Freckle Eye Fancy

March 13, 2017 Oh little bean, I love you so much. The past five days of knowing you are here have been so wonderful. A little confusing sometimes, because I’m still grieving the loss of your brother, but wow do I love you. I am so lucky to be carrying you, and so blessed to be your momma. We’re getting impatient, waiting to get the first appointment date set, because we just can’t wait to see you, and make sure you are growing healthy in there! And we’re getting excited to tell people too! We saw dad’s side of the family over the weekend, but we both did so good and didn’t tell anyone!! We’re hoping to have an ultrasound next week, and then plan to tell everyone next weekend. Little bean, I’m nervous about whether people will be excited or not. I know there will be a lot of nerves floating around after losing Carter, but I want people to treat this pregnancy, and you, as if we didn’t know any better. I don’t want people to forget him, but I don’t want losing him to tarnish their ex...

On Wednesday last week, I left work for my hour lunch break, and texted Brandon as I walked out the door, asking him to call me because I was having a hard time. About three seconds later, my phone rang, but it wasn't Brandon. That call was from my endocrinologist's office, but while I was on the phone with them, my phone rang again, and I thought for sure it would be Brandon that time. It wasn't. I listened to the voicemail, and it was from the hospital, saying that we could go pick up our little girl. I called the lady back, and she said we'd want to pick her up as soon as possible. So I called Brandon and told him, then told him I would spend my lunch break finding a place that would cremate her. By the time I had hung up with him, I was at home. I called the mortuary closest to us, and they were seriously so nice. I cried at the lady on the phone while I was asking if they could cremate her, but she was so sweet, and said they would be able to cremate her, and th...

I did a silly thing a few weeks ago and let myself get excited about the pregnancy. You all know how much we love Disney (too much, probably), and at the end of April we had booked a trip to Disney World so we could announce the pregnancy and gender there. We had the whole thing all planned out: Mickey balloons, a just celebrating pin, and cotton candy. And in my head I already knew it would all be pink. I wanted to take the picture in front of the castle, since last year we announced we were having a boy in front of the ferris wheel in California Adventure. We were so, so excited. We're supposed to be at Magic Kingdom right now riding Pirates. I just got the notification for our fast passes. After the visit with the specialist, we decided to cancel our trip. We would have hated to be so far away from our doctor if anything happened, and we decided that even if we lost her before or after, the trip still would have been a little hard. Of course we still would have had fun togeth...

The day we found out I was pregnant, I started keeping a little journal where I could document the pregnancy before we shared the news publicly. The only documenting of Carter's pregnancy that I did was through the blog, and I wish I had done more, so I really went all out with journaling for this one. I planned to share these posts after we announced her (which was supposed to be Friday), and have decided to share them anyway. Today I would have been sixteen weeks pregnant, but instead I'm sharing a picture of the first set of flowers we left at the cemetery for our little bean. Life is a strange, strange thing.  This first post is from that special day we found out about our bean. March 8, 2017 I have to keep a separate journal for these, because if I write them in the blog I know I will accidentally post them. For the past few weeks, I have been an absolute crazy person. I have been angry, sad, happy, depressed...just all over the board. I’ve been craving Zupas and hambur...

A year and a day after we found out we were pregnant with Carter, we found out we were pregnant again. March 8th. I had known for a while, but we didn't get a positive pregnancy test until that day. It was the best day we'd had in a long time. And we were finally getting another chance to bring home a baby. Everything was really good for a long time. We had an ultrasound at six weeks, then another at seven weeks, and another at eight weeks, not because anything was wrong, but because we wanted one early, and then our doctor was so nice and did one each time we saw him. We got to watch our bean grow from a tiny little dot on the ultrasound until she looked like an actual baby, and it was wonderful. I don't know how many doctors allow their patients to have eight ultrasounds by the time they are 14 weeks, but if yours does, I highly recommend it. The first trimester was, like Carter's, a dream. I was more nauseous than I was with Carter, and food didn't seem to hel...

Brandon turned the big 2-9 on Thursday last week!! Sometimes it's weird to think about the fact that he was 23 when we got married, and is 29 now, because in my head I think he'll always be right around 26. But I guess we all have to get older sometime, right? We went and saw The Circle on Tuesday last week, which was pretty good. I liked it as much as I liked the book anyway. Wednesday, we went and got ice cream. Random question. Has anyone else ever had the banana ice cream from Coldstone? Not every location sells it anymore and it makes me so sad!! It's so good!! Anyway. Thursday, Brandon's actual birthday, he went out to lunch with a friend, and we saw Guardians of the Galaxy that night. Brandon loves  popcorn, so getting to refill our giant bucket twice in one week was honestly probably the best birthday present I could give him haha. But I did give him a real present! He gets to drive a super fast car around an autocross track. It's not happening until July...

Normally I hate  commentary on a recipe blog post. I don't care what's going on, I just want the recipe. But here I am, writing my first recipe post, and I'm going to tell you a little story. Sorry. I have this problem where about once or twice per season, I wish it was a different season. And I don't just mean that in winter I wish it was summer. In fact, it's generally the opposite. And for some reason, for the last month or so, I have wanted it to be fall or winter SO BAD.  I've been dreaming of football season and boots and hot chocolate and rainy days. And Christmas. All I've wanted is for it to be Christmas. I love the Christmas spirit, and I think I want to feel it again already because I wasn't in the mood for it in December. Once it gets warm and stays warm, I'm sure I'll feel different, but all I know is that when it snowed last week, I felt no shame listening to Christmas music on the way to work. We still had Hershey's Kisses f...

Our day in Luxembourg was my absolute favorite day of the entire trip. When we were trying to decide where to go for this vacation, Brandon suggested Luxembourg, because it is close to Belgium, and one more country we could add to the list of places we've been. I'm so glad we decided to do it! The train ride from Brussels to Luxembourg was only three hours, and again, the ride was beautiful, so it wasn't bad at all. When we got there, we walked from the train station to the car rental place, and picked up our little car. It fit all our luggage perfectly, thankfully. We left the city and headed immediately for the countryside, winding around and around little neighborhoods and going through tunnels. I will never be able to explain this well enough, but it was like all of a sudden, we were somewhere completely different. We entered the valley of seven chateaus, and it was just perfect. Rolling green hills, houses scatted on the hillside, and these little yellow flowers (ca...

I think Brandon was most excited for our day in Brussels, he talked about Belgian waffles and chocolate nonstop before our trip! We woke up bright and early (dark and early, really) on day five to catch the bullet train to Brussels. The bullet train saved us an hour, but honestly the countryside was so pretty that I wouldn't have minded the extra hour. We got there around nine, which was great, because the town was still quiet and nobody was out. We stayed at the B-Aparthotel, which was different, because there was no front desk to check in at! It was a self serve check in, and luckily there was another group of English speakers that got there when we did, otherwise we would have had no idea what to do. Long story short, the email with the check-in instructions went to my old email that I don't check. Anyway! The housekeeping staff came down and put our luggage in a closet for it, and we were off to see the city! The first thing we did, and the thing I was most excited about...

Let's get back to this trip, shall we? Our last day in Amsterdam was busy . We didn't have any specific plans for the day, but there were still a ton of things we hadn't done that we could get into for free with our citypass. First we went to the Nemo Science museum. It was basically your typical science museum, but it was way cool! There were a few um...European sections that we didn't wander into, and that was pretty strange, but besides that, it was one of the better science museums I've been to!  After the science museum, we went to the Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust Museum was still in production (they just started building it last year) but it was still really powerful. The building we were in used to be a holding place for children that were taken from their parents and going to be sent to concentration camps. The museum had items from these children, along with their stories. We learned though, that the people who worked in that building started passing ...