It's finally Fall.... and 12 week appointment!

We wait awhile here in Texas for it finally to be fall. Our leaves have changed and the weather is cool! I love it! We took these pictures a couple of weeks ago at Mike's parents house in KS. It is always so beautiful there in the fall.
I had my 12 week appointment today after preschool. It was a very long Thursday cause we were all at preschool today and then drove to my dr.'s appointment. I ended up taking the girls cause I knew it would be a short appointment. My dr. was on time and the kids did really good. We got home at 6:00 and were all pretty exhausted. All is great with baby #3. He asked how my appetite has been and let's just say I am for sure eating enough for 2. I am so hungry all the time and it is so nice to not be sick. The doctor found the heartbeat right away and it was so amazing to hear it so clearly. Ellie and Anna are totally amazed by the whole doctor process especially when the drew blood and I got a band-aid. We leave tomorrow for my parents house for Thanksgiving. I am so excited as I haven't been there since June. I'm sure I will eat plenty of turkey and pie!

How it all went down.....

I've yet to tell how I got to surprise my family with the announcement of baby #3. I kind of felt yucky and tired the week prior to taking a test. It was a Saturday and Mike was out with Ellie. I snuck off to the Dollar Tree to buy a test (Yes, the work)! I took it and there was for sure 2 positive lines. I went out that afternoon to do some errands. I stopped by Pei Wei and got us dinner as well as a cookie cake. I hid the test under Mike's fortune cookie. He was totally shocked and it was the first time it was a surprise for him cause with the girls I would be throwing up so he knew I was pregnant. It was a really fun night!

I Survived!

I wanted to thank you all so much for your comments and prayers. I could totally feel so many people praying for me. I have learned so much about pain and suffering through this time. I cannot imagine the slow suffering of cancer etc... The pain can be so unbearable at times to where all you can do is pray. I felt really awful from Saturday-Tuesday. I started to not vomit anymore on Tuesday. I think I vomited around 20 times during this three day span and so the relief of that alone made me feel better. My mom was such a servant to us and literally did everything for me and the kids during her time here. She made us awesome meals and cleaned my house! The girls loved having her here and in the mean time they both got colds. She was taking care of three pretty pitiful girls. I saw my doctor today for a follow up visit. It was really informative as he did another ultrasound. The baby is great. It pretty much sounds like the fibroid will not effect the baby just me. I can have a normal delivery he thinks so far and everything seems fine. He said I was in so much pain because of the rapid growth of the fibroid due to all the hormone changes with the first trimeter etc... I look huge. I am not kidding it really makes you show a lot earlier and he said it was normal. The fibroid has not grown, but it could. I am praying it just stays the same size. I was able to go to work today and did pretty well. The huge praise is that we've had a trip planned to FL since June leaving tomorrow. The doctor said it was fine for me to just to take it easy which should be pretty easy to do. I am so glad I didn't have to cancel our trip. Mike has so been looking forward to it since it is his first break after a busy fall. We are going with another family in our church and their children. We will do Disney a few days( I may get a motorized wheel chair ha ha!) and just relax at our timeshare. I will keep you all posted and I have so many pictures from the past month that I hope to upload in Florida. Thanks for your friendship!

ps-I forgot to mention the doctor is predicting a boy because I have had no morning sickness etc... until this last episode, but that was due to pain. I feel totally different than I did with Ellie and Anna. We will have to wait and see, but maybe not to long cause I think I will get an ultrasound almost every visit. I am 9 weeks and due June 10th!

Update on my Wife...

*UPDATE: Sorry friends that I have not even wrote the post yet about baby #3. I've been wanting to do it in a fun creative way and life got really crazy and now sickness. I'm glad Mike decided to put a picture up of a fibroid! PLEASE PRAY that this pain will go away. My mom flew here to help us and I don't know what I would do without her. I am going to my Dr. on Thursday so hopefully he can help us out as well instead of just the ER doctor. I have the best husband in the world. He has been there for me and the girls in amazing ways. Please, pray for this sweet baby. I don't know how he/she is making it with all the stress going on in my body. I am throwing up almost everything including vitamins. I am truly learning how to call out to Christ in the midst of my weakness. Thanks so much!

It has been a crazy couple of days. Many of you are probably wondering what has happened to my wife, so I'll explain, but let me first back up a few months. Last June we were at our church's family camp in Estes Park when my wife had some really bad back/abdominal pain and was throwing up quite a bit. We took her to the ER, they gave her lots of fluids, tons of pain medicine, and the pain went away. They said it might have been a kidney infection, but weren't sure. The pain eventually went away, and Holly was eventually able to enjoy the rest of the week. Friday morning pretty early the pain came back. She just happened to have some pretty stellar pain meds left over from her wisdom teeth taken out a couple months ago, so she took a pill and the pain went away, but if she got off the couch or out of bed she'd throw up. Friday she refused to see the doctor because the trip to the ER in Estes cost us $1500.00, and our insurance didn't cover it. She figured the pain would go away like it did in Colorado, and she would be back to normal. Saturday the pain was still there, but she's thinking it took two days in Estes for it to go away, and that she'd go see her doctor on Monday if the pain hadn't gone away. In the midst of all this we had a pretty big event with our high school ministry that I couldn't get away from, so we're still not sure how our kids survived during this time. Sunday morning I got in at 2:30 a.m. from our high school event, and then left at 6:30 a.m. to go run a half-marathon with about 4,000 other runners at White Rock Lake. Crazy, I know, but everyone in my house would be asleep right up until I got home from the race. It was good therapy in the middle of a crazy weekend. (this doesn't have anything to do with the reason of writing, but I ran a personal best, 1:52 after getting very little sleep, I was excited). So I get home, shower, and my wife's not feeling very well. So, I take the girls and we give mommy some alone time to continue to rest and she takes another pain pill. We had a lunch planned with some friends from church, so we went to their house and stayed until about 2:30. As we were leaving the Hornberger's house, Ellie is sitting in the car screaming about her ear. I rush her home and ask Holly what we should do. We load everyone up, and take Ellie to Urgent Care. On the way there, we pull over so Holly can puke. Crazy. We find out that Ellie has an Ear Infection, and get two prescriptions for her. We leave there and I've had enough, and take Holly to the Emergency Room. I'm glad we did. The ER doctor did an ultrasound, took over 40 pictures (according to Holly he was touching her ovaries with the ultrasound thingy, OUCH!) of the uterus, etc....We find out the baby is fine, but he has some concerns and wants to move Holly to the OB floor. This morning we find out that Holly has a baseball sized Fibroid (non cancerous) attached to her Uterus. That's what hurt so bad. The OB thinks that's what was hurting back in June in Estes Park. Crazy huh? It's grown to be the size that it is now, and nobody has ever picked up on it. At the end of this post I've put some info on Fibroids I found online if you're like me and have no idea what a Fibroid is. The Doctor tells Holly there's nothing they can do until after the baby is born. So the pain will come and go during the next 7 months, and he's prescribing some more pain medicine. We're supposed to leave on Friday for vacation, if you could pray for minimal pain/discomfort that would be great, and are obviously still thrilled that we'll be having a little one on June 10th!  One other thing I would mention that I learned during this time is how important community is.  I was dumb and didn't think to call our community group into this until yesterday afternoon.  Once I did it was a HUGE blessing.  All of the couples in our group either called or came by, and our friend Adam came over, watched our kids, and I was able to go to the hospital to be with my wife.  Thanks for reading and praying,  here's the info. on fibroids if you're still with me at this point :)
"Fibroids are muscular tumors that grow in the wall of the uterus (womb). Another medical term for fibroids is "leiomyoma" (leye-oh-meye-OH-muh) or just "myoma". Fibroids are almost always benign (not cancerous). Fibroids can grow as a single tumor, or there can be many of them in the uterus. They can be as small as an apple seed or as big as a grapefruit. In unusual cases they can become very large."