Carl, Ellie and Naise Life

For those of you that know me you may or may not know the following tidbit about me...I remember every dream I have and they are usually pretty weird.   Case in point, I have a recurring dream (more like a nightmare) that plagues me every single time I see a certain mascot.  Yes, you read that correctly, a mascot.  To be more specific, my Dad's high school mascot - that subsequently was supposed to be my mascot too my senior year - the Bearcat.  It really isn't a scary animal, seriously.  It looks like a cougar with a ginormous head.  But for whatever reason, this animal plagued my dreams anytime I saw it when I was little and stuck with me, even at 34 years old.  The dream is that we are at a huge family reunion just outside of Scottsbluff at a lodge.  There is another family there, but the Cottrell/Satur/Ziegler crew had one wing of the place to ourselves.  Suddenly a ginormous bearcat appears outside and the only way it will go away is i...

I have struggled with how to write down what I am feeling right now and over the past week. I have struggled with understanding why we are at a point of utter sadness, grief, longing, and mourning. This is not a place we ever imagined being, but it is where we are. So, as I struggle through this post, I hope it makes sense so that years from now when I revisit this post, I'll know what I meant. On August 10th, our baby died. He (we imagine our baby was a boy) was only 7, almost 8, weeks old. The world will only understand this as a pregnancy loss or miscarriage. Heck, I have even stated both of those "terms" when making a short conversation. But the truth is that both Brandon and I view life at conception, so our baby died. There are no words to describe what we went through. No words came easily. Sometimes they still don't. We hurt. We ache for the loss of feeling him kick or hiccup. We hurt for the loss of seeing him outside...for not seeing him grow up in front...

I had to do a double-take.  Make that a triple - no, a quadruple-take.  I had gone into the test thinking that it would be like every other time - one line indicating my body either decided to be late or skip a month.  But that quadruple-take was not me staring at one line. There were two lines on that test. Wait...seriously?!?!  Immediately tears of joy and relief and excitement came flowing out.  The first thing I did after it clicked was pray.  I thanked the Lord for the blessing that He was giving us...the blessing of being parents after a long journey of infertility, doctor's visits, medicines, needles, tests.   I did not run immediately upstairs to my sleeping husband to wake him up for this awesomeness (not a real word, but I'm making it one).  In fact, when I did go upstairs, I was grateful he was still half asleep so I could fib that it had been negative.  I had a plan --  Instead, I messaged Stacie.  Odd, you may...