Finally Feeling Settled!

The last three weeks have really been a roller coaster, and not in a good way.  Besides the stress of moving and finding a new job, we had to add the stress of the renters that were in our house for the last eighteen months.  We really did not think that this would be a stress at all.  We had a property manager for our house for the last eighteen months.  Before we hired him, we had a meeting with him and went over our expectations of the people we wanted to be living in our home.  He assured us that they did background checks on potential tenants, and that they did do random walk throughs of the homes to make sure that things were being taken care of properly.  This made us feel like our home would be taken care of while we were away.  

I met with the property manager on a Monday to change the locks on the house and do a walk through.  At that same time, we had also scheduled Daisy Maids to come in and do a light cleaning of the house.  I am major OCD on cleaning, but I kind of have an issue with cleaning up other people's filth.  I can only handle cleaning up my own.  The property manager was late to our appointment, and Daisy Maids was waiting in the drive way.  The property manager called me and gave me the code to get into the lock box where a key to the house was at.  I got the key and let Daisy Maids in to start cleaning the house.  As soon I opened the door I was sick to my stomach.  There were holes in my once perfect walls.  The baseboards had a layer of dust on him like you wouldn't believe.  The carpet was just nasty.  I've lived in quite a few places since I moved away from home, and I always thought it was common sense to clean a place before you moved out.  Obviously whoever rented our house while we were away, did not have the same thinking I did.  It was obvious that nothing had been wiped down, vacuumed, or cleaned before they left.  Thank heavens I had already had the appointment set up for Daisy Maids.  Then I went upstairs where I saw the bathrooms that they were just starting to clean.  I think it's pretty safe to say that the toilets had never been cleaned in the last 18 months.  Probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.  

Daisy Maids did their cleaning for about two hours.  When the property manager showed up we began changing the locks.  I then saw that the outdoor lights on the house would not shut off using the light switches.  The property manager took the light cover off and found that the renters had rewired the lights so that they could not be turned on or off.  What the point of that is, I have no idea. As the property manager and I walked through out the house, I could not believe all of the holes in the walls.  These weren't just small nail holes.  These were huge holes and 5-6 right together in a row.  When we bought the house three years ago, we had never hung anything on the walls.  We had brand new carpet installed and the entire house painted right after we bought it.  The property manager kept telling me that everything to him seemed like "normal wear and tear".  He tried to convince me that the reason why I thought that things were so bad was because I had an emotional connection to the house.  I tried to see his side of it, but I was having a hard time.

Later on that same day Josh and I came back over to the house.  The house had been cleaned and still had a smell to it.  So we scheduled Stanley Steamer to come in the next day and clean all of the carpets.  On this same day we also found that there were several scratches in our stainless steel fridge.  These scratches don't come out.  We had also bought the appliances brand new when we bought the house.  As I washed down the walls, I kept noticing that there was a lot of dog hair everywhere.  One of the stipulations with having a pet in our home, is that the monthly rent would be increased to cover any damage the pet might do.  At no time did the renters let the property manager know that they had a pet.

Stanley Steamer came the next day and steamed the carpets.  We thought that everything should be good to go at this point.  Boy were we wrong!!  We moved all of our things into the house that following Saturday.  By Saturday night, I was noticing that as I would walk through the living room, I would smell an animal pee smell.  I kept trying to tell myself I was just imagining it.  Then I kept smelling it more and more often over the next couple of days.  It got so bad, that I wouldn't even go down into the living room.  It was so strong!  Because we had already had the carpets shampooed, we figured the only way to get rid of the smell was to replace the carpets.  At this point I had been contacting the property manager about what we were experiencing.  He talked to the renters, and the finally admitted to having a pet "occasionally".  I'm not quite sure what that even means.  We went and picked out carpet on that Wednesday.  We had to move all of the furniture out of the rooms to have every room empty for the new carpet to be laid.  This felt like moving all over again, minus the packing up boxes.  We moved as much as we could into the bathrooms, kitchen, and then what was left into the garage and basement.  On Thursday we began pulling the carpet up in the living room and the entry room.  Boy were we shocked!  There was pee stains everywhere on the back side of the carpet.  It was shocking!  I do have plenty of pictures of this as evidence!  The smell once we pulled the carpet up was even worse!  We did some research online and found that because it was so bad, we need to spray bleach on the entire base floor to kill the enzymes.  Then after that was dry, we had to roll on a coat of Kilz that would kill the order for good.  We found after pulling out all of the carpet in our entire house, that there was pee stains everywhere.  We still couldn't believe how someone could live like this.  They had to have known that their animal was not potty trained and was peeing all over the house.  All I can figure is that this wasn't there house so they didn't care.  Hopefully they learn to care when they get the $4000.00 bill for all of the damage they did to our home.  We really did not expect any of this to happen.  

It's been almost three weeks now since this nightmare began.  We now have a house full of brand new carpet that doesn't smell like pee.  Thank heavens!  One of the questions our property manager asked us is that if we go to court, can we testify that we have never had an animal in our house.  For those of you that really know me, you know that I'm not much of an animal person.  The closest thing we have had to a pet, is a Beta fish, and last I checked, they don't pee everywhere.  So through this experience we have a learned a couple of things.  First thing is never rent your home out to someone, unless there's no chance of ever living there again.  Second thing is that we must be some pretty good renters!  We have always cleaned the apartment/house were were leaving, the best we could before we left.

This was the first weekend that we could truly enjoy Josh having weekends off.  It has been so nice, and feels like a new life for both of us.  I'm used to being alone on the weekends and having to find things to do myself.  Yesterday we went to the movies, and then just relaxed.  If it hadn't been such crappy weather, I'm sure we would of been doing more yard work, but hopefully that can happen next weekend!

More changes to our ever changing life....

More changes are happening in our life.  It seems as though there's never a dull moment.  I hope after all of these upcoming huge changes, our life settles down for awhile.
After living in Roosevelt, Utah for the last year and a half, we have decided that this is just not the place for us.  We primarily moved here because of Josh's new job.  Josh's friend owns a hotel and restaurant here in Roosevelt.  We moved here so that Josh could be the general manager of both.  After a year and a half of a very poor work life balance, and many other issues, we have decided to move back to our home in Magna.  Josh and I were maybe seeing each other a total of 10-12 hours a week.  Between our two work schedules, we just never saw each other.  This was extremely hard on myself because we don't know anyone here, and all of our friends and family are two and a half hours away in Salt Lake.  There's many details to the reasons why we came to the decision to move, but I'll leave those to your imagination!  
Our official moving date is April 11.  Josh is actually starting a new job in Salt Lake, starting on March 30!  We are beyond excited for this new career opportunity he has been given.  He's finally going to have a professional job that is Monday thru Friday!  He is going to be working as a recruiter for companies looking to hire employees in technology.  This is a whole new world to Josh, but he is already so excited to start this new journey.  We've already bought him a whole new wardrobe and a book to help him get started!  
I just put in my two week notice at work on Friday.  In my whole adult life, I have had to put in two week notice for the third time now.  It doesn't get any easier each time.  I always dread the day I have to do it, and don't get any sleep the night before.  Thankfully my boss was understanding and can see why staying in Roosevelt just isn't an option for us.  So my last day is on April 3.  I'm not quite sure where my next job adventure will be as of right now.  Between getting everything packed up here in Roosevelt, all of the moving details, and being two and a half hours away from any potential interview, I have decided to wait till we get moved to even start looking.
One thing that we are both so excited about is moving back into our home that we own in Magna!  We have had an awesome property management company looking after it while we have been in Roosevelt.  We have had some awesome tenants there the entire time we have been here.  It will be so nice to be back in our home with lots more space!  We're already looking forward to doing yard work when we get back.  
We can't wait to be more involved with our family and friends once we get all settled!  It's been extremely difficult being in Roosevelt all by ourselves.  Even though our move to Roosevelt didn't work out, we both have no regrets that we did it.  Moving is hard.  Starting new jobs is hard.  Being away from family and friends is hard.  But if we would of never given it a chance, we would always wonder what it would of been like.  Life is about living and learning, and we both have definitely learned from this experience!

PGA. NBA. NFL. All in one place! All in one week!

Josh and a friend of his went to Phoenix, Arizona, January 28-February 2.  The original plan was to go for the PGA tour that was there.  After getting there, it turned into more basketball and football, than golf.  It was raining pretty good most of the time that he was there, so they ended up finding other things to do.  It just so happened that the Super Bowl was in the same city that weekend, so there was plenty for them to do.  They also went to two Suns games while they were there.  I'm just a little jealous of all the fun things they were doing!  I stayed behind to work, and then went to Salt Lake to see some friends and hang out with my sister and her family for the weekend.  Josh had a great time, but he did admit he was ready to come home by the end of his trip!

 Shaun, Sonny, Andre Arrington, and Josh

 Shaun, Josh, and Sonny

 Josh, Deontay Wilder the boxer they met at a Suns game, and Sonny

Josh, Amani Toomer, and Shaun

 Suns Game

 Tiger woods in the pink shirt

16th Hole

Sometimes life just isn't fair…...

This may be one of those blog posts you may want to skip, if you’re not comfortable with some of the not so fun details of life.  I feel like I need to make this post not only for others out there that may have or will have the same experience that we have had but also for myself.  The things that have happened over the last 19 weeks of our lives, have been something I’ll never forget, but also I feel like has changed me forever. 

September 17, 2014, is the day Josh and I officially took a pregnancy test and knew we were going to be parents!  This was by far, the most exciting day in both of our lives.  All the planning, preparing, and talking about having a baby, became real on this day!

On Monday, October 27, 2014, Josh and I were finally going to experience what many of our family members and friends, have talked about.  We knew that I was approximately 10 weeks pregnant!  We hadn’t told a single soul we were even thinking about having a baby.  We wanted to keep this life changing decision between us for awhile.  We were going to our first doctor’s appointment.  We could hardly wait for the minute we would be able to see our baby on the ultrasound and hear the heartbeat for the very first time.  We were beyond excited.  We had been planning and anticipating this moment for quite awhile.  We arrived at the doctors office and checked in at the desk.  We were told that the doctor was running behind because of an emergency.  Not the best thing we wanted to hear since we were so ready for this appointment.  Two hours later it was finally our turn to see the doctor.  We started out by talking with the doctor.  Then it was finally time to go into the ultrasound room and see our little tiny baby.  As soon as the doctor found the baby, I knew immediately that something was wrong.  He pointed to the screen where the baby was and said, “that’s where the heartbeat should be”.  Should be?!?!  What exactly did that mean.  In my heart I knew what he meant, but I wasn’t ready to accept it at that point.  Then he told us he wanted us to have a more extensive ultrasound just to confirm what he was seeing.  I had two more ultrasounds done right after that.  Then came the most devastating news.  There was no heartbeat.  Josh and I were devastated.  We had been waiting forever for this moment, and those words shattered our world.  So many questions began running through my as tears ran down my face.  Why us? What did I do wrong?  How could this happen when I felt like I did everything right to prepare my body for pregnancy?  We had planned so long for this, how could this be happening?  The doctor was very compassionate about the situation.  He then told us what our options were.  After a few minutes of discussing all of the options, Josh and I left the doctors office feeling completely lost. 

We both decided we didn’t need to go back to work, we just needed to be with each other and try and accept this unexpected news.  We went home and cried until we couldn’t cry anymore.  There is no way to even make sense of what we were now faced with.  We went from being so beyond happy and excited, to now feeling like our whole world was shattered.  An emotional high to an emotional low, all in one day.  I didn’t know that was possible until this day.  Every thought over the last 10 weeks had been about our future with this baby we had not even met yet.  Everything we talked about and planned for had included this sweet baby.  That was now just taken from us.  It wasn’t fair.  After discussion, we decided that the best solution for us was to have a D&C.  I called the doctor and we scheduled it for two days later.

On October 29, I was admitted to the hospital and the doctor did the D&C.  This whole process was so difficult because it made it final and real.  The surgery went smoothly.  At this point is when I realized, there really was no more baby.  I’ll never forget this day for the rest of my life.  Our future that we were planning for wasn’t going to happen. 

Over the next 8 weeks, we did everything we could to talk about our feelings and deal with the emotional part of what had happened to us.  In my opinion, Josh and I have great communication in our relationship.  We talked numerous times about what we were going through and how each of us was feeling.  That helped me so much to deal with what was happening. 

All of our healing and trying to move on, came to a sudden reverse on Tuesday, December 23.  The day had started out like any normal day.  Josh went to work.  I went to work.  It was around 12:30pm that day, and I was sitting at my desk.  All of the sudden I had the feeling that something wasn’t right.  I grabbed my cell phone and ran to the restroom at work.  Without going into too much detail, I was hemorrhaging at work.  I called Josh and he didn’t answer his cell phone.  At this point I really began to panic.  I wasn’t sure how I was going to get myself to the hospital without his help.  I then text him and let him know I was bleeding really bad and to please call me back.  He immediately called me after that.  I let him know what was happening, and he left work to come and get me.  I was really panicking at this point and felt like I might pass out.  I decided it was probably best if I unlocked the restroom door, and let someone know I was in there just in case.  Luckily, the sweetest lady at work heard me, and came to help me before Josh got there.  Josh got to me within a matter of minutes, and got me loaded up in the car.  The hospital is only a few minutes from my work, which I was very grateful for.  All that kept running through my head was, I don’t want to bleed to death. I kept telling Josh how much I loved him, I was starting to really think I was going to bleed to death. It was bleeding pretty bad.

Josh got me to the ER and found someone to help get me into a wheelchair.  A nurse wheeled me into a room to take my blood pressure and check in to the hospital.  I felt like time was moving so slow, and that I was really going to bleed to death.  Finally they got me into a hospital room and began asking me questions.  I explained to them that I had a D&C 8 weeks before due to a miscarriage.  I let them know the doctor I had been seeing.  Luckily my doctor was already there in the hospital.  I was then moved into another room.  Once in this room, they told me they need to get me hooked up to IV’s, and prepare me for a possible blood transfusion.  I let the nurses know that my veins are really hard to get an IV in, and that my wrists and hands are the best places to get a vein.  They attempted 7 times in both arms to get a vein.  On one try, they even blew through a vein and blood was squirting everywhere.  The ER doctor then came in and realized that they weren’t having any luck.  He then decided it was time to put a picc line in my neck.  Now just so everyone knows, I already have major anxiety issues.  This was pushing me to my limit.  In order to put the picc line in, he had to put a paper drape over my face.  He numbed my neck three times before actually putting the picc line in.  As he was doing this, he said “this is going to tickle your throat a bit as I push the line down into your heart”.  I could feel myself getting more and more anxious as the seconds went by.  I kept telling myself that freaking out was not going to help anything, and that I needed to calm down.  As soon as he was done, my anxiety level went way down.  They then had to do an X-Ray of my heart to make sure the line was in the right spot.  I couldn’t really move my neck because of what he had done.  My doctor then came into the room and began doing an ultrasound.  As they were doing this, they kept pushing on my already full to capacity bladder.  I thought for sure I was going to embarrass myself even more than I already had, by peeing my pants right there on the bed.  After four people looked at my ultrasound, my doctor then informed me that they would need to do another D&C surgery to stop the bleeding.  He said that my blood work was also showing that I was still pregnant.  I have no idea how this is even possible.  I later found out, that if they don’t get all of the tissue out on a D&C, that tissue can still live and let your body still think that you’re pregnant.  Because of the traumatic last few hours, I just wanted to have the surgery and stop bleeding.   Throughout this whole process, I was extremely worried that Josh was going to pass out from everything he had to see.  I’m sure he wants to erase the 3 hours we spent in the ER from his memory.  I was then taken back to surgery.  In the last 15 years since I have graduated high school, I have had 9 surgeries including this one.  This is the first surgery that I have had that the anesthesiologist hasn’t told me he’s going to give me the sleepy medicine and then told me to count to 10.  I went from laying on the table just wanting the bleeding to stop, to waking up to the voices of nurses talking.  Just like that it was over!  I was so thankful to wake up with Josh by my side.  While I was in surgery, Josh posted this on his facebook page:  ( I just had to share since I have such an amazing husband! After he posted this, we heard from so many friends that had experience similar things, and made us feel not so alone.) 

I guess you could say I'm pretty private about the real personal things in my life but today has been a horrible day. 9 weeks ago my wife and I were so excited to finally be parents, we came in for our first doctors appointment so happy to be able to see our little baby and hoped to see a heartbeat. After 3 different ultrasounds they couldn't find a heartbeat and we were both left absolutely devastated and still haven't gotten over the fact that we lost a baby that we had so much planned for. A couple days later they performed a D&C and our excitement had turned to hurt and an emptiness I could never explain. Today my wife began bleeding very heavy at work and called me crying and scared, I felt helpless as I rushed to get to her at work. She was so afraid and thought she was going to bleed out and I will never forget the fear in her eyes as I tried to rush to the hospital. They nurses poked her several times trying to get an IV in and finally ended up putting one in her neck, I cried for her wanting to be in her place. They found clots and tissue that resisted the first D&C and she is in surgery now getting the procedure done again. I'm glad they were able to stop the bleeding and find out what was going on but nothing will erase the fear and hurt we have to relive today. I am so grateful that I have such a strong and amazing wife. Who knows if we will have our dreams come true of having a baby but I pray every night that God watches over our child until we are reunited one day.

The doctor let Josh know they had found several blood clots while doing another D&C.  The surgery had went well.  Three hours later, I was finally released from the hospital. 

Going through this latest experience, and letting other people know of what we were going through, I have learned that many others have experienced similar things.  I have felt like this never happens to anyone else, so why are we being picked on, this entire time.  Miscarriage and experiences like what we have been through, are really things that not very many people talk about.   Over the past 9 weeks, I have really blamed myself and wondered what I did wrong for this to happen to us.  I want more than anything to have answers.  Each doctors visit when my doctor asks if I have any questions, I just ask him why is this happening.  I felt like we had planned and prepared for this baby as much as we possibly could, and we didn’t deserve this to happen.  My doctor never has an answer for me which is the hardest part.  I feel like if I just had an answer, I could be more accepting of what has happened.  Not knowing why and blaming myself, is something I have dealt with everyday for the last 9 weeks.  I’m hoping that as more time passes, our hearts are able to heal more and more each day.

Josh has been my rock through all of this.  I really don’t know what I would do without him.  He has been there to just hold me when I want to cry.  He talks with me about all of this more than he probably wants to, but he does it because it’s what helps me deal with the pain.  I will never forget how excited he was when I told him I thought I was pregnant, and how he hurried home from work as fast as he could when I told him I was going to take a pregnancy test.  Hopefully the tears are less and less, but the pain we feel will never go away.  This whole experience we are going through, has definitely brought us even closer together and made our love even stronger, even though I didn’t think that was possible.  Hopefully as time passes, we are able to see the silver lining in this life experience.

Thanksgiving, Softball, and Anniversary!

A few things have happened since I last blogged.  As boring as we are, we do a few things here and there.  
For Thanksgiving we went to Salt Lake for the weekend.  Bright and early Thanksgiving morning, I ran a 10K race.  This race was to benefit the Utah Food Bank.  It was a fun run with tons of people!  The weather would of been perfect if it weren't for the wind.  The temperature was unusually warm for it being the end of November.  It was fun to run a race with my brother Shane, and his father-in-law and brother-in-law.  As much as I kept questioning myself about doing it, I'm glad we did it!

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we went to St. George for a softball tournament.  Josh was invited to play on a team to raise money for Toys 4 Tots.  They played a total of four games.  It was fun to go to a new place, for the weekend.  The weather was so nice there, we didn't want to come home.  Josh had lots of fun playing!

Our wedding anniversary was on December 12.  We have been married for two years now!  It feels like so much longer.  It is awesome being married to my best friend!  Below is a collage that Josh put together.

Jazz game and date weekend!

On Friday, October 24, we went to a Jazz basketball game.  For those of you that don't know, Josh is a HUGE Jazz fan!  And by huge, I mean if I gave him the okay, we'd have season tickets, even though we live 2.5 hours away from Salt Lake!  Earlier that week Josh talked about going to a Jazz game that weekend.  We knew Josh finally had a weekend off, so instead of sitting around this boring town, we decided we'd go to a Jazz game and spend a couple of days in Salt Lake.  So Josh went online and found us some pretty sweet 10th row tickets.  We both love going to Jazz games.  The atmosphere at the game, is so much fun!  I had to work on the day of the game, so we decided we'd leave as soon as I got off work around 3pm.
As soon as I got home from work, Josh was busy packing our bag and getting things ready to go.  I of course being the girl that I am, debated on if I had packed everything I needed.  I hurried and changed my clothes, and then grabbed a bottle of water, and headed out the door to head to Salt Lake.  We stopped and ate in Salt Lake, and then headed to the game.  As soon as we parked the car, I asked Josh to pop the truck so that I could put my purse inside.  I hate carrying my purse around at Jazz games.  As I went to put my purse in the truck, I noticed our bag was not in the trunk.  I then checked the back seat of the car.  No bag.  So then I asked Josh where our bag was.  His immediate response was, "I thought you grabbed it."  We had both assumed the other person had grabbed it.  I was determined that this was not going to ruin our date weekend.  After the game, we made a stop at WalMart and got all of the necessities.  $80 later we were ready to head to the hotel.
While we were waiting for the games to start, I turned around and noticed that Jerry Sloan was sitting in the row behind us.  I didn't want to be that annoying fan and ask for a picture with him, so Josh tried to take a non-obvious picture of me with him in the background.  I think he did a pretty good job!

I LOVE spending time with my husband!  I just wish that we could do it more often!  

Another fun race...

On Saturday, August 16, Shanon and I, along with a  few of my running friends, ran another 5K!  This one was difficult for me.  I've been having back and hip issues for a month now.  I debated on if I should even do this one, but then I decided I would "just walk it".  If you're a runner, you know how difficult it is when an injury happens that prevents you from running.  I've been going to the chiropractor and been trying to take it easy, but it's so hard.  According to the chiropractor, this injury has happened because of me running on the uneven roads.  I love running outside!  I feel so free and unstoppable when I run outside.  The chiropractor telling me that's what is causing my pain, made me so sad.  I've been trying to get better, but it's taking forever.  

On the day of the race, I decided I was going to give it everything I could, even if it was just a walk.  This race was a girls only race. I started out the race walking, but not to far into it, I decided I had to at least try to jog.  I finished the race in 33:07.  That's the slowest I've done a 5K, but at least I did the best I could!  Shanon did fantastic and placed 1st in our age group!!

After Shanon, my friends, and I completed our race, it was time for the Princess Run.  Tori was so excited about this!  She did awesome!!