Mother's Day & Infertility

Well, I've survived another Mother's Day. This past Mother's Day was the 5th one I've had to go through since we have been trying to get pregnant. To my surprise, I actually told Brent that I wanted to celebrate Mother's Day as a day to celebrate my being a "mother" to my dogs, Charlie, Bauer & Layla. He gave me the above card, which I thought was cute. Brent had to change some of the words to say "we". As silly as it sounds, I feel like my dogs are my kids. They eat, sleep and poop just like kids and they need affection and love.

This past Mother's Day wasn't too difficult to get through. First of all, I ditched in going to my own ward and went to my sister's and brother's Single Adult Valentine Ward in the West Stake. Going to the Single's Ward is the best place for any infertile person to go to. They did not ask all the women 18 and over, even if their not a mother, to stand up to receive a gift. It's absolutely annoying to stand up or be part of Mother's Day in a family ward. The speakers in Sacrament Meeting simply talked of their own mother's. It's probably where I'll be going to for Mother's Day from now on.

I spent the morning and early afternoon with my mom and my family. Toward the evening I spent time with my in-laws and had dinner there. We had an enjoyable time and I really try to focus on celebrating my mother and mother-in-law on Mother's Day.

***************************************

Well, speaking of Mother's Day, I recently found out that a previous friend of mine recently got pregnant. She was not just any friend, she was a friend that got married the same time as we did in May 2003, started trying to get pregnant same time as we did in May 2005, and has gone through fertility treatment the same time that we were with the same fertility doctor. She recently posted a message on her Facebook that she was pregnant with twins. I had never been so happy for anyone in my life to get pregnant (usually I feel the opposite). I felt like she was giving me hope...real hope. Like me, she had tried fertility treatments like Clomid and IUI and failed. They took a break and tried the IUI with a much stronger fertility treatment and now she's pregnant with twins. I AM SO HAPPY FOR HER! I especially feel optimistic because her chances of pregnancy were actually lower than ours (how much lower can you get below 1%...I don't know). Her husband had a very very low sperm count and they were able to get pregnant. Not to get too personal, but Brent doesn't have that problem. I hadn't spoken to her in person in a few years, but I felt prompted to call her and congratulate her in person. She felt appreciative and wished us luck with our hopeful pregnancy. I am more happy for those girls who have really struggled with infertility (not the girls that only struggle for a year or two...that's nothing) and get pregnant. They actually have to "pay" for a baby before it's even conceived where others don't. I'm just happy that she doesn't have to struggle with this void anymore. And I'm happy at the fact that she doesn't have to attend gatherings where she's the only one whose either not pregnant or doesn't have a child.

In our case, we don't feel like it's our time right now to try again. What I mean by trying is that we don't want to pay for expensive fertility treatments and crazy mood swings. I have put the thought of trying to get pregnant for 4 years ahead of anything else that I wanted to do. I put my education on hold and now I feel like I need to get my priorities right and get my education done. We will try again with fertility treatments in a year or so, but right now is just not the right time.

Easter Sunday

So, I decided to host Easter dinner this year since my in-laws went out of town to visit their grandkids. I kind of felt obligated to host as a matter of fact. I've done it before, but at that time the weather was more permissible and I had Brent's help. Brent had to work all day on Easter and so I had to prepare and cook dinner all by myself. I knew I could do it, but I wanted to have the type of direction from Brent as to how to time all the food.

My family (Dad, stepmother Wanda, mom, stepfather Jason, my sister Linda and brother Adam and his girlfriend Amy) came over to watch the second session of General Conference as I prepared Easter dinner.

Here's the tables I decorated. Since there is absolutely no room in the kitchen and weather was horrible outside I decided to just have people eat in the living room which was just barely enough room.


Here's the food that I made myself (except for the Caesar salad which my brother made and the dinner rolls from Cosco). There's a honey-glazed ham from Costco which was nice and juicy and not overcooked, greenbean caserrole, red skinned mashed potatoes, etc.

This is my pride out of all that I made. This is a homemade (from scratch) double chocolate pudding pie. The cinnamon graham cracker crust is homemade and the whipped cream topping is homemade as well.

I got this recipe off the Food Network website after I watched it done on TV. Some people say its too rich, but I think its absolutely perfect. This is a hard pie to make. You have to make sure you have the right consistency or else will be ruined. The night before I attempted this recipe and completely failed. I spent 2 hours in the kitchen and as I was pouring the mixture into the homemade graham cracker crust it completely became watery. I was too tired to get upset that I just left the mess in the kitchen and tried it again in the morning

I obviously got too excited to take a picture that I had already taken a slice to eat.

Valentine's Day

So, on Valentine's Day I had to spend most of the day all by myself and had to teach my Relief Society lesson, which were not part of my ideal way of spending Valentine's Day. I have other thoughts of having an ideal Valentine's, but I don't Brent would ever get the clue because he never does.

Saturday afternoon I spent the day baking (when I should have been studying). I love Valentine's Day because it involves 2 of my favorite things...the color red (which most of you already know know that I love) and roses (which were part of my wedding). I love the colors and all the candies and baked goods that are part of this "holiday".

Like I was saying, I spent the day baking. I made from scratch these red velvet sandwich cookies. I got the recipe off of the Food Network website. I love red velvet cake and I just felt prompted to make these. I spent 3 hours in the kitchen making these and Brent said that his co-workers devoured them in less than 30 minutes. I enjoyed making them, but it just took so long.

Here's the recipe (I highly recommend that you try these):

RED VELVET WHOOPIE PIES

For the cookies:

1 ounce semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 ounce mild chocolate, chopped
12 tablesppons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablesppon red food coloring
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
3 tablesppons unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups of powdered suger, sifted
1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and seeds scraped (or what I used is 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract because vanilla bean is expensive)

DIRECTIONS:

To make the cookies:

Preheat the oven at 375 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment/wax paper or foil.

Whisk the melted butter, sour cream, eggs, vinegar, vanilla and food coloring in a bowl until combined. (Make sure that the butter has cooled before you add the eggs. If you add the eggs to the melted butter while the butter is still warm or hot it will cook the eggs and you don't want scrambled eggs in your mix).

In another bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt until combined.

Combine the semisweet and milk chocolate in a microwave safe bowl in microwave at 50 percent power until melted, about 2 minutes. (Or what I did is used a "double boiler", which is putting a glass or aluminum bowl over boiling water from a pot on the stove. Do NOT allow the water to touch the bottom of the bowl or else it will clump up your chocolate).

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in equal batches, whisking each batch completely before adding the next. Stir in the melted chocolate.

Scoop heaping tablesppons of batter onto the prepared baking sheets and smooth the tops with a damp finger. Bake cookies until the cookies spring back when lightly pressed in the center, 8-10 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes and transfer from baking sheet to kitchen rag.

For the filling:

Beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer until smooth. Beat in the powdered sugar and vanilla. Sandwich tablespoons of filling between 2 cookies. Repeat with remaining cookies. Refrigerae for 30 minutes before serving.

(I had to make some changes to the frosting. Because I didn't have enough powered sugar, I just added in left over melted chocolate into the frosting which flavored and sweetened it).

I like to make my food look pretty so I dusted some unsweetened chocolate powder on top.



I also made homemade chocolate covered strawberries. Brent knows that I love them, but I just don't like wasting my money on something that I could do at home for a lot cheaper and I could get a lot more for my money. I made 2 batches. One was a milk chocolate covered strawberry (which is the picture below) with white chocolate drizzled on top. These were for Brent. I made myself a semisweet batch. We had a total of 18 chocolate covered strawberries for the cost of what we would have paid for maybe 6 at a specialty shop.

These were so good and easy to make. Happy Valentine's Day to me.

Another dessert that I made was that I made some heart shaped cookies out of the red velvet mixture and added white chocolate drizzle on top. These were good too.

And here is the dinner I made for myself. This is my all time favorite recipe. It's Mormon style parmesan chicken with red skinned mashed potatoes and crescents. It was so good. Brent had his own dinner.

New Year's Eve Party!

So I thought it would be a lot of fun if Brent and I had a New Year's Eve party. (The party idea was really my idea). We just wanted to celebrate going into the new year and forgetting about 2009. Last year (being 2009) was a horrible year for the both of us. We had many challenges, much more than we ever thought could happen. Without going into detail, we just really wanted to celebrate the new year with hopes that it will be better than 2009.

We invited our friends to a "Rock Band/Guitar Hero" party at our house. My brother was kind enough to bring over his game and have everyone participate in playing. We had soo much fun.

Below from right to left is: Matt Bird, my brother Adam with his girlfriend Amy, Lauren Baker and Melissa Bird.


Here's Brent rocking out on the microphone with Spencer Baker and Matt Bird.

Here's the girls band with Melissa Bird (which was her first time ever playing Rock Band), myself and Amy. I believe we were playing "This Ones for the Girls" by Martina McBride.

Here's the girls, Lauren Baker, Melissa Bird and myself.

AND...the most important feature...THE FOOD! We had jalapeno poppers, taquitos, lil' smokies, my mother-in-law's very addicting Chex mix, vegetable tray, and candies that where rock star/band inspired like Hershey Kisses for the band KISS, Starburst, Airheads, Pop Rocks and so on.

We had so much fun and cannot wait until we throw another party. The time went by so fast that we didn't realize that midnight was coming up until 15 before the new year. For those who missed it, you missed out on a great time AND thank you for all who came.

Ho Ho Ho!

Looks like Santa (Bauer) is done with Christmas. I thought this was too cute to pass up.

This year Brent and I weren't really in the Christmas spirit. We just had a lot going on and didn't have the time and didn't want to put in the effort of making our house look "Christmasy". I was given this fabulous Christmas tree by my friend, Melissa Campbell, at church. I told her that we didn't have a tree and gave this to us after she used it for a Sharing Time presentation. Obviously, we also did not put much effort into the tree itself as we decorated it with Christmas cards given to us, but I thought it was cute.

So I know this picture looks a little creepy, especially with my dogs eyes glowing, but every year we take a family picture with our dogs. It's become a sort of tradition now. This was taken on Christmas Eve at my in-law's house. We had a good time and had Melynda's awesome "Cutts McNuggets".

On Christmas Eve, we also went to my in-law's for Christmas lunch and had my brother, Adam, and his girlfriend, Amy, come over with other Cutts/Bethel families. We had a good time. It was nice to be at a family gathering and not have the bickering that usually occurs on my side of the family. My brother is the only sibling still living in the states. My other two sisters live in Utah and Arizona so spending time with the only sibling I have close by was really important to me.

After stuffing ourselves with Christmas lunch, we went as a family to the movies and saw "Sherlock Holmes".

Overall, this Christmas holiday was really nice and I really enjoyed the time I had with family.

4th of July

Here I am at home with my "kids", Charlie, Bauer & Layla. They are decked out in their homemade hankies that have the Army, Marine's and Navy patterns on them. THANK YOU to the service men and women who protect our country.

I spent my 4th of July with my family in Madera. Unfortunately Brent had to work that day (but that's okay because he got paid time and a half). I had a great time playing "Rock Band" with my sister Christina, who now lives in Orem, Utah. I just have to say that game is addicting.

"One Year Older and Wiser Too?"

You know how the Primary birthday song says, "One year older and wiser too", I'm not too sure about that.

So, as some of you may know, I had my 27th birthday on June 23. It's hard to believe that I'm that age. I seriously feel like I'm more at the age of 23 than 27. For the past couple of years I have been telling family members and friends that I have not been wanting to celebrate or acknowledge my birthday at all. I honestly see it as just another day, no different than any other day. I've gotten over the whole cake and celebration part of it, but I do have to thank all those who did put an extra effort to make me feel special.

First, to my husband. I told him over and over again that I did not want anything. I told him that he could just get me a card and that's it. Considering the fact that we don't have money to "waste" on things that I don't need, I didn't see why I would ask for something we couldn't afford. But, to my surprise when I came home from work a vase of flowers were sitting on the table in our living room. I didn't expect it at all. For the first couple years of our marriage he would get me AT LEAST a dozen red roses (red is my favorite color) for my birthday and our anniversary. But I would have to say that this was my favorite gift so far. The fact that he went out of his way knowing that I didn't want anything and still wanted to make me feel special on my day. Although it's only 3 roses in that vase, it means more to me than all those dozen roses I've gotten before.

Secondly, my new visiting teachers came by and brought me some cupcakes. They were so good and to think of it now, I believe the frosting was buttercream frosting and it was chocolate cupcakes. My favorite.

Third, my lovely 2nd counselor, Melissa Campbell, was kind enough to surprise me during Primary with an Oreo cake and little gift. Somehow she and the Primary kids were able to keep a secret from me during the entire time. Usually I can pick up on things going on behind my back, but wow, good job Melissa. All month I have been avoiding being song the birthday song in Primary and they finally caught me.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE MADE ME FEEL SPECIAL,

ESPECIALLY DURING THESE DIFFICULT TIMES.