Post Season in Missouri

For the second year in a row, both Missouri teams are in the post season play.

12139995_10100914318865031_8511307385566631455_oOur family is divided. My in-laws root for the Cards, but in our house we obviously are rooting for the Royals. We have made that no secret.

I am excited to see my team make it again, and maybe we will see them take it all the way this time.

Maybe we will relive the 1985 series between the two Missouri teams.

It is hard to believe that this was just a year ago when we went to the post season for the first time in 29 years. We took advantage of those sleepless new baby nights to watch them play. It was a remarkable time in our lives.

IMG_5488Those baby wrinkles were magic.

And now my bouncing one year old will hopefully bring some more magic.

12113352_10100914319034691_6174924856826151898_oGeorge has got this guys.

We are excited for October baseball. We haven’t had many of these to celebrate in our life time. So we eat it up when we can.

12113513_10100914318600561_5373501788853113333_oI am excited to see the heart.

I am excited to the stolen bases.

I am excited to see team spirit.

I am excited to see the city spirit. Seriously what major league team does pep rallies in the middle of a work day and turns their whole city blue? Kansas City that’s who.

I am excited for others to finally see what we in KC have always seen about the Royals.

Let’s play ball!

This video gives me goosebumps.

If you didn’t see this video, our team spirit spreads far and wide!

Take the Crown! We are forever Royal!

But first George takes his cousin…Royals all the way!

11113861_10100914319159441_4071806865817407007_oWho are you rooting for in the hunt for the World Series? Any other True Blues out there?

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

Well personally, I want a big hot dog and a soft pretzel when I am at a baseball game, but that’s neither here nor there.

We love baseball in our house, which I am sure you noticed with our pregnancy announcement.

Opening day was today, and we are so pumped to have our beloved Royals back!

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Tom was so pumped to get a camo KC hat!

Unfortunately, being a Royals fan comes with a lot of pain. We lost our first game today to the Tigers.

But never fear, the season is long! And I am sure we will bounce back!

We are not fair weather fans in this house!

I grew up in KC, and my mom’s house was down the street from the stadium. Many weekends we spent in the parking lot riding our bikes and watching fireworks on Fridays.

My brother and I collected baseball cards like it was our job there for a time.

We ate ice cream and applesauce out of our beloved small plastic baseball caps.

You just love the men in blue when you grow up in KC. And luckily I married a man who also loves my Royals, despite where he grew up being mostly Cardinals fans. He knows where the true sportsmanship is!

Our wedding was also unintentionally in Royals colors. Tom’s favorite color is blue and mine is yellow. That is how we picked out our wedding colors, and we soon then realized that we had matched our Royals.

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I have had so much fun over the years watching games. The Royals fans and the stadium atmosphere are top notch.

We stand behind our team no matter what.

The games are fairly cheap, and they do a great job entertaining between innings and pitches. It really is a fun time. Plus they have lots of give aways, so generally you are guaranteed some swag when you go. I can’t wait to live closer to take advantage of T-shirt Tuesdays!

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Some of my Iowa favorites reuniting at the game

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I had one of my bachelorette parties at a game. Seriously a fan, and I won’t hold it against my sister-in-law (pictured here) that she roots for the wrong Missouri team.

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My best friend and other half with their men, my mom, and my sister-in-law. They were keeping me distracted while Tom was on one of his Army adventures.

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This was at an I-Cubs game in Des Moines, but they were playing the Royals farm team. So obviously we came decked out in blue!

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My best friend and other half (two different people folks)

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My dad and step mom at a game.

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One of the fortunate things of my undergrad was that it was close enough to make it to some games with college friends one in awhile.

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Match made in heaven with our fandom!

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I think this was opening day one year with my Best Friend and Slugger!

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My brother and I at a game. See wedding colors?

Tom and I were both born in 1985 when the Royals won the World Series. We were born to be Royals fans. So we are hoping that little birthing luck will be passed down to our Little Guy, and this will be a good year for our boys in blue.

If you were not aware, Lorde’s song “Royals” was inspired by the MLB Royals player George Brett. She saw a picture of him in a Royals t-shirt, and the rest of her fame is history. So it is only appropriate that someone in KC made a parody.

Do you watch baseball? Who is your team? Have you ever experienced a baseball game at the K?

We Won Valentine’s Day: Our Pregnancy Story

Thank you for all the well wishes! We are pretty stoked!

Baby 4

Here is the story of how we found out. It really is the best story ever, but I could be biased.

I am going to talk about some bodily functions, nothing too graphic. Just know that before you keep reading, however the craziness of the story will be worth it.

Let’s start with my last real period was in the beginning of November.

We had at least 6 negative pregnancy tests from before Christmas to the first week of January since no period came. We also had two negative tests from the doctor around January 8th. There was something so devastating about each one of these because I just felt that this time was different. Something told me that this time we made it happen.

A few days later after the results from the doctor and feeling defeated, I started bleeding. You may remember me complaining about the worst period ever. And if you follow me on Instagram you may have seen my seriously depleted diet and several sick days. Y’all, I don’t take sick days, so you know it was bad! It wasn’t like my most recent periods, but I continued to bleed for the next 3 weeks and was so sick to my stomach ALL DAY LONG. Because of the negative test results, I didn’t think anything of pregnancy spotting. I just thought that my awful periods pre-birth control were just coming back. (Before I took BC, I would pass out from feeling so sick, cramps were a nightmare, and I would bleed for more than a week, have a week off, then start the next one. Awful, I tell you.)

So again, we just consulted the doctor.

At the same time, we had already set up our first appointment with the fertility specialist. My doctor suggested to talk my period issues over with them, since hormone therapy will be one of the first things they try, and we would go from there.

Valentine’s Day happened to be when our first appointment was with the specialist. We don’t generally celebrate this holiday, but we did find it kind of funny that we had an appointment about baby making on this day.

We trekked it down to Nashville for this three hour appointment.

They poked and prodded me taking blood/urine and doing a pap smear. We then sat for an hour listening to the doctor talk about all the different routes we could go, all the while telling jokes and wise cracks. He is a super goofy guy. Then Tom had to sit through a financial briefing, as I was being briefed that the last thing they wanted to do was an ultra sound to check to make sure there was no cancer or abnormal growths.

Talk about swing of emotions here! Going from talking about infertility, money, then possible cancer?

Obviously a sane person, would have been a little less on edge, but I think both of us were wound up at that point that we just hung on to those trigger words.

So here I sit in this cold room half naked waiting for what seems like hours for them to stick a giant probe in my lady bits to see if I have cancer. I know dramatic, but it’s where I was.

Finally, Tom joins me, then the doctor and nurse follow in after.

Tom leaned over just before the doctor started the ultra sound and said, “Isn’t a chance she is pregnant is there?”

And then the world stopped.

“Yep, you knocked her up. Good job.”

WAIT. YOU. SAID. WHAT?!

“You are 8 weeks pregnant. You did it.”

I could not see the screen, so I sat up and said, “You are not joking are you? There really is a baby in there? There is no way!”

I thought it was a cruel prank the funny man doctor was playing on us. I probably said this 3 or 4 times before I believed that the little blob on the screen was our baby.

OUR BABY!

Then both Tom and I were crying from shock and joy. This is probably a moment that I will relive forever. So sweet for us.

I told the nurse and the doctor that they were the best fertility specialist facility ever since we just had to walk in the door.

We asked if this happened often, and they said no, and we have since become famous at the clinic with our story. Pretty crazy.

The next hour is kind of a blur. We watched our baby on the screen through tears and disbelief, and they told us that the heart beat was strong and healthy. Then once I got dressed and found a quarter in my pocket (luck was on my side apparently), we were rushed into the conference room to discuss how to get the bleeding under control and get my hormones in check. My body was reading as if it wasn’t pregnant because my hormone levels were so low. This baby is a trooper! They gave me several things to get my body with the pregnancy program, and we now have to go in every week to get checked out.

Because of my hormones being out of whack and the long period of bleeding, I am still considered at-risk, which is why I cannot do anything above a walk or lift anything above 10 lbs. The good news is though that I am no longer bleeding, and I am now reading positive for a pregnancy. Now if only the nausea would go away…

Baby 2

We are just a little over 10 weeks pregnant now, and we are still kind of in stunned mode. Besides the nausea for the past 2 months, you can’t tell that I am pregnant. However, every visit we have had the doctors have been positive about the growth. The last ultra sound we saw the little bugger doing the old man shuffle, and the heart beat has been great every time.

The whole thing is still mind boggling, and sometimes it feels like a dream. Like I said, we were preparing ourselves for the worst at this appointment. We even had the discussion on the way there of the possibility of one of us being infertile and how we would proceed with adoption. To go from that, to seeing a human in my belly, was absolutely nuts.

Prayers are answered in God’s time is all I can say.

We are over the moon excited. We told about every stranger we met that weekend because we were so excited. Tom has been showing the ultra sound picture to anyone who has eyes. We are just giddy with joy right now.

When we got in the car after the appointment, Tom went into prep mode as you all could expect. He claimed we needed to go get diapers, a stroller, and that I needed to sit in the back seat in a car seat for the rest of the pregnancy.

So that my friends, is how we found out that we are going to be parents!

Also this is how we came to win Valentine’s Day, which means we will probably celebrate now in the future.

Baby 3

Our Roster Is Expanding!

We have an announcement!

Baby 1

And let me tell you this little rookie is having a lot of batting practice right now.

Come back tomorrow for the full story on how we found out, because you may remember that a month ago my doctor assured us that we were not pregnant.

It may be the best story you ever read, seriously.