A new look!

Finally...Saturday!! :)

I decided on a whim Thursday that I was sick of my dry-looking hair and that it was time for my yearly "Fall look" color change!! So I called my hairdresser, who happens to be my cousin, and she said she would LOVE to do it!! She LOVES coloring my hair, because she knows I'm pretty open to anything and I'll let her try new things! lol I usually have my hair a dark auburn in Fall and Winter, then lighter with hi-lights for Spring and Summer. I was looking online at celebrities and I really like the way Sharon Osbourne always had her hair when it was that deep dark red.

...Well, this is the result! Not exactly what I was going for, as it's a little dark for me, but she reassured me that it will fade out in a couple washings and be more like what I was going for. ??? Hmmmm.... She did offer to redo it on Tuesday if I want, but the more I look in the mirror, the more I'm getting used to it. As much as I wash my hair, I'm sure she's right. So be honest...what do you guys think??? I can take criticism ok. Especially when I'm not ooohing and aagghhing it myself! lol Against my better judgement, I'm posting before & after pics!

Every year, the last weekend of September we have this little festival in our small town called Octoberfest. Well, it's this weekend. So last night we walked uptown for a while and let Liam play a few games, ate some bad-for-you fair food (although it was soooo good!) and ran into tons of people we know! You can't fart in this town without everyone knowing it!! lol Especially when over half the town is somehow related to you!!! Then Jay, Liam and I came home and we decided to have a "slumber party" downstairs in our living room. We blew up the air mattress, watched "Night at the Museum" and curled up together with the cats! ....Well that lasted til about 2 a.m. when I woke up in excrutiating pain!!!! Apparently our air mattress has a small hole and had DEFLATED!! Since I'm a side-sleeper, I was laying hip-to-hard-floor!! Ugh...yea....nice! So I moved up the couch and it was all downhill from there!!! First I started hearing this cat outside our window (we live on an alley and there are tons of strays around here), so it meowed all freakin' night...then the trains started coming through, laying on their whistles allllll the way through town, then this big truck pulled into the alley and was revin' up his engine right outside our window!!!! AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!

...So...I'm thinking we will NOT be doing the "slumber party in the living room" again anytime soon!!!!

On that note...

I am so blessed!!

Well the BIG DAY came and went. As it started out, I was beginning to think "if this is how 37 is gonna be, then I'm skipping it!" I woke up with a splitting migraine that seemed to last through the day up until about 4:00. Turning 37 was literally a PAIN IN THE NECK! But finally it went away and turned out to be probably my BEST birthday yet!!! My Mom went with us out to dinner at Olive Garden, which is by far one of my favorite places to eat!! They did the whole singing thing, brought the cake, I got embarassed, and all that jazz! Liam, with a little help from Jay, got me the new Season One 6-disc set of Br*thers & S*sters. That happens to be my favorite show! As you'll notice in the picture above, my wonderful, romantic, ever-so-sweet Jay, got me a beautiful white gold diamond ring!! NO, not "THE RING" (note to self: YET!), but gorgeous none-the-less!!! She sure knows how make a girl happy and she also learned early on that diamonds ARE a girl's best friend!! ;) I just love her so much!!! No, not because she got me diamonds, although that helps (lol), but because she is the most caring, giving, loving person I've ever known. She goes out of her way, day in and day out, to make Liam & I happy. I just hope she knows the joy and love that I feel for her and hopefully I do as much for her as she does for us. I truly am blessed. :)

Today is MY day!!

And not afraid to say that I am the big 3-7 today!!!!!

Great day on the boat!

Not much new going on here, but I wanted to share some cool pictures we took Sunday. Jay's parents have a real nice pontoon boat and decided to take us out for a few hours. The weather was perfect. About 70*, sunny, cool crisp day!! Fall is just around the corner. :) I'm so excited! It's definitely my favorite time of year...especially here in Ohio.

Yesterday wasn't such a great day in our world! Liam had to go to a pediatric dentist and have 5 crowns done!!! They said his teeth are perfectly aligned, but they sit very tight together, so that's what's causing the cavities. He doesn't eat much candy at all, doesn't drink pop, only averages one juice box a day (if that!) and consumes milk like it's going out of style!!! He was a trooper though! I expected last night to be a nightmare, and other than the codine had the REVERSE effect on him, it wasn't bad at all! I sure wish they told you all this kind of stuff in childbirth classes or while you're pregnant! Being a parent is the hardest job in the world!! I'm sure I was much more stressed out than him! I sat in the waiting room for 2 hours, worrying, anxiety, knot in the pit of my stomach and ended up getting a splitting headache!!!! I mean, that's my BABY!!!

On the TTC front, I've been tracking O this month and finally got a +OPK today (cd17)!!! WHAT?!?! I never ovulate this late!! So now I'm wondering what's going on. Stress?? Freak cycle? I'm having my progesterone checked Sunday on cd21. Then on cd1, I'll call my doctor and they'll call in Clomid for me!! Then we'll order up what we need and be on our way to baby toes!!!!!!! :)

Mixing things up a bit!!

For any of you that are like me, change is fun!! I'm one of these people that NEED change! I get bored very easily. So, to "shake things up" around the house, I conned Jay into helping me change our living room around this past weekend. We have a pretty good size room, but it's long, not so wide. From the day we moved into our house, exactly 19 months ago, we've always had our TV at the far end of the room. Well, I've had my furniture just about every way imaginable in this room!!! So I finally got smart and said, "hey, lets move the TV!" DUH!! So we moved it to the other end and now I can finally have my couch and love seat in the traditional L shape. OMG, we LOVE it!!! It's soooo much cozier now and the room just flows, if you know what I mean!! Last night I lit some candles, dimmed the lights and it made for a very romantic setting.

....This being said, it was, afterall, our 2nd anniversary of our first date!!!! Wow, looking back, we've come a long way in 2 short years. So many great memories and yet a whole lifetime to go!!! She surprised me last night by taking me to our absolute favorite mexican place for dinner! Liam stayed with his Nana, so it was nice having some quiet time for a little bit. He doesn't eat mexican anyway.

For those of you following our TTC journey, things are looking up and I think we may be back on the road to baby toes next month!!! I called today to see if our donor is still available, and he is, so I'm going to at least order tomorrow. I should be ov'ing in the next few days, so I'll chart this month and start on Clomid again when AF arrives in a couple weeks. So hopefully this time next month, I'll be in my LAST 2ww!!!!! :) PLEASE send lots of baby dust our way!! This has to be our lucky #7 cycle again (Liam was concieved on lucky #7!!)

Back to school

Well Liam started back to school last week! We got our first week under our belts and here it is, only the second week and he's home SICK!! Yep! Caught a cold Friday and was stuffy and runny nose all weekend, then got a fever last night and this morning! Great way to start off the school year. Oh well, what do ya do?? Here's a couple pics of my big 1st grader!! What a handsome boy he is! :) (Not that I'm prejudice or anything!!) I sure did miss him last week. It's actually nice having him home today. *Shh, don't tell the school I said that!! ;) It's been a bit of a rough start....for both of us! He's going through separation anxiety, and frankly, so am I! It's hard to take your "baby" to school and leave them crying for you!! Breaks my heart. I'm sure in time he'll be fine.

Other than school, not much new in our neck of the woods. I did put in my resume at several places last week, so hopefully someone will be impressed and call me this week!? As soon as I get a job, can save up some money, the sooner we can TTC again!!!! This is on my heart everyday. I try not to lose focus of what I already have and enjoying every day with Liam, but yea, it's a constant emptiness in my heart. Anyway, I wanted to share these pics of Liam. :)

Do I have to wake up??

Do you ever just have one of those dreams that are soooo good that you wake up, realize you were dreaming, and try your hardest to drift back off so you can dream the dream again?? Yea, that was me this morning? I had one of the BEST dreams I've had in a long, long time! And usually I don't remember much about my dreams, but this morning I remembered every detail!!

...The beginning of the dream was vague, but from where I remember, I being released from the hospital...with my brand new baby boy!!! :) Jay had come to pick me up and we were both freaking out because apparently he was born 6 weeks early and we were NOT prepared, to say the least! We hadn't gotten the crib, bedding, clothes, even a stroller or carseat!!! That's hilarious because when I DO get that BFP, I'm gonna start shopping ASAP!! lol At any rate, they let Jay and I leave the hospital without even checking to see if we had a carseat...so I held my new baby boy in my arms in the backseat and told Jay to take us to Sears! Funny thing that it was Sears because Jay has an interview there tonight for a p/t position!! lol (Maybe that's a sign of what's coming soon!) Anyway, Liam was with Jay's mom and so we called my mom and told her we were shopping at Sears trying to find everything we needed. Well, I couldn't find the right size diapers (hello...Sears doesn't carry them!!), nor could I find a carseat I liked...so I told Jay we needed to go to JC Penny! I guess Babies R Us didn't exist in my dream! So off to Penny's we went. We got there and I was walking through the store breastfeeding my baby! He was perfect...but so tiny! Well, they didn't have much of a variety there, and in the meantime my mom met us there. So I told Jay to find a catalog because they have some beautiful stuff in there. So she went and got one and we were sitting in the furniture dept, me breastfeeding, and looking through the catalog. Suddenly I spotted it...our baby's bedding set....it was ELVIS!!! lol My mom was in Heaven because she loves Elvis and thought it was an excellent idea!! NOT that this will ever happen in real life!!! ELVIS baby bedding??? I'm cracking myself up as I write this! Anyway, so we did end up going to Target and I found the most adorable carseat and stroller. We still hadn't picked out a name because he was so early, so I don't even know what we named him. But as much as I thought I wanted a little girl, since I have Liam, I don't care anymore...I think Liam needs a brother!! It was a great dream, and up until the Elvis bedding, it was so real. I can still see his beautiful little face, peeking out of the blanket and I remember so clearly breastfeeding him.

I hope, I hope, I hope this dream is significant in some way for what our future holds.