Sloppy Joes

I'll never grow tired of Adam Sandler's Lunch Lady song! Anyhow, somehow I got the idea to make sloppy joes and since I had a lot of hamburger buns left over from the 4th of July, I thought it would be smart to make them.
I used this recipe as a guide, but didn't measure anything out and substituted red bell pepper for green and used Walla Walla sweets.  I used my usual 3/4 lb. ground beef portion and it could have yielded 5 sandwiches.
I liked it as did Mr. W. The boys were unimpressed, but I'd make this again next time a sloppy joe mood strikes.

Letrozole side effects

I took my final pill on the 4th.  The side effects weren't too bad, and I'll admit I was a little freaked out based upon how much the pharmacist was stressing that I read all the possible side effects before I left the store. I definitely got hot flashes and would wake up pretty sweaty, even though it was still rainy in Portland in late June and early July. One night DH and I got into an argument about I-don't-know-what.  And he said, "Why are you picking on everything I do?!" And I started laughing because I had NO idea why I was being so critical and irritated.  Mood swings aren't one of the Letrozole side effects like they are on clomid, but I certainly can't explain why I was so upset over nothing.
On Monday while Baby Boy was at daycare, but My Little Helper's Nature Preschools haven't started yet I took him on a date to the cinema to see Brave.  Lordy, did I cry! Just when I thought I was resigned to be happy whether I have a daughter or not I watch a movie focused on a red headed girls relationship with her mother! I hope God's plan still includes me mothering a daughter, because I will be perplexed at why I feel so strongly drawn to it if it isn't my calling.
Anyway, it's nice to be done with the Letrozole though and I'm busy drinking green tea instead of regular tea. For the life of me I can't remember what that is supposed to improve, maybe my lining?  Oh, well, I can certainly continue to suffer through drinking green tea if it will slightly increase my chances at another pregnancy! I have a monitoring appointment on Monday and I'm hoping that this drug will yield good results.
We finally found where we packed the follistim pen, but unfortunately the case was empty save for a few needles.  The pen itself must have been in with the box of left over follistim in the fridge that Mr. W pitched when me moved.  Too bad, but hopefully we won't need it and if we do hopefully we don't learn that they were expensive.
Mr. W went in to have the screening  so that he could leave a sperm sample fore an IUI, but it has been determined at the last minute, as always, that no one needs to go to Europe this weekend so he should be available to be here for us to have timed intercourse rather than an insemination. Such a relief! I did not want to have to coordinate childcare around all of that!

Independence Day Open House

We decided to host a bbq for the 4th of July this year and coordinate it with our Open House.  We were pretty sure we would have a view of the fireworks down town from the balcony and the windows in the attic. We set the party to start at noon and continue through 9 pm.
In the hopes of directing people to enter through the original front door to get a better effect for the tour My Little Helper and I lined the walkway with red and blue pinwheels.  My mom recently gave us a 48 star flag that was in amongst my dad's things so I asked Mr. W to drape it from the balcony.  We don't have a wall bracket for our flag pole yet so this worked out rather well. Red, white and blue flowers by the front door with a doormat I couldn't help but purchase at Freddy's.
The yard looked great after all the hard work my uncle m, my mom and her gardener did as a housewarming present.
We had a melting pot menu:

• BBQ pork shoulder
• Frankfurters, bratwursts, and cheddar brats.
• BBQ baked beans (with all the drippings from the meat!)
• Deviled eggs (it's not a summer party without them!)
• German Potato salad (which we didn't end up making because he forgot to put them on my grocery list)
• Caprese pasta salad with fresh mozzarella, pine nuts, basil, and tomatoes
• Guacamole and corn chips
• Hummus and corn chips
• Green salad with cheese on the side
• Watermelon
• Corn on the cobb

• Apple pie (vegan)

• Cupcakes with raspberry and blueberry garnish

The list gets more vegetarian and vegan the further down the list.  I was trying to accommodate our vegan, gluten free, and allium allergy guests. Whew! And that doesn't even include the fickle tastes of children!

We had a nice steady stream of guests coming and going throughout the day. A few families stayed late enough to do some Oregon-legal fire crakers in the street.
Many of them were just smoke bombs.  A police car drove by up the street and paused to watch us.  Then it slowly turned the corner and parked.  I was like, "What?!"  All our fireworks were legal, I couldn't believe he was going to harass us!  Instead he said he saw the kids and decided to stop and give them some stickers. 

He has children and is missing out on them lighting sparklers and stuff. I guess that teaches me that you can't make assumptions, but frankly, ALL of us thought he was pulling over to give us grief.  When he finally left he flashed his lights for the children. 
Baby Boy was SO excited about the fireworks!  He doesn't have a lot of words so it was mostly just him grunting, straining, and pointing at the fireworks. Hysterical!

 I kept trying to cover his ears during the loud ones, but he wanted NONE of that and never seemed to be startled or scared by any of them.  The cutest was his ready pose where he was squatting with his hands on his knees in anticipation like a baseball out fielder.  So darling!
The last of our guests left around 9:30 and Mr. W and I put the boys to bed; so past their bed time!  Then we went up to the attic to watch fireworks after the sun set.  I couldn't believe what an awesome view we have.  There were fireworks going off all over the city!  I must have looked like I was watching a tennis match because I had to keep turning my head back and forth to see them on all sides of us.  Mr. W was beyond amazed at how many people set off their own fireworks and we marveled at how much money people must be spending on these big ones! 
Once the sun was completely set the downtown fireworks started and he and I sat on the balcony together watching them.  It was so special and yet another moment when I'm reminded of how special this house is and how lucky we are to be it's current caretakers.

St. Peter's Day

I keep meaning to do St. Peter's day because we love fish and it seems like such a great idea for seasonal eating in the summer.  Also, Mr. W loves watching Gordon Ramsay shows so we're always hearing about the john dory which is also called St. Peter's fish because of the spot on the side of it. It is supposed to be symbolic of the thumb print of St. Peter from the fish he threw back into the water.
I never see john dory fish here in the grocery store, and I don't have much reason to go to specialty markets.  I considered trying to hunt some down, but we've been a bit busy and Mr.W has been working late that I decided to find an alternative.  Any fish would be a good tribute to the fisherman anyway, right!
I bookmarked this recipe for St.Peter's fish with parsley sauce last year and have been looking forward to making it.  This recipe calls for tilapia anyway.  I have read conflicting information on what IS St. Peter's fish.  When we went to get the tilapia, we decided the red snapper looked better so that is what we settled upon.

Mr. W made beet greens for our vegetable and yukon gold mashed potatoes.  I was really happy with how the fish turned out, I highly recommend the parsley sauce.  I was too full for seconds even though I really would have liked some. (I wonder if the drugs are effecting my appetite? haha!)

Cycle #11

When does 4 days feel like 4 years?  When you are waiting for your period to arrive after a BFN HPT! I think that is part of the reason I don't test early, I'd rather have hope while waiting for a period then get a negative early and then be bitter for another week while waiting to start bleeding. In any event, after I tested at dawn on Sunday, AF didn't arrive until about 10 PM Wednesday night!
Thursday was a nice day so I decided to take the boys to the zoo.  Once I got us loaded into the car I remembered that I needed to call my RE to set up an appointment for an ultrasound on CD3.  Since my period arrived after 5 PM they don't consider that a cycle day.  I'm not sure why my cycle days are Jewish going from to sundown to sundown when I am Catholic, but whatever.  I was surprised when the nurse asked if I could come in that morning like within 30 minutes for the ultrasound.  "Uh, well..." And then I realized I already have the boys loaded into the car I may as well do it.  I told her I'd try to see if my mom would come meet me there to watch them (or I could even drop them off at her house and probably still get there in time.) Unfortunately I was not able to reach her, but this ultra sound experience with both boys was a lot better than my last one with just Baby Boy in attendance.
They just got new ultrasound machines so there was a rep there to give my doctor a tutorial through the whole exam.  Everything looked good though.  He decided to start me on a slightly higher dose of 5 mg of Letrozole since I ovulated so late last cycle.  I asked if the fact that I show Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR) would also mean it is not too risky to use a higher dose and he agreed. He and I just talked about adding a trigger (at my insistence) and timed intercourse rather than IUI and that I should return on July 9th for a monitoring appointment.  Also I don't need to pick up the trigger shot at a pharmacy, they should have it in their office when I am ready for it.
It wasn't until I was checking out that I remembered that Mr. W told me he may have to go to Europe on business right around the time I would need him to be here to ...complete our mission.  So I had to have the nurse come out and discussed what would be required if we needed to switch to IUI.  Mr. W would first need to go in an have an infectious diseases screen, and after results in a about two days he could come in to leave a sample to freeze. This means he needs to figure out from work whether or not he is going enough in advance for him to do all this before flying out.
So, I'm not technically supposed to be doing IUI, right?  Sure, but if I'm going to go through the expense and potential side effects of fertility drugs I don't want to have it all be for naught if he does infact have to go out of town. And he never seems to know in advance and I need to start taking the drugs today.
Later on I thought about how some people do back to back IUIs. I'll have to check with the RE to see if that would be worth it given our situation of needing to use frozen sperm, or if it even matters at all considering Mr. W's numbers have always been good.
I picked up the Letrozole and the pharmacist went on and on about the side effects and wanting me to be sure I understood everything before I left.  I was actually surprised when they rang me up that I only had to pay $4.  I was expecting it to be more and she mentioned that my insurance was paying $153.  Letrozole is technically a breast cancer drug, and must be coded as such because our insurance certainly doesn't cover IF.
Here is my current daily dose of pills:
(2) Letrozole {1 pill 2x a day}
(1) prenatal vitamin
(2) Fish oil capsules
(1) B12 vitamin
(1) D3 vitamin
(6) Cinnamon & Poria herbal supplement {2 pills 3x a day}
 

Chopping down trees

As a housewarming gift my mom offered to have my Uncle M and her gardener come out and prune all our trees and shrubs and clean up around the pond before our Open House.  She loves gardening but has grown weary of her own yard.  I think she would have made a good landscape designer because she seems to enjoy the laying out and planning of the garden more than the day to day maintenance.  Although, maybe everyone enjoys that?  Is weed pulling therapeutic to anyone?
In any case, they all arrived Monday morning and began pruning back the rhodys, star magnolia, dogwood, and lilac. On the west elevation of the house the view of the original entry was obstructed by 3 trees that were planted in front of the stairs. 
The northern most tree was a cherry tree that was obviously rotted at the trunk, although it was still bearing fruit. The southern most tree was a fig tree that I was looking forward to harvesting and maybe making a fig paste to use for cheese tastings and such. Plus it didn't really interrupt the view of the porch in my opinion.  The middle tree was an ornamental apple tree which they told me had been well pruned and maintained, unfortunately the original placement was poor.  It was too crowded between the other two trees and many of it's leaves were covered with black spots.
Initially I thought I would want to eventually take out the middle apple tree and that we'd take out the cherry when it was on the verge of collapse.  I liked the idea of harvesting our own cherries, but so far they tasted very sour to me. I wasn't sure if they still weren't ripe yet or not.  My uncle said they were actually considered pie cherries because of their tartness. I wasn't expecting to remove any of them during this endeavor. But they talked me into doing it now since my mom was paying them to work.  Mr. W and I hadn't talked about removing any trees though and I wasn't entirely sure of his opinion.  Unfortunately he had meetings all day with clients in from Japan so we could only text about it.  He was fine with having them removed, but was adamant about saving all the wood to use for barbequing.
Once the cherry tree had been cut down it was suddenly much easier to pick the cherries! 
They are such pretty little things. My Little Helper and I were able to pick two bowlfuls! We worked together as a good team.
 
 Eventually I grew weary of picking and needed to get back to laundry day. Now I need to make some pies.
It makes such a big difference with those two trees removed!  Now I have the view of the house I want.  I've been wanting to take a new family photo on the front steps to use for change of address cards, but hadn't gotten around to it because I was feeling discouraged about how to set up the camera to avoid the trees. And you can see how rotted out the cherry tree was, it's amazing that it was still standing!

The pond was completely overgrown. 

Those big leafy things are called dinosaur something.  I walked by someones yard recently and saw how tall they grow and thought, "I don't want those in my yard!" Plus there is a holly tree that drops a thousand spiky leaves and berries. They ended up transplanting a few of the sword ferns into other beds and removed a clump of euphorbia too.   My mom also decided to have her pond guy come out and fix the pond.  He met with us Monday to do an estimate and will come back on Sunday to do the work before the party. Nice! Fortunately all the pump parts are in good shape and sized appropriately.  I was not planning on fixing this pond anytime soon, so this is an especially nice gift.  She's not really excited about her own yard and pond anymore, I think she considers my yard and pond her new projects!  I don't mind at all! She's so excited about it that she brought over the Japanese lantern I bought for her pond.  I think it looks great in its new spot.  Since her pond was near the front of her house she never put a candle inside it and feels like we'll get more functional use out of it since our pond is off our back deck.

They planted a few plants that I got at Bosky Dell Native Plant Nursery.  I think they fill out the lilac bed nicely.  I've started to do some reading on Victorian gardens and will have to do a lot of thinking to figure out how best to incorporate natives into historical looking borders and beds.

Feast of St. John the Baptist Day

This was our third year hosting a beer and cheese party.  The weather hasn't been great, or at least it hasn't been consistently sunny and dry, so I had to reconsider where we'd have our porch party at our new house.  I originally planned to set up a table in the grass near the front steps, but since it had been raining during the day I didn't want people to get their feet damp. Instead we set up the table on the deck. I kept the same tablecloth and flowers from the Bee Tea.
All the beers came from Belmont Station and the cheeses mostly from Zupan's.

• Havarti Dill (Demark) paired with Czech Rebel Pilsner (Check Republic)
• Hook's Sharp Cheddar (Wisconsin) paired with Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale (Yorkshire, England)
• Parmigiano Reggiano paired with Chainbreaker White IPA (Deschutes, Oregon)  This one I actually heard about when I was driving up to Seattle a couple weekends ago.  I was in Mr. W's pickup which only has a cassette player.  There are limited radio stations between here and there so I ended up listening to a local beer themed radio program.  They mentioned that this was to be a limited release, seasonal brew so I wanted to incorporate it into our tasting.  Mr. W had already purchased a six pack of it before I even brought it up.  The man knows beer.
• Emmentaler paired with Spaten Oktoberfest (Munich, Germany)
• Bleu Cheese (Idaho) paired with Chimay Grande Reserve (Chimay, Belgium)

I tried everything again this year, but I still don't like beer and didn't like any of them. People really liked the Chimay and the Chainbreaker.
Kids in the dig pit.
 
It got chilly early so we retired to the kitchen and later the Drawing Room while the older boys got to watch a movie. We are really enjoying entertaining in our new house!