Pumpkin Patch Part 1

We met up with the Guinns at the Pumpkin Patch for some fall photos. We had a great time despite the October heat and the girls did great posing for pictures in the tutus. Ella wanted to put all the pumpkins in her mouth, along with her tutu. I can't believe she will be 9 months old on Halloween. Time is going by way too fast. She is just blossoming before our eyes and growing up so much. I'm impressed we got so many great pictures, because she doesn't want to sit still too much now that she can crawl around. Thanks Trey, Julee, & baby Joy for joining us in the pumpkin patch; it was a lot of fun! Looking forward to Halloween and dressing the girls up again for trick or treating :)

More pumpkin pics coming soon...still filtering through the hundreds we took...

Go Aggies!

Playing With Picasa

I was told about Picasa by a friend who loves it! I'm totally addicted!!! It's so fun to play with your pictures and create collages and put frames around them and add text and....I could go on and on. Here's a fun little collage I created this evening with some of Ella's best black & white photos from her 6 month photo shoot. So fun!!!

8 Questions

Allena, one of my blogging friends (and friend from high school), tagged me for a game of 8 Questions. Thought it might be fun to participate even though I'm not very good at answering questions and even worse at coming up with my own to ask, but here goes...

The rules are simple: Answer the 8 questions, come up with 8 new questions, tag 8 people. Easy. And here are her eight questions:

1. If you could go on a trip right now, where would you go? This is hard because I would want Ella to go with me because I can't bear the thought of being without her for more than a couple hours, but wouldn't want her to have to endure an extra long plane ride to any of the places I would really want to go, like Greece or Spain. So, I guess I'd say I'd go on a trip to Colorado to get a little bit of cooler weather and to see my sister because I know she's getting tired of being away from home.

2. What is your favorite baby name? (and you can't name your own children) Adalyn and Ryker

3. What is your favorite website? I absolutely love Etsy.com

4. What is one thing you're embarrassed that you bought? I can't think of anything particular; but I"m embarrassed at how many similar items I buy for Ella. i.e...She really only needs one chair to sit in to eat, but she has 3 different ones-only 2 I bought her though; the other was given to us if that makes it any better :0

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? hopefully a stay at home mom with 2 little ones enjoying life with my husband and little family

6. Are you a wine or beer drinker? I would normally say a wine drinker, but lately, I've been enjoying beer like Micolob Ultra

7. If you didn't have to work, what would you do? Luckily, I'm blessed to not have to work right now, so I'm getting to stay home and spend all my time with little Ella (it's the best job in the entire world)!

8. What is your favorite blog? I'm a big fan of Chronicles of a Babywise Mom even though I don't really follow BW completely. It's got so many great parenting ideas from a mother of 3. I also love to read about all my friends through their blogs. I wish I was half the creative writer that they all are :)

And now I tag the following...

Julee

Courtney B.

Krista

Courtney W.

Shara

Heather

Valerie

Mollie

Questions:

1. What do you do in your free time?
2. If you could give the world one piece of advice, what would it be?
3. What is your favorite website or blog?
4. What scares you the most and why?
5. What is the hardest thing you ever had to do?
6. What is the weirdest thing you will ever admit to having done in the past?
7. What is your favorite book you read as a child?
8. What sound or noise do you love?

Reality Has Set In

My knee has made 1/2 Marathon training difficult! It's only been 2 weeks of training (and by training, I mean trying really hard to not pass out while jogging 2-3 miles at a ridiculously slow 15 minute/mile pace). After making it through the run, my knee is swollen and sore and pretty useless the rest of the day. When I told my Physical Therapist that I was planning to run a 1/2 marathon, he practically laughed in my face :) So, after many sessions with him, talking with Mark, and really thinking through things, I've decided that the reality of the situation is that I'm taking on too much and dealing with too much pain, so I'm no longer taking on the 1/2 Marathon!

I first need to work on regaining strength in my leg and building the supporting muscles around my knee. Hopefully after I'm stronger, the pain won't be so intense when I run, and then won't be so horribly painful after my run. So, I'm going to continue training and running (with some walking thrown in there), but I'm aiming to complete a couple 5K's in September and October and a 10K in mid-October instead of the 1/2 Marathon. Then, if my running ability improves and my knee starts to hold up better, I'll try to do the 1/2 Marathon in February.

Good News :)

We met with a dermatologic surgeon today for a second opinion. She made me feel so much better about the situation and I am no longer overly worried. She felt that the mole area was definitely larger than she would like to see and it should be removed, but that it didn't look like melanoma. We will have to wait for the biopsy following surgery to be 100% sure, but she was comfortable saying that it seemed fine to wait a while (until at least the 1/2 marathon I'm training for is over) to have the surgery because even if it were melanoma (which she is pretty confident it isn't), it wouldn't spread that fast to be a real concern. So, we scheduled surgery for November and now feel very good about the situation.

I think it helps that her specialty is cancer related surgery unlike the previous surgeon we saw who was just a general surgeon. It's also great that she understood how important continuing breastfeeding was and reassured me that it won't be an issue (maybe more pain than normal due to the stitches, but it should be fine to resume our normal nursing schedule within a few hours after surgery). It was also a relief to hear that she will only be using local anesthetics unlike the other surgeon who intended to put me under for a 30 minute surgery. The last thing that was reassuring was that she said the recovery time would be about a week or less which sounds much better than the 3-4 week recovery the general surgeon discussed. It will still be a 4 centimeter incision (kind of shaped like an eye), but she suspects that will take care of any abnormal cells. If not, she may have to go back in to remove more, but that's worse case scenario.

Overall, we were very comfortable with my new surgeon and feel like she's a good match and is very knowledgeable about what I'm dealing with. I know it was in God's plan to find her and for her to decide to see us because she usually only deals with people who have actual cancerous lesions to be removed, but she made an exception to meet with me. Thank you for your prayers; I also know they were part of the great news and the sense of relief I'm feeling.

Now, on to the 1/2 marathon training and hoping I can make it past the 3 mile run I'm tackling tomorrow. Baby steps...

Prayers Needed

I wasn't sure I wanted to post this, but I know the power of prayer and need it right now :) A couple years ago, I had some moles removed from various places on my body. They were all shaved or scraped and biopsied, but one of them came back as being moderately dysplastic and I needed to go back and get more of it removed. Well, I was pregnant when that appointment rolled around and didn't want to mess with it because it was on the lower part of my breast and they were just too sore due to pregnancy.

Long story short, I didn't get around to going back to the dermatologist until a few weeks ago. After looking at the mole again, she decided it had grown quite a bit and because another scraping wouldn't get enough of it, she sent me to see a surgeon. He agreed that it needed to be taken care of fast (which is just a scary thing to hear when dealing with something that could be melanoma). Hopefully, once it's removed, the biopsy will come back clean and I will have worried over nothing. However, the other chance is that it is melanoma and we will have to take another path if they didn't get it all.

So, please pray that God will heal me and that it is something small (and hopefully benign) that will be taken care of with the complete removal of the mole. Please also pray that this breast surgery will not impede nursing Ella because I really want to continue breastfeeding her until she is a year old, but am worried about the placement of the stitches because they are planning to make a 4-5 centimeter wide incision.

The surgery is scheduled for this Friday afternoon. I'm meeting with one more surgeon this afternoon to get another opinion because surgeries scare me (my last surgery on my knee didn't end so good if you remember), so I'll know even more later today.

I tend to have an overactive mind too, which has made this all worse because I naturally start to assume the worst. I'm trying to take one day at a time and think positive, but it's hard to do and I've become an emotional mess. So, I'm praying for peace and comfort during this time along with healing.

Love to you all!