Ch-ch-changes!

To update most of the world, I'M PREGNANT!

Charles and I found out the morning of our 1st Anniversary that our dream to become parents was becoming a reality! I'm not gonna lie, I took like 7 tests within the course of the next week or two just to be sure! And all were positive!

Now, dealing with my past miscarriages, we did not tell a soul about our pregnancy. Other than our mothers. I was excited, but scared at the same time. Right about when I was 12 weeks, the family went to a pumpkin patch/corn maze. It was fun! Until I started bleeding... scary. We got home and I layed down. The next day, I stayed home, and called the doctor. He wanted to see me in the very next day. I was put on bedrest. LAME.

The next day was a sigh of relief. I was still bleeding, but the baby was fine. I was not bleeding from the inside of my uterus. Thank goodness! My cervix was irritated, thus causing the bleeding. I have been fine ever since.

The weeks seem to have gone by so fast, but getting to this point has taken so long! Every Wednesday, I add a week onto my pregnancy! This past Wednesday, the 19th, was my 18th week! I can no longer fit into ANYTHING of mine! We found out at the last ultrasound that the doctor is about 75% sure it's a girl! So we're looking forward to her arrival on Apirl 22, 2009!! I will keep everyone updated on how things go! I will also be posting ultrasounds and belly shots! :D Things have been amazing! I can feel her moving every once in a while and it is nothing short of amazing! Keep us in your prayers! We miss and love you all!

P.S. Jenelle, you are SO taking all of our preggy pics!

It's been a while!

Wow, with moving in, remodleling, and everything else going on, we have not had time for anything! BLAH! We are getting internet sometime in the next few weeks! YAY! So I am using a friend's as of right now!

I have a lot to blog about and no time! So if you wanna catch up with me, CALL ME!

I love you!

UpDate June 2008

Tornadoes, flooding, thunderstorms, allergies, oh my!

Again, we have no internet, so I am on the web at my in-laws house! I thought I'd give those who read this thing a quick update!

The first night of all the tornadoes and storms hit us hard. We got about 3 feet of water in our basement :( *pictures on Facebook*) It hit our town hard too, but not as hard as others. There are pictures posted on the local radio's website of flood damage too. One is of a bobcat stranded in a tree that is surrounded by water. It's wicked! KSIB radio

We are going to be in Cedar Falls next Saturday, the 28th, for a friend's wedding! *Yay Lauren* And we're gonna stay with Jenelle and family! Then it's back to good ol' Creston!

In August, we're going to be heading down to Dallas for John's wedding! We're driving all night on the 28th of August, and arriving in Dallas at about 2 in the morning! Then we're going to the hotel, sleep till about 9, then head for Six Flags Over Texas! Spend the WHOLE day there! That Saturday, we'll be off to the temple for the sealing! Then to the reception! We're going to be heading home Sunday. We might have other plans on Sunday/Monday, but we'll see! I need to make some calls!

Other than that, our bathroom is almost done! The carpet will be out ASAP! And we're trying to survive the storms! I'm getting paranoid though! Every storm coming our way, I'm ready to go to the basement! Wish us luck. We love and miss all of you!

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Things have been completely ridiculous the past few weeks. With Charles graduating, both of my younger brothers graduating the next week, my cousin Cinnamon graduating the week after that, a wedding for some underclassmates right after that, MOVING, AND a guy I use to date who got married just this last weekend, Charles and I have about had it!!

I'm am breaking out in pimples, I can't eat, and at times I eat too much... and on top of all of this, we're tearing out our carpet downstairs because the nicotine in the carpet is staining our socks and making everything we own smell TERRIBLE.... *sigh*

Vacation sounds good right about now.

Charles's best man in our wedding, John, FINALLY got engaged! We're going to be flying down to Texas for his August 30th wedding! We're excited! :D :D :D

My Graduate and I!

I'm proud of him, I love him!
My Uncle Tim, he's my GodFather, also graduated on the same day!
(The pic is washed out, but I LOVE it anyway!)

My Graduate! My Husband!

So tomorrow my Husband is graduating from SouthWestern Community College and we've got a whole day planned for him! I have to work *BLAH* until noon, and Charles's sister told us that she will help us with the food prep and what not! We're excited! We're having a small get-together with some family and friends from the area! We're having a turkey roast with lots of goodies! Cake, ice cream, the whole deal! I'm very, very proud of my Husband and his accomplishments!

This week has been full of work... work... and more work! Not just my job, but work on the house! It's coming along quite nicely! We're still iffy about the carpet smelling like cigarette tar... we dont' know if we just want to tear it out or not just yet... it's an AWESOME carpet... so we're TRYING to salvage it. The bathroom gets the leveler laid down after we prime the walls to be painted on Saturday! We plan on laying the tile down Monday and then painting sometime next week. :D I'm excited!

Mother's Day is this Sunday! WOO HOO! Charles got me a card! I don't know what it is of, but he told me not to look at it when he put it in the cart! Haha! I got my Mom and Nana necklaces that say "Mother" and "Nana," and we got Charles's sisters the same book, 'Chicken Soup For the Soul; Life Lessons for Busy Moms', and we're still undecided about Charles's mother... we'll find something, I'm sure!

I've lost 2 lbs already doing the Curves program! I've gone everyday this week and it's awesome! I love it! I feel more positive about myself and I'm happy! This is a HUGE change! Haha!

Anywho, I just thought I'd let everyone in on my week and what's going on this weekend! I love and miss you all!

Time for a change!

So in the recent year or so, I've gained about 45 lbs due to major stress, miscarriages, depression, and in general, marriage. After my shower a few days ago, I walked pass my vanity that has a HUGE mirror on it, I never look at myself but this time was different, I caught a glimpse of myself, naked, in the mirror. I went into tears.

Now, Charles tells me constantly that I'm beautiful and that I look fine, and that's great! But I don't feel "fine" or "beautiful" anymore. I don't know how I let myself get so far along this path... but things are going to change, and fast.



I am going to be attending the Curves downtown starting Monday. I figure I can jog/walk to the Curves building, do the 30 minute Curves plan, and jog/walk back home EVERYDAY of the week (minus Sunday, cause they aren't open then anyways!). Charles is willing to completely rearrange our eating habits for the better to help me out. I don't like how I am anymore, and I just want to be happy... FOR ME. So I'm excited about Curves and starting to do something with myself again. It's hard to find time in my busy life, but I'm going to do it.

I'm just tired of always complaining about how I look and not doing anything to help. Times are changing. And so will I! Wish me luck!

Fun Stuff!

REWIND!

10 YEARS AGO: Hmmm 1998 - I was 11 and I had the world ahead of me! My parents were going through their divorce and I was spending most of my time hiding my feelings and emotions from people. This was also the year I realized just how talented I was in art and decided there and then that I would be an artist!

5YEARS AGO: Hmmm 2003 - My sweet 16 was spent in New Orleans with my Aunt Megan, Grandma Jean, and Grandpa Gary! We toured Louisiana for a week! The day of my birthday, we went on a river boat tour of the Mississippi River!

5 MONTHS AGO: Hmmm December 2007 - Charles and I spent our very first Christmas together! We had loads of presents to buy for both sides of our family and we about went broke! It was awesome! We stayed in Cedar Falls the few days before New Years so that I could see my friends and hang out with my family!

5 THINGS ON MY TO DO LIST:
1. Continue packing
2. Paint the bathroom
3. Pay rent
4. Remember my CD player for work tomorrow
5. Make love to my husband!

5 SNACKS I ENJOY:
1. LemonHeads
2. Animal Crackers!
3. Doritos or any other snack chip
4. Skittles
5. Any kind of fruit!

5 THINGS I WOULD DO IF INSTANTLY A BILLIONAIRE:
1. Pay off my debts (college, medical, loans, etc.)
2. Go to Tuscany for a month or so vacation!
3. Put a million dollars into savings for each of my future children's college fund!
4. Get a 2008 Jeep Liberty!
5. Tear down and rebuild the house! Same floor plan, but maybe put in a dining room and extend the back porch/hot tub area!

5 BAD HABITS:
1. Biting my finner nails! I am getting better, but I use to be HORRIBLE at it!
2. Putting myself down... all the time.
3. Buying Avon stuff... It's more of an addiction, but I think it counts.
4. Not returning phone calls... I'm really terrible about that :(
5. Getting mad really easily... Charles gets the worst at times :(

5 PLACES I HAVE LIVED:
1. Omaha, NE
2. Red Oak, IA
3. Nodaway, IA
4. Corning, IA
5. Where I am now! It's a secret ;)

5 THINGS PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT ME:
1. I LOVE Hannah Montana! I even have a Hannah shirt!
2. I listen to Air Supply religiously
3. I collect straws, unused ones!
4. I have over 40 purses
5. I shave my belly.

UNI Dining Center Ice Cream

One of my friend's fiance posted a hilarious blog and picture about the ice-cream cone he got from the UNI dining center! Here. In response, I told him that it was best to KNOW the person giving you your ice-cream! And here is why!

His Ice-Cream:


MY Ice-Cream cone:


And there you have it! A simple acquaintance leads to HUGE ice-cream cones! The end!

Our Bathroom?!?

Charles and I have been hard at work trying to get our downstairs bathroom ready to be painted and then have tile laid down. We are doing everything by ourselves, growing in love, and patience! It's quite the ordeal! :D Here are some quick photos!

This is my Husband trying to figure out how to remove the sink! (We did successfully as you see in the picture below!)


After the sink was out, we noticed all the tile behind the sink! YUCK! But I decided to go ahead and scrap off as MANY layers of wallpaper as I could! The green on the wall is the dry-wall I FINALLY found!


Pulling the Carpet and Padding up off of the floor... it was nasty... there was dust and mold EVERYWHERE! :P


This is us being safe!

What we did over the weekend! We finally got all of the tiles off of the wall and put up a new sheet of dry-wall! Charles is putting the plaster in the nail holes and corners. It was quite the project! We even wrote notes to each other on the dry-wall! :D

Tomorrow is a day of priming and mopping! WOOT! We'll be painting by Thursday!

Until then! I'm outtie!

House Stuff!

Charles and I found out the other day that the terrible smell coming from our living room is the wonderful smell of nicotine... so we've been scrubbing walls, we hooked up an air filter thing that's suppose to be 100% guaranteed to work (we'll see), and we've shampooed the carpet more times than we can afford. But we're doing our best and actually seeing some results! We totally gutted the downstairs bathroom and 10 layers of wallpaper later, we found the drywall! We tore out the carpet in the bathroom and we'll be laying tile down shortly! I'll post some before and after pictures soon!

I cut my hair again.... I just got rid of the "longer in the front" look. It was driving me nuts!

Congrats to Jenelle on her wonderful fourth addition, Eliza! She's gorgeous! :D

Charles and I have been reading a lot about the Second Coming of Christ and it is really kicking us into high gear. We're focusing on living our lives and doing the work that needs to be done. Home teaching, visiting teaching, doing our callings, etc. We want to bring children into this world, and someday we will... but for right now, we've decided it to be best to spend the first year or so of our marriage just the two of us. We're still young and we've got plenty of time... but everyone, and I mean EVERYONE around me is getting preggers or having babies... it's kinda driving me nuts! But I'm so happy for them, nonetheless!

That's all for now! I'm off to bed! Nightie!

HOME OWNERS!

Charles and I were officially handed the keys to our 6 bedroom house on Tuesday! We've been super busy with getting things ready to paint and move in! As soon as we were free to go, we ran to the house and jumped for joy! It was quite comical! We are already into the whole buyer's remorse thing, but it's not terrible! The previous owner painted around everything so we had to go buy matching paint for some of the rooms... others will be painted over! The house just needs A LOT of work! Charles wanted a fixer-upper! And he got it! Here's a slide of the house! I've posted the pictures on my Myspace and Facebook!

Fun Post!

1. Where is your cell phone? Table
2. Significant other? Charles
3. Worst bad habit? Cusing :(
4. Hair? Short
5. Favorite food? Italian
6. Your Favorite thing? Family
7. Your dream last night? Dunno!
8. Favorite drink? Water
9. Dream/Goal? Thinner
10. Room you are in? Living
11. Your ex? Missed
12. Your fear? Spiders
13. Where do you want to be in six years? Motherhood
14. Where were you last night? Home
15. What you're not? Awake
16. Muffins? Yucky
17. Wish list item? HDTV
18. Where did you grow up? Iowa
19. Last thing you did? Charles ;)
20. What are you wearing? PJs
21. Your TV? Juno
22. Your pets? Irritating!
23. Your computer? Laptop
24. Your life? Amazing
25. Your mood? Stressed
26. Missing someone? Jenelle
27. Your car? Jeep
28. Something you are not wearing? Bra
29. Favorite store? Aero
30. Your summer? BIRTHDAY!
31. Love someone? Husband
32. Last time you laughed? Earlier
33. Last time you cried? Yesterday

Maximilian Austin!

We got our new puppy ToDay! He's the best! He is still scared of Lilly and Leo, but he's warming up and playing a little bit more with them! Here's a few pictures of him!


He likes to play with Leo, but Lilly is being a pill to him! He likes to run in circles and bark at nothing! I am really going to enjoy our newest member of the family, Maximilian Austin!

Procrastination...

I guess I'll start this one out saying that I don't hate it here, I just wish I lived within city limits of my friends! Especially Alyce! I don't like being 30 in away from everyone I love so dearly... *oh well* I will live, I'm sure!

[Quick vent]
THE SKY-ROCKETED PRICE OF GAS AND FOOD IS SERIOUSLY MAKING ME MAD. I can't imagine feeding children considering grocery shopping for JUST Charles and I is climbing towards $150 for two weeks, if that. We don't eat that often, but our food seems to go away fast! And healthy food is especially expensive :( It just drives me up the wall...
[End vent!]

Aside from that, this while FLDS YFZ Ranch stuff is really getting me down. I'm sure it's just want my father and step-mother needed to hear about... They have always gotten on me saying that our LDS temples are used for sacrifices and other stuff, but the fact that these Fundamentalist LDS people have beds in their "temple" for the consecration of their marriages (plural), makes me sad to know that my Dad and Andrea probably are thinking that it pertains to the LDS church... I just pray that Heavenly Father will open their hearts and show them the truth by example. My example.

Anywho, Charles and I are days away from our house and new Pomeranian puppy, Max! We are packing every night after dinner. We've decided that we're going to move single rooms at a time! It sounds nuts, but it makes sense to us! We have six weeks to be out of our Rental, so we're going to be fine! Wish us luck!

General Conference was awesome! I didn't see the first Saturday Session because I had to work, but I'm going to watch it online! As for the other talks, President Monson's talks really made me see that he is the true prophet of the here and now and I know that he is a spiritually lead man. He will lead us into the future with hope, not fear, of the second coming of Christ! Charles and i have made it our celestial and eternal goal to be able to partake of the sacrament at Adam-ondi-Ahman and earn celestial glory. We know that God knows we're human, but we are going to honestly try and hope for the best!

That's all for now! I only had enough time to write this, and now I've gotta get going! I hope all of you had a good day! :D

Working, Moving, and I'm STRESSING!

I had to work overtime this morning, GAH! I don't like working overtime :( But it's more money that we need! So it's okay! I guess...

I am happy to say that Charles and I have started small packing and getting ready to start moving soon! We close the deal on April 15th and we're excited! Our House! Check the link! The pictures are small, and there aren't many, but you kinda get a feel for it! It's 6 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, HUGE living room, nice kitchen, HUGE backyard, big basement, and a HOT TUB!! The only down fall, is that there is no dining room :( So we're going to be building one in the next 5 or so years! Some walls need to be re-plastered and most of them need to have the wallpaper taken down because it's from the '70s! AHH! We're going to have it re-wired before we move in! We decided that we're going to paint the rooms while we move in and after we move in. We have plenty of time to fix the house up considering we can't try for children until the end of September and then if we do get preggers then, we will still have 9 months! SOOO we have time!

ALSO! We're adopting a pomeranian puppy! It's a boy, about 4 months old, pure breed, and freakin' cute! We don't have a name just yet for him... we want to be around him for a few days before we name him! We get him in 2 weeks! :D :D :D

I'm going to work out now! I miss all of my friends from UNI and Cedar Falls the most :( I hate living here and having no friends... just family. Family is fine and all... but I need a good hit of Caity and Jenelle sometime soon! :D Until then, I'm outtie!

Speed Tester

Megan did this, so I thought it'd be fun to do! It was quite fun for me!

60 words

Things on my mind...

These last few months have been crazy hectic. With Charles and I trying for children and buying a new house, I've spent a lot of time looking into the lives and lifestyles of my friends and loved ones. Nothing bad, I just like to admire their courage and strength. Some of my friends that have had babies, came out and told the world that they were pregnant right off the bat... some wait for a few months... and some don't even tell anyone until they show up on your doorstep with a baby. However they do it, the ones who come right out have much more courage than I do. The ones who wait to tell, I'm taking notes. And the ones who don't tell anyone, I don't understand why you wouldn't!?

When I found out I was pregnant with this last one, the EDD was 11-13-08... Charles and I spent nights talking about if we wanted to tell people or not... we even discussed whether or not we would even get excited... well, we decided to go ahead and get excited and tell some close friends. We figured that if we kept shut and didn't get excited, we were only expecting a loss. So we swallowed our fears and held our heads high and proudly told our close friends... only to discover that we would lose the baby just 2 weeks later... Our first pregnancy ended in a molar pregnancy . It was quite scary considering the cancer risk involved. I had a suction D&C to remove the contents of my uterus. The tests came back negative, thank goodness. This time, I had to save the "tissue" I passed and take it in. Talk about humiliation... it was horrible. But the pathology report came back negative for a molar pregnancy, WOO! My doctor told me NOT TO try again for over 6 months. This means I'm not allowed to try again until about late September, early October. Charles and I will be spending the first year of our marriage by ourselves. It's quite the blessing... but we are kinda bummed about not getting to at least share some of it with a big baby belly.

We have prayed and pondered about this for the last week and we both came up with the conclusion that Heavenly Father wants us to try because He knows we're going to fail a couple tries. We're taking this loss very well. Surprisingly. It's hard to say why, but we are okay with it. It's crazy hectic with getting packed and getting rid of stuff that's unneeded.

On a lighter note, I'm going to use this time to get back into shape and lose all the marriage-weight I've gained! I wanna look half way decent in a swimming suit! I hope to regain my muscle and get physically healthy and ready for our future babies!

First Blog!

So, since some of my friends have this blog site, I thought I'd go ahead and create an account too! Since Jenelle's blog is a "friends only, members only" needed to view, I thought I'd go ahead and add a blog specifically about my family! And since you're reading my blog, you obviously know me! Here's some info about my family!

My husband's name is Charles Dean Austin! I met Charles at church in December of 2006. He was still fresh off of his mission and in "missionary mode!" But needless to say, I asked his sister Teresa what his name was and told her I thought he was very cute! I hoped he'd make the first move, but I had to step in and introduce myself! I moved back to Corning from Cedar Falls and Charles and I began our relationship soon after.

He proposed to me on June 5, 2007, and we were married for all time and eternity on August 11, 2007, in the Nauvoo, Illinois Temple! We have two cats, Leo and Lilly!

We have tried twice for children, and I am sad to say that both attempts ended in a loss. We know Heavenly Father's plan for us and that helps us cope with the loss of our two pregnancies. As for right now, we are going to get my wisdom teeth out and move into our *new* house! After that, we plan on trying again! Wish us luck!

That's all for now! I hope to get back often and update you all!

Love, Carie!