Christmas Photo overload.

So here is a blog post, with pictures from our christmas festivities. (We opened gifts with Mykayla and Myranda on December 22nd, they left on the 23rd. We opened gifts at Tim's parents on Christmas Eve. We had our christmas morning at our apartment. We then opened gifts at my mothers this afternoon.)

With the girls

With my nieces Myranda and Mykayla, and Madison who wouldn't let me put her down



The four M's. (Myranda and Madison, Mykayla and Mackenzie)


Christmas Eve

Michelle and Mackenzie opening gifts


David and Sandy



Mackenzie's big gift from Oma and Opa



Christmas Morning at our Apartment. (It was messy!!!)

Mackenzie got lots of toys..here are some..

her doctor set


her new scooter


some of her tools


her pretend "homestyle kitchen"



Madison got lots of toys too, but was only interested in two!

not sure what it's called




her popcorn popper


and their stocking stuffers were diamond cross necklaces from Kays. Go santa!



Opening gifts at my mothers

Mackenzie and her uncle Trevor


Mackenzie and April. (April's facial expression cracks me up!)


Madison and Uncle Trenton. (My grandmother MADE his hat, lol)


She wanted those gifts!

A post before Christmas

So I figured I'd update before the chaos of Christmas sets in.

My brother Trenton along with his wife April and their daughters Mykayla and Myranda are coming in on Saturday. I can't wait, the girls will only be here til Monday though, because their mother is a psychotic bitch and won't let them spend Christmas with their dad, whore.
Anyway, so this weekend we will be pretty busy getting to see them while they are here. Trenton and April will be staying til some time after Christmas, which is good. Tim is excited, he wants to go play pool with them. Mackenzie is thrilled because they are bringing their puppy Tinkerbell, and she wants to play with her.


All of our christmas shopping is done, except for my gift for Trevor, which I still need to pick up. Since our family is so large, and buying a gift for everyone would prove fairly expensive, we pull names. I have pulled Trevor's, and Tim has pulled Sarah's, who is Trevor's girlfriend. Although we only pulled Sarah and Trevor, we still bought gifts for my mother, and Tim's family and of course our girls and each other.
But all the gift buying has been done, now I just have to wait for the items I ordered to come in the mail so I can wrap them. I am overly thrilled with the gift that I picked out for Tim's sister, Michelle. Since she might read this I won't put what it is, but it's perfect and I can't wait to see her face on Christmas!!! You will love it Michelle, I promise!!

The girls are doing great, my little pain's in the rear. Madison is officially weaned, no more breastfeeding, bye bye titties! I weaned her the week of her birthday, and she took to the bottle fine. Except now she won't drink a bottle of milk unless her dad is giving it to her, so the recommended 14-16 ounces of milk she is suppose to get a day, she only gets 6 ounces. It really sucks, so whenever Tim is home he gives her a bottle. She is officially sleeping through the night,and it's awesome. The girls now wake up around...10 in the morning, it's heaven!

Tim's work is in the middle of it's slow season, it's awful but thank god we are still making bills. This is the one time when we use a credit card for bills, and then we pay it off once he starts making money again. It's the only way we can survive the slow season without me working. I don't really like it, I hate credit cards. Hopefully this economy starts improving and people start buying and building homes again. (Tim does new construction plumbing, so if new homes aren't being built, he doesn't have any work.)

So I am back on the active donor list again. The recipient couple who picked me out aren't able to go through with the procedure right now so they have to put me back on the list. Hopefully things will pick back up again, because I was really excited about donating.

Anyway, that's my update. In case I don't post again before Christmas, Merry Christmas to everyone, stay warm!


I told Tim he looked like he was about to rob the liquor store!



They're so hood'


but he's a softy



She looked so warm!



Madison's new thing, pressing her face against the glass and making faces at daddy

My baby girl is ONE!

Okay, so I haven't wrote in a bit, so here is my update.

I will start off with updating about the birthday girl, Miss Madison. Her birthday was on Sunday, and I can't believe she is already one, isn't that insane!? I can't believe how fast the time really does go.






She is such a funny child too, for the first two months of her life, she cried..constantly. Turns out she had acid reflux, so we got her on medicine. She improved, and up until recently was a pretty quiet kid for the most part. Now she is gibbering, and talking and her favorite thing to say is uh-oh, which started last week. She walks around, drops things and says uh-oh. Tim noticed it first, it was funny.
She is sleeping better too, last week she slept through the night about 4 times, it was great! I feel so much better after being able to sleep a whole night. She is getting better at running now...she is always on the move which leads me to the next point.
Yesterday we had her 12 month check-up, and while she is an inch taller, she hasn't gained a single ounce. That had me worried at first, until the doctor pointed out that she is more active now than she was at 9 months. Good point, she is constantly running.

Guess who can say the ABC's perfectly, Mackenzie can! (okay so V sounds like B, but whatever) She also can count perfectly to 10, and sometimes all the way to 18 if her daddy helps her.
For the past week or two she had been sleeping in our room with Tim and I. She got in a bad habit of getting out of her bed and waking up Madison, so after a couple nights of laying down in our room we have moved her back into her room. Last night was the first night and she laid down and didn't get up, not once. It doesn't matter that she only did this because I told her she could eat birthday cake for breakfast if she stayed in her bed, does it? Well who cares, because it worked! haha, and for those wondering..yes I let her have cake for breakfast this morning.
On Saturday she made Christmas cookies with her Oma and Michelle, and she loved it. Shoot I loved it, I got a tin of cookies at home to munch on now. Speaking of Christmas, she can't wait until her Uncle Trenton and Aunt April come to visit, so she can see their new puppy Tinkerbell. She keeps telling us "Trenton is bringing me a puppy to play with." Trenton and April...ya'll better bring that dog, she will be crushed!

It's so fun to be able to finally start traditions of our own for Christmas. We decorated stockings and put up our Christmas tree, and can't wait to buy presents for the girls. Mackenzie is kinda freaked out by a man coming into her house while she is sleeping, and leaving gifts. She told me "No mommy, he can't come in here, make sure you lock the doors so he stays out." haha. I asked her how would she get gifts then? She told me "he can leave them on the porch, but no come inside"

Well, I want to chop my hair off short again. I asked Tim if he wants me to just trim it or go short again. He told me he doesn't care but if I go short, wait til it's long enough that I can donate to locks of love again. I love that, I love that he knows that it meant something to me, and he wants me to do it again. So I will probably wait a few more months, and around march or so cut my hair for locks of love.
Speaking of March, that will probably be when I donate my eggs. My recipient wanted to start the next step around January..and to get our cycle's aligned I will have to take a month of birth control, so if we started around the middle of January, I will probably be donating at the end of February to beginning of March.

Do you know how proud I am of my husband? Do you? I am stinking proud. He finally has his 4,000 hours that he needed to take his tradesman test and submitted them yesterday. They told him that it normally takes a month or two to get his test date, and they will let him know. He is excited, while nervous at the same time. This test will increase his paychecks by $400-$500 a week, which will be amazing. He will finally be a licensed plumber, not just an apprentice, and will be able to work on his own truck. He is so excited, and everyone should be proud of him and tell him how proud you are. He has worked long and hard to get to where he is!

Life is good.

I was picked!!!!

So today I got a phone call from Jennifer at the fertility clinic. She asked me how I was doing, I told her great and she goes "good, because we need to talk"

She proceeded to tell me that I was picked from the couple that was interested in me on Friday. She said that they picked me and if I was still interested that she wanted to start the process at the beginning of the year.

Wow, was that quick or what?! They say it normally takes months to get picked..I on the other hand was less than 3 weeks. Wow.

Anyway, I was picked and am one step closer to becoming an egg donor!!!

Egg Donation as of 11/21/08

So I had my consultation on Tuesday and it went great. Basically it was a lot of paperwork, which I'm positive there will still be loads more of.

There were tons of questions, and basically them explaining the process. After I practically signed my life away, ha, I was given instructions that my next step was to go have a drug screening and blood work.

So yesterday when Tim got off work we went and did that. It went well, besides the fact that I couldn't fill their urine specimen cup, I just didn't need to go. I made them stay after close by about 10 minutes, so they could wait for me to...finish the job?

Anyway this morning around 9am I got a call from Jennifer, my nurse, that I was now an active donor, and all I had to do was wait for a recipient couple to pick me. Sweet. Then at 5pm I got another call from her telling me that they needed the rest of my information, because I had a few couples interested in me.

Damn was I a cute kid or what?! So I sent her the rest of my information, family history, and she told me that they will be in contact with me on Monday for the next step.

I just looked at a paper that is in my folder and at the bottom it reads...

"Thank you for helping a couple achieve their dream of having a family." That pretty much sums it up.

Just another update

So I have been putting off writing a blog, just because I have posted more than usual lately. I don't want to go blog crazy or anything. So here is everything I wanted to post about..in one blog.


Mackenzie gave us quite a scare the other night. As you may of read in my bulletin, she got out of her bed and was sleeping under it. Tim and I couldn't find her until I saw her two toes sticking out, so we were pretty scared for a bit. Well last night she did it again, but this time I knew where to check first. I don't quite know how she gets there...she is a VERY light sleeper and I just can't imagine her getting out of her bed and crawling under there, or sleep walking. To get under her bed she would have to belly crawl, cause of how low it is. It's odd. Recently she has been coming into our room around 1-2am and climbing in bed with Tim. She likes to sleep with her daddy and of course he loves it too. I have re-assembled the pack n play and it's in our room. I don't like her sleeping in the bed with us, but if she wants to be in our room she has to sleep in it. So this past week she has come in 2-3 times.
She is officially in a big girl seat, like booster car seat. I know of a few people with kids around Mackenzie's age that already use them. This made me nervous with Mackenzie just because on some of the boxes they say "Do Not Use Under Age 3". So being the researcher I am, I decided to try and find the Texas car seat booster law. Damn them to hell, the only thing that they have are weight/height limits. That's stupid. You can have a freakishly tall 14 month old who can qualify, or like us, you can have a really small 3 year old. Well she isn't 3 yet but you get my point. Anyway, Mackenzie couldn't keep doing the front facing car seats, she would get out. She is on this kick lately "Well big girls do this....Big girls don't do this .." and it is working great. So since being in her "big girl car seat" she hasn't been escaping. I also have a new favorite thing that Mackenzie says...bubble bath. Except in Mackenzie lingo it comes out.."bubble baf" too cute.


Madison is 11 months today. Oh my gosh...1 month til she is a year. (I'm a genius I know..I can do math) It has flown by, my baby girl is a toddler. She is such a hoot, and a big Momma's girl.
She is content sitting in my lap all day and especially if we go to a friends house. She is the quiet one of the family, but we expected that. When I was pregnant with her, she barely moved..was real calm. Mackenzie on the other hand was real active and well....she still is. Madison is content sitting in my lap and just observing the world. She barely makes a noise, unless something is wrong. She doesn't really talk much for her age, she mainly grunts. No words, just ma,da,ba. that's it. We're not concerned...she'll talk later.
This past week she has been sleeping pretty good. I think the girls finally have a schedule together, my goodness it only took a year. They go to bed between 8:30 and 9:30..and sleep til 7 am. Of course if you know my girls this doesn't mean it's straight through..they wake up a couple times a night.
We don't have anything planned for her birthday, money is a bit tight right now..and we really don't feel like throwing a party anyway. We will probably do a little family bbq and just have fun with our family.


Tim is still with Victory and is 100 hours away from his 4,000 hours. This means he will be able to get his test date for his license by December 1st. He is VERY excited, but also very nervous. The test he has to take is insanely hard and very complex. The book that he has to remember for this test is around....600 pages. It's not only residential plumbing but commercial as well. So some of the stuff he hasn't even encountered yet. His boss told him that since the economy is so bad, that Tim will get a test date immediately after he turns in his paperwork..normally they would wait a couple months. So he isn't quite ready to turn in his paperwork, we will probably wait until January just so he has more time to study.
He had been doing tubs with Santos, but since his company has been letting people go, they moved Santos off of tubs and onto Punch and put Tim on set-outs with Fred. Tim gets along well with Fred so this is good, plus Tim is doing more than just installing tubs, now he is installing sinks, water heaters, toilets and tubs in finished homes, custom homes. In fact today he is doing a house that has eight...EIGHT bathrooms. Ladies could you imagine cleaning 8 bathrooms?! His days are longer now..they work til about 6-7.


So as you read in the blog I posted a few days ago, I'm trying to become an egg donor. Well yesterday they called me and I have my consultation date set up for November 18th at 2:00pm. I am to bring in photos of me between the ages of birth to age 15. So I am trying to find lots of cute ones. I am so stinking excited about this whole thing. I did receive one hate message about this though. I was asked "How can you just give your egg to some random person you don't even know, that's like abandoning your kid". This certain person pissed off my husband very much. As Tim said "it's not ABANDONING her child, it's giving someone else a very important thing, a very special thing that they couldn't have else wise. It's giving them a child you dumbass." Sometimes I love him, haha.
Speaking of babies...Ashley is having a boy. Tim and I are THRILLED and can't wait for this little guy to make his appearance. YAY GO BLUE!!

Charlie boy is in surgery today. Tim and I dropped him off at 7:30 this morning in Austin. He is to be picked up this afternoon between 3-6pm. He also has to do the same thing tomorrow also. I hope everything goes okay, we're really nervous.

Motherhood...it's amazing

So...how do I start this off...let's see.

I love life. I love my children. I love that when I look at my girls..I see their father, and I see myself. I love that we brought two perfectly beautiful children into this world.

I have many friends who have been affected with infertility and miscarriages, and that breaks my heart. Tim and I never had to try to get pregnant...we never had to wait countless months to finally get that positive pregnancy test. We make jokes that I'm so fertile that if there is the slightest chance that I could end up pregnant, that it will happen. It's a bittersweet feeling..because while I have conceived quite easily..there are countless women in the world..who will never know what that feels like.

I have always been interested in surrogacy, or becoming a donor. I have always wanted to help bring life into this world..I want to help make a family. Now that I have a family of my own, this desire has become so much stronger. I would willingly carry a friends child if they couldn't do it, I would do it in a heartbeat without a second thought.

I looked into surrogacy but at this point I don't think I could handle being pregnant and chasing two toddlers. Plus I feel like my body needs a well deserved rest. So about a month ago I started looking seriously into becoming an egg donor. I checked out a couple websites and found a really nice fertility clinic in Austin and submitted an application.

I have been in contact back an forth with this place..and I'm at the point of filling out a donor survey. I just feel incredible and really hope that this works. Thank God that I have an amazing husband who supports me in this, and an amazing family who is standing behind me.

I just wanted to write and let my friends and family know that we are seriously considering this. Keep us in your prayers."

My ten month old newborn

Why is it, that everyone else's infants sleep so well and mine doesn't sleep at all?!!?
Did we just get insanely lucky with Mackenzie and we stupidly expected the same with Madison?
Mackenzie slept through the night at two months old, and loved to sleep..that child STILL loves to sleep. All we would have to do was put her in her crib, wide awake and she would just lay down. No rocking, no needing to nurse, no bottle..no screaming. If she wasn't quite tired yet, she would play for a few minutes and then lay down. When she would wake up she could play in her crib for up to an hour quietly before we even knew she was up! At 2 years old she still takes two naps a day, and sleeps a full 12+ hours at night. She was a perfect sleeper, perfect.
Then we had Madison. This child doesn't know what sleep is and doesn't want anything to do with it.
Some of you may remember our problems with her in the beginning, the fact that she only wanted to sleep on my chest while NURSING and refused her bed..well that was the case until she was like....6 months old or so? Well we slowly got her to sleep in her bed in the room with Mackenzie. We also slowly broke her from needing to nurse into a deep sleep before being in her bed. We can now lay her down and she will go straight to sleep. The problems arise in the middle of the night.
If we lay her down before 9pm, she wakes up around midnight and cries hysterically and can't be soothed. Regardless of what time she goes to bed at night, she will still wake up at 7:30-8am. She still wakes up every two hours (exactly) to nurse...just like a newborn.
Yes I know she doesn't need to nurse and we can let her cry it out and she will get use to it after a couple nights..or so i've been told. If that's the case then someone please explain to me why my husband has slept at my mothers every night, for the past two weeks while we tried this out, unsuccessfully. (he slept over there because despite what anyone says, he DOES need his sleep to be able to work the next day, he does manual labor) I have tried this out every night for the past two weeks and it doesn't get easier as the nights pass, she still cries at the top of her lungs until she vomits or wakes her sister, and this can last for hours.
Last night for example, she went to bed around 8:45pm, and around 11:30 woke up to nurse, I nursed her, put her back in her bed at 11:45pm and she cried until 1:45am when Tim and I went in the room to get the girls because they were crying hysterically. Madison woke up Mackenzie who was scared and started crying as well. I don't see this getting any easier..and I honestly am at my wits end. I am emotionally and physically drained.

I have had more than a handful of people tell me she has me "trained" and I need to "train her"...is she a child or a damn dog? Seriously?! Train her?! They say she has me 'trained' because she cries and I go to her...uh..I think that's called being a parent and not seeing the need to let them cry their effing lungs out just because it inconveniences me. I will go to my child when they cry..even if they are okay, because they are crying for me, they want/need me..and as a parent it is my responsibility and privledge to go comfort them.
I guess I'm just looking for support..and someone to tell me there IS a light at the end of the tunnel.

walking...talking..and bubbles

Madison is walking!!!! Not like a speed walker or anything but she can take more than a handful of steps before falling down. It's awesome. She started trying to take steps this past weekend (Sep 27th and 28th) and can now walk about 5-7 steps before falling. She has also cut her second top tooth, so she now has four teeth!
Madison has also started to wake up between 3-5 in the morning for a couple hours, it's not so fun. I know they say that happens sometimes when they are cutting teeth or learning new things..I wish it'd stop. I barely get any sleep as it is, I feel like I still have a newborn...without those long naps in the middle of the day.
She is such a hoot, and so much fun, I love this little girl to pieces. It makes me miss when Mackenzie was this age, where you could just lay her on the floor and blow raspberries on her stomach and she couldn't do anything about it but give you a deep belly laugh. If you tried that with Mackenzie now she'd start scream/laughing and yell "No mommy stop!"
My little duck



Speaking of the little monster also known as Mackenzie, that girl is getting sooo big. Sometimes she just amazes her daddy and I with the things she says and does. Her vocabulary is getting much easier to understand which sometimes isn't a good thing, especially becuase it's expanding. The other day we were sitting on the couch with my grandma and Mackenzie dopped a toy and said "oh damn". We all just died laughing as my Grandma tried to ask my mother what she had just said. She is starting to become a little parrot and we are having to watch the words we say around her.
She is also showing us that she will probably be the expensive daughter. She loves shoes, purses and clothes. But she is also incredibly smart and if you read a book ONE time to her, she can read it to her sister..well some of it, the Mackenzie version. She can also count to 7..sometimes skipping four, but hey she normally gets it right! She has really good balance as well, so we have been thinking about putting her in dance, gymnastics or possibly horseback riding since she shows such a strong interest in horses.
She is just getting so big and its a bunch of fun to watch her become this little girl instead of a toddler.


About Tim and I.

Tim just purchesed his Uniform Plumbing Code Study Guide and Book for $200 some odd bucks. This study guide is a must for every apprentice, journeyman, contractor and inspector. It contains questions and answers on every chapter of the UPC, plus nine practice exams, including plumbing layout drawings. He is so excited about it because in January he will have enough hours to take his test to move up from being an apprentice to a tradesman, which means he gets his own truck and he starts making the big bucks. I am seriously so proud of him it's not even funny. He will have to study his ass off to be ready..last night he studied for 3 hours before bed, which is a big thing, because he's never studied in his life!
Now about me...I don't even know why I update about me, nothing is ever different for me same old thing every time. ha. I am cruising craigslist today looking for a simple part time job, maybe doing receptionist work since I enjoy working on computers and I can work a telephone. ;) But that's all that's really new. Oh and I sold the majority of my infant furniture this past weekend at a yard sale. I made 56 bucks, yay.
Oh and to those of you that saw my bulletin about my blonde moment..apparently it's a very common thing and I'm not alone! I had so many people write me and tell me they had done the same thing, some of them multiple times! I was also asked to take a picture...well I did, but only after cleaning up the kitchen and getting rid of alot of the bubbles...so here is a picture with a couple left over. There is about two inches in the bottom of the dishwasher in this picture. This was taken on the last time I ran the dishwasher...yes I had to run it MULTIPLE times.