Trying to make the best of it

I'll be the first to admit it's been tough since we got cancelled. I've had these really wide range of emotions from angry to upset to sad back to angry again. I just don't understand why it happened to us. Everyone else I was supposed to be cycling with had no issues, in fact all are having or already had their ERs this week, which was supposed to be me, and it just sucks - there's no other way around it.

I'm still waiting for AF to show up though. My cycles are like clockwork so I'm expecting her next week, with this weekend being the earliest and I'm really hoping she comes sooner than later so we can get this show on the road. I updated my schedule and depending on AF it looks like if all goes to plan and I have an average of about 10 days of stims I will be doing ER around the 3rd week in January, which seems SO far away.

Although I'm still really affected by the cancellation and I don't think there is an hour that goes by where I don't think about it, I am truly trying to make the best of it. I've been drinking a lot of wine - ok so probably not the best thing when you're preparing your body for IVF, but seriously, I need it and it's the holidays and I've always drank more around the holidays. Nick and I had a great weekend last weekend and last Saturday we decided to drive over an hour out to this Christmas tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. Growing up we always had an artificial tree because my dad and sister are horribly allergic. I've always wanted a real tree and even in our first couple years of marriage we had a fake tree because that's what I was used to and Nick didn't really care. I'm kind of a nazi about Christmas traditions and I had such a great childhood so I kind of try to recreate it. But this year we decided, we're going to start our own Christmas tradition, so we cut down our own tree - it was AWESOME! And it was like 60 degrees at the beginning of December so it was so nice to be outside.

Before - cutting the tree down

When Nick was cutting the tree down, he kept saying "don't take a picture of my butt" "are you taking a picture of my butt - stop it" No babe, I wasn't taking a picture of your butt, although you have a very nice butt I'm not going to share it with the blog world, so RELAX!

So this whole excursion took quite a bit of time because we got the tree, had free doughnuts and apple cider at the tree farm, drove back home, picked up food for dinner and by that time it was like 6pm. Then we decorated the tree while listening to Christmas music on Pandora on our super sweet new TV - this was a purchase we did on Black Friday - well Saturday really - and drinking wine (Nick drank beer). Then we cooked dinner and had a really nice evening by the fire watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - we save Elf and Home Alone for closer to Christmas! All in all, it was a great day!

After - decorated with the star on top

Then on Sunday, because I was super ambitious and had a lot of coffee that morning after abstaining for like 2 months (I was so jittery, but really wired) I wanted us to get ALL of our outdoor decorations set up. Again it was like 65 degrees out - I was in a t-shirt and flip flops in the beginning of December in Chicago - say WHAAAA? We got that all done and all the neighbors were saying how we were making all of them look bad - SCORE!

I had to take a later afternoon picture of this one (and it's still hard to see) but we took red ball ornaments and hung them all over this tree in our front yard - it looks awesome in person. And we put up our lit wreaths and then lit small trees by the garage.

So hard to take night pictures on my phone, but it looks so pretty and festive! We have icicle lights lining the whole front ot the house, a wreath on the front door, lit garland over the door. Planters with lit branches, our poor lit reindeer who's lights aren't working quite right and I can't find the problem, 2 lit wreaths on our trellis and the lit trees by the garage. So our household is ready for Christmas! I don't have as many decorations inside as I would like, but I'm accumulating them over the years - I like to hit up after Christmas sales for those, and I need to do all my baking and finish Christmas shopping and order our cards, etc. but hey the house looks nice!

And signing off, I'll leave you a picture of Callie - she was posing so nicely the other day I just had to snap a shot! I'm pushing through, having my good and bad days, but the holidays are really helping to take my mind off, even if I'm not feeling as festive this year as usual.