Let's Make A Baby!

We have truly enjoyed every single second of our miracle baby, Charlie. He has been everything we could hope for, and more. And as he is growing, crawling, standing, tumbling, giggling, eating, making messes, and being everything little boys should be, we are starting to look to the future and imagining all the great things that he will experience in his life.
Upon doing In Vitro for Charlie, we thought we would either get pregnant with twins or at least have some extra embryos to freeze so that if we felt so inclined, that we would be able to give Charlie a little friend. Neither twins, nor extra embryos were in the cards last time around and so we thought we were done having children. That was until he was born. Since then, we've been praying and pondering, and we feel that we should try one more time. Charlie needs a friend to grow up with. When he's 8, Tori and Abbie will be out of the house and we'd love to have one more for Charlie to grow up with.
In Vitro is an expensive and hard process ($16,000-$18,000), but after going through it, we feel it is worth every penny and more. Charlie has brought us so much amazing joy, more than we could have ever imagined. The joy we have felt has far exceeded the pain and sorrow we felt in the 8 years of infertility that we struggled through. We are so grateful for our three amazing children, and as we ponder the idea of doing In Vitro one more time, we know we are so blessed already.
We'd like to invite you, if you feel so inclined, to help donate to our "Let's Make a Baby" fund to help us be able to afford doing In Vitro one last time. We are saving every penny that we can and hope that if you have a little to spare, to help us in our journey, we would truly appreciate it. We are hoping to be able to do In Vitro in July, but it will depend on how quickly we can save and raise the money.
One thing we'd like to do for our future baby is create a book that includes everyone who has donated who wishes to be included, it would include a picture and a story or note to our future little one. So that our baby can keep this as a keepsake to see who it was that loved them even before they were born.
We appreciate your love and support. If you cannot donate, we understand. We've been there. But we do appreciate your prayers and happy thoughts. Thank you! -From the Brockbank Family

If only every baby was an In Vitro Baby...

It's been almost 6 months now. Every smile, giggle, cry, spit up, poopy diaper, cat nap, late night, breastfeeding, drool, crawl, peeing on the wall, peeing on me, splatter of butternut squash... EVERY single moment I absolutely cherish. I feel like I'm living a fantasy life, like it's almost not real. Because I have my Charlie. And it makes me think, I wish I would have enjoyed my girls this much while they were little. I wish I would have had this intense gratitude for their existence as I do for Charlie. That sounds kind of harsh. And don't get me wrong, I am absolutely amazingly grateful for my girls. Especially now. My life would not be the same without them, it would be just as empty as my life without Charlie, but at the time that they were babies, I didn't find it profound or amazing that they were alive. I didn't enjoy every single moment, as if it almost didn't happen, it is such a different paradigm. This is why God gives us trials. To say that the joy outweighs the pain is an understatement. The joy is so magnified it's almost unreal! My heart is so full of love and gratitude. Thank you Heavenly Father for the trial of infertility, to bless me with such love and gratitude for my children, and for every single day, and every single moment that I am blessed to be their Mommy. I wish that every baby could be an In Vitro baby, so that their Mommies and Daddies could love them as much as I love Charlie.

Charlie Bradan Brockbank

It's amazing how fast 6 months can go by. Charlie is now 5 1/2 months and as cute as ever. Here are some pictures from when he was just about 2 weeks old...

Letter to Charlie

Dear Charlie, I wanted to write you a letter before you are officially are born into our family here in a few weeks. I've been wanting to write to you for a few months now, but haven't really known how to put into words the feelings I've had these last nine months. First of all, I want you to know how much I love you. I've loved you since before this Earth I'm sure of it, but from the night that you showed up in my dream, I have loved you more each and every day. Not one day has gone by since I saw you in my dream that I haven't missed you and yearned for you to be a part of our family. Not one day has gone by that you haven't been on my mind. I have not given up after so many failed tries, and it feels so good to finally be at the point of success. I've shed a lot of tears and thought about you for hundreds of hours and am so grateful that we are finally getting to the point where you are just about here.
We've been preparing these last few months for your arrival. Decorating a beautiful nursery for you, buying, washing, and folding all of your clothes. I think you have more clothes than any member in our family. I'll be lucky to get you in every one of them before you grow out of them. You definitely have more shoes than I do, but I'm okay with that. I walk into your room every day numerous times, just to smell the baby smell that comes from the cute diapers we bought, and to remind myself that its real. You are really coming into our family, and we're ready for you. I have your first outfit picked out for you, and your baby blessing outfit too.
Every morning that I wake up, for the last 9 months at least, I always have to remind myself that I'm pregnant, and that it wasn't just a dream, that it's real. And lately I always rub my belly to see if you'll move so that I can make sure that you really are in there, and that it's not just my imagination. It's hard after waiting for so many years for you to come, to actually accept the reality that you are real and that you are almost here. I think once I'm holding you in my arms, that 8 years of emotion will flood out and I will not be able to contain the emotion and joy that I feel. I've imagined that moment over and over again so many times I can't count. Whenever I felt doubt and lost almost all hope, I would think about the image of me holding you for the first time in the hospital and knowing that it was worth all the tears and so many years of waiting. And I will probably cry for months and months if not years and years, because of the amazing miracle you are to me. And every time I look at you, I'll feel so grateful to Heavenly Father that you were an answer to my prayers.
Almost 8 years of trying to get you here puts a lot of emotion into one's heart. So many nights of prayers and pleading with the Lord to bless me with you. Promise after promise, trying to figure out what it is that I could do to make myself worthy of such a blessing such as you. All the while, the Lord has taught me many lessons. I have grown to be the woman and mother than I am now, and I'm sure that as I raise you, I'll be refined even more, but I'm up to the task. I am honored to be blessed with the responsibility of being your Mom, to be responsible for teaching you all that I know, and all that I will learn.
Thank you for trusting me to care for you. Thank you for giving me the hope and knowledge that I needed 7 years ago when you appeared in my dream so that I wouldn't give up on you. You and I are going to be buddies, and I will love you with all the love I can possibly give. I will devote my life to making you into a better person than I am. And helping you to become an amazing son of God, missionary, husband, and father. You have a great mission on this Earth, I am sure of it, and I will be your partner in helping you reach your potential and fulfilling your mission. I love you Charlie. - Love, your Mom

It's a Boy!!!

I'm so happy! I'm going to have a son! Our little Buckaroo! My little monkey. My mini Bradley. I can't wait to see his handsome face and make him a Momma's Boy. I'm so grateful to Heavenly Father for blessing me with this amazing opportunity, to raise a son and fulfill my dreams. I never gave up, and I'm so glad I didn't succumb to discouragement. Now if I can just convince Brad to call him Charlie...

I can feel him move!

I know it's been forever since I wrote. I'm sorry. Life goes by so fast. I wish at times I could just freeze time so I can enjoy it a little longer. I'm about 23 weeks along now. Can you believe that? I am over halfway to holding our little baby boy. I don't think I even wrote on here before that we're having a Boy! I'm pretty sure I've talked Brad into the name Charlie. We're going to see what he looks like when he comes. I can't think of any good middle names to go with Charlie right now. Hopefully something will come to us in the next 4 months. Anyway, I feel him move every day now and I absolutely love it. I can't wait to hold him but I'll enjoy every move I feel until then. I'm so blessed, and so grateful it's finally my turn :)

What a Morning

I was planning on waking up this morning and making a yummy breakfast and enjoying a relaxing day. Instead I woke up to blood.

Yep. I went in to the bathroom for my morning ritual and to my shock and horror, I was bleeding.

I woke up Brad, 5:30am, and we contemplated what to do? The more I thought about it, the more I panicked. I had spotted just a brown color twice in the last two weeks, but this was RED.

So I called the hotline. She said I didn't need to do anything till I was soaking a pad an hour... So what you're saying is just wait to do anything until you know for sure you're miscarrying? I don't think so. Stupid nurse. She obviously doesn't care about my baby.

I told her I'd like to go to Urgent Care, so she gave us an address, they opened at 7am.

So we woke up my kind parents, dropped the kids off, and drove to Portland...

Took quite some time but they did an uncomfortable exam, took blood, and then my favorite part of the day... Ultrasound!!!

Baby is alive, he even waved Hi to us and sucked his thumb :) (see picture) His heart was beating at the normal range. I was so relieved. I told Brad, at least we got a $50 ultrasound!

Thanks to prayers and a Priesthood Blessing, baby is alive and well. I'm still spotting, turns out I'm anemic, but they couldn't find anything else wrong. I'm going to call my Doctor on Monday and get some more blood tests done. It's so unnerving, I'm 12 weeks now, I shouldn't be bleeding. So your prayers are greatly appreciated. What a day.

Update, 12 weeks...

I'm 12 weeks now! Can you believe it? Next week I'll be in my 2nd Trimester! I'll post a picture soon when I have the energy to put on some makeup and do my hair :). I definitely have a little belly. I can't fit into any of my pants, at all. I'm doing the whole rubberband around the button thing but today I decided that I may have graduated from that, as it left a nice red indent in my belly today. Geesh! Thankfully my pants I ordered from target that are drawstring arrived today. Hallelujia! I really do hate this in between stage. Today I feel completely lowzy, but that's because I have a cold. For the most part I'm doing pretty well now. I can't walk around or stay on my feet for a long time, but it's not bad at all. I'll post pictures soon. I'm going to try to do pics every Sunday if I can start remembering :) And in case you wanted to know what we're having, still don't find out for sure (although I'm sure it's a boy) until December. Thanks for reading!

Dream Come True

Most of you already know, but there may be some that subscribe to this and not Facebook or my other blog. We are expecting a little bundle of joy! It's been a super long journey. 8 years almost exactly, and I'm so happy to finally be on this end of it. It's really hard to believe honestly. Every morning I wake up I have to remind myself that its real. It's a little easier to believe its real every time I wake up at 3am to use the restroom, or when I have to undo my pants button... but it was really nice today to have an ultrasound with the doctor and see that he is moving around and that his heart is beating. Such a relief. I say "He" because I firmly believe he is a he. I had a vision of my little baby boy about 7 years or so ago and I had another confirmation at my very first ultrasound when I found out that I'm not having twins, that this was a fulfillment of that vision I had 7 years ago. So I will heretofore refer to him as a he and until I confirm that in December, that will be how it is. Going through the fertility process is so interesting. I felt like I had a good head on my shoulders when we finally got down to the actual process of In Vitro, and I'm really grateful. It was only through my relationship with my Heavenly Father that I was able to have confidence in the whole process and know that although I don't know the reason for all these things, I DO know that I'm doing what he wants me to do, and that is all that really matters. I knew that if for some CRAZY reason that it didn't work, that I wouldn't be letting him down, and I wouldn't be letting myself down, because I was doing what he wanted me to do, and that's all I needed. But every time I had a doubt and I prayed that everything would work, I always heard this voice in my head saying, "It's going to work." And so, I trusted. And even the last few days when I had doubts creep in that something bad happened and the baby stopped growing or that he wasn't there anymore (normal fears by the way), I still had that trust and knowledge that whatever happens with this baby is completely up to God. It's his child after all, I'm just housing him in my belly for 9 months and then I get to have the opportunity to be his mother and take care of him, but he's God's Child, not mine. So as long as I do my part, and do everything in my power to make sure I'm healthy, and doing everything I can, the rest is up to God and I'll trust it is how it's supposed to be. My little man was moving all around today, he still looks like an alien, he looks like a little alien, but he's adorable, and I couldn't be happier.

Long time no See

I saw a dear friend of mine, Traci Hammond at Kid's Fun and Fitness yesterday and she reminded me that I haven't updated my blog in forever. So I thought I'd do that really quickly. I get on facebook so often now that I have a hard time keeping up with my blog. Anyway, here's a few things I've worked on recently that will help update you on our lives. Go ahead and comment if you even read my blog. I figured no one reads my blog anymore, so if I get enough comments, I may start blogging again :)

Wow, lots to update on

Well, its been since November 2010 since I last updated my blog. That's crazy. Since then, we've had a great Thanksgiving and Christmas in Dallas, changed jobs and moved to Kentucky in February, had some close calls with Tornadoes in Kentucky, went to the Kentucky Derby, then Brad's job transferred us back to Washington. Most of you already know this, and I'm much more faithful to facebook now than my blog, so I apologize to all the bloggers out there that still think I'm chillin at home in Dallas semi-retired :) We're excited to be back in Washington and we're really happy here :) Life is good!!

Semi-Retired

Yep, I am. I'm Semi-Retired. I quit my full time/over time job and now I'm Semi-Retired. I never thought it would be a difficult transition but I struggled there for a few weeks. Trying to figure out what to do with my time. I started cleaning my house but that wasn't very fun, so I gave that up pretty quick. I did recently unpack my office, that feels really good because I can now reach my computer with my eyes closed without tripping over something. So that was really productive. I decided I should start doing our laundry instead of picking the "less dirty" out of the dirty pile, and that has helped our family hygiene immensely. For real though, I'm really enjoying being a Mom again. Being there emotionally for my kids when they get home from school. Helping them with their homework and interacting with them. It takes working full time to enjoy those little things that most get sick of after doing them every day.

It's cold and rainy today. High of 61, low of 47. I turned on the heater and oddly enough I love the smell of a heater that hasn't been run in 9 months. It's like the sure sign that Fall is here. If I could I'd go to Hobby Lobby and spend hundreds of dollars on Autumn decorations and decorate my house all up for Thanksgiving. I don't think we're going to do anything for Thanksgiving this year, just stay in Dallas. We recently went on a Cruise to Mexico with the whole family and my parents, and before that we went to Las Vegas and Cancun, just Brad and I. So it's been a super busy year, lots of traveling. So I think we'll stay close to home.

Now that I'm Semi-Retired I'm sure I'll get back into blogging, so feel free to check up on my blog again. I'll post some super cute pictures from Tori's Baptism on here soon. That was October 9th in Washington. I forgot we went to Washington in October too. Man, we've been all over the place! But it's been an incredible year!

J. Hilburn's New Video-This is why we moved to Dallas...

Sorry it's been so long

This was definitely blogworthy:

Abbie- "There is a boy in my class that has a crush on me. He likes me even more today than he did yesterday"

Tori- "How do you know he likes you?"

Abbie-" He keeps hitting me and smiling at me. And I don't like it. I wanted to tell him to stop liking me, but I don't want to hurt his feelings."

Me- Tell him you just want to be friends, but you don't want to be his girlfriend."

Abbie- "I don't think that will work. He likes another girl too."

Tori- "That means he's cheating on you!"

Abbie- "Hmmm, he IS cheating on me."

Me- (trying to hold in my laugh) Tell him he has to choose between you and the other girl. That's how I got your father to make up his mind, he's gotta choose one or the other. Then hope that he'll choose the other girl so you'll be off the hook :)

Happy Anniversary $2500 later!

Brad and I had our 9th anniversary on 5/11/10, we went to go see a movie from about 5:30-8:00. Dropped kids off at some good friends of ours that have kids their age to babysit. Came back and Abbie was on the couch crying with an ice pack on her head. Our friend said she fell but she's okay. Tori convinced me to come outside to see where she fell. She fell off of the trampoline, hit her head on their ladder and then the concrete. Abbie's headache got increasingly worse so I called our pediatrician and went to the Urgent Care Clinic. Both places said to take her to ER. So we went to the ER, they did a catscan, came back with "She has a decent size fracture in her skull, we need to send her by ambulance to Children's Hospital, then she'll stay overnight over there for observation. That way if anything gets worse they have the ability to operate if they need to there, but right now its just for observation." So they gave her an IV, strapped her down on one of those board things with the neck brace and all and I rode with her in the ambulance, went to Primary Children's hospital and upon arrival about 20 doctors/nurses/etc. were all in the room surrounding her. It was pretty crazy. In about 5 minutes they realized she was fine, no need to even send her there, they were kind of annoyed because she didn't have any bad symptoms like passing out, or dizziness, or nausea, so they unstrapped her from the board thingy, took off her neck brace, gave her a Popsicle, and she hopped and skipped out of the hospital at about 1:30am. So THANKFULLY she is fine, but sucks that we have to pay for two ER visits AND an ambulance ride, but I'd pay that in a heartbeat if it meant she was okay. At least we have insurance. Holy cow it was scary though, and I'm VERY tired. :) I'm thinking we'll hit our Out of Pocket Max for the bill $2500, what do you think?

Happy 9th Anniversary Brad!

It's Time

Well, it's time to update ya'll so this may be a long one. I'm sorry for the lack of blogging. I'm pretty busy nowadays, but life is good. So around Valentine's Day Brad took the girls to a daddy daughter dance, here are the pics:







It snowed a few times, in fact we had some record snowfall this year and they didn't even close school! We had about a foot of snow. I figured out the school board had never seen so much snow that they probably didn't know that they could cancel school and that snow days were called snow days cause you're supposed to cancel school when it snows. My goodness. If record snowfalls don't cancel school, what does?





For Brad's birthday we went bowling. i got a video of Tori bowling, it was so cute. It's pretty dark, but its worth watching, you'll get the gist of it.



We're heading to Kentucky to go for a drive and visit Mark (Brad's brother) and Mark's wife Sarah, who are visiting her family in Kentucky, so we're going to go meet them there and have a blast, we can't wait.

The last story is really hilarious, and I apologize for the delay, but here it is:

About 2 weeks ago I was working at my desk and Abbie was sitting on our bed, playing with some real handcuffs that Brad had from his days of doing transports for troubled youth (that's what he wanted me to tell you the handcuffs were for, I think they make him feel powerful, like he could arrest someone if he had to, but I promise he's never used them on me, I swear.) So Abbie was playing with them and all the sudden she says, "Mom, look what I did!" in a happy/proud voice. I looked over and saw that she had handcuffed her ankles together. I raised my eyebrows kinda like "wow, cool." Then her eyebrows furrowed and she said, "you have the key, right?" I started laughing hysterically because I knew I didn't and I hadn't even thought of that until she mentioned it, and she started crying. It was SO FUNNY. Man, if I had a camera crew follow me around to catch moments like these we'd be rich off of america's funniest videos. You know what I think would have won the grand prize? If we had caught the lizard escape on video. That surely would have won. Anyway, so I had to calm Abbie down and assure her that Daddy was coming home from work to unlock the handcuffs so she could walk. I carried her downstairs to watch tv to distract her so she'd stop crying, and that worked, and then she waddled her way around downstairs until he came home about an hour later. It was classic. Sorry I don't have any pics, I'll get better at that.

The Dog Bed

So we bought this dog bed for Nali from Costco and almost every morning Nali is on the floor and Abbie is in her bed. Brad thinks we should buy one for each of the girls so they don't steal it from the dog. We had to get proof in a picture for future blackmail purposes :)

Farewell Lizzy

I hate to say it, but the day has come. Lizzy has been let out into the cold and dreary world to become part of the food chain once again. She had a nice 4 1/2 month vacation in the sunny sand filled cage where all of her food was provided for her and she could relax, protected and well fed. Brad was looking at her today and realized she was covered in mites. Not sure how the mites got there or how long they've been there, but he decided it would be better to let her go and fend for herself than to trap her in a cage full of mites and watch her die a slow and painful death. She wasn't eating her crickets that we gave her and she has been trying to hibernate but hasn't been able to because of the warmth and the noise and all that, so he let her go. I'm just glad it was Brad's decision, not mine.

Also, for Halloween the girls won fish at the carnival. We had to go get a fish tank and all this crap to keep them alive. Since then we purchased 3 other fish. They started dying about 3 weeks ago, one by one. And then they started eating each other! It was so nasty. All but one fish died so I dumped them out and had compassion on the last one, kept it in a big cup. The girls were fine with it, not one tear shed, so i figured they just didn't care much. Brad dumped the last one into the toilet one morning so that the girls wouldn't have to go through the last one dying... They realized first thing that morning the fish was gone and Abbie started bawling! I'm like, 5 fish die, you don't care, the last one dies, you freak out? Totally unpredicted. I told her that Daddy let it go into a lake. She was upset because that one was hers, and it was the last survivor. Kind of like she won the contest for last living fish. And we went and killed it. Brad told me after the fact I was supposed to tell her that it died first. I wasn't about to completely lie to her, so I told her he let it go into a lake, because I figured that whatever body of water it ends up being could be considered a lake, right? Well apparently she wouldn't have been sad if it had died first, it was the fact that it DIDN'T die, and we let it go that made her upset. Who woulda known.

So its just us and the dog now. Simplicity is much better. I think we're done with the crazy pet phase of our life. I hope the girls enjoyed it because we won't be going there again :)

I was at the pet store on Saturday and was looking at the little yellow parakeet birds. I had a flashback to my childhood. Brian and Michael's (my brothers) little parakeet had broken its foot and couldn't fly (not that it really could in a cage either) and Mom and Dad were taking it to the vet to get better. The parakeet didn't come home that day. Now that I'm a mom and I know how bad birds stink, and what a huge upkeep they are, I have a feeling that the bird didn't go to the vet that day. Mom, would you like to fill in for me what REALLY Happened that day?

Update

I'm sorry I've been MIA lately. I have hardly had a second to breathe. The girls are getting ready for bed, so i thought I'd add some pictures real quick since I found the cord to upload the pics from the camera. I got my hair done about 2 weeks ago and when I got home I decided to give Tori a new style and it just happened to look just like mine :) She likes to call herself "mini-mama"