30 Years in 30 Weeks - edition "catch-up"

If you've ever watched Pulp Fiction, you may remember the joke about the tomato family going on a walk. Remember the baby tomato? He was walking too slowly so the daddy tomato stepped on him and said, "Ketchup". Yep. That's me. I haven't blogged in a while and am seriously behind on the 30 in 30 series. Anyway, this edition will feature FOUR YEARS!!! For your viewing pleasure, 3 of the 4 years are Easter pics, since I'm busy trying to wrap up the slide-show for the upcoming 20 year celebration of our family Easter party!



2001 - finished up the year teaching in Rosebud-Lott. Chris got out of the Army and started managing for Wal-Mart. In March, he moved down to Rockport with his mom while attending training classes. I drove down every weekend to visit. Glad we had no kids and gas was cheap back then. It was a long drive...Temple to Rockport with a beagle on my lap. After the school year was over, I moved down to Rockport and we lived with Cherri for the summer. All of our belongings moved in with Mom and Ben. In August, Chris got transferred to Alvin and we moved to a townhouse in Pearland. I took a job in Stafford, where I would stay for the next three years. My PaPaw Giggs died that Fall. I miss him so...



2002 - Shortly before I turned 24, we bought our house in Friendswood. It was an exciting time for us. Twenty-three years old, and we were homeowners! And three bedrooms! (By the way, 2 kids and a 100-pound dog later...our house isn't so "grand" anymore.) This is one of the ONLY pictures I have of me while I was pregnant with Caleb. I tried to avoid cameras at all costs during that time. This particular picture was taken in September while attending the State Fair with Mom and Sarah. It was unbelievably hot and I think I came *thisclose* to passing out several times. Thankfully, Mom and I found plenty of air-conditioned buildings to look through and watched all of the Southern Living cooking demonstrations we could find. By December, I was pretty miserable. My yearly teacher evaluation was done early, so I wouldn't be overlooked after my maternity leave was over in the Spring. My feet and ankles were so swollen that I could barely walk and I actually wore house-shoes during my evaluation. My evaluation was also done in my Child Development class and we were reviewing the information for their semester final. As soon as Mr. Munoz walked in the door, one of my students correctly (and very loudly) identified a certain part of the female reproductive system. Mr. Munoz's face turned beet red...I don't think he noticed my house-shoes. My doctor finally put me on bed-rest the day before I was to give my last final. I had Caleb on the day all of the other teachers went back to work in January.



2003 - Caleb's first Easter!!! That's my sweet Nanny in the picture with us...miss her, too. I went back to work 6 weeks after Caleb was born. It was horrible. Caleb was NOT a good sleeper. (In fact, he didn't sleep through the night consistently until he was 15 months old.) I can't imagine why...I had to jerk the poor baby out of bed no later than 5:30 every morning to feed him and then drop him off at the babysitter so I could walk in the door at school by the time the 7:00 bell rang.



2004 - Aren't those the cutest babies??? JR, Garrett and Caleb were born within 6 months of each other...Caleb in January, JR in May and Garrett in July. 2004 was my last year of teaching in Stafford. It was just too far to drive when another little person depended on you. Back in December, I was given an opportunity to come teach closer to home in CCISD. But, since I was still under contract with Stafford, I had to wait until the end of the school year. I really liked Stafford and had built a great program there, but it was too much for me to handle anymore. That Fall, I got that job in CCISD - teaching 7th and 8th graders. Loved being closer to home, loved the people I worked with, hated teaching that age group. God bless the people that can.

That Fall was especially trying for our little family. In late September, I found out that I was pregnant again. But something was wrong. My hormone levels were too high by late October. My doctor sent me in to get an early ultrasound and all the tech could tell me was that "it didn't look normal". Long story short...I was experiencing a "molar pregnancy". I had never heard of this before and I later learned that there was like a 1 in 29,000 change that this should be happening to me. Basically, there was an "empty" sex cell, but my body still thought everything was normal. I was carrying a blob of cells that would never ever turn into a baby. Before I even had a chance to tell my family, I was faced with this and was scheduling a "procedure". The weekend before Halloween, I checked into the hospital for my out-patient surgery, signed all sorts of scary papers that basically said if anything went wrong, they would have to perform a blood transfusion or a hysterectomy, etc. Well, since you know that I've since had another child, you know that everything went okay. But for the next 3 or 4 months, my hormone levels continued to rise and my body still thought I was pregnant. Yeah...weight gain, moodiness, fatigue...but no cute baby to show for it in the end. For the next 6 months, I had blood tests done every two weeks and then I had another 6 months of monthly blood tests. Happy ending to this saga in my next 30 in 30...