Its a New Year

So its a new year, and about to be the start of a new life for me and the children. In just about 9 weeks I will be getting married. I can't believe it, I can count the weeks on my fingers. It is coming up so fast.

We are also preparing to buy a house, and figuring out where to buy that house has been a huge discussion in our house. I really did not want to move from Good Shepherd Catholic School and Church but it is turning out that that really might be the best choice for the whole family. After all we have a child entering high school in less than 4 years and no Catholic, or even decent, high school near where we were thinking of buying a house. However, if we move to Brevard county we then have to think about college..and if we stayed in Orlando they could go to UCF and stay home, but if we move to Brevard they would most likely have to dorm. Oh so many things to consider!!

I am in my second to last semester of midwifery school too (God willing). I will be so excited to be finished. Especially if we have to move to Brevard.

Anyway, there is a small update about me!

STRESSED!!

I am finding myself so stressed out these days. I have had a lot of stuff going on in my family life that has been trying the limits of my abilities to cope. Mix that with planning a wedding, raising three children, the final year of midwifery school, being on call, working clinic, and my own personal roller coaster ensues, both emotionally and physically.

I'm beginning to feel it. The exhaustion that sets in from too much stress. I'm trying to find moments to remind myself it will all be worth it in the end, and that God's plans are sometimes quite different than our own. Spending a lot of time in prayer lately.

On a brighter note, we are taking the kids camping this weekend to an awesome part of a national forest. I can't wait to just relax and soak in the days for a few days. It's like our own mini staycation. Jereme and I really need this time to just chill and get back to the basics with the family. We're both about at our peak of frustrations these days.

Speaking of Jereme....he found a kitten in our back yard. The kitten is all black with yellow green eyes and has since been named "bipity bopity boo" or "boo" for short. He's about 6 months old. At first he was way skittish of us, but my daughter tricked him into coming in the house and now all he does is sit in our laps and purr. God knew I needed a baby in the house to love on I guess :)

well that's it for now, off to do some more organizing for the trip!!!

The Home Stretch!!

I feel like there are so many things coming to culmination within the next year. I'm in the home stretch in so many things!

My wedding is only 6 months away! I can't believe it. In just six more months I will once again be a wife. What a huge life change this is.

I should graduate from midwifery school and finally have my Florida license in just 10 more months! I can't believe it. It's been such a long road, frustrating and lovely and frustrating and perfectly done just the way it was supposed to be.

My birthday just came around again, though I was still combating the flu, it still ended up being an alright birthday anyway. I have such an amazing family and my mom, brother, children and Jereme all celebrated with me and made sure it was a good birthday.

Clinic has been busy as always!! Gotta love my life!

Will update again soon!

One year ago

One year ago yesterday eHarmony.com matched me with a group of local men. Out of that group, I chose to only start communicating with two. Of the two, only one was interesting enough to continue to communicate with, and his name was Jereme. It has been one year since the start of our amazing whirlwind of a romance and I am still loving every minute of it. Jereme asked me a few days ago when it was that that feeling would wear off. Many of you know the feeling he spoke of, the feeling of not wanting to go to work (or whatever) because it involves leaving each other for a brief time. We just can't get enough of each other, still, and wonder if and when it will wear off. Some have suggested to Jereme it would wear off after the first year, we shall see. But I know from personal experience, when I am totally in love with someone, it never really wears off.

We've been talking a lot about midwifery, and the wedding, and school, and the honeymoon, and having more children. Wow how my life has changed in the last 18 months, it's barely even recognizable as mine. I am living such a blessed life, in a career that I love, with three amazing children and one of the most amazing men I have ever met.

I truly feel like I'm living a dream.

Wedding Planning!!

Yup, instead of working on my paper (at least it isn't due for a few more weeks....) I am surfing the web and doing some wedding planning.

So, though not all the bridesmaids are chosen yet, the dress is!!

So yup, there it is, the official choice for the bridesmaids dress. Now to figure out who that final bridesmaid will be....LOL!

Also in discussions around here lately have been the need to choose a DJ here pretty soon, figure out a photographer...and choosing the flatware. Yup the flatware has been quite the discussion for us.

First, Jereme had offered that we use paper plates. I scoffed at this idea!! The pure upset it caused for a full day in this house...not fun!! However I understood his point. Who wants to wash dishes for 200 people? Certainly not us!! So I did what I do best, and went on an internet search for a compromise.

And I found one!! So we are either going with disposable, compostable, renewable, fair trade palm plates ,














or disposable, compostable, renewable, fair trade bamboo plates.

Which ones we choose is yet up for discussion. I would love to also go with the birchwood forks and knives to go with it, but I'm nervous about the wood texture. I can't even stand the feeling of popsicle sticks in my mouth, I'm not sure how I can ask all of my guests to be happy eating off of a fork that is popsicle stick textured. We may have to come up with a different option for forks and knives...I'm thinking maybe biodegradable forks and knives made from sugar cane.

More later!!

two families

Molding two families and two households into one is turning out to be a stressful ordeal for me. I never thought this would be a particularly overwhelming step for me, but its turning out to be. I start thinking about things and then wandering down different rabbit holes until I just have no idea about anything anymore. I will say that this is more complicated when you have kids and other stuff already in the picture. It will all work out though, I just have to practice my patience.

Summer Heat

Year one term 3. Almost a junior!!

Today I finally asked one of my beast friends Sunni to be my maid of honor. I've been wanting to ask her for a few weeks, but just haven't been able to get to see her in person. I finally decided to ask her over the phone, and I am so happy that I did!! We cried together over the phone and it was just a beautiful moment. The wedding party is almost completely chosen now, we're just waiting on one of the potential bridesmaids to confirm that she can come.

Right now we're on summer break, and this break I have a ton to do. I have to clean, do a ton of homework, be on call, and still try to enjoy myself and Jereme for the holiday weekend. We'll see how it goes.

My repro research paper is on the antepartal risk factors associated with incidence of cerebral palsy. My antepartum paper is on hyperemesis gravidarum. My antepartum paper is due before the repro paper, but the repro paper is way more interesting and therefore is almost done, even though my antepartum paper is sitting in my head bouncing around.

My kids are in Ohio for the summer having fun with their great grandparents and cousins and such. I miss them so much. They have never been up there without me, it's definitely been a difficult experience for me, less so for them. But they are having a blast, so that's good.

Jereme started his new job and loves it. I am so proud of him and happy that he is doing something he likes and is good at. Our lives are really coming together.

We Got the Hall!

So we reserved the hall for the wedding reception on Monday. After a weekend long dialogue between Jereme and I, trying to decide if we should cut the guest list or just get the bigger hall, we opted for the bigger hall. So, we decided to rent the Winter Park Garden Club building that is in Mead Gardens. The hall is actually beautiful and it overlooks the gardens. I love it. So I am secretly happy that Jereme won the dialogue and we're just ending up over budget for the hall.

So, the main part of the hall has a stage, and a white sash that stays on the ceiling at all times. It has long windows but they have shutters that close from the inside to block out sun if you want. the lights are dimmable, and globe shaped. They include tables in the rental, and chairs as well, which is cool, but it does not include linens or plates or anything (which the smaller hall did).

The hall also comes with a smaller room which is going to be used as the "buffet" room. It is a fairly good sized room with a kitchen off of it, and a place for the bar to be set up. The kitchen is small, but plenty big enough for our mother's to get to work in it for the food! LOL!

We have six hours with our rental fee, and just over $70/hr for any additional time that we need. The cost has me a bit on edge about the budget, but I'm going to have faith that it will work itself all out. Jereme and I will be paying for this wedding all on our own, since my family has no money to put into a second wedding for me.

now that the question of the hall is all squared away we can get to more fun little things. Of course there are still a few big things we need to get (photographer anyone?) but most of the rest of the things we have to plan can be done over time instead of needing an earlier reservation time.

School is winding down, and we only have two weeks left. I'm so excited to have yet another semester behind me, and I am doing so great! I can't wait to be a junior and have to be in Gainesville less often.

More updates to follow!

Bridal Party Bouquets

So Jereme convinced me (it actually wasn't too hard, though I do still have some misgivings about it) that fresh flowers is the way to go for a spring time wedding. I made all the Bridal party bouquets for my first wedding, and I wasn't even really very intimidated by it, though I knew nothing about making such bouquets, and I had never attempted anything like it before. I also, I might add, am not a crafty person. At my first wedding the bride's bouquet ended up costing me around $15 and each bridesmade bouquet cost me between $10 and $12 (the maid of honor's was a little different and so cost a few dollars more). I was determined to not spend more than that this time around, even though I'm using real flowers this time.

Our theme for this wedding is gardens, and even though we're having the actual ceremony in the Church (not in a garden LOL!) the reception will be held at a gardens, with an inside hall and an outside we'll be able to use.

My favorite flowers are lilies, especially Easter lilies, but really any lilies. I love the smell of them, I love the beauty of them. So we definitely wanted to incorporate a lot of lilies into our floral arrangements for the wedding. So, I set about at my first trial of making the bouquets for the wedding. I have a year, so it may seem like I'm starting way too early considering we'll be using alive flowers and can't make them months ahead of time, but the intimidation level was high so I wanted to practice, and lilies are more expensive when they aren't in season. Since it's April now, and they're in perfect season, now is the time to try! Plus it gives me a variety of flowers I'll be likely to find next year at this same time as well.

While Jereme and I were at Publix, we saw a small bunch of flowers, with Lilies in them. They were pink and purple and white and pretty. We went ahead and picked up a small bunch ($4) and then went to walmart and got some floral tape and ribbons and pearl headed pins. A few nights ago I set about to work on attempting to make my first live floral bouquet and this is what we ended up with:

So, it is still a little rough around the edges, but I think I did a pretty good job for a first attempt! I want the Bride bouquet to have more flowers though, probably by twice. at least one more stem of lilies, and possibly incorporating a few small calla lilies in it as well. I am thinking the guy's boutonnieres are going to be mini calla lilies so we need to have some in the bridesmades as well. Also we may try to go with a different color flower, depending on what's available next year. I think we've narrowed the wedding color down to a soft light purple (think lilac). The total cost of this bouquet that I made was less than $5.

sick, sick, SICK!

I am so sick of being sick. We have pretty much had at least one person sick non stop in my household since October of last year. I have started completely disinfecting my house wondering if there is some hidden bacteria or something in here making all of us sick. I don't know what the cause of our crippled immune systems is, but I know that it stinks.

On another note, my semester is winding down. I have only two weeks of school left (three more trips to Gainesville left) in the semester and I can't *wait* for summer break. I have so much to do during summer break that it's not even funny, but I'm aiming for at least one trip to the beach as well in there somewhere.

My daughter's First Holy Communion is next month, on the 21st of May. Her dress just arrived from Ohio where it was being made. My grandma's best friend Jeanne made the dress out of my wedding dress from when I married the children's father. Tori looks so beautiful in the dress and now she has something special, a part of me and her father from the days when we loved each other, to keep forever as part of her history. I have many other things to do (and get) for her First Communion, and so I look forward to the break in school so that I can appropriately prepare her for her big day!!


Speaking of big days, Jereme and I have gone and spoken to the priest at Good Shepherd about our planned marriage. We've gotten the paperwork started for it, and reserved a date with the priest. So our official date is April 14, 2012! We've started the beginnings of planning for the big day. I have given myself quite a challenge, as our official budget for this even is a mere $3000. I managed to have my last wedding for a mere $2000 but there were not nearly as many people invited, nor expected, at that wedding. This time we are planning to invite just over 200 people, and expect around 150 to actually come. So I am going to have to come up with many ways to be super frugal. I have many projects and ideas that I am working on, and I will update on the blog as I develop them!

Finals this week are Female Sexuality class and Midwifery Practicum class. We'll see how it goes!!