She is a Fish After All!!

One thing I have really enjoyed this summer is swimming with Kailey! She wasn't to fond of the swimming pool earlier in the season... the water was a little cool for her. But, once the outside temperature went up, so did the water temp. Kailey loves to splash and play in the water!! This was the first pool we got for Kailey, which she enjoyed until she figured out she could crawl right out of it!

My parents bought a really nice pool for her at their house from Academy, so I think we are going to find the same one for here. The sides are much taller and thicker, so she can cruise along the sides without pouring all the water out.

In May, our neighborhood hosted there annual Luau to celebrate the reopening of the pool for the summer season. Since we are on the Pool and Common Grounds committee in our HOA, Tim volunteered to work the Cotton Candy machine. Nonnie and Granddaddy came to visit so we all stopped by to visit Tim and play in the splash pad .

Walking in the water with Granddaddy.

Chillin' after a fun day at the pool. :)

For Memorial Day we went to Magnolia to hang out with Tim's family. One of his parent's friends were out of town for the weekend and let us swim in their pool. Kailey LOVED swimming with her cousins and going down the water slide with Daddy!! I wish I had been able to catch a picture of her face when they went down the slide... it was priceless! It appears Kailey really does like the water... but what did you expect?!? She is a Fish, after all!

Swimming with Daddy.

Zumba!!!

I finally decided last month that working out alone is not for me! If I have to go by myself I end up finding all kinds of excuses not to go. I'm actually like that with everything... I would much rather be doing things with someone than alone. I had heard through a family friend that Zumba was a fun workout to do and had great full body results. Its kinda of like working out via Latin dancing! After doing some research I found a class at the Clay Madson Rec Center in Round Rock. It was $5 per class for nonmembers and free for members. I sat down at the computer and worked up some figures in Excel (I know... I'm a dork!), and I realized it would be cheaper for me to cancel my current membership with Fitness 19 and join Clay Madson. Plus, Clay Madson offers other free classes to members like Kickboxing, Water Aerobics, and Strength/Flexibility. I figured I would be much more inclined to attend a fun class than spend 30 minute on an Elliptical. So, starting this Wednesday at 6:00pm I will be (hopefully) be dancing my way back to my pre-pregnancy weight and body shape! I just have 10lbs to go!

I started walking the lake (Lake Pflugerville) on the mornings I'm home with Kailey. She kicks back in her stroller and naps, waves at random joggers, and squeals at any dogs that pass by... it seams to be her favorite part of the day! It is about 4.5 miles from our house to the lake, around the lake, and back to the house again. Tim and Cooper have been joining us in the evenings for a 1.5 mile walk which is to the lake and back. I have really enjoyed our time walking together!! I also discovered that my iPod has a pedometer on it so i turned it on for my Saturday lake walks.......... 13,500 steps and 600 calories!! 125lbs, HERE I COME!

Finally, to really prepare for my new workout routine we went to Chili's and had one last Molten Chocolate Cake.... Gosh it was good! Kailey got to have some for the first time:

I think her face says it all!!!

Kailey Bug - Birth to 9 Months!

Kailey Marie Fish was born on 7/24/2009 at 7:43pm. She weighed 6lbs 5ozs and was 19.5 inches long! Here is what she has been up to the last 9 months...

First week home - chillin' on the couch!

1 Month - Inspecting Daddy

2 Months - Sporting her first pair of jeans

3 months - Pumpkin Patch

4 Months - First Thanksgiving hanging out with cousin Emily

5 Months - The best present EVER!

6 Months - Photo shoot

7 Months - Eating is tiring!

8 Months - Easter Eggs are YUMMY!

9 Months - I love unloading the dishwasher!

Kailey is such a blessing, and we are loving every minute!!!

Baby Belly at 18 weeks

Well I had to go back into the hospital again last week. I took it pretty hard given I had thought I was done with hospital visits and was feeling better the week before I had to go back in. Oh well. During this time the Lord really spoke to me. He sent someone I would have never imagined to minister to me about her pregnancy experience. It was so nice to know that someone else had been through what I was going through, made it out alive, and had beautiful babies (notice the plural) to show for it all. God also started really showing me the true meaning of the phrase "My grace is sufficient for you". He also really pressed on my heart the truth of His statement "My power is perfected is your weakness". If there was ever a time I was weak physically, mentally, and spiritually, this was it. He is taking this time to perfect His power in and through me and I felt blessed! I left the hospital feeling revived both physically and spiritually! I also left the hospital with a baby bump I did not have upon entering the hospital!!! Here is the picture of my baby bump at 18.5 weeks!

Where Have I Been the Last 5 Months?????

Holy cow.... I can't believe it has been 5 months since I posted anything!!!!! I bet the few people that were checking this blog have probably given up hope by now, but I will post anyway. The last five months have been INSANE for Tim and me!!! Everything was going great until Thanksgiving, and then our lives changed dramatically. Over Thanksgiving we went to Magnolia to visit Tim's family. The first night we were there I fell asleep on the couch around 8pm, then dragged myself upstairs to bathe and go to bed because I woke of feeling sick :( The next day was pretty normal. We did all of the usual Thanksgiving things: eat, sleep, eat, sleep, etc. We got up the next morning and drove to Brenham to spend the rest of the time off with my family. Friday night I started feeling pretty sick again and curled up on the recliner praying for relief. My dad gave me some Tums and I went to sleep...... no big deal.... I woke up feeling fine the next morning so I blew it off.
Monday rolls around and I decide I should call my Dr. because I was 2 weeks late for my period... now to anyone else that would be a big deal.... but my period had been coming late for months so I figured this month was no different. I called and set up an appt to talk with the Dr about fertility options since they thought we would have a difficult time getting pregnant given my history of irregular cycles and not ovulating (sorry if this is TMI!). Our friend Gretchen from our church down south happens to be a nurse practitioner for the OBGYN I see so I called her to set up the appt. She told me to take a pregnancy test the next morning just to confirm what we all thought we knew... which was that I wasn't pregnant and just didn't ovulate again that month.
Tuesday morning......... alarm goes off at 6am, I hit the snooze till 6:30. Tim gets up and jumps in the shower. I drag myself into the bathroom and remember "oh yeah, I guess I should do the darn test". I pee on the stick, put the cap on, and toss it on top of the toilet while I continue to get ready for work. A couple minutes later I return to the bathroom, pick up the stick.............. and almost passed out. There were 2 pink lines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I run to the shower glass door and slap the stick up against the glass and said "we are pregnant"! Tim didn't believe me at first... one line was fainter than the other (it happened to be the control line). I called Gretchen and she made an appt for first thing that morning. We get to the Dr office, go in to the ultrasound room, and for the first time we see our precious little baby.... all .2cm of it! We spent the rest of the day in a state of shock!!!
Fast forward to today........ I am 14.5 weeks pregnant and the random evening sickness I had over Thanksgiving has turned into 24/7 sickness. I have lost 15 lbs since that Tuesday in the Drs office 8 weeks ago, spent two overnight trips to the hospital, took 1 trip to the ER, installed a Zofran pump in my stomach, and spent countless days bedridden. I cried, begged, got angry, got depressed.... you name it and I have felt it. But then last week..... I saw my little baby's face.... I saw its nose, its ten tiny fingers, its little legs kicking on my uterus, its little mouth opening and closing as if to say "mamma". It was a baby!!!! Not just a globular parasite that was sucking the very life out of me, but a baby, MY BABY, TIM's BABY... it was a miracle to say the least! And as I lay here in bed typing this, because I just got out of the hospital and am too weak to go back to work right now, I cling to those images of our baby and hold fast to the idea that eventually I will be able to hold that baby in my arms and tell her that it was worth every bit of what I have gone through!
Thank you everyone who has been keeping me in their thoughts and prayers. I praise the Lord for you!!! Keep it up because I still have a long way to go!

Bet You Can't Watch Just One

The Olympics are killing me... well, not quite... but making me lose a ton of sleep! I normally like to be in bed by 10:00-10:30 on work nights. I have a really hard time functioning on less than 8 hours of sleep! Well since my birthday (8/8), which happens to be the day the Olympics started, I have been falling well short of those 8 hours of sleep a night. Tim and I have been staying up until well after midnight almost every night since the games started... and since my alarm goes off at 6am..... you do the math... I'm hoping now that Michael Phelps has won all of his races and gymnastics is over we might be getting to bed a little earlier. You never know though... there could be a really intense equestrian competition or a late night round of badminton we might get sucked into. We keep telling ourselves this sleep deprivation isn't that bad since it will only happen every 2 years, but every morning, as I hit my snooze at least 3 times, I curse my decision to watch "one more race"... which never happens because that "one more race" turns in to 5 more races and no sleep! Oh well..... GO USA!

No Disassemble!

I've decided to start posting updates as I repair my truck (1997 Chevy S-10 that currently needs the clutch components replaced), so keep checking back and hopefully I'll have frequent updates and photos as I do some major amateur repair work! And if you're wondering why I titled this post "No Disassemble!", then you're probably haven't seen or don't remember the movie Short Circuit. I haven't seen it in a really long time but it's worth a watch if you can get your hands on it...

Anyway, the main goal is for me to replace all of the clutch components and anything else that needs replacing along the way. It had become very difficult for me to shift into any gears towards the end of last year, so I had decided to take it in to a mechanic to see what was wrong. They told me that I probably needed the clutch and slave cylinder replaced, if not all clutch components. Christian Brothers quoted me about $1800. Anyway, I didn't want to or expect to have to spend that much money, especially since we were just settling into our new house and had many other things that we needed. So I looked around and even got an estimate closer to $1100 from a transmission shop, but by this point I had decided it would be nice to repair my truck myself if I could. I've done oil changes before, and I've even replaced brake pads and spart plugs and wires... but those things don't really require much work compared to what I've started now :-)

I haven't driven my truck in several months, and since gas prices have gone up so much it made more sense for Summer and I to carpool to work anyway. A few months ago I bought the first few items that I needed to begin repairs... a floor jack and 4 jack stands to allow me to raise my truck in the garage and work underneath it safely. So my truck has been in the garage on jack stands for a couple months now, and I finally started work this past week! I'm not sure why I waited so long, but I guess I was nervous about undertaking such a large task... and the first steps pretty much commit you to the whole process!

So, in order to replace the clutch components, I have to do the following things just to get to them:

• Disconnect and remove the driveshaft
• Remove the shift lever (which by the way either requires you to cut the carpet slightly or remove the seats to be able to lift the carpet over it :-O )
• Remove the section of exhaust pipe that runs from the exhaust manifold to the catalytic converter
• Remove several wiring clips and the transmission crossmember
• Unbolt and remove the transmission, lowering it from underneath the truck

Fun eh? Actually I think I'm going to enjoy it but I'm sure some parts will be frustrating and tough since these bolts haven't been touched in over 10 years now and are probably quite rusted as I've already found!

This week I decided to just go for it and start taking apart stuff... I removed 4 bolts from the driveshaft, and 2 more from a center section of the driveshaft. The repair manual said I should just lower the rear portion of the driveshaft once I removed those bolts. Hmm, after 30 minutes of pulling/yanking/twisting (carefully since I'm underneath several tons of metal) and spraying more WD-40, the driveshaft was still connected and it wouldn't "lower". So I gave up for the night and did the usual the next day: Google. I finally found a video of a guy removing a driveshaft (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWYNfVdAx70), and he had to smack it quite a bit with a hammer since corrosion keeps the pieces together even when they're no longer bolted. So a day or 2 later I had time to try again. I grabbed the hammer and smacked it around quite a bit to try to get it to come free... and finally after 15 minutes of that (I had to hit a certain part I guess) the driveshaft came loose!!! I had said a little prayer after I had been trying for awhile, so thanks for the answered prayer God!

I also removed some bolts from a section of exhaust pipe since I need to replace the muffler as well. When I first got underneath my truck earlier this year I saw a hole in the muffler that had been leaking on our driveway. So, that's what I've done so far. Not much but I already feel better about doing the rest of the work... it's just going to take patience and persistence!