Some inspiration that I just had to share

I've had a much needed emotional week and I'm coming out of the funk ready to celebrate Christmas and APPRECIATE how lucky I am to have my amazing husband and family.

I have to accept that as much as I want children and anticipate every day how beautiful life will be once that dream becomes a reality….my life is pretty darn beautiful right now. I've been making a conscious effort every day to fully appreciate it for what it is, another day that I am blessed with the opportunity to live and love.

When I'm in the in between mood, just on the verge of cheery, seeing some visual inspiration and understanding always makes me feel good. So I've decided to share the images and words that are helping me move forward today.

I'm sorry that there are so many, I was originally planning on doing a top 5 and then that quickly became a top 10 andddd then I decided to make it 12 (kind of a play on the 12 days of Christmas) but that didn't work out either. Anyway, here are 14 images of inspiration to enjoy. The last 2 are my absolute favorites. All of them were found on Pinterest (my quotes board can be found here).

I had a "moment"

Amid what was otherwise a very productive and warm fuzzy feeling inducing weekend I had one of those moments that come out of nowhere when you think that you've gotten to the point where your skin has thickened and you can confidently say that you're okay.

It happened at church on Sunday morning. We had just heard the adult choir sing some beautiful renditions of Christmas carols, everyone was in the holiday spirit and I was feeling very happy and safe from the sadness. The church that we attend  always does videos to introduce different sermon series and this week the sermon was going to be on the nativity. Once the video started I felt the moment coming and I wanted to be anywhere but in that seat in that church at that moment.

It started with a picture of Mary holding her assumably pregnant stomach. As it progressed with her finding out she was pregnant, etc. etc. I could just feel the emotional breakdown coming on. Then the screen switched to a picture of an ultrasound where there was a perfect baby swimming around and all was quiet except for the loud thump of that baby's perfect heartbeat. And the tears started. Luckily I've perfected the art of silent crying and the lights were down so that people could see the video. The tears just streamed down my face and I couldn't stop them. I felt completely overwhelmed. Josh had his arm around me and I think he noticed that my leg that was crossed started bouncing (my telltale sign that I'm trying with everything that I have to hold myself together) because he squeezed a little tighter.

In that moment when I heard that heartbeat on the video I was taken back to the first ultrasound that I'd ever experienced.....my ultrasound this past July. My doctor ordered it to check on the baby once I started bleeding. I went into that ultrasound feeling completely defeated but I had just a tiny speck of hope. Like it was yesterday I remember seeing that screen as I watched it that day....willing the technician to find a heartbeat. And not hearing a sound or seeing a flicker of movement, no matter how hard I concentrated. 

I didn't realize until Sunday how much that ultrasound traumatized me. I'm absolutely terrified that we'll always have disappointing ultrasounds, that we'll never be able to see a swimming baby or hear a strong heartbeat. Even thinking about it now makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.

I hadn't had a breakdown like that in awhile and it definitely reminded me that my skin isn't as tough as I thought it was. But I'm not giving up, I'm moving on with this process even though the fear is overwhelming so I've also been reminded that I'm stronger than I thought.

Movies to cry along with...

Some days I just want to cry. It's usually not all about one particular thing. I just build things up and every 2 weeks or so I'm due for a good, long emotional breakdown. Josh has come to affectionately call these episodes "getting my boo-hoo's out."

One thing that I've found helps these along is watching a movie that makes me cry. They'll usually start the floodgates and then I don't feel completely ridiculous about crying for no particular reason….since technically crying because Mandy Moore has leukemia is perfectly acceptable.

I figured that I'd share my favorite movies for those emotionally rainy days, hopefully some of you can relate and if you haven't seen one of these movies they are seriously fantastic and I highly suggest them.

1. A Walk to Remember. This movie became my go to crying movie in junior high actually (I've obviously been an emotional wreck for a very long time) and it's still one of my favorites. It's based off of a book by Nicholas Sparks (which is also fantastic by the way) and it's one of the last Nicholas Sparks books made to movies that I enjoyed. The most recent ones (looking at you Last Song starring Miley Cyrus) are just not the same. It's basically about a good girl preacher's daughter who falls in love with the town bad boy, changes his life forever and then *SPOILER* finds out she has cancer. The part that really gets me is after Shane West's character finds out. He's driving in a car and you can tell that he's a mixture between SO angry and absolutely devastated....and his lip starts quivering. Gets me every time.

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2. Time Traveler's Wife. Good golly this movie really makes me cry. It's also based off of a book and anything with Rachel McAdams is a winner in my eyes. This movie is about a man who involuntarily time travels throughout his life, meets his wife when she's a little girl and their story. There are miscarriage references in the movie but there's also a lot of hope so it's been the movie for my cry-fests lately.

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3. My Sister's Keeper. Another sad young person cancer-related movie. I don't know anyone who has managed to stay tear free through it. 

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4. An Affair to Remember. This is an older movie but it's the best. There's nothing child or really illness related in this movie, it's just a good old-fashioned chick flick. It's actually referenced in Sleepless in Seattle…it's the movie that the women in that movie are always quoting and crying over.

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5. Steel Magnolias. With an all star cast that includes Dolly Parton, Sally Fields and Julia Roberts this movie takes me across a whole spectrum of emotions. I laugh until I cry, I bawl and I roll my eyes. Love it with all of my heart!

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Please share some of your favorite movies with me, great ones for my bi-monthly emotional breakdowns or others :)

By the way...

P.S. I got positive OPKs late Friday night and all day Saturday so I'm assuming that I've effectively ovulated :) My temperature didn't shoot up like normal today so that concerned me a little bit but it did go up by a little over 0.2 degrees and my OPKs are now negative. Because I'm an obsessive worrier I also plugged fake temps into the next 2 days on my chart via Fertility Friend and based on those they put my ovulation day on Sunday like my OPKs predicted. I'm still holding out to see what tomorrow does but I'm officially considering myself 1 (almost 2) DPO!

Another fun fact, last month when I was supposed to get 3 different blood tests done they all ending up falling during Thanksgiving week since I ovulated so darn late in my cycle. It was an absolute mess and a pain because of the holiday hours for the labs. Welp, this month I'm supposed to get blood drawn on 7DPO. That's Christmas. Thanks so much body. I'm not even sure a lab will be open on Christmas Eve! I'm going to call around and see what day closest to 7DPO I can find a lab that's open and then I'll have to email my doctor to see what she thinks. Geez Louise.

Peeks into my weekend

Our weekend consisted of some eating (and drinking....I LOVE hot chocolate!!) out, a lot of moving on Saturday (we moved down our humongous bed and basically have our new room completely set up), some sugar cookie baking and decorating on Sunday with Josh's mom, siblings and our adorable nephews (I promise I'm not grumpy in the picture where Josh was kissing my cheek...I just get a little too perfectionist with my cookie decorating :)) and I finished off my 3 day weekend today baking with my mom and grandma.

Weekends like this last one make me feel warm and cozy inside, remind me of how lucky we are to have such close families and make me so thankful for our little life. I can't wait to share these beautiful memories with our children but for now I'm doing all that I can to live every moment and enjoy this holiday season. 

Moving Tips???

Soooo we are moving. And we're moving like….in 2 weeks. Right now we're in a 1500 square foot, 4 bedroom/2 bathroom house.

We have accumulated so many things and I'm feeling extremely overwhelmed with the whole moving process. When Josh's great grandma died last year she had a small library in her house and, knowing how much I adore books, my mother-in-law gave us a ton of them along with 3 floor to ceiling bookshelves. Books take up so much space people, so much space. I started packing last weekend and decided that starting with the books would be a good idea but I was wrong. After packing 4 boxes and barely making a dent I just wanted to cry. I have NO idea how we're going to pack up our whole house.

Plus we're moving most of it into storage. This is because we're moving in with my father in law for the time being. It was a really hard decision for me to agree to because Josh and I have been on our own for almost 3 years in our own house and we're completely and comfortably financially independent. We really want to buy a house in the town that our parents live in/that we're moving into. We're both extremely lucky in the fact that I already work in that town (right now I'm commuting 2 hours roundtrip to work every day) and the company that Josh works for is also located in that town and they are willing to transfer him into it (he's been working a route that's closer up to where we live currently). But his company doesn't really plan ahead so we didn't find out what position he'd be transferring into until last week. And we still don't know exactly what he'll be making. We know that we want to base our next house purchase off of Josh's income since I won't be working after we have a little one. Since we don't know what that'll be yet we'll be living with my father in law while we're in limbo.

The upside to that is that we will be saving a lot of money since, even though we'll be helping with utilities and groceries, we won't be paying rent. We already budget to spend only what Josh makes and we've been saving my paychecks but this will give our savings another good boost…which will in turn help us afford a house that we'll be comfortable raising our little family in once we find it.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't have reservations but I think a lot of it is based on my pride. When people ask if we have a house yet I hate saying that we're moving in with Josh's dad. I feel like I instantly lose all credibility as an adult and I'm always quick to follow up with the reason why we're doing it. Hopefully it'll teach me a lesson in humility. Josh is so good at not worrying about appearances or what other people think when they don't know the whole story but it's definitely something that I struggle with a lot.

Does anyone have any packing/moving tips?? Or tips on how to help me swallow my pride?

My Christmas Wish List

Just for fun I thought I'd post about some of the things that are on my radar for this Christmas. I know it's pretty close to the actual holiday but even if it doesn't give you any spectacular ideas at least it's a little peek into what my brain is focusing on lately!

My Real List (aka the list that I actually gave my mom and mother in law…yes we still make them lists!)
1. A Garmin for running, preferable the Garmin 405 but I am most definitely not picky.

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2. Babycakes, a vegan baking cookbook.

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3. A rose gold, Fossil watch <----Oops I may have bought that for myself on black Friday :) 

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4. A Snoogle. I know that they market these towards pregnant women (and I found out about them through a pregnancy blog in fact) but I think that I positively need one now, even though I'm not pregnant. It just looks so comfy!

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5. Long sweaters and long necklaces. This one is pretty self explanatory, I basically live in long sweaters during the winter.

My When Pigs Fly Wish List (aka the list I'd never give anyone because I'd feel bad asking for these things)
1. This oGorgeous bag.

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2. This Marc Jacobs bracelet. 

 
3. These Kate Spade shoes.

 
4. These Tory Burch bracelets.

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What's on your list this year? (Both real and imaginary :))