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- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Last week Matt and I celebrated the 6th anniversary of our first date. It's a little tradition we have to remember November 8, although year to year we haven't been very consistent in what exactly we do - sometimes one or both of us comes up with a gift, or we make a nice dinner at home or we go on a fabulous date. This year we talked about going to the restaurant where our first date took place, but the more we thought about it.... the more we both really wanted sushi, lol. Also it turns out that restaurant is now closed. RIP Sierra Grill. Thanks for a good dinner back in 2006 <3
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
It has been an interesting week so far, marked by lower back pain, eeeaarly mornings, and anticipating Remembrance Day by playing the trumpet and intermittently being stabbed by my poppy.
I am very excited to be playing the Last Post for the church’s Remembrance Day service this year. I sold my trumpet in the Spring because I never played it and it needed a professional cleaning, but I didn’t want to spend the money on that knowing that it probably wouldn’t be played anyways. I haven’t regretted selling it, and I only occasionally miss playing it (which I also did when I still owned it in its not-playable condition), but I am having a lot of fun this week on a borrowed trumpet getting my face back into shape to play for this Sunday. Rumour has it the borrowed trumpet may actually be donated to the church, in which case I could play it for future special events and also have access to it at the church for those random trumpet hankerings I get sometimes.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Matt and I are undertaking a challenge this month to quit using our credit and debit cards cold turkey.
A lot of financial advice people suggest using only cash, and when we first started budgeting we tried doing cash only in separate envelopes or jars for different categories. It was too complicated to keep track of though, and too easy to end up stuck somewhere without the cash we needed. As we’ve tweaked our approach to budgeting over the last few years, I think we’ve found a pretty good middle ground in using plastic for convenience but not to overspend.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
This past week I had a huge crisis that basically put me in a downward spiral to the lowest point I can remember since January. The short version of the story is that the church where Matt works is a hot mess, and circumstances around that have left me hurt, frustrated, disillusioned and spent. I've been blessed since January to be attending another church in our community where God shows up for me in so many ways and has brought a lot of healing and comfort over the past many months. As part of that process, I began to experience a renewal of hope for Matt's church and its future, and our potential future there, and then last weekend those small green shoots of hope in my soul were basically torn up, set on fire and crapped on.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Our prenatal class started this week, and I am so excited! We got a list of classes in our area from the midwives, and I scoped them out only to find that on a two-sided page of options there was one class that I hoped would be a good fit (financially, philosophically, and geographically). After attending the first class, I think I was right, and I am really looking forward to the next 5 weeks :)
The woman leading our class, Shannon, is a doula (a professional birth attendant), and let me tell you this woman is passionate about birth! I think we were all pretty amazed as she described (with the help of a doll and a pink knit uterus lol) the stages of labour, what is happening in the body and how babies are active participants in the birth process. For example, were you aware that during a contraction the top of the uterus (fundus) tightens and pushes down on the baby, and the baby reflexively straightens its legs to push itself down against the cervix/down the birth canal. Apparently there have been cases of pregnant women in comas who have delivered babies without waking up – the body and the baby work together to make birth happen. Mind blown.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Life has been busy, but not in a very bloggable way. I keep getting more pregnant though, which is always bloggable, right? So here's a quick update as I near the end of my fifth (!!!) month of pregnancy.
Here is the bump at 17 weeks, about to go out to dinner with Matt! My book said the baby would double its weight between weeks 17 and 20...
But my belly definitely started to pop before then. This is 19 weeks, rocking my maternity jeans!
And here's 20 weeks - half way to full term!
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
This week I am inspired by the mad alliteration of Thursday the thirteenth to share three thrifty strategies I plan to put into play this Fall to lessen our living expenses. With a year of maternity leave coming up in 2013, Matt and I are preparing to lose a major portion of my income. Ideally we will fit our cost of living into his paycheques so that my maternity benefits can go to savings or debt and so going back to work can be an option rather than a necessity for me. I'm glad we're starting to plan now so we have a good number of months to sort things out and adapt as we need to!
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
The Summer I had radiation treatment for thyroid cancer, I yelled at my grandmother over a card game.
To be fair, I have always hated UNO.
After the primeval shriek, storming out of the kitchen and bursting into tears in my bedroom, my dad came in and sat on my bed to tell me that he took the fall for my outburst, told my grandma that I was upset with him and that's why I'd gone bananas. I really appreciated that - I still do; it is a gleaming, gold-star parenting moment that stands out so much in my memory. My dad also told me that I was probably stressed about my upcoming radiation and that was okay, and in that moment I realized it was true - I was scared.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
I guess I should post something so the end of my NFP mini-series doesn't sit there for weeks scaring off any strangers who wander by. I'm 24 years old today! It's pretty good, especially since I spent the last few weeks (months?) feeling like/thinking I was 24 already. It's embarrassing, as an adult, to have to correct yourself on the rare occasion someone asks your age.
It has been a laid-back birthday - I have the day off work and have been alternately taking it easy and catching up on chores after our two-night camping trip that ended yesterday (with a rain storm. Adventures!). Currently I am starving and about to get dinner started so we can hopefully clean up in time for some friends to come over for cake this evening. I am EXTREMELY hungry, which hits about 40 seconds after normal hungry, but I am resisting the urge to collapse and weep on the floor until Matt gets home because this weekend my doctor started me on a higher dose for my thyroid and it. is. magical. I cannot share a list of all the wonderful changes this new dose has wrought in my life, for many of them are very personal and this IS the internet. But the very most wonderful change is feeling like a human being and not a sock that someone played shoeless soccer in before it got run over by a bicycle. It turns out that pregnant ladies are supposed to feel slightly less fatigued in the second trimester, which I missed out on because I have no thyroid.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
The cord I needed has been found! I hope you enjoy this quick visual update on what's been going on lately :) There are the shoes I purged, before and after pictures of our prayer table which was refinished by the men's ministry/carpentry workshop of my church, the pictures of my Shahi Paneer Korma, cookies I baked, AND last but not least my 15-week bump.
