I found out yesterday that I am pregnant again.  This was a bit of a surprise, but we are happy.  As almost all of you know, I endured an awful miscarriage over a year ago.  I'm asking that you keep me in your prayers and thoughts that no complications develop and that things go smoothly.  I have no intentions of going to the doctor anytime soon, just as I outlined in my blog entry of March 20, 2006.  I will handle this with my husband for the first few months.  I just hope I do not have another miscarriage...I don't know if I could handle that again.  We are waiting till Thanksgiving to tell our extended family and church.  Thanks for letting me share this with you!

~Alice

1.  I'm grateful to have had a nice conversation with a friend who helped me sort out my experiences yesterday.

2.  I'm grateful that mother-in-law got her paycheck today.  It was over two weeks late!

3.  I'm grateful that my father-in-law finally got the reports he needs from his doctor to go forward with his disability claim.  He has post polio syndrome and DESPERATELY needs this to get done with.

4.  I'm grateful that payday is tomorrow!!!

5.  I'm happy I got to talk to several wonderful people today on the phone:  my mother, my mother & father in law, and my good friend Bertha!  I also got to talk to a lot of good friends on the instant messenger.

It was a rather strange day today. I'll blog about that separately....

1. I'm grateful that I had a visit from my grandmother in a dream today during a small nap I took with Will. My grandmother passed away in May of 1999. I'm grateful I got to ask her some questions about some things I wanted to know. I'm not sure, now, what to do with this information or if it is really true or not. But...irregardless, I'm grateful to have had a visit with her today.

2. I am grateful that my whole family got to go on a really nice walk today together.

3. I'm grateful that we got to eat dinner out tonight at Taco Bell! I love Taco Bell and got a little break from cooking.

4. I'm grateful my husband is home this evening and not working overnight.

5. I'm grateful that I got an interesting visit from a bear just a few hours ago. I believe this is related to my grandmother, somehow, and I'm really glad that I was not hurt. More on that in my other blog in a bit.

My friend, Marlena, from MySpace has been keeping a daily gratitude journal for the past few months.  Even if she doesn't blog about anything else, she always does her gratitude journal entry.  It has been a joy reading it everyday and I have often thought about doing it, myself.  Yesterday, she issued a request for all of her friends to start keeping a gratitude journal, as well.  So, I'm going to give it a try!  Basically, you try to list 3-5 things you are grateful for each day.  I believe it helps keep you focused on the positive things in life.  I would issue a request for all of you to try to keep a gratitude journal!

1.  I'm grateful that I was able to attend Sunday school and church services yesterday morning with my whole family.  I truly love and look forward to seeing my "church family."

2.  I'm extremely grateful that my husband is alive and well.  I was reminded yesterday that others are not so fortunate as a newly widowed woman returned to church after losing her husband last week.  I'm so, so grateful I have my husband.

3.  I'm grateful that my children are healthy and doing very well.

4.  I'm grateful that we have, hopefully, been able to come up with a way to solve a huge problem that some family members have been experiencing.

5.  I'm grateful that I have a home to live in and most anything I could want or need.

I don't know about you all, but in this part of the world we have had a bad problem with a huge crop of goldenrod this year.  Goldenrod is a beautiful fall flower, but daggone!  It has been really making us miserable with our sinuses and such.  There hasn't been a whole lot of it in the past few years and I forgot how it affects me. 

As predicted, my children were absolute terrors over the weekend.  It was just one thing after another with them and they were really trying my patience.  Especially Will and Klara!  They were just into everything and backtalking and pushing the envelope repeatedly.  I'm so glad school is back in session and the weekend is over!  Last night they were still awake at 1 a.m.!  I really cracked down on them this evening and so I am hoping for a quiet night.

My very good friend, Amanda, had her third baby today!  She was a little girl they named Kaylin and she was 6lb and 12oz.  She was sooo tiny compared to the big, beefy 9-10 lb babies she and I usually have.  Her little foot was only about as long as my thumb!  But this is the best part about Kaylin.  She is an absolute, 100% miracle baby from God.  Now, I know that all babies are blessings, but Kaylin is super special.

You see, Amanda had a tubal ligation almost 5 years ago after she had a c-section delivery with their second child.  The doctors were dumbfounded because tubal ligations done during c-sections are usually pretty thorough because they are right inside of you and are able to really see what they are doing.  During this whole pregnancy, we all just assumed something had come undone or grew back together...until today.

Amanda had Kaylin by c-section and after they took the baby out, they invited her husband to come have a look (and they filmed all of this also).  Both of her tubes still had huge 2 inch sections still cut out of them.  Each cut end still had a clamp PLUS two stitches behind that.  As a matter of fact, the ends of the tubes were completely healed over.  Medically, it was impossible for a baby to be conceived.  However, Kaylin proved everyone wrong!  The doctors were shocked and said it was obvious that Kaylin has a reason for being here and is a complete and total miracle.  I have to agree.  It was amazing just to hold her and look at her little face, knowing how rare a child like this has to be.  The doctors told them that when a woman gets pregnant after a tubal ligation, they always find that something is off with the procedure when they look at the tubes.  But this was a perfect, thorough job and it still happened.

I brought my camera and was going to take pictures, but when I got it out I discovered I had forgotten my memory stick...duh!  So I will go back tomorrow and take pictures of the little sneaky baby girl and post them tomorrow for everyone to see.  Watch the papers for this one because she's bound to do something amazing later in life!

~Alice