Valentine Adventure

My Valentine

Several years ago Dan and I stopped doing the typical "eat dinner out on Valentine's Day" thing.  I hate crowds and the restaurants always find ways to charge more for a price fixed menu.  And, honestly we are not one of those couples that loves getting all dressed up for a "night on the town".  So a few years ago we began a new more adventurous and fun tradition:  a medley of stops at our most favorite local places.  This year we invited our neighbors and friends to come along and our stops included:

Breakfast pastries at J.J. Sweet

Our neighbors and friends Craig and Janee came too!

A visit to our favorite cheese monger in Beverly Hills

Have you every been to a REAL cheese store?  It's  amazingly fun!

A lunch stop at The Grove in downtown LA - The boys had Greek gyros.

The girls had carnitas tacos.

Dan bought our dog Jersey some treats from the doggie bakery.

On our way back to Chino we dropped by the hundred-year-old olive grove and the Graber Olive House to pick up a few cans of our favorite olives.

When we got back to our house we began to feast on our Valentine booty.

The cheese was such a tasty and fun treat!

The Post I've Been Waiting To Write: The Waiting Ends and the Shots Begin!

It has been a messy few weeks going back a forth between lawyers, clinic coordinators, and notaries but today I had my baseline ultrasound, baseline bloodwork, and FET scheduling session.  FET #2 is scheduled for March 9th!  YEA!!!!!  The first thing I said to Dr. K this morning was "It is soooo glad to be back!".  Our donation contract should finalize sometime on Monday and our 12 2PN embryos will officially be ours!  I start twice a week delestrogen shots on Wednesday and I am so excited!  Shots mean we are getting close!  (Can you tell I am excited?  I can't stop using exclamation marks!)

MARCH 9th!

A Fun Giveaway!

My cousin Rachel is having a giveaway on her blog. (She is the one who recently hosted an adoption fundraiser for us with her business Little Lesiw.) Make sure you go and post your comment by tonight to enter the random drawing to win this awesome collection of bitty blooms!

Meet Number Seven!

Late last night Dan and I became an Uncle and Auntie again!  

Our first niece was born! 

(We also have six nephews on my side.)   

Meet Abigail Ruth!

 

So cute!  Congratulations Jake and Kathryn!

Simple, healthy, delicious . . . well mostly healthy!

Last night I made caprese salad.  Fresh and Easy had heirloom tomatoes on clearance so I snatched some fresh mozzarella and basil.  I think I could eat this everyday!  So easy and delicious.

It is avocado season in California so today I made fresh guacamole!

Dan and I are major cheese lovers and I am not talking about jack, cheddar, and swiss.  For a special treat today we bought some imported cheese from France and Holland.  The triple cream was AMAZING!

One of our favorite healthier desserts is dark chocolate covered strawberries.  We live amongst many strawberry fields, so when I saw these beauties I whipped up a quick batch. 

IRS and Embryo Adoption

I saw a letter that explained embryo adoption as equated with traditional adoption for the purposes of receiving the adoption tax credit and showed it to our tax man. He wouldn't do it (primarily due to the fact that none of our embryos have resulted in a live birth yet.)  It is really unfair how the insurance industry treats (or rather doesn't treat) infertility patients. It is sad that our country (including the IRS) doesn't recognize an embryo as a human life. Even many pro-adoption people I know seem to feel it is more noble to adopt a born child rather than one that is unborn as we do in embryo adoption. Hopefully by showing them our embryo pictures next to pictures of those same embryos after they are born will help all to realize that embryos are not "potential" life they are indeed fully human and fully alive.  We need to force our government to honor what we already know: embryo adoption is in fact adoption.

Getting Closer!

Today we got word that the donor family and their lawyer approved all the changes we wanted made to the donor contract.  We had our signature page notarized and then overnighted a $50 check to the lawyer for our donor family's notary fees.  We were a little bothered that they insisted on $50 for notary fees (which seemed excessive) until the lawyer told us it was to have a notary go to the donor family's house to get their signatures on the donation contract.  This means that we won't have to wait four weeks for our donor family to find the time to get to the notary on their own - WELL worth $50 if you ask me!  Our contract should be finalized by the end of the week which means we should have a transfer date by early next week.  I am beyond excited and thankful that we will not have to deal with another failed donation match.

I was talking to Dan today and realized that we both had the same concern.  One of the many reasons we wanted to share our embryo adoption story was to encourage others who may be considering embryo adoption.  I am worried that some of our unlucky turn of events may actually discourage others from embryo adoption.  I have two thoughts on this:  1)  I have noticed that our embryo adoption/donation experience is not the normal timeline for most people who have chosen to pursue this type of adoption.   Many of the couples who began this journey around the same time or even after us are now well into their pregnancies.  2) While the disappointments we have had (especially in our failed matches this year) have been hard to deal with at times, I have no doubt that the joy we have received (and will receive) have made the journey worth it- cliche but true. 

The boring part of our adoption journey is nearing a close.  It's time for some excitement!  Let the hormone shots commence!