Quick Takes...

Once again, hanging out with Jen on this awesome Friday!

1.  I'm actually writing these on Thursday night (look at me, being all productive!) because we have a kind of crazy day ahead of us on Friday.   I need to get a full day of schooling into the rascals, then get to a doctor's appointment for myself in the early afternoon, and get the big two rascals to their gym practice mid-afternoon.   Oh, and all of those things are about 30 minutes of driving apart from each other.....

2.  I'm a little nervous about the doctor's appointment, so if you can remember, say a prayer for me around 1:45 EST.    I finally gave in and scheduled an appointment after dealing with a fun myriad of symptoms for the past couple of months.   All you charters out there - give me some ideas to mention to her when it comes to tests to run or things to look into.   My symptoms:  extreme fatigue, a severe shortening of my luteal phase (from about 14 days to consistently 9 now), irritability, always cold, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and having a hard time focusing/concentrating.    Thoughts?   My thinking is to test for thyroid issues and/or anemia, and possibly mention progesterone.  She's not an NFP doc (but is NFP friendly and a fabulous doctor, overall), so I'm thinking I might have to suggest some things.  Mike's given me some suggestions....throw out some of your personal experiences, too....

3.  It's only been up for about 12 hours, but I'm already overwhelmed by the nice notes and messages I've received from this post.  You guys are so good to me.   Thank you.  I can't help but wonder if this wasn't all part of His plan in allowing the miscarriage - the connections that I've made, the number of people who have come up to me and said, "Thank you for sharing, I didn't think anyone out there felt the same way I did"......it feels so out of my control, and I'm so grateful for it.

4.  My poor rascals all are coughing tonight.  Poor guys.  :(  I hope it's not that they're coming down with something.....maybe we won't have to go to gym practice tomorrow after all.....

5.   Mike and I are giving our first joint NFP presentation at a marriage prep this weekend - pray for us! We'll be talking about the awesomeness of the Church's teaching on sex and marriage and just how amazingly awesome NFP is.    It's also a quick biology course and touches on the horrible, not-talked-about side effects of birth control.   To be honest, that's the part that makes me nervous.  Birth control has such a glorified (unfortunately) status in our society, and I want to teach and enlighten.....not offend.    It's a hard line to walk - I want to show these couples the beauty of NFP and the dark side of contraception....without ticking them off.   Pray for us and for the couples who will be there!

6.  How about ending with a few pictures?   This one is proof that Rascal #3 can actually sit still for awhile.  AND be quiet  (I know, it's hard to believe).  But here he is, doing both!!

7.   This one I snapped the other evening.  I call it "Proof for my future daughter-in-law that I did teach my son how to wash his own dishes."   He calls it "Allowance."

Have a great weekend, y'all!