Day 1: suppression Meds begin

Meds arrived today! I HAD to face my huge needle fear & administer my own shot today! I went through 91 shots with the twins 4 years ago & I didn't touch one of them!!! I had to learn because I'm flying out to Austin in a few days for a long weekend with JR's sisters & my amazing counterpart is not joining me! But I know my SIL will rescue me once we get there & she'll stick me!

Anyways, today was so cool, we gathered the kids all around & shared with them how this medicine is gonna help prepare mommy's tummy for the embryo babies. We then went on to briefly explain how with medication sometimes comes side effects so we explained that this medicine could make mommy sad or tired & we needed to pray over Mommy that God would supernatural balance out the hormones in my body.

I then went to talk about how in the beginning of their pregnancies I had something i dealt with, I looked at Foster & told him that I got so sick from smells alone & I would puke brushing my teeth! I told Charlie & Paisley that with them I was so tired I had to crawl to the bathroom & with Betsy I ate unhealthy foods all the time, I just shared with them how we have to gather together daily as the medicine is daily preparing my womb, that God would spiritually prepare a supernatural environment where my body could do the work AND I could still be the mommy I needed to be, with strength & healthiness, & energy! We are gonna contend for God to give us an incredibly different pregnancy!

Oh MY gosh their prayers were hilarious! Foster prayed for God to help me to not make unhealthy eating choices & to not be sad & for the embryos to be safe. Charlie prayed mommy would not get fat, & Betsy prayed for her pink princess house & then paisley prayed I wouldnt get too fat!!!!

Kids are HILARIOUS!!! How fun that we are rallying together to just enlarge our circle of love!!! Here's some shots of the morning!

Most current pic of us.

My lovely, we need a date.

cleaning house.

I have had a lot of time to search my heart over the past few weeks. I have been un-faithfully blogging over at tumblr under dakinlife for a few years on and off now.  I have blogs created for each one of our kiddos and I have been so inconsistent with posting that it messes with my head.

I am a 0% or 100% kind of person. I need to sharpen that part of personality before the cross because in it rests a lot of pride and a lot of fear. I have been wrestling a ton lately with blogging in general. That word alone kind of makes my skin crawl. Have you ever heard a word or seen a word so much that it begins to annoy you? Well Blog, blogging, facebook, social media, twitter, tweet, hashtag, all these words that were pretty much undefined in my adolescent years have now become so common in every day language, and they all bother me.

Part of it is because I don't adapt well to the invasiveness that it brings, yet I do love the community that it can at its purest moments create. I could go on a tangent about all of this and if you ever sit down to coffee or ice cream with me you will learn I am a professional rabbit trailer. So I need to stick to my point. I get inspired to write and then I stop doing it.

I have questioned that "repeat quiting" this past few weeks and I have because our family is about to walk down an incredible journey that I desperately want to remember. Which means I have to wrestle with the heart of my issue with inconsistently posting. You could look at me and say, Oh Aly, you are SO busy, don't be so hard on yourself, but I have had to question my motives in a way that change me. I AM busy, and our life is only going to get inconceivably busier. But really, a few moments to sit down and share the victories, the fears, the daily happenings... it doesn't take as much as I make it out to be... I have to change the heart issue of why I do it. I have said for many years I blog to remember these days, but...

I have uncovered some ugly truths about myself that I have had to hand over to Jesus. When I post it puts me in this scavenger position to not be in my physical place whole heartedly, I am busy about my daily routine and then I am quickly checking (99% of the time on my phone) at comments, posts, etc... Then I find myself wondering why this person didn't comment or that person didn't do this or yada yada yada. And I have seen some ugly in heart that I have had to remove.

I have been moved by the Lord to write down this crazy journey of Embryo Adoption. I have wanted to share it but out of fear, pride, lack of time, insecurity, (name the issues) I haven't been faithful to it.

I posted over on Tumblr (dakinlife) a few weeks ago, a link to a video made of our family that explains very vaguely that we have adopted these embryos. I then followed it up with a post of some basic explanation of what we are doing. So since then, I have received a slew of wonderful encouraging messages and comments that I was moved by, but it's just like that sly little serpent to creep in my thoughts and help me doubt sharing any of this... I struggled and it has made me silent.

 I deeply plan on keeping my motives pure and standing vulnerable before the Lord through this journey, I will write and not do it to please people or seek affirmation. I do not live that way in my normal life, I don't know why I have fallen prey to these insecurities. I will write. I will write. I will write.... Write down the revelation and make it plain... Habakkuk 2:2

I start suppression shots in less than a week. I have flash thoughts of memories of when I did this with our twins... I feel overwhelmed at the reality that I am doing these again, but my human-ness gets challenged by grace and God will step in and shower me with courage.
Its so fitting that the scripture reference that I am memorizing in my bible study is this:

"Be Strong and Courageous, do NOT be afraid, for I am with you where ever you go" Joshua 1:8

I am uncertain of how to merge my blogs or if I even will. I have disliked the name to my blog for years now... A few years ago I came up with one I LOVED! Then I had Miss Willow join our family and it through a wrench in the name. I would write names down and none of them stuck... So yeah, I am cleaning house in the look and layout of my blog. I get frustrated with tumblr and until recently I was even more frustrated with blogger, but its interface is all new so I thought I would give it a try and this lovely name came floating through my frontal lobe... "Dear dakin's" that's gotta ring... my little dakins are so dear and little and someday I will be another name in the family lineage... and this will hopefully be bound and re-told to many dakin's for generations to come.