Falling

                                                                             More

                                                                                and

                                                                          More

                                                                                 in

                                                                             LOVE

with these two each day!!!!!!!!!

We have kicked fall off with a bunch of fun already and the weekends of October hold a promise of much more fun! I am LOVING the stages the girls are at right now! :) So Much Fun!

P.S. I will be back with a full update from the weekend activites!

Kripsy Kreme Donut's Recipe!! YUMMY!!!!

Carleigh was my donut cutter outter :)

MMMM Everyone I know loves Krispy Kreme donuts, they are a huge hit in my house and this weekend I used a receipe I found online that claimed to be like Kripsy Kreme and let me tell ya, I think they were pretty darn close!!



Sorry for no fancy plating up :) I remembered to snap a picture after I had already put them in a container!
















Tim is raving about them, we filled a couple, that was fun too! :) I got the reciepe from Wiki How

Doughnut Batter

• 2 pkgs. regular or rapid rise yeast
• 1/4 cup warm water (105−115 degrees)
• 1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk (scalded then cooled)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 5 cups all−purpose flour
• Vegetable oil

Creamy Glaze

• 1/3 cup butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 2-4 tbsp. hot water

Let me know if you try this tasty treat!! I think next time I do it I am going to do some research and use butter instead of crisco and a little more sugar!! ENJOY!

GLEEfull!!!

It is very possible that after reading this post you will think I have resorted back to High school. I will probably be called a Geek Gleek and a Loser, but you know what I am OK with that!! I am embracing my Gleekness!! and maybe taking my best friend down with me in the process....ummmm I would apologize Trish but I am not really sorry! LOL!! You see, the countdown to the Glee season premiere is totally on! I have a huge obsession with Darren Criss (Blaine) and well with the whole show really. I mean I am not obsessed enough that I would attend Glee in 3D on opening night.....

oh this picture??? ummmmm nope I sure didn't take that....

I am way to mature to go opening night, and we DEFINITELY didn't enjoy ourselves so much that we stayed for the second showing... NOPE not us!!!

And there is no way you would ever catch me in Glee paraphernalia.... that would definitely not be something I would be caught dead in, especially in public..........

It is possible that Glee is my favorite show of all times, it is also possible that I have converted my best friend, husband and daughters to love Glee also....it may be becoming a family obsession....only time will tell!!

Well I better get back to re-watching season 1 in time for the big show premiere next Tuesday, Hey Trish what good food are we going to have for our kick-off???!! Hehehe!!  

Warning Signs

Let me start this post with a disclaimer!!  I am not a doctor, I am a wanna be doctor but have no degree :) I am a self proclaimed nurse by googling trade but am not licensed in any way, shape, or form! Ok, now that we got that little tidbit out of the way we can move forward with this post! I also don't know the rules of using Internet data so I am just going to tell you what I know about PCOS and the warning signs and symptoms that I have, and I pretty much have them all! If you suspect yourself or your daughter might have PCOS after reading this I strongly urge you to contact your doctor about it, an OB/GYN would probably be better than a family practice doctor, but I am sure your family doctor can recommend  someone if she feels the need to! The biggest thing about PCOS is that it is often times misdiagnosed or not caught at all. It took my mom reading a magazine article, dragging me to the doctor and showing it to him to get the right diagnosis. There are so many reasons why finding out early is imperative! First and foremost, a girl with the side effects of PCOS is going to get made fun of at school, it is just a fact. But boy would I have felt better about the teasing if I would have known that I wasn't doing something wrong to cause the things I was teased about ( such as always thinking the extra weight was due to overeating, the gray patches due to not "scrubbing" hard enough, the crazy hair growth from not shaving often enough). And I can't stress enough how important it is to know about PCOS so as to protect what little fertility you may have! It is only by the grace of God that I decided to try to have babies so young, and only because I had gotten a PCOS diagnosis my senior year in High School did my OB/GYN start me on fertility treatments after just 4 or 5 months of trying. I never went back on birth control after I had Carleigh at age 23 and we started active fertility treatments when she was around 15 months old, in just 15 months my fertility had decreased even more, the treatment regiment that worked with her did not work with getting pregnant with my other pregnancies, by the time I conceived Caylee I was on the strongest doses of meds that you can do for IUI for 14 days and still only grew one egg, we had two insemination's and this was the last cycle we were going to do before IVF. That was a huge change in just a couple of years! My Reproductive Endocrinologist told me I was her youngest patient to date and that she wished more of her patients would seek treatment out earlier because the success rates are much higher!

PCOS presents with some or all, and even only one or two of the following symptoms. There may be more that I am not listing but you can check google PCOS and get a few really good websites if you want more information!

weight gain/being overweight and having a hard time losing it
insulin resistance
gray patches of skin on the elbows, knees, neck, groin
excess facial hair (sides of face, chin, upper lip) side note: in junior high the facial hair was worse on the side of my face, now I am just hairy everywhere! Thank you old age! LOL!
Delayed starting of period ( I was fifteen)
irregular periods- (I was put on birth control for this)
Anxiety- (this can also present as panic attacks, I have had anxiety since I was a small child, this was one of the first signs/symptoms I probably presented with, following with the weight gain)
Infertility
Male Patterned Baldness ( I do not have this one yet, but let it be known when I get it I will be turning into Daniel instead of DeAnna, this is your warning! )
Acne
Dry/Oily Skin
Elevated Blood Pressure (I do not have this symptom yet or at least it hasn't been diagnosed)

If you had problems with any of these areas and were never diagnosed I would urge you to get checked out and I would urge you to watch your daughters as they grow up. I would say that I was full blown PCOS by age 13, that is when I peeked with all of my symptoms. Next week I will compile some websites that have good PCOS information on them. There are many ways to alter your diet and physical changes you can make to help control your PCOS. (It is very possible that I find the diets extermely miserable and awful but I will never admit that!) There is also good infromation out there to help you to increase your chances of pregnancy! Have a GREAT Tuesday!! And even though this post was heavy, I sure hope you have giggling good day!!!

Labor Day Weekend!!

Before the week is officially over I want to get these pictures up from Labor Day! We took the kiddo's camping and had a prefect weekend! It was hot enough to swim and cool enough we didn't die of heat exhaustion! But I will say that by Sunday night we needed sweatshirts and jeans which was insane since Friday  it was 100 degrees!! What the heck weather!! Oh and did I mention that for the first time in like 6 weeks we got rain! Yeah, what the heck do you do with 5 girls aged from 13 to 2, and one Uncle/daddy in a camper when it rains???

Why Lego's, a laptop and sleep to the sound of rain pelting the tin roof of course!! (The two lumps on the bed are the 13 year olds?? Oh and that uncle/dad??

He can sleep through anything!!! UGH! I wish I had that special power!

We cooked some more pretty awesome meals over the campfire! Can I brag on myself? I ROCK the campfire cooking!! LOL!! I told Tim I need two campfires so that I can cook more at items at a time though! We did BBQ chicken, baked potatoes, hamburgers, cowboy baked beans, and some awesome grilled ham and cheese sandwhiches as our new things this weekend!! YUM YUM! We also had a pizza delivered to the campground on the first night there! Don't Judge, I never said I was a rustic camper! I like to mix modern conveniences and Amish ways! LOL!

We got up early on Monday morning to head out to our annual Labor day Parade and Picnic. We are a proud to be union family and take Labor day festivities very seriously! :)

Every year we get a family picture at the parade, as our family has grown our pictures have gotten a little more tricky to get!! I will say that this is the best/worst picture we have ever taken! and it was the best pick of all that we took! LOL!! Oh my goodness!! I sure hope that come October we can get our act together for our family portiats! :) Oh did I mention the wind was blowing so hard that we pretty much had to hold onto the small children, hences the HORRIBLE hairdo's!!

I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend! Monday I will be featuring a "warning signs of PCOS post" Mom's of young girls, it's a post you won't want to miss!!

Get your SERVE on!!

So I have been a part of the blogging world for a little over 2 years, long before I had a blog I read blogs. It is a fun hobby that I love! One of my ALL TIME favorite bloggers is Patrice (also known as Jonah's mommy!!) She is a down to earth lady who writes with humor about her everyday life taking care of Jonah who has EB. Jonah is adorable, really go over and check him out, he will make your heart melt into a million pieces! I wish he lived closer so he and Caylee could have a play date!! They are only about a month apart, I know they would be great pals! So Patrice is a definite go getter, she has organized great fundraisers many things, including DEBRA which is a foundation that helps out EB families, she also organized fundraisers to earn money to help baby Anton come home from the orphanage and now she has come up with this really cool idea called "Get your Serve On". If you get a minute hop on over and check her out! Grateful for Giggling Girls (I am nicknaming us GGG) is going to link up with Patrice and Get our Serve on. I have had this idea rolling around in my head for months since I read about the concept out in the blogosphere, it is a Community Clothing Swap and I am so excited to announce that I am putting this event together in our Community! My church is going to allow me to use our building to host it and the date is October 15th!! I haven't set on a official time yet! The concept is that I will accept donations (in abundance I hope!) and then set it up in the church like a store, and then those in the community that have a need for clothing in the coming months can come shopping for FREE, no money exchanged, no goods exchanged, no questions asked! I am hoping to arrange for help in the nursery so that mother's can shop while the kiddos play, and to have cookies and punch! Did I mention I can't wait!! One statement that Patrice said that really stuck with me was that an excuse that we often use, myself included, is that my kids are to young to get anything out of serving others, they aren't going to understand it, Patrice countered that argument by saying, what if our kids grow up never knowing what it is like NOT to serve, what if serving others is something they have always known... That statement really got me thinking! I want my girls to be eager to serve others, to always be helpful and not do things only to earn money or recognition! So do you have it in you? Are you willing to jump aboard the Get your Serve on train? With God's help we can change one life, one event, one community, one person at a time!!!  If this is something that you want to consider, then head on over to the Get your Serve on facebook page, and join! There are lots of good ideas being shared over there! and hop over to see Patrice, she tells all about in her blog post The proposal !! If you do decide to jump on the movement, leave me a comment I can't wait to watch it grow!!

What IF????

What If I hadn't been overweight as a child??
What If I hadn't been teased for the "hairness" of my arms and face???
What If I would have known that the dark patches on my skin weren't "dirt"
What If I would have developed apporiately for my age?
What If I had told Tim I may never be able to naturally conceive a child?
What If he had turned away and never looked back?
What If I had given up after trying naturally with no success of getting pregnant?
What If the treatments had never worked?
What If I can never get over the desire to have a big family?
What If I always long for just one more chance to be pregnant?
What If I didn't have to deal daily with the facial hair
What If I didn't have to deal with the horrible anxiety and panic attacks?
What If I could live one day feeling normal, beautiful, and less "manly"
What If I let PCOS rob me of my desires?
What If I let PCOS dictate who I am?
What If I let PCOS come between me and my faith
What If I let PCOS shape me?
What If I let four letters consume me?

What if that little girl at school getting made fun of, has a disease? One she doesn't even know about, and yet your child is taunting her for being overweight, or looking different? or teasing her for having "dirt" spots on her knees and elbows. What if you are whispering about how her parents should make her be more active? They should make her scrub those "spots" off in the shower? What if we took the time to educate our children and ourselves? What if PCOS wasn't spoken only in hushed tones at the doctors office? What if we took a stand to make a change, to raise awareness of PCOS and all that goes with it? What if we caught it when it first shows signs in young girls and helped them to battle it and to not be ashamed of it??

What if you could make a difference?

September is PCOS Awareness Month, Please help me to take the shame out of PCOS? I will be doing posts throughout the month, highlighting warning signs and symptoms, educating on PCOS, what it is and what it does. Please help me to make this four letter word, one that we aren't afraid to use!

image used from an online source

Flashback Friday on a Thursday!!!

I am pretty confident that I could never deny that I am my children's mother!!