Pifer Life

Countdown With The Pifers

5 days until HALLOWEEN!! (we are all stocked up on candy for our little trick or treaters!!)

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Family Updates

Zach and I- are doing good---same ol' same ol'.... :)

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News

I am hoping that I can put some really great 'news' in here soon...I have something exciting going on tomorrow (can't go into details...yet! But since y'all are so grand, I'll give y'all a little hint... 'hospital M-F'

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Big events over the weekend…

Friday after work I went and picked my mom up and took her to run a few errands, my mom's health is far from good, so anytime we are able to get her feeling good enough to get out of the house for a while is amazing!!! We met Zach and my moms boyfriend at TX Roadhouse for dinner and then I took her to a few more places before we called it a night.

Saturday was my sweet cousin, Amber's, wedding shower. My mom came over and I did her hair and makeup and off we went to the shower. It was a beautiful shower and so great to see alot of my family, some that I haven't seen in a while. Later that night Zach and I went to dinner at LaFiesta, I had spinach-chicken and mushroom enchiladas...(ohh they were delicious!) After dinner Zach really wanted to go see Paranormal Activity; I personally can't stand scary movies...so I wasn't too thrilled, but since he is ever so sweet and agrees to all of my 'chick flicks' I thought I could suck it up for him :)....boy was I extremly excited to see they were sold out!!! Whew! I was saved--haha, but I will most def. see it soon...just for him!!! :)

Sunday, we ran tons and tons of errands and went grocery shopping (stocking up on Halloween candy was a must for this past weekend!)...and Sunday was pretty much a very lazy day for us, a very much needed lazy day indeed!! :)

Here are a couple pictures my Aunt took from my cousin's shower:

Alot of family---starting from the top left "Me, Perk (my grandma), McKinley, My mom, Cousin Amber (the bride)--on the ground L-R, Cousin Kim, Cousin Holly (with Elliana in her lap), Aunt Dicque (mother of the bride), Aunt Susan, and Cousin Britt.

Me, my mom and the beautiful bride to be, Amber!

Me, my mom and my Sweet Aunt Susan!

I was the odd ball in this picture, no one told me this was a "1-2-3 close your eyes" picture...
This is me, my amazing grandma, Perk and my mom...and they have beautiful eyes (both open and closed!) haha!!

I hope everyone has an amazing week!

My Opportunity--Failure to Peace

There can be a roller coaster of feelings during an infertility journey. I am defiantly one who is dealing and has dealt with these hard emotions.

Failure crossed my mind today...it's hard not to feel like a failure while trying to conceive, it's hard looking at so many who conceive without trying or only tried for a little period of time--it's hard to 'not' wonder why so many can succeed at this journey but you 'fail'....I think the word fail is awful, but it is most defiantly a word and feeling used often during this journey.... however, I try not to be discouraged, because with every 'wrong attempt' is another step forward...and as long as you keep trying and believing and never forget that HE is in control, then you will never fail; no mater the outcome...

Humility....do you ever feel humiliated at the fact your body is 'abnormal'....I do. I believe it's a normal feeling...again, it's hard not to feel Failure and Humiliated when you are supposed to just 'get pregnant'...when growing up women dream of having children, we play baby dolls--barbies, being a mother is something most women want from the very beginning. I believe it's a natural instinct...however no one ever thinks that they won't be able to conceive due to infertility, that word doesn't exist while growing up...it's supposed to 'just happen'...however it's not always that easy.

Faith...I've spoken of faith from the beginning of my blog, God says 'I tell you the trust, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ''Move from here to there" and it will move'-Matthew 17:20----God doesn't show us the whole staircase or journey, we just have to take the first step in Faith and trust in him to guide us through the rest...so although we feel failure at times...and humility, we can bypass those if we have Faith in our God.

Hope... 'He who has hope, has everything'...hope can get you really far in this journey, it has me. If you don't hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes. Infertility women often hope...we hope and pray....we hope and pray and have faith...God doesn't promise us all the answers, but we have to 'hope' that if we have 'faith' in him, he will guide us through our moments of humiliation and moments that we feel like we are failing.

Strength...I used to consider myself a very weak person, emotionally and physically. Although I am not very strong physically, I do believe I am emotionally stronger--thanks to God! You see, a lot of times God send us down a zig-zagged path in life to help us grow, and one way he has helped me grow is my strength. There is no strength without unity, and unity being God...without leaning on him I would not be where I am today. So after much hope, God has given us the strength to have faith in him to get us through these trials, like humiliation and failure.

Peace...there will come a time in this journey where you let it all go and you are at peace with the situation you are in...some have reached this, some haven't. The pain and the heartache and longing for a child haven't left me, however I have peace with the journey God has chosen for me. I am thankful! Peace isn't something you can force yourself into, it can only be achieved by patience. Failure and Humiliation try to weigh you down, however if you hope and pray, and have much needed faith in God he will give you the strength to have Peace in the path he has chosen for you.

Opportunity-- "If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it"....did I lose y'all?? :) Not many think of infertility the path they want in life, and although I would not have picked this journey for myself, I thank God on multiple occasions for the opportunity he has given me. Sometimes in life you have to 'swim' longer than others to get the same as they have....how come they didn't have to swim, that I don't know, God saw something in myself that I didn't see, and I might not even see it now....but I know that with this opportunity he has given me the chance to kick 'feeling like a failure and feeling humiliated' to the curb, he has given me the opportunity to know the true meaning of hope and faith, and given me the opportunity to learn how to lean on him for strength...and most importantly he has given me the opportunity to find true peace in this crazy journey of infertility.

Pifer Life --- with LOTS of Pictures!!!

Countdown With The Pifers

Only 11 days until Halloween!!!

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Family Updates

Zach- is doing great, his knee is wonderful--he has started to work out at home and is looking into which gym would benefit him better as far as getting his knee/leg back into tip-top shape. He is leaning towards the 'YMCA', it has a pool and his physical therapist told him (back on his last day there) that pool exercise would really benefit him in the beginning.

Me- I am hanging in there--issues at work have not disappeared--I can only keep on praying that hopefully soon things will indeed get better. I have had my moments this past week of 'sadness'. I personally think I am just overwhelmed with so much right now--the fact my heart longs for a child but I feel we can't do anything about it at this moment is hard, it's hard letting go and leaving everything to God; I know he has our best interest in mind! Then there's the fact that work isn't going great...I've had this same stress headache for about 2 weeks now; thankfully my sweet honey rubs my shoulders almost every night--it really helps! I really don't know what I would do without him; he truly is my rock!!!

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News

I have BIG news.....finally----I got my car BACK! Oh how I missed my sweet Durango!!! :)

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Big events over the weekend…

(Y'all wanted pictures and I hope I've fulfilled y'alls picture craving, haha!!!)

Friday--Zach and I went and ran some errands and then came home to relax and do a 'whole lot of nothing' haha!!!

Saturday morning was the MS walk, it went great.

Lorri is my co-worker (she is the one holding up the green bandanna) she found out about 2 years ago that she had MS, it hit her extremely hard in the beginning; she is in my department and I've seen first hand how MS can effect your life--she is def. a strong women and starts each day with a positive outlook on life. I am honored to walk for her! Our team was called 'Accounting for Hope' (We are in the accounting dept, and everyday is a day you 'count on hope' to get you through it!). We had a lot of fun; Zach and I ran some of the 5K, which was nice :)

Saturday night we went to the Fair and Rodeo--it was finals night at the rodeo; here recently I've really gotten into watching the rodeo--we went 3 times this past week, so I was eager to see who would walk away with the 'big win'. Half way through the rodeo I was traumatized--Please excuse my lack of knowledge in this description; but you know the men who pick up the riders when there 8 seconds is done? There are 2 men who stand by on there horses waiting to help the riders off of there horse/bulls...well the man and his horse was just 'standing' there waiting for the next rider to come out of the chutes; the horse collapsed--and appeared to be having a seizure. It's legs were twitching and it was the saddest thing I've seen, all sorts of cowboys and the vet rushed out; they sedated the horse so they could move it. Then this tractor came out and pulled the horse out of the arena; they later came on and said it had an aneurysm and sadly passed away. That put a huge damper on my night, I had tears in my eyes and just prayed that beautiful horse didn't suffer.

After the rodeo, we went out to watch Tracey Lawrence sing and OH MY he sounded amazing. The Heard's met us out there, it was great getting to see and hang out with them for a little while--it was freezing, so most of the night was spent huddling up next to each other trying to steal each others body heat--ha!. I also saw my sweet friend Rosemary from a distance in the rodeo, I sure wanted to see her cute little belly (she is about 13 weeks pregnant with her first child after beating infertility!!! If you get a chance please hop over to her blog and give her a huge congrats!).

These pics are some from every night at the fair...

My 'cowgirl' gear... :)

My honey and I and our self portrait pictures... (we take these things seriously, haha!!)

We have to take the most 'self portrait' pictures out of everyone in the world, haha!

Me and Ashley!!!

Sunday we slept in since we didn't get home till late, then we cleaned the whole house--I rearranged some things and moved some of my decorations around; feels like a whole new house, haha! After the house was spotless Zach took me out to dinner, we ran to Lowes to get a couple things then came home and crashed...

Our weekend was pretty good (minus the horse fiasco---poor thing!!!). I hope you enjoyed our slide show of self portraits :) and have a great week!!!!

Pifer Life

Countdown With The Pifers

Only 5 days until the MS walk!!

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Family Updates

Zach and I- are doing good...taking one day at a time and trying to leave the rest to God.

Mom-nothing new with my mom just yet, they are still monitoring her as of now. Thank you for the many emails and prayers!!

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News

We STILL don’t have my car; I called the auto body and BEGGED they give us a rental car and they did (yea!!!)--it's going to feel like a brand new car when I get it back! Boy did I mess it up or what?!!?

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Big events over the weekend…

This weekend was a very 'chillaxation' type weekend....

I haven't felt the great for about a week or two now; I think part of it's due to the weather here, but I think another part is stress...I'm under a great deal of it, and since I'm around it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week it's hard to 'avoid' it....hopefully soon something will change.

So this weekend nothing major happened, we didn't even go to the fair, it was quite nasty outside all weekend. We hopefully will be going soon because we have 3 nights of tickets--I am ready for my traditional 'gotta haves'....you know the funnel cake, candy apple, turkey leg, roasted corn, and cotton candy....mmmm, thats my favorite part of the fair---the rodeo is pretty darn cool too! :)

I have really lacked in the 'picture' department, there really hasn't been anything grand to take pictures of (however I did get a couple of my dogs in there Halloween shirts that I need to upload!!)....next weeks post will def. have pictures because of the fair and the MS walk!!!

I hope you allllll have a grand ol' week!!! :)

Count to 10....

The above describes my exact emotions. And no, they have nothing to do with not being able to conceive, this time.

My mom used to tell me when I would upset her she would go in the other room and count to 10 (I guess it makes you feel better?) Well let me just say I've almost counted to 500 and I don't feel much better....I guess I'm counting wrong?!!

I can't go into exact details yet, you never know 'who' exactly is reading your blog---however it's job related and needless to say (it's obvious by my furry friends pictures above) I am stressed, sad, upset and unhappy...hopefully soon things will get better--I surely can't imagine them getting much worse!! Let me just say that back rubs, sweet emails/calls/texts and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream are amazing at this time :-) No matter HOW hard things get, my husband, family and all my friends know just the things to do and say to help put a smile back on my face...THANK YOU!

For now...

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.

Amen.

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(The fair starts this weekend!!!! yea!!!!!)

Pifer Life

Countdown With The Pifers

5 days until the Heart of Texas Fair and Rodeo

Only 12 days until the MS walk!

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Family Updates

Zach and I- are doing good. Taking one day at a time and praying for God’s guidance.

Mom- My mom went to her Dr as she has been having some major pain. Her tumor in her brain has grown a little, although it’s still fairly small the Dr. believes it’s pushing on some nerves which is causing her to have bad headaches. However due to the location of the tumor, surgery is out of the question. They are monitoring her closely right now and mentioned ‘Gamma Knife Radiation’ in Dallas…this radiation treatment will help shrink the tumor since they are unable to remove it…I will keep y’all updated…thanks for all the prayers :)

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News
We STILL don’t have my car and I am really beginning to miss it! We had to give our rental back last Thursday as we met our policy max (you can only have it for 30 days…)

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Big events over the weekend…
Nothing big happened at all—Saturday I had to work all day due to month end closing, and Zach stayed home and did a lot of work around the house…Sunday I woke up sick as a dog. I don’t exactly know what was wrong but I was extremely nauseous with a pretty bad headache…I could hardly stand up without the urge to get sick…I managed to get some breakfast in me, but that’s all I ate throughout the day…around 2ish my whole body was wobblely and shaky…I had icepacks on me since the coldness seemed to help my nausea a little…I tried a cold bath too (needless to say I couldn’t stay in there too long b/c it was too cold)…I came back to bed and Zach made me a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup—I couldn’t eat but a bite :( He brought me crackers and I could only get one down…he was such a great doctor, but nothing was making me feel better…around 10:00 my nausea seemed to go away and I immediately felt 100 times better; I even managed to eat a couple spoonfuls of applesauce before bedtime—I don’t know what exactly was wrong with me but I feel a lot better today…

I hope you all had a better weekend than I did :-)