot done though. A little bit in each room. The boys have clean beds, I have a clean bed, almost all the laundry is DONE, almost all the dishes are DONE, most of the toys are picked (still a few stragglers), and I have a my decorations up. Left on the list is the bathroom, vacuuming, picking up all the stuff & putting away all that laundry. I can't wait to start the weekend off with a clean home! Gabe and Brandi if you are reading this, we'd love to have you over anytime!!! Let me know when you have a meal open :)

Urgent Prayer!

My grandmother (Grandma Cheyney) who lives in Washington, IA, fell yesterday in the McDonald's parking lot around 8pm. She was transported in ambulance to the local hospital. They discovered that she had broken her leg bone near the hip and it was a bad break. She was in a tremendous amount of pain! They then transported her further to Iowa City, IA's Mercy Hospital where she was doped up on morphine till this mornings surgery. She should be out of surgery now, but I haven't heard yet how it went. She is nearly 85 and was, till yesterday working fulltime at the local walmart. The family has erged her to retire, but she wouldn't. I think this will force her to. She will probably spend some time in Iowa City recovering and then be transported to a nursing home in her area that has a rehabilitation wing. Ryan is off till the 12th of January and my mom wants to go up to see her mom. We are looking into the possibility of taking her up there and staying a few days. Please pray for my grandmother's quick healing. It is very difficult for bones to mend at her age and condition. Also pray that she would have peace with the situation as she will not be home for Christmas.

Still Hope

Since yesterdays news from my dr., it got me thinking of a lot of questions. What if my progesterone is low, but I am still pregnant? What if my progesterone levels were tested too early? And so many more. So I got to googling. Coem to find out there are many women who have gotten the near same results and wound up pregnant, much to the astonishment of their dr.s. So we still have hope that maybe, just maybe we might have conceived and the dates are just a little off. I guess we will see. I have already had early pregnancy signs, but not sure if it;s all just mental. I will be keeping a relaxed eye on everything and try to be patient and see what next week brings. I will be able to test then. It's all in God and only he knows truly what my body is doing or not doing for that matter :)

Seeing God's will revealed for now

Well I got some rather disappointing news that was rather hard to take today. In fact the news was so disappointing that my doctor called me to give me the news. My progesterone levels are horribly low, near non-existent. Which mean, I more than likely didn't ovulate, which means I am more than likely not pregnant. This was the second and final round of clomid that I decided to take. This last round gave me dizziness, headaches and moderate depression for about 3-4 days. Dr. McCollum seemed stunned and amazed that the medicine didn't at least get my progesterone up. The next step would be infertility doctors, but I am ruling that out for now. It must not be in God's will for us to have children via biological right now. And as far as adoption, we are very open to it, but don't have the time, money or energy to go through such an exhausting trial as adoption is. It's too bad it takes so much to adopt a child. It is all very hard to swallow and I will admit that it is difficult to rejoice in the will of God right now. I write this in tears because my heart so longs to carry a child and hold a newborn again. I see this as an opportunity to enjoy what we have and get a lot of things sorted, organized, worked out and dealt with. It also a time to rejoice that we were given two great boys! We are so thankful that we let go and let God immediately after we got married for if not, we may not have had these children. God is so good. Please pray for me, that my heart would be softened and I would turn to God and rejoice right now.

Oh the woes of a housewife/mom...

I am finding out this year more than ever how hard it is to clean, decorate & organize with two young ones running about messing up my work. Whew. I love to have pretty candy out in candy dishes, but can't leave it unattended for fear I will find my boys with candy rings around their mouth and an empty dish beside them. I'm disappointed how hard it is to find spiced gum drops in holiday colors and whopper snowballs. These were always the candies of choice when I was growing up. I am happily surprised that there has been no peeking of the gifts or early unwrapping! I'm still behind getting my outside decorations up. I will eventually. Christmas Eve counts right!

The last several years my mom has had a shadow box coffee table that she puts a snow village in in the winter (sometimes the village stays up well into summer :) I'm going somewhere with this. My dad found an identical table at their neighbors garage sale several years back and put it aside. I finally have room for it, so I'm the fortunate owner of such a lovely table. I then found a set of snow village houses at goodwill for a cheap price. I now get to pass on the tradition of the snow village. To me it's basically an adult version of a doll house. I loved playing with dollhouses when I was little.

We also did out Christmas tree shopping last weekend which went something like this: 1st stop, Home Depot, who only carried Frazier Furs. Next stop a well needed dinner after missing lunch. Now that we were all happy again we went on to search for our tree. A couple of lots also only had Fraziers :( . Alas, Lowe's across town had some Douglas Furs. By now it was 8 pm and the boys fell asleep. So...I ran in and practically got the first one I saw (in the dark) that was tall enough and snatched it up. Once home I realized the bottom is rather bare and it's not as fresh as I would have liked. But, oh well, it adds character and I'm not going to be like my mom who actually bought a tree, got it home, put it in the stand and decided it wasn't quite right. She loaded that thing back onto the car and RETURNED it to the store! I try as much as possible to not be a perfectionist, but it's hard when I married a perfectionist.

In other news: I've been feeling particularly yucky this week. I sure hope this clomid stuff works cause this is the last time I'm using it. He upped it and boy did I notice. I had about 2-3 days of depression like no other while I was taking it. Thankfully that was went away once I took the five days worth. I'll test again next week to see if it helped me to do the "O" word, but I won't find out if I'm preggers or not till hopefully the 23rd. I'm seriously thinking of surprising Ryan Christmas morning if I find out it is positive! Thankfully he doesn't follow my blog religiously so I think I can slip this one by him :) On the other hand, I'm finally keeping up with everything on the calendar so he is more in tuned to where I'm at, which means he'll probably be asking questions. Well enough rambling got to get some stuff done.

What do ya think?...

Does this color look good on me or does it wash me out? You like! I thought it is a little more in season.

A Wonderful Anniversary!

Five years ago tomorrow, which again falls on the SEC Championship, I married the love of my life. It has taken me five years to be able to admittably say that. We had a lot of struggles those first 5 years but it finally seems that we know enough about each other to get along. In all actuality we learned more about ourselves and our own sin than the other persons. In our first two months of marriage Ryan got laid off, I found out we were expecting, I got in a accident which totaled our good car, we were left with a car with no AC and 300,000 miles on it, and I got fir..I mean laid off :) . Whew! It was a rough ride and yet I am so thankful that the Lord put us through such trials. We never got that honeymoon period where everything was lollipops and roses. Nope we had all our cards laid out on the table from the beginning and boy did we have some ugly hands of cards. Our marriage has been tested in ways I never knew of before. With all that said, I am so excited that we have made it these five years. I look forward to the next five and whatever it brings (hopefully more little ones :) Happy 5th Anniversary Honey!


I don't often like pictures of myself, but this one is wonderful of Ryan and I :)


Proof--Our Invite


Okay, to explain the weird hand thing, I went to go hold Ryan's hand and he missed my hand and barely held the tippy top of my fingers and the picture was shot :|


This is from our honeymoon to the arctic zone in Destin, FL. Seriously we should have brought some Fur Parkas and the sand mights as well been snow.


This is the summer after we got engaged and Ryan said "hey, you wanna got to the beach tomorrow", and I said "WHAT!?", and he said "ya, my aunt and uncle live in NC and the coast is only a couple of hours from there, we'll go for the day and come back the next day". That was the longest trip for an hour of fun on the beach.

My Beloved Grinch

This is so funny I had to share. I constantly tease Ryan about being a grinch at christmas time. He doesn't go for all the tree, lights, presents, and holly jolly like I do. It took two years to talk him into getting a tree. His heart is growing towards it though :) . This is where the funny comes in. I had gone to the store one morning and tuned into some holiday tunes on the radio since Ryan was not with me. When Ryan started the van to go to work the Grinch song came right on on cue. And no I didn't call the radio station and synchronize it, though I do go to great lengths at times to tease him.