Baby Number 5!

On December 27, 2013 we welcomed our new little addition into the family, baby GIRL! number 5! Yes, baby is a girl although ALL signs pointed towards her being a boy! This pregnancy has been 150% different than all of my other pregnancies. For starters, the morning sickness was horrid! I've had morning sickness (that I thought was bad) with my last pregnancies but none of it compared to what I had with my little Beanie Baby here. I was sick to my stomach 24/7 and most of the time I was throwing up.... Throwing up so much that I about put a hole into my stomach and was throwing up a ton of blood every day (tmi right?!). I was sick my whole pregnancy! The last trimester I wasn't throwing up daily but sick to my stomach all day every day. That was one major thing that made think BOY! but I couldn't have been more wrong. Really, now that I think of it, I think that was the one main thing that was different... The other things could just be because I have several other kids at home and I'm just tired and forgetful as it is. My pregnancy was pretty uneventful this time around. No million trips to the hospital due to contractions, no thinning cervix, no real issues until the end. I started seeing the Maternal Fetal Medicine doc every 2 weeks at around 18 weeks until I was 28ish weeks pregnant, I was on progesterone injections that Chris gave to me weekly at 20 weeks until I was 36 weeks, like I said, pretty uneventful. On the night I hit 34 weeks, I started feeling really light headed, dizzy, having contractions and just feeling way "blah" and "not right". I called Chris and told him to come home, that I needed to go to the hospital and luckily he was already on his way home. When I got to the hospital they took my vitals and my blood pressure was a bit high, nothing too bad but enough to be concerned about. They checked me and I was a tight 1cm dilated but not effaced and baby was pretty high up still. Because of my high BP they checked my urine for proteins and sure enough that came back positive. There weren't a ton of proteins present but again enough to be a bit concerned with. Luckily my blood work didn't show any signs of pre-eclampsia. I was contracting every 3-5 minutes by now, the contractions were officially regular when they hadn't been even close to it beforehand. They tried to stop my contractions with nifedipine but the med didn't do a thing the stop the contractions and they said that I was in labor and at 34 weeks and a high bp and spilling proteins that it may be safer for both baby and I for her to be born and that they weren't going to stop the labor if I kept progressing. At this time I was 1.5cm, about 60% effaced and baby was at a -2 station so quite a change from the time before. About an hour-ish later they checked me again and I was a tight 2cm, 70% effaced and baby was still a -2 station. This is where I stayed although my contractions continued. They sent me home with a 24 hour urine catch to check for pre-eclampsia and that was pretty much it. (The urine came back that I had a mild case of pre-e) Although I was still contracting every 3-5 minutes I wasn't dilating anymore so they kind of just let me stay in that limbo which totally SUCKS but I knew it was best for baby! Christmas came and Christmas Eve I was baking TONS of cookies with the girls and decorating them and baking pies and crap. Basically on my feet for a few hours without a break (yeah I know, shame on me!)Christmas day was pretty much the same, on my feet all day cooking and cleaning up wrapping papers and trash and toys. That night I was having some painful contractions so I tried to keep them going because I was 36 weeks the next day and I got the ok to try anything to get baby out the day I hit 36 weeks! The contractions got less and less intense though and so I went to bed. Didn't really sleep a wink that night because I was so uncomfortable and the next day tried to take a nap (which failed). I got up out of bed and felt a leak and so I kind of hurried to the bathroom and right as I was sitting down my water completely broke. I called Chris in and told him to call my grandparents, call the hospital and tell them we are coming, and I got in the shower! That was about 1pm. We got to the hospital and walked for what seemed like forever and my contractions weren't picking up or dilating me any so they started me on pitocin to get everything going. They considered me in active labor and I was in labor for a little over 3 hours before about a push and a half at 2:50am delivered my 6lb 7oz, 18in baby girl! So after a long rambly post I'm excited to introduce my little MAKENNA MARIE!

It's Been a Minute.... And a Half!

Wow! It has been quite a long while since I've updated my blog! I didn't just stop for no reason at all, I got busy with life! Right after my last post Chris and I found a house! We were going to do a year lease on the place and then do a rent to own! This house was beautiful! Two stories, front yard and huge fenced back yard with grape vines and a play set for the kids... Two living rooms, one gorgeous updated stainless steel kitchen, five bedrooms and three bathrooms.. This house was more than we could have dreamed for! We decided to still get married but cut a lot out of the wedding... I changed my dress and shoes last minute, the venue turned into our church, we made our cake, we never sent out the invitations, just invited a few close family... I mean we really cut down this wedding....We still got married on November 10th but it was not at all what I wanted. All so we could put money into moving and the house. Well, that's when our nightmare started! This house turned out to be not as updated as we had expected. The ONLY heating source downstairs was one small gas fire place and the two older girls slept down there and froze so we had to turn the fire place way up, all the time. And we had cracked one pane old windows in the basement! They promised to get them fixed and never did. The gas bill was through the roof! The electricity was horribly wired and went out in half of the house and took over a month to get fixed. That was hell, extension cords were everywhere, bathroom lights didn't work so we had to put extension cords and lamps in the bathrooms... It was bad. Well then water started backing up through the floor in the laundry room and the city couldn't figure out why, plumbers couldn't figure out why... Just water every few days, EVERYWHERE! They had done the remodeling themselves to save money and well.... They didn't do a good job AT ALL. The hardwood flooring the kitchen started coming undone, not one thing was fixed right in the house... The calking around all the sinks and tubs and what not went to hell... It was just BAD! I could go on forever the issues! Our rent was way higher than this house was worth and with our bills being high because of the water and gas issues well it just wasn't worth it. We decided to break our lease and move. Thankfully the landlord found new renters and we got most of our security deposit back and were able to break the lease with no penalties. Thank God we left when we did! Two days after we moved, we went to get our last load in the Uhaul and the basement was FLOODED! I mean inches of water through the WHOLE basement...... All coming from the window that would have been right over my computer desk and all of my Scentsy work stuff AND living room furniture and electronics! Thankfully all this stuff was gone by this time... Two days later and we would have lost thousand and thousands in furniture and electronics! Well it turns out that the landlords didn't get their sprinklers blown out even though they said they did and it was in the contract that we didn't have to do anything with the sprinklers until spring/summer. I guess they "thought" the previous tenants blew them out but they didn't make sure and of course they didn't. And with the pipes freezing and unfreezing and then snow melting and weather changing like crazy, well they blew and flooded right into those cracked single pane windows! It looks like God was definitely watching out for us! We did lose a few hundred dollars in some of my work stuff and some smaller furniture and baby stuff and we tried to get it out of the landlord since it was THEIR fault... Negligence on THEIR part... We decided $500 wasn't worth it to take them to court and so we cut our loses before things got ugly. Well now we are in our new place and doing great... Have been here since February 1st. It's a three bedroom basement apartment with two bathrooms. I like it but I wish we could move soon. There is no lease agreement because the house is for sale but the owner is asking too much for it (400K) and won't go lower so we sit here until we have to move. All of our utilities are included in the rent which is great! But it is small still..... Over 2,000sq feet but the rooms are tiny, except for our room which is actually a livingroom. The landlord didn't say that he was considering the livingroom a bedroom. And well at least I will try to relax for awhile!

Invitation Choices and Theme

This by far has been one of my hardest choices of the wedding. I had no idea the them I wanted let alone an invitation design, color, font, etc. I looked at hundreds (literally) of different wedding colors and themes and finally decided that I want the Winter theme. But I couldn't decide on my colors.... And the fact that my wedding was in Fall and not Winter, I didn't know if Winter was even a good idea! So I came up with the idea of "Fall into Winter"! My thought process on this is my wedding is in the Fall but it will be "falling" into Winter. At first I was thinking that I was going to do the ceremony in a Fall theme.... Totally Fall colors and leaves and then the reception was going to "fall" into Winter... It was going to be totally Winter themed. After thinking about this for awhile and playing around with colors I decided that was a bit too confusing for people to understand. I picked my favorite of the four colors I had chosen and decided the the "fall" part of my wedding will be snowflakes.... That's what they do, they fall. So my theme is now still "Fall into Winter" but it is based around snowflakes. After I had chosen the light blue and the snowflakes I googled, I Etsy searched and I found a design I finally loved.... It was a tree with snowflakes falling. Perfect! So here are the examples of my design (none of my info is on them [Except name and date}, these are purely the examples of which they created and are part of my "proofs") and the creator actually has their own url which is http://www.whimsicalprints.com/

We are so happy with the design and think they are perfect for my theme! My next post is going to be about my bouquet and flower choices! Although this will be done later as I have a fussy bug baby to deal with!

Shoes and Clutch

These are the shoes and clutch that I have picked out to match my wedding dress. When I actually receive my wedding dress and have it in front of me and I know the true lace color, I am going to order the shoes and clutch because they will be custom made to match my gown. They are from an Etsy maker called tlccreationsuk. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do, I am very happy to share them with you!

My next post will be the invitations and theme that I have chosen for my wedding!

My Wedding Dress!

I have been slacking on posting my wedding stuff.... I have picked out tons of things and have many ordered but I haven't shared any on here. I have one Facebook, but I have never blogged about them. So I am going to share everything we have so far. I am doing this in different blog posts so they can be found easily and classified and I can make sure I get everything, don't forget anything, and I can not have one HUGE post that jumps around from item to item, category to category, and to keep my own sanity!

My first post is going to be on my favorite thing of all.... My wedding dress! I have not ordered yet because I haven't gone and got my measurements done yet. Measurements are happening this week, ordering my dress hopefully next week. My dress is coming from a trusted (and used before) dress maker in China! Her name is Alice and I am so in love with her many different styles of dresses. She speaks very good English so we haven't had any communication problems and she even ships dresses to the US for free! All I have to do is pay her for the materials and her time. Materials in China are a lot cheaper than they are in the US so I am getting my dress at a fraction of the price that I would from having one made here. As I said, she is trusted and I have used her before! She makes dresses for weddings, proms, and other formals. It was already decided that whatever design my dress may be, SHE will be making it. Hands down! She is also amazing at getting measurements correct and if for some reason I was to get measured incorrectly or something is wrong, even on my part, I ship the dress back to her (which isn't that expensive) and she will fix it for free and pay to have it shipped back again to me. I looked at her dresses for hours, different designs on google, and actually fell in love with a dress that she already has already designed and has a sample made on her Etsy site. So here is my dream wedding dress, and I'm not paying a fortune for it!

In my next post I am going to show you the shoes and clutch I am planning on buying to match my dress. They are from a shop on Etsy and although I have never used them before they have amazing reviews. The shoes and the clutch together are actually more than my wedding dress! But, this is my one little splurges and I figured since I am save sooo much on my dress that I can get the shoes, the clutch, and the dress all at a price I could get a "cheap" wedding dress in the US!

Wedding Binder!

Ok I'm totally failing on the blog challenge so I'm going to stop at least until the wedding is over.... But fear not I still have to post about my wedding and babies and all sorts of other mommy crap! I took pictures of my (literally) 10lb. wedding binder and I'm posting them because this is one thing I can actually be proud of (besides my kiddos!). I found awesome budget worksheets and every paper and literally everything I need at

http://www.russellandhazel.com/content/wedding-templates

I labeled my binder with simple dividers and only needed one pack of eight. I bought several packs of protections sheets, one pack of business card holder pages, and a calendar insert. If you don't want to purchase a calendar insert you can print them free at:

http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/excel-calendar-template.html

The have tons of different colors too!

*Budget

*Calendar

*Guests

*Honeymoon

*Registry

*Stationary

*Venders

*Wedding Party

Then I labeled the vendors section with sticky note tabs on clear plastic protector sheets.

*Bride & Groom Attire

*Cake

*Caterer/Food

*Flowers

*Music

*Photography

*Venue/Officiate

The pictures aren't in order.... I uploaded them in order but blogger decided where they thought they needed to go. SO the order is as I have listed above.

So as you can see this damn binder is really a 10lb binder! I have all of the wedding template sheets (there are 57) and I have been using photoshop to put together pictures of my dress and what not on one page so I don't use too much ink. I also have lined paper in each section to make notes. This thing is stuffed to the max! I'll write another blog on all of my other wedding choices as I go along but I hope that this helps some bride out there!

Days 5-8... I'm a total failure but I swear I have a good reason!

I know my domain should be failboat.com but cut me some slack, I'm a mom with four kids (girls I might add), planning a wedding, and looking for a house! I have a lot on my plate! So I will do a little catch up with that before my 5-8 ;)

I've been doing a TON of wedding planning the last few days... Picked out a venue to do the ceremony AND reception, put together a whole wedding binder (pics to come), ordered a sample of our (late) save the dates, and even ordered our ring bearer pillow! I feel like I have been busy non stop on the wedding stuff alone.

We've been doing a ton of house hunting too! Just something to rent right now though. So today we went up and set up a bank account for Chris and his work so they could do direct deposit and we could start saving not only for a wedding but to purchase a house. Then we went and looked at a cute 3 bedroom 2 bathroom 2 story home that we absolutely loved! It's a little over our price range for the monthly rent price but I think we can swing it if we budget and save. Everything was new and redone! Stainless steel appliances and brand new carpet, paint, bathrooms. GORGEOUS! We filled out the rental application and will find out tomorrow if we got the place. I am SO excited! I'm also very excited to be ordering brand new living room and bedroom furniture and when we get the place (or a place anyways) I can finally do that!

Okay, now my 5-8!!!! Day 5 - Post a picture of something or someone that made your day special. This one is so easy! My girls! My girls make every day special and so worth all the bs in life!

Day 6 - If you could spend 15 minutes with any celebrity who would it be and why? Oh gosh I hate this. I don't really like celebrities... I mean I don't think I'd really want to spend 15 minutes with one. I know I'm a nut but it's true. But if I had to pick anyone I'd pick Elizabeth Banks. I think she's an amazing actress, she's gorgeous, funny, and a great mom.

Day 7 - If you could live in any time period of the past, when would it be and why? I would so live in the 50s, or is it the 60s? The Grease era! Everything seemed so amazing then.... Everything was less expensive, times were easier, things were simpler. I think if things stayed that way things would be so different now. I sit and watch Grease sometimes and just get lost in that timezone. I wish so bad that I could go back to that timezone, just for a day.

Day 8 - How do you envision your life being in 5 years? That's so easy! I picture myself living in a nice house with 5 kids, being able to make a great life for them and having a beautiful house for my husband to come home to every night. I'd love to be done with school by then but since I haven't even start I don't know if that will be possible. I want to be a supermom and not be well off but be comfortable and not have to worry.