Memorial Day and Other Nonsense Ramblings

For the first time since Jeff and I relocated we actually celebrated a holiday with our friends.   Normally we would either visit my parents or if he had to work, we stayed home and it wasn’t much different from any other day.  But this year we celebrated!  We spent an enjoyable afternoon visiting and eating and going from sitting outside to sitting inside while it rained then back to sitting outside.  I can’t really complain except that the homemade ice cream didn’t set up so that was a bust.

     One of the families that are our friends have an 18 month old daughter and are expecting their second anytime.  Their oldest, Adi, is just as cute as a button and it is always a joy to see her, but there is always a hint of sadness mixed in as probably many PAPs can understand.  She played in Baby G’s room today and I actually had to go in and straighten it up after they left, not that they left a mess, just restoring it to its normal state.  It felt nice to see that the room had been played in and enjoyed by a child, it made the room feel less empty and desolate.  I walked with Adi down our hallway, which is almost as long as a bowling lane and the quick little pad pad pad of her bare feet on the wood floor is a sound I hadn’t really realized had been missing.  Well, some days are harder and some are easier.  We are just waiting to hear something and that is okay, but if someone had said three years ago that we would still be waiting for our first Baby G, I would have thought they were crazy and told them so.  The Gobble Family has a poem posted on their blog called “Wait” and while I won’t post it here, if you are waiting as we are I highly recommend reading it.

     Sometimes, I think to myself, why is this taking so long and I am ready now, don’t delay!  But other times I find myself thinking am I ready?  Are we ready?  maybe it is okay that we have all this time and we should be taking more advantage of it.  While still at other times I think, what if we just stayed the two of us?

     I ran across an ad the other day on craigslist that was looking for women to donate their eggs and so I clicked on the link to see and it was going to pay $5000 for each harvest, and I thought WOW! that is even better than donating plasma!  LOL!  Only the max age was 30 years.  I am going to be 32 this September, I guess my eggs are too old!  I never really thought I was that old, but I guess it isn’t too far off, according to a nurse friend of mine you are a high risk pregnancy if you are 35 or older, hmmmm, that oughta make any momma to be feel good!  

     I am really just typing these thoughts as they come into my head with no rhyme or reason.

     My mom came to visit this weekend and we went shopping at some baby stores.  Didn’t buy anything for our Baby G, we actually bought a baby gift for my brother to give to his friend and wife.  They are the proud new parents of a bouncing baby boy.  It was fun to wander around and look.  Two of the stores we visited were boutiques, but the third was Baby’s R Us, which is an exciting thing here because they finally put one in with the Toys R Us.  It isn’t quite as impressive as the one up in Chesterfield Valley that I have been to, but it is way better than not having one at all!  Not to mention that now we can get stuff bought online shipped to the store.  Well, I guess I am going to quit rambling for now!  Happy Memorial Day, may we never forget why we are free!

Poison Invasion

The mother vine!  Jeff couldn't believe it had its own branches!

The "original" vine from the beginning of the world!

Another shot of the mother vine.

Well, I don't really have anything new to report on the adoption front, but I thought that it was time for an update on other things!  Our camping trip that I wrote of in my last post was literally a washout so nothing to tell there.  The most spectacular thing going on right now is our battle to stop the invasion of the killer poison ivy.  It has earned that name because I HATE it.  I had ran into a patch of it last year while I was picking gooseberries which grow wild and abundantly in the woods surrounding our house.  I was so immersed in picking that I don't even know where it was that I got it.  Now, that I know that we have some on our property I am a little more wary and try to keep my eye out for it.  Well, as it turns out it is nearing gooseberry time again and I have been keeping a close eye on some of my closer plants so I know when I should start picking them.  Being that they are in the woods and the woods have ticks (another evil of nature!) I decided that I would cut some paths near some of the plants that are on the edge of the woods so I could keep a close eye on them without having to spray with deep woods off everytime.  So I begin to mow and as I am mowing an area I look around and notice pretty green leaves of three.  At first I thought oh they are just some other kind of brush plant, but then I realized they were getting bigger and looked nothing like the plant I thought they were.  I ran in the house and got on the internet, to double check my suspicions and correct I was!  Not only was there a little poison ivy, but it was rapidly taking over, then I noticed a vine that I had never really looked at climbing a tree in our yard and realized it was the mother of all poison ivy.  Thankfully, I have not gotten the oils on my skin, but I did take some precautionary measures and ran in the house and washed any exposed skin off with my Bert's Bees Poison Ivy soap, I wasn't taking any chances!  We have since bought Roundup poison ivy killer and Jeff went on the offensive, killing (hopefully) the ivy we had found, unfortunately as we became further enmeshed in our offensive we found more and more!  If I had found the mother of all poison ivy vines, today we discovered the original poison ivy vine that God put here during creation!  Jeff didn't even think that it was poison ivy at first, stating, "it has no branches, I don't think it is poison ivy."  The problem was he didn't look high enough up the tree!  Normally I would just let nature be, but with a dog that runs in the woods indiscriminately and I being allergic to it, poison ivy MUST go!