Life Lately and What Is To Come in 2019

So before we move all our attention to 2019 I wanted to do a quick recap of what we were up to in the last month or so of 2018.

Right after Thanksgiving my office threw the head of our department a baby shower.  If it isn't immediately obvious (ha!) she is having a little girl at the end of January. We have baby showers fairly often in my office so we like to think we are pros at it at this point!

In early December we had our third and final IVF harvest and then to celebrate we took a little weekend trip to Solvang to belatedly celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary and the end of the harvest portion of our IVF journey. We even had a fireplace in our room. A full recap of our trip to Solvang coming soon!

In the middle of December my brother-in-law turned 50 and had a traditional Filipino Kamayan dinner to celebrate. Everything is served on banana leaves directly on the table and you eat everything with your hands. All the food was delicious but my favorite thing was the nutella bibinka for dessert.

In all the craziness of life and IVF I wasn't very on top of sending Christmas cards and when I went to order them I realized I didn't even have a good picture of us from the year to put on them.  I knew we would be getting dressed up for the party so I made it a mission to take a photo of us specifically to use on our Christmas card.  This was the winner.

The Friday before Christmas we went on a little date night. We went out to dinner and then walked around our local Christmas in the Park looking at all the pretty lights and Christmas trees.

The weekend before Christmas our niece turned 15 so we spend that Sunday at my brother-in-law and sister in law's house celebrating her.  We had Filipino breakfast foods for lunch and then spent the afternoon playing games and watching her open presents.

Last week I ran into Target with a co-worker to grab a few things for a game night and saw this absolutely perfect mug.  The mug was so perfect for me that I had to buy two so I can have one at home and one at my desk at work.  Good job Target!

For New Year's we knew we didn't really want to be out and about at midnight but I didn't want to do nothing at all.  We were both working on New Year's Eve so after work we went out for a sushi date since my days of eating sushi are rapidly coming to a pause.  After dinner we stopped by Foster's Freeze for some ice cream (despite it being quite cold and windy) and then headed home.  This is where our plans changed a bit...

After we got off the freeway on our way home we noticed that the signal was out. Then we realized the whole area looked like it had no power.  It had been so windy that day that our whole neighborhood was out of power so instead of relaxing at home and watching some TV until midnight we manually opened our garage door and went in to find candles and flashlights.  We got home around 7 PM and the power ended up coming back about 9 PM.  

While we were in the dark we lit some candles and then taped a headlamp to our light fixture that hangs above our kitchen table.  We had enough light to play a card game and then decided to do a puzzle.  Even once the power came back on we still ended up finishing the puzzle before toasting to the new year in our pajamas and my sparkly headband.

Now that we are in a whole new year it is time to think about what I want to achieve in 2019. During 2018 we did 3 rounds of IVF to harvest eggs and we ended up with 5 healthy frozen embryos from all of that so this year is the year we implant.  I am hoping and planning for this to be the year we have a baby.  Our implant date is fast approaching. More details to come soon!

Assuming all goes well with the implant (send all the positive thoughts out there) most of my plans and goals for the year will revolve around having a healthy pregnancy, preparing for a baby and then figuring out life with a newborn.