Sex, babies & the in-betweens.

This post is probably going to be a little out of character and blunt on my part, but I swear there's a tornado running through my mind and I need to calm it a bit in order to focus on ANYTHING right now. You know the saying 'when it rains, it pours'? I truly believe that that's true. I think it's a true testament to the verses in Ecclesiastes that tells us there's a time for everything in life.

I mentioned earlier today in a post that Jeremy and I are trying really, really hard to get pregnant again. We tried the 'we just won't try, but we won't NOT try either' route and it didn't happen. Then we tried 'timing' things just perfectly and it didn't happen. Now we're straight 'doing it' every other day - and we're hoping it'll happen. (Let me just say, having a kid can do something to your libido. We used to 'do it' every single day, sometimes two or three times a day, when we first got married and there are nights now, even though we're trying, that I really wonder how in the world we kept that up.) I would be beyond the moon ecstatic if it happened THIS month even. I don't want to spend my entire vacation toting around tampons and I think it would be sweet to have a winter month baby since we have a summer month baby.

I know that it's not in my control, and I'm thankful that we have such a wonderful, perfect son now. If we never have another, I'd be blessed beyond measure.

We are getting ready to head to the home improvement store to possibly buy our siding. I say possibly because we're nervous willies (as usual) about the whole thing and it's impossible (as usual) for me to make up my mind on the color. We are so extremely blessed to have a friend that is a contractor who came out and measured, gave us a list of the supplies we would need, and is even going to help us put it up. He does siding for a living, so there's no possible way that we can mess this up. It's the hugest breath of fresh air and I've actually sat in wonder lately at how much God can bless us at times. A huge weight has been lifted from our shoulders, not only with the siding part, but knowing that a professional has told us that our house is in great shape and sound.

Henry is teething and he's a nightmare to deal with some days. He doesn't want to eat, he doesn't want to play independently, and I am one exhausted Mama when I have to tote around my 20 month old while trying to get things done. By the time Jeremy gets home in the evening, I am ready to just break emotionally sometimes. I think a big part of this is the stress from other things in our life right now too, but I would love if you would whisper a prayer for me and my patience.

I've come to the conclusion that I have way too many hobbies. This fact alone is overwhelming me because I love them all. You can't get better at something if you don't practice it often, but you also can't practice everything at once. I have two weddings to photography coming up very, very soon and I'm a nervous wreck because quite frankly, me and my camera are not friends right now. I'd rather sew, crochet or create than take photos lately. I've found myself more content being involved and having a semi-crappy cell-phone pic than I was when I was snapping photos of everything happening around me, standing on the outside and not really being involved. I have more regrets of 'missing' the moment with involvement rather than 'missing' a great photo of the moment.

Baseball season started today and I'm so glad. I love me some Reds, and it gives us something to watch pretty much every day. I'm so over tv and tv shows and Jeremy and I have done very little tv-watching lately.  We feel as if society gets WAY too wrapped up in television and we've been guilty of it ourselves at times. We used to rush home from dinner with friends in order to watch 'Deadliest Catch' even though the DVR was recording it. There's something seriously wrong if you'd give up good time with good friends just to watch a tv show. We realized that fairly quickly and nipped it in the butt. TV shouldn't be a focus of our lives, ever.

I feel like I can start running again pretty soon. I'm still not sure that I didn't break my ankle versus spraining it, considering there is a huge bump on one side of my ankle that is just not going away, but whatever I did, it seems to be healing fairly well. I tried a small 'mini' run from the grocery store door to the car with Henry today and it didn't really hurt to have that added pressure on it. I'll have to just take it slow and see how it goes. I feel like getting back out every night and exercising again would really help with stress. Even thought I only got to do it for a few nights, I miss it.

You didn't realize you were going to have to read an entire book when you opened this blog post, huh? Like I said - lots on my mind! If you made it this far, bless your wonderful heart. You must be one special friend!

Siding Nightmare

Jeremy and I have planned on siding the house since we bought it. We feel like if we tried, we could probably side it ourselves, and have pretty much got it in our minds that we don't want to pay someone else to do it. We've had plenty of friends volunteer to help us when the time comes who have at least some experience in siding, so we feel like tackling the project shouldn't be too hard. (So it usually goes, right?)

We priced some siding earlier this week and got a rough idea as to what it could possibly cost us. Menards is offering 11% back on all purchases this week, so we're really considering trying to buy right now. One would think that the hardest decision would be color (which isn't the easiest decision, let me tell you!) but planning WHEN to buy seems to be the tough part for us. We also will be buying new gutters and such too.

It's super stressful to try and make a decision like this. Buying right now could potentially save us a few hundred dollars, which would be wonderful, but we also feel rushed and uncertain under the time crunch. We're really, really, really hoping that the money we got back from our tax returns will cover all the costs and we'll still have a bit left over but we're not sure. It seems like everyone has something different and some other price to tack on to what we thought was a final price. Has anyone else ever tackled a siding project? Any tips or tricks to make it easier?

Wish us luck in this adventure! I'm pretty sure we're really going to need it!