2011 in review

I woke up made myself a coffee and crawled back into bed to enjoy my lazy day at home. As I was sitting there I wished my peeps a happy last day of 2011. After sending out my wishes my mind started to wonder back to the start of 2011 and as I traveled back through my year in my head, I didn’t even believe all that had happened. So I figured why not share my crazy year in review with my blogging peeps!

I woke up to 2011 in Costa Rica, realizing that instead of having a nap my mom, sister, aunt and I had slept through New Year’s Eve. While in Costa Rica I challenged pretty much ALL of my fears and phobias. I rappelled down 350ft waterfalls, zip lined 750ft over the rain forest, hiked up a volcano, played in the rainforest with frog’s snakes and all other types of creepy crawlies.  I got stung by jelly fish and almost got tackled by a giant lizard sliding down a hot tin roof. My 15 day trip in Costa Rica challenged me and opened my world up even more then I could ever imagine.

As if Costa Rica wasn’t enough, March brought us Boston and the running of the brides. Running of the brides is a yearly even where all the designers send their dresses to a giant convention hall at crazy discounted rates. Women line up overnight to wait to all rush in to grab there perfect dress; you run, wrestle, barter and sometimes fight for that perfect dress.  We lined up at 3am for my girlfriend pam and we were some of the first in line, we fought our way to her dream dress and by 11am it was all hers. We explored Boston, visited Harvard, did a photo shoot and partied the night away for my girl Keeks birthday!

With my year being a roller coaster, starting up up up and then eventually racing down it bring us to April and our first appointment with our fertility specialist. We were told after years of trying, tests and emotions that our only options were for me to have surgery or for us to go through IVF. I had a follow up appointment with our DR in May after he got a hold of my medical records and the surgery was taken off of the table because of safety concerns for me. We were left with only IVF, which is a 10-15 thousand dollar procedure with (for us) a 50% chance of success.  We were devastated.

The summer was a blur of  anger, denial, tears and finally acceptance. Accepting that maybe children were not in our future was a hard pill to swallow and clouded what is normally my favorite bright sunny summer season.

Finally in comes the fall!

On one special shopping day in the states, my sister in law asks me if I can keep a secret. She’s pregnant and (other than her hubby no one else knows). This news made me so happy and brightened not only my day, but my cloudy world. She is currently 5.5 months pregnant, everyone knows and she and their soon to be baby girl are doing amazing. (I am feeling her kick as I write this post lol)

In comes my phone call from my mom and sister that has forever changed our lives. The New Hot 899’s Win a baby contest; put us through another rollercoaster of emotions. Entering and Ryan trying to make sure my hopes weren’t too high (to avoid another range of emotional consequences), passing the top 5 qualifying deadline and assuming we did not make the top five, waking up the next day to hear that the top five had yet to be chosen, making top five, voting and then finally finding out that all top five couples had won. We had all won up to 35,000 and up to 3 rounds of ivf. We got our baby hopes back and made some amazing connections through this process. Our family friends, friends of friends and complete strangers stepped up to support our dream of having a baby of our own. Oh and on the same weekend we won the win a baby contest…I turned 30. J

Since then it has been a blur of planning out our treatment, signing forms, media interviews, media profiles and me prepping for hormones and a hopeful future baby. I’ve lost 15lbs and have been trying to mentally prepare myself for what’s to come in the New Year.  We are excited, nervous, elated, anxious and ready to explore 2012. We’re hoping that Charly’s baby girl will have a cousin to play with by Christmas.

Not to mention all the weddings, party's, job changes, accidents and other daily craziness thats fills our lives.

So 2011 was like a girly movie for me, started exciting and happy, had some dark low points and then finishes on a high. Hopefully 2012 is less girly movie and more a baby story.

After over a year of blogging, thank you for following along with me in my crazy life and cannot wait to share all that’s awaiting me in 2012.

Lotsa Love,

Tasha