My sweet girl

We are getting to the point where Addison is inventing words. She's sooo funny. Her latest creation almost landed me on the floor. "Addison, what's that? (pointing to her bottom)." She answered, "That's my boonyhynie."
HA! I love it. So now when she's poking about I get to tell her, "Move your bootyhynie, we have to go."
And she knows exactly what I mean.
We received a letter in the mail last week from our fertility doctor. He has discounted IVF $4000. That is a great amount of savings bringing the price down to about $10,000 to try again. Unfortunately, we are still paying off Addison's conception and will be for many years to come. My husband is getting the baby itch. He is convinced he's supposed to have more than one kid in this life.
I am torn. Very torn. I don't even have to go back to the beginning of this blog to remember the torture I put my body through, the pain..to get to where we are today, to be parents.
Realistically, I don't think I could go through all that again. Not to mention, I have a child now to take care of while I would be in that state.
Oh the dilemma.
In May, I joined Jenny Craig. My hopes are that drastic weight loss will trigger my fertility and maybe, just maybe, we'd get pregnant naturally. I'm minus 23 pounds into my journey. Not too bad for 3 months time I think. It's been steady loss through birthdays and vacations.
Instead of setting one big goal, I've decided to do several small goals. I'm halfway to my first goal.
We'll see if it works, the skinnier I get.
In the meantime, I enjoy every moment that my little chatterbox babbles away. I cherish every night she still asks me to rock her. I play along as I help her diaper her baby dolls and answer the same questions over and over. I hope I can give her a real baby to play with soon. We'll see.

A Landlord's Woes

Today we had two evictions and a section 8 inspection. None of which are the finer moments of being a landlord. I often wish that I actually could receive all of the money back that people steal from me. From the 2 evictions today, I lost nearly $4000 in rent not paid. Another $160 in manual labor and at least $2000 in painting, repairs and basic roach removal. Yes, it was a depressing day to be landlord. It's a constant search or a person who isn't lying about their reliability. It's a persistent gamble to find qualified individuals that will not only take care of, but appreciate all the hard work you've put into a home. This business is not for the faint of heart....or for anyone who has a fear of roaches. The biggest irony of the day was a sign we discovered in one of our 2 bedroom,  100-year old, beautiful Victorian apartments. You know, the ones with the hardwood floors and the claw foot tubs. It was severely trashed and infested with roaches. We had to get shovels to scrape up the carpet  in the hall laden with so much dog urine that it was literally glued to the floor, all the while dodging dog poo balls and piles around on the hardwoods. Yet amongst the piles of trash and yuck was a pretty little sign that read, "Don't forget to pick up after your pet!" Yes, irony at it's very best. Clearly, these people could not read.
But probably the most important piece of advice I can give anyone doing an eviction also came i to play today. Rule #1: You never..ever...under any circumstance, open the fridge when the power has been turned off for a week. It's just a fact. Cold rot is much more tolerable than hot. These are the precious lessons of a landlord. For whatever it's worth.

We finally got to go on vacation!!

Denver, Colorado
Home of hairy female armpits and people au naturale, beautiful snow-capped mountains, ice cold rivers, a Chipoltle on every corner, a wide array of free-form art and some of the most gorgeous God-made scenery I've ever seen. We drove up 14000+ feet to the top of Mt. Evans and met some mountain goats on the way back down. We visited Golden, Colorado where they claim to be "Where the west lives."  They were big on bronze statues that documented tons of things from gold strikes to mountain bears. This town had a lot of neat stories to tell all over the plaques around town. It's hard to imagine how the west was won those many years ago...dealing with Indians and trying to stake out a claim in hopes that they would strike it rich and find gold.
We also visited Colorado Springs, CO, home to the Air Force Academy. They have a cathedral there that is made of airplane parts. It's pretty impressive. After watching the video and touring the campus..even I wanted to join the Air Force.
Boulder, CO was just plain cute. What  a great little downtown with all the restaurants you could want and the most amazing historic district. A wonderland for a turn-of-the-century housing enthusiast.
Then there was Water World. My pick for destinations because it's on the travel channel's top 10 water parks. Although I don't think the park utilizes all of the 64 acres that it claims to have, I was really impressed with the rides. It was a combo of "Monster Plantation" meets "White Water"..lol. If you're from Georgia, you get my drift. They have animatronics on some of their rides. I liked it a lot, but quickly learned that I may be getting too old for water parks. This was the first one I've gone to in over 15 years and I was pretty sure that my heart actually stopped on that first flume. At least the onlookers got a kick out of it as they laughed at my screaming.

Like I said, we had a really great time. Don't know if I'll ever go back, but we can mark this one down in the history books as total SUCCESS.