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Hey there!

When I left you yesterday I had just found out my glucose test came back positive.  Hello, my name is Erin and I have Gestational Diabetes.  They scheduled me an appointment with the dietician for today at 11:30, I’m anxious to go to that and see what my new lifestyle will be back.  I do know multiple times a day fingers pricks are on the docket.  Besides that I have no idea what she’ll tell me, except eat less sugar and carbs.  Um, I eat 2 pieces of toast with a glass of chocolate milk EVERY MORNING.  This is going to be tricky. 

The sky last night was so beautiful, the clouds were coming in as the sun was setting.  Wanted to share a pic of it.

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Dynamite went a little off the calendar again last night. Andy didn’t think he needed to do anything fancy so took matters into his own hands.

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Aiden’s school Christmas program was Monday night.  It lasted 1 1/2 hours, but it was a great show!  Lots of fun songs.  I was so happy that so many of the songs were traditional Christmas songs, not those made up, weird ones.  There were a few of those, but mostly it was songs we knew.  The kids are so cute, getting all dressed up and trying their hardest to impress their families! 

Aiden’s in the 2nd row, third one in (right above the 2nd ‘H’ in my watermark).

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So what if…

~ I have some weird pelvic bone pain thing going on because of the pregnancy and, although a very small chance, there is a chance it could split and be EXTREMELY painful and not get better until after I deliver the baby.  Some people have it bad enough they can’t even get in and out of the car.  Yikes!

~ I’m secretly happy to have GD so I can get my diet on track and be healthier for the baby

~ I didn’t decorate or dress up my Christmas gifts this year.  They are wrapped and have a name tag on them, that’s it.  I have no creative mojo these days.

~ I don’t think a gift bag is an appropriate way to ‘wrap’ a gift.  How much fun is pulling tissue out of a bag to see your present laying there? BOR-ing!  No, I do not give gifts in gift bags, either.  The only time I use them is to carry a WRAPPED gift to a party.  Sorrynotsorry.

Life After I Dew

I’ll be back tomorrow with all the details of my meeting with the dietician today.

Erin

Cookie Swap Recipe

Ugh, this pregnancy brain is going to be the death of me!!!  I totally forgot about Mean Ang’s cookie swap link up today!!! Duh!!!

Mean Ang

So, I am sharing with you one of the easiest recipes ever but it is by far my most favorite Christmas cookie/candy EVER!!!  Don’t knock it til you try it!!

Haystacks

1 pkg Chow Mein Noodles

1/2 pkg Almond Bark

1/2 pkg Milk Chocolate Chips

Melt the bark and choc chips in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave. Start with 60 seconds, stir, then another 30 seconds followed by a stir until it is all melted.  Stir in the chow mein noodles until well coated by the chocolate mixture.  Drop by spoonful onto waxed paper.  Let cool/harden and then enjoy!!!

Guess which newly minted gestational diabetic has an entire container full of these delicious goodies who doesn’t get to enjoy anymore this season?  THIS GIRL!  Dang.

Thanks, Ang!!!  Can’t wait to read the other recipes!!!

30 Week Bump-date

If you read my post yesterday you know I had my 2nd glucose test, the dreaded 3 hour one.  The time went by pretty fast, actually.  Just before my 9:30 blood draw I started feeling ‘funny’.  Luckily that passed.  I didn’t get fuzzy at any of the blood draws so that’s a big success for me.  Hoping to get the results today.  Based on how my appointment went afterwards I’m guessing that I do have gestational diabetes.

So, my appointment.  I went in with a couple of questions this time. First, I keep waking up laying on my stomach…sort of.  I prop my leg up out to the side, Andy calls it my kickstand.  But when I sleep like this I sleep amazing!!  So I asked if that would/could hurt the baby.  The answer is no, so restful nights here I come!!!  And bye-bye body pillow!

My second question was about heartburn. Boy do I have it!  I’ve been having some here and there (mostly here) since about 11 weeks, but over the last 3 weeks or so it has been so much worse.  It’s gotten to the point where Tums doesn’t cut it anymore. So she gave me a scrip for Zantac. Started that yesterday and I can already notice a difference!  Aww, sweet relief!

If you remember from my 24 week checkup I was measuring a little big, about 3 weeks big at that point.  2 weeks ago at my checkup the other dr. told me I was measuring ‘fine’.  Um, okay, what does that mean compared to where I was 2 weeks before that?  So she (my main dr.) measured me yesterday, said I was still measuring big.  When I asked how big she laughed and said ‘Well, I wasn’t going to say but since you asked, you’re measuring 4 WEEKS AHEAD!!!!”  Holy shit!!!  You know me, I’m a worry-wort, so I started to panic just a bit.  She said we should go ahead and do an ultrasound and scheduled one in 2 weeks before my next appointment.  I asked what they could find there (again, panicking) and she said we’ve already ruled out that anything is wrong with the baby so it shouldn’t find anything like that. Basically, relax Erin!  They will measure the baby and see if it’s measuring big, check my amniotic fluid to see if I have excess of that and just check that kind of stuff out.  No biggie, doesn’t mean anything is wrong, just want to keep track of baby and make sure it’s not getting too big.  Hello early induction!  Maybe.  So I’m super excited about this US because the boys will be home for Christmas break and can go with us without any (or not much) worry about finding something wrong with baby. Basically we just get another look at it and the boys can see what it’s all about!  So that part’s exciting. 

Now, because of this I am fairly certain they will tell me I have GD. 

Hold the presses – just got the phone call.  Yep, GD it is.  Out of the 4 blood draws you have to fail 2, which I did, but only barely on the one.  Oh well, this is good to know so I can make healthier choices for me and Baby and Baby, hopefully, won’t keep getting so big.  Waiting for a call back from the nurse with an appt. with the dietician.  You know how much of a freaker I am but crazy enough I’m totally calm about this!  Only thing that bums me out is I won’t get to eat the rest of my haystacks, boo hoo!  LOL!  So, that’s that.  Guess I’ll be blogging about how that all goes for me now.

Well, I need to make some phone calls now, so going to end this here. 

Erin

A Full Weekend and A Glucose Test

Hello there!  Coming to you live from the hospital lab today.  Today is my 3 hour glucose test.  I made it safe and sound after a 2 1/2” snowfall yesterday that left the roads a little snow covered this morning.  Arrived just before 7 a.m., got registered and came down for 3 1/2 hrs of torture.  First things first, they drew a vial of blood.  My favorite tech was just getting here for the day as I was walking back with someone I’d never had before. Let the panic set in.  Luckily Janet told the gal I need to recline when getting my blood drawn (especially on an empty stomach!) and this different tech was very good, barely felt a thing.  The other good thing about Janet being there is she talks and talks the whole time, so I can focus on her and chatting and not on what’s really happening to me.  Survived the first of 4 blood draws, then went and peed in a cup.  Wish I had known about this before I went to the bathroom right before I walked down to the lab!  Oh well, was able to give them just enough so we’re all good.

Next up, drinking the orange drink.  I chugged that thing in 1 minutes time!  Boom!  Like a pro, folks.  And now it’s been 30 minutes since I drank that stuff and I’ve gone from feeling fine to feeling a bit yucky, back to feeling fine, and now super tired.  Not sure if it’s from the drink, the lack of food or having to get up so early to get in here this morning.  Will let you know the results of the test when I do!


Wow, what a fast weekend this one was!  Sunday night were were sitting on the couch at 7:30 and I told Andy I felt like I missed the entire weekend, never had one. 

Saturday I was home all day while Andy went Christmas shopping for me with his mom. They have a tradition of going shopping together every year so she can get his dad’s gifts and he can get mine.  He came home mid-afternoon then I got ready to go out with some girlfriends that night.  Saturday night I met the girls in town at 5:30 and we went on the Christmas Tour of Homes in my hometown.  There were 5 houses on the tour this year.  We had such a great time!  There were 4 old houses, built in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  The 5th house was built in the 90’s.  The first house we went to was my favorite, by far.  The house itself was GORGEOUS.  The homeowners have remodeled parts of the house over the years and they did an amazing job at it!  And the decorations were beautiful.  She is an antique collector, and not just furniture.  A lot of her Xmas decorations were antiques also, which totally got my wheels spinning because I love vintage/antique Christmas decorations, too.  So I will be stopping at antique stores from now on.  The other houses were nice but were not decorated as well as the first (in my opinion).  After the tour we went to supper and have fun just chatting.  We have decided to make this an annual tradition from now on.  So if anyone else wants to join us (ahem, Jodi!!) mark the first weekend in December on your calendar for next year!

Sunday was a busy day, too.  The boys had religion class in the morning, and while they were there I was home decorating 2 dozen cupcakes for the reception after that evening’s Christmas program.  We picked them up from that, went home and hurried up to make snacks to take to my mom’s for the afternoon of Tree Hopping.

Tree Hopping is something my mom’s family started doing 20 years ago.  The gals were all sitting around complaining about how they go through all the trouble to decorate their houses for Xmas but no one ever sees what they did. So they decided to plan an afternoon to go house to house and we’d snack at each house, drink, be merry and see everyone’s trees.  It has been one of the most fun traditions we have and every year I look forward to it so much.

So we started at noon this year, at my mom’s house.  I made some crescent roll ups and took a plate of deer bologna, sticks and jerky.  My mom made a yummy chip dip that I found on Pinterest (follow me!), set out a tray of our cookies and candy we made a couple weeks ago, and my sister took fruit and a fruit dip.  The other stops had rolls with Cinnamon Honey butter, cheese balls, snack mixes, BBQ pork sandwiches and Bacon Cheeseburger soup.  The roads were deteriorating throughout the afternoon but we all made it safely from stop to stop.  We were bummed out we had to leave a little early to get back home for the boys’ church Xmas program.  But when we got to the car (after all of us getting bundled up to head out) I checked my phone to make sure the program hadn’t been cancelled and sure enough, it was!  So back in we went and got to spend another hour with our amazing family!  (Program has been rescheduled for this coming Sunday.)

It was a great weekend but just flew by so dang fast!  Looking forward to this coming weekend, we have NOTHING planned at all!!!


Our friend Dynamite was a silly little guy this weekend! 

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This one upset Brennie, he thought Dynamite was being mean coloring on their pictures.  I had to explain that he was just being silly.  After that he was okay with it.

This was the handiwork of Andy.  Figured I’d let the engineer design the snowflake!

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And this is what the boys found this morning.  Unfortunately I wasn’t there to see their reaction.

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My first hour is up, time to get blood draw #2.

Have a great week!!

Erin

A Couple Of Things

Happy Friday!  It’s pretty dang cold here for the next 5- 7 days, highs in the teens is all. I am secretly loving this weather, shhh! Don’t tell!

Because it was so cold coming back last night poor Dynamite needed something to warm himself up. What better than a cup of hot chocolate?!!?  He even has a chocolate mustache this morning!

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I told you I was getting my hair done on Wednesday. Well, I never could remember to have Andy take a picture for me so I gave it a shot this morning.  Didn’t turn out super great but you’ll get the general idea of how it looks.  I added in a lot of a really warm brown and a few lighter caramel colored hi-lights. 

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(Ok, that’s really poor quality and you can’t even tell what it really looks like. Sorry.)

Erin is doing a link up today to show off your Christmas cards.  Here is ours.

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I’m heading off to volunteer at our church’s gift shop today.  It’s all decorated for Christmas and looks beautiful in there, plus the Christmas music will be playing .. going to be a nice, relaxing day!  I’ll post a few pics on IG today to show you what it looks like.

Plans for the weekend?  We are busy again.  Tomorrow Andy takes his mom Christmas shopping for the day, then we are meeting up in the evening and I am going out with the girls for my hometown’s Christmas Tour of Homes.  You get to go into people’s houses (that volunteer, not just random houses!) and get to see all of their decorations.  The money for admission goes to decorating and maintaining the decorations on our town square.  After that, supper with the girls!  Sunday is religion classes for the boys, then my mom’s side’s annual Tree Hopping day (we go house to house eating and drinking, socializing and checking out their tree).  Sunday  night is the boys’ religion class Christmas Pageant.  We are expecting a big snow Sunday sometime, hoping none of this gets cancelled.  Monday morning, my 3 hr glucose test and 30 week baby checkup.  Then Monday night the school Christmas concert.  Sheesh, I’m wiped out already!!!  Glad next week settles down and we can just relax.

Oh boy, time to go!!!  Talk soon!

Erin