Green Hair

Troy likes to color his hair when he gets his hair cut, this time he chose green.

Am I a vampire?

After the last batch of lemons, my doctor handed me a few more. My ferritin level was 5, which is extremely low, no wonder I have been feeling tired lately. Low Ferritin levels can make it harder to become pregnant. The more tests the doctor performs on me the more it seems like there is a possibility that I am a vampire. At least it seems like there is no blood left inside of me. Maybe that is why my mom kept feeding me blood pudding as a child, and honestly as awful as it may sound, I loved it. That red delicious pudding with raisins in it, served with syrup on top. I think the one I ate was made with pig’s blood, but my guess is that any type of blood will do.
By the way, Norwegians are not the only ones crazy enough to eat this crap, just Google black pudding and you will find the British version of it.

Acupuncture

Last week I started with acupuncture in an effort to achieve that goal of ours. I am not sure if I am a believer but I am willing to give it a try. Tomorrow I will go in for my second appointment. If nothing else it was vert relaxing. Btw I need to figure out hos to stop the iPad from making my spelling worse than it already is.

If life gave you a do-over what would you do?

There have been times I have wished that there were do-overs in life.
My one big do-over would be to have children at a much earlier stage in life. Troy, my biggest joy in life arrived with hormonal support after 3 miscarriages, so when Geir and I decided we wanted to try for a little one we knew that it may take a while and not be an easy road. We were both checked and we were told that my hormonal imbalance has now been joined by two blocked fallopian tubes. We were also told that we had to get married since we had not been living together long enough to get IVF treatment. I guess the Norwegian government wants you to be truly committed before they make it legal to get ivf treatment. Well, we wanted a baby so we planned and executed a wedding during the span of one month. Since our budget for the wedding would now have to be used to pay for IVF treatment we had to make it low cost, and even so it was a really great day.
A week before the wedding I started to get upset with my period for being more irregular than normal, we wanted to start ivf as soon as possible after the summer vacation so I needed to get my period asap. From previous experience I know that taking a pregnancy test seems to be the most efficient way of getting my period started so one night I took one I had laying around. Imagine my surprise when the test showed that I was pregnant. I had been told that I had two blocked fallopian tubes, and even though I knew that the test they put me through would increase the chances of me getting pregnant I really did not think it would apply to me since there seemed to be absolutely no opening. Both Geir and I were in an absolute dace over the next few days, but I managed to call my doctor to get the hormonal support I need in order not to miscarry. A few things started to make sense to me now that I knew I was pregnant. From not caring much for potato chips to feeling like I could not live without them. That sore feeling in my stomach as if I had been working out, why I felt grumpy for no reason at all.
During our summer vacation I started to feel really sick and keeping my food down became a challenge. With Troy I hardly had any pregnancy symptoms as all, this time around I seemed to have them all.
We were scheduled for an early ultrasound on August 1 at 9 weeks, since this was a high risk pregnancy. Having had miscarriages before I was not able to completely relax and enjoy the pregnancy, but I was not prepared for the ultrasound results. My doctor kept measuring the baby and pointing out stuff, and all I could think of was: Where is the heartbeat?!!! I finally asked and he became a little flustered and said that he was not able to find it. The baby also seemed to be a few days smaller than it should be, so he sent us to the hospital for a second opinion. He did however warn us that he was rarely wrong in these cases, and he was not. At the hospital I opted not to have a dnc, as that may result in us having to wait longer before we could start over. After a week of popping pills my body got the point and I had a miscarriage.

I called my doctors office to see when we could start the ivf medications, and they told us that I had to have one normal period before we should start to optimize my body. During the conversation I learned that I have really low egg reserve and that we very well may not be successful with ivf at all. So hormonal imbalance, blocked fallopian tubes and now low egg reserve. I am not quite sure how to make lemonade out of these lemons.
I really desperately want to have more kids. Being a mom is the best thing in the world, and I would love to have a soccer team of my own. I know that is unrealistic at my age, but I really truly hope that we at least can get one more little rugrat in the house.
My do-over in life would be to start working on that soccer team in my 20s, but since we do not get do overs I’ll do whatever it takes to have one more baby.

New House

It is exciting to see our new house beeing built, and at the same time there are a million decisions that have to be made. It seems like every little change to the original plan, makes the house a lot more expensive.
We just decided to change the color of the hardwood floors downstairs, and just to change the color is an addition in the price.

The other day we went by a store that sells light fixture, and I am thinking that I may like this lamp over our dining room table, only downside is that I may have to buy a new dining room table to fit the lamp.

We are Married

Yesterday Geir and I got married. Considering that we had all of one month to plan it all I am happy about how smoothly it all went.
Troy and I spent the night at my mom's and Saturday morning was all about preparing and getting beautiful for the wedding. I got my hair and make-up done and back at my mom's Troy and I got dressed. Troy looked so handsome in his suit, and he kept telling me how beautiful I looked. His cousin and flower girl Celina was not quite agreeing with Troy that I was the most beautiful, she said that we both were beautful and I have to agree with her. She was so cute in her outfit.
The forecast had been awful, but the day started out with the sun shining. As my maid of honor was about to take me to church it started pouring, we waited it out a bit and we got to church at least somewhat dry.
During the ceremony Geir's brother played the guitar as my sister sang Vår beste dag, and it was fantastic and I had a hard time holding back my tears.
The only hitch during the entire day was during dinner when a napkin started burning, and Geir was going to toss it on the floor and ended up tossing the burning napkin in my lap. I screamed and tried to get rid of it, but it just kept changing position on my dress. I finally got it off. The floor ended up with burn marks but my dress did not get any marks at all.
Geir and I stayed at a hotel and when we got there, there were heart shaped flowers on the bed that matched my wedding bouquet from Geir as well as a tray of fruits and chocolate. We had room service in the morning which was a perfect ending to it all.
I have to say that I am not completely understading Norwegian hotels. They all seem to have single beds that are pushed together. If they know someone is spending their wedding night there, they should at least make sure that the beds are somewhat attached so that the newlyweds don't have to spend the night in separate beds...

We are getting Married

Geir proposed before Christmas, but we did not immideately set a date. We were talking about next year, but we were not sure how we wanted the wedding to be. Me a bride for the second time wanted small, him a groom for the first time wanted big. As far as the date goes that was sort of set for us, so on July 9th of this year we are getting married :)
That gave me exactly 1 month to plan a wedding. I know the way we have chosen to do this is not to everyones liking, but if I were to plan a wedding according to what everyone else wanted I would need years and several weddings to accomplish that. It is a little hurtful that some people can be so negative, but with 2.5 weeks to go I can't let that face me too much.

Places I have been

Not adding any new countries this year, as we will spend our summer vacation in Sweden

Create your own travel map


Laila has traveled to: Belgium, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United States, USA States: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas

Our new house

Since there are no houses for sale in the area we want to live, we have decided to build a new house. We have chosen to build a house called Nukleus, and if we are really lucky they should start the building process in a week or two. The house should be ready by Christmas.

Tigers

Yesterday when Troy woke up, the first words out of his mouth were:
Mom, sleeping next to tigers is not smart cause they are dangerous. Then we have to get Catriona so she can shoot them, cause she has a gun!
I guess someone had a dream about tigers.

Duh!

On the way home today Troy asked if we could go back to Florida on vacation since he really liked the Dr. Seauss world at Universal. I told him that we are about to start building a new house so we can not afford to go on such an expensive vacation this year. Troy's reply: but Mom we better go now, because there is no way we have any money left after we built the house!

Happy New Year

Last night we had my sister and her family over for dinner and to celebrate the New Years. We were going to have turkey for dinner but since they were sold out, we ended up making Danish Christmas Duck. It was the first time ever I made duck and it turned out to be pretty good. After dinner Troy and Celina were running around the house playing proclaiming that they were going to be best friends forever. I heard them laughing in the kitchen and it was not until I heard them knock something down I went in there to see what they were up to. I was met by the two of them slipping and sliding all over the floor. They had taken the pan that we made the duck in and emptied the grease all over the kitchen floor (the duck was not big but there was a lot of grease!). They thought it would be fun to make a skating rink in the kitchen and what better way to do it than to pour grease all over the floor.

Troy has never liked fireworks, it scares him. Last night he actually wanted to go outside to see the fireworks, and that is a big improvement.