Our Family Tree

So the other day I ran my family 5 year plan by Mandrae and he didn’t seem to disagree with it so right now here is my plan at least:

Anissa- born November 13th 2009 (that is my prediction of when she will be born)
Trae- born October 2010
Andrae- born September 2011
Girl (not sure of another name)- born August 2012
Boy (not sure of another name)- born July 2013

So that means by the time we are 29 we will have our complete family of 5 children.

What do u think?

I know that God has the final say but I hope it looks something like this.

RATS!!

Ok so Mandrae went to work on Tuesday and when he got there his desk had pink huge balloons all over it and a cake on his desk and everything said, “It’s a girl.” Is’nt that so so sweet? His team loves him. So he brought 3 pieces of the cookie cake home with him and it looked so so good! So I took a piece of it to work for lunch with me on Wednesday and then this morning I was really late leaving for work. I was running like 30 min behind and didn’t have time to make my lunch. So I grabbed my frozen dinner outta the freezer and the rest of the cookie cake and a Gatorade and ran out the door as fast as I could.

Well I got a phone call from Mandrae later on that day and he said, “Baby we have rats!” And I was like what? And he said yeah, I woke up this morning and I was so excited to eat the rest of my cookie cake for breakfast and they ate it all!

OOPS!!!!

So yeah he called me at work and told me this and I was crying so hard from laughing so hard it is not even funny! I cant take how funny that was. He said that he was going to call Terminix again to spray for rats and they just came out on yesterday and sprayed. Apparently I left crumbs all over the floor and the counter and I took the lid off the cake and threw it across the stove in my hurry. I was cramming a big piece of cake into a lil baggie and I guess I got crumbs everywhere. It was dark this morning bc it was raining and so I obviously couldn’t see. So anyway we are sure that bebe cleaned up the floor but he left the counter messy for me to see what the rats did!

What can I say, you show a pregnant girl cake and she will eat it all!

Fence

Here are pics of the fence that we stained. It looks much better huh? But cost way too much for what it is. O well it is over with now.

Anissa's Room

Here are pics of our lame poster board dots on the wall. What do u think? What should we change and what color should the dots be? I am taking a poll bc I want just one color and Mandrae wants like 3. What do u think?

IT'S A GIRL!

Ok so had my dr. appt yesterday to find out what the baby is and IT IS A GIRL! YAY! We will be having Anissa Beth Collins. We are super excited. After the appt we went and registered at Target and Babys R Us. We were gonna register at Walmart but their registry was broken and so we aren’t gonna register there anymore. We found a bunch of stuff at Babys R Us and it is reasonable and so that is great. We looked at all the girl clothes and they were so so cute and that made us super excited to dress her up. And we agreed on most of the clothes that we liked- so that was a surprise. We love their clothes and they are priced well and so that is good too so we can always go and get them later. We then bought her name in white letter from hobby lobby and put her name above her crib. We also cut out orange and light yellow dots from poster board and glued them to the wall to look like it was polka dotted and it turned out really bad! So not sure what I will do about that yet. Mandrae said that he fixed the room with the dots to look better (not sure what he did) but I haven’t seen it yet so we will see.
Anyway the dr. said that the Anissa’s arms and especially legs are SUPER long for her size but that it is okay. It was to be expected do to her parents. They checked all her organs and brain and didn’t see anything abnormal and she is very healthy so that is awesome. They tested Mandrae for cystic fibrosis and so we will find that out soon. If he is positive then we will I guess be transferred to a high risk section where they will test the baby for the disease but she said that they have never had a case where both the parents test positive and that it is really common to be a carrier in the Caucasian race. I gained 6 lbs within the last 4 weeks but I am sure that is from my yummy waffles and peanut butter and syrup. So that is prolly why I gained so much weight and that I am not sick anymore. But I have gained a total of 7 lbs and my dr said that is normal at 5 months. I am 21 weeks today and my due date is said to be around Dec. 6th, 2009. Our new sonogram pics are not that good, the ones from 4 weeks ago were better so I wont post them online today. The baby is still all bones and so the dr said that she is fully developed by now and the rest of the pregnancy is just to fatten her up. Anyway we are super excited now.
At church on Sunday around 20 people found out for the first time that I was pregnant through word of mouth I guess they just thought I was fat. (?) It was funny we were bowling (and I bowled a 175! YAY!) and the lady next to me looked over and said, girl are u preg? She said that she looked over and thought I put a bowling ball in my shirt. Haha it was funny.
Anyway the only other big news is that we stained our fence this weekend. We stained it a dark brown and it looks much much better but we had estimated around a $150 project bc Mandrae was going to do it himself and let me just say that it ended up costing A LOT A LOT A LOT more!!! And you cant just stop in the middle and say this is too much and have half a stained fence so we HAD to pay it. URGH! Mandrae started out by himself and after an hour and a half of staining and only 1/20th of the fence done he called on help from our landscapers to come out and they finished it in 5 hours right when it got dark. So that was good but it was expensive!
I will put up pics of the fence tomorrow.

In Memory Of............

Ok so I started a memorial for Hercules today on my desk. Here is a pic of my memorial and then a real life pic of a tea cup chihauhah to show u how truly tiny he was.

Follow up from Dr.

So before I had my second round of surgery on my other toe, I got a call from my OBGYN. She said that my blood tests came back positive for cystic fibrosis and that we will have to get another blood test from Mandrae on Monday to see if he tests negative or positive for carrying the disease. I don’t have it, I am just a carrier. So please pray for those tests and that he is negative. Also they told us that since I am RH- (B-) and he is RH+ (B+) then I will need to be getting Rogan shots starting at 28 weeks to trick my body into thinking that this is my first time being pregnant everytime I have a child because my body is apparently trying to kill off the baby due to our conflicting blood types. Sounds crazy I know but that is what I was told. I am not looking forward to those shots. I am tired of all of these shots and tests and surgeries. O man!
Anyway the surgery on my toe went much better this time. Mandrae went with me and I read a magazine while he cut up my toe and so I didn’t see it at all and so I didn’t pass out. The numbing shots hurt A LOT worse but that only lasts about 2 minutes. So praise the Lord I am done with all of that. I almost ran out though. It is scary sitting there before they cut your toe off. Crazy thing is that I have had a dr. appt with either toe dr or OBGYN every single week of this month. EXHAUSTING. (They are all BIG appts too)
Our real appt to see what the baby is is on Monday the 27th at 9:30 am and I am excited and nervous. I am carrying the baby kinda low and so some people think it is a boy but we will see. I want a girl though. And then we will spend the rest of the day registering at Walmart and Target and maybe Babies r Us.
And I am getting HUGE! I keep telling myself to take pics and put them up and I promise this weekend I will do that for sure or I might have someone take them today while I am at work and then post them later on tonite. But I will get them up bc I am telling you that I am huge! I am pretty much 5 months now though so that should be normal.
The other day I thought that I felt some kicks in my lower tummy when I got in bed and it lasted a while but I was so so sleepy that I fell asleep while I was trying to feel them all. I guess the baby sleeps when I am active and is awake at nite. And I always wonder if the baby can hear me singing in praise team because the drums and guitars are so loud behind me and I wonder if the baby is scared or if she/he likes the singing and the music. I sing so much right now that she will FOR SURE know my voice when he/she comes out. Sorry Mandrae. Maybe the beat of my heart and growl of my tummy overshadows the music at practice and on Sunday morning but it is loud.
O and the other day there was this LOUD noise outside our house like a gunshot and me and bebe jumped because we were so scared and I PROMISE I felt the baby jump too and it was crazy.
Ok well I will stop talking for now. I will try to go get some pics taken and put them up.

New Business

Ok so Mandrae and I finally joined Private Quarters with my mom. We are excited too and are hoping that this might be my way to stay home w the lil one when he/she comes. We are having a hard time trusting w daycare and so would ideally like for me to stay and I am going to be having babies one after another until 5 of them are born and I then I might stop. Haha. I am serious though. Anyway we are having our launch party on August 8th, 2009 and if any of you are interested in any sheets, pillows, comforter, blankets, doggie bed, baby blanket, robes, footies, and more then check out our website and shop and let me know and we can get it shipped to you since Christmas is on its way here. Anyway our website is www.privatequarters.net/mandraeandkarissa. Check it out and let me know what you all think. And if any of you stay at home moms want to join let me know. I will update you on how well we are doing. I am trying to get to the point where I am making the same amt a month I make now or more and then I can stay home w the baby. So if it works for me it will for sure work for all of you. So check out the website and I will keep you all updated.

Bowling w the TOE

Ok so on Sunday I had to go bowling for our Destiny league and I had to bowl with my toe all bandaged up from surgery on Monday. The bowling alley will not let me wear a sock so I had to do this:


I had to get a shoe from the bowling alley and shove my foot into a size 13 because there was no way my foot was fitting into anything smaller. I looked so dumb and didnt bowl the greatest.

Parkers Swimsuit

So I hear that Parker loves to swim and so I ran into this swimsuit for 12 to 18 month olds and I HAD to get it for her. Isnt it the CUTEST???

Garage Sale

So on Saturday we had our gargage sale from 9am to 1pm and we didnt advertise just put like 4 signs out and we got quite a few people to come. It turned out pretty good considering we had pretty much nothing to sell as u can see by the pics below. It was HOTT though!! But now we really have nothing in our house that we dont need and so that is a good thing.

This is lil boots all laid out on my lap exhausted by the heat. Man she is cute huh? :)

my lil poo poo- (or maybe I should call her my lil barf barf)

Closet

So we are having a garage sale on Saturday - I guess from 8 am to noon and so we cleaned out our closet and it looks AWESOME! And Mandrae let me have the good side of the closet so I can hang up all of my shirts now and now stuff them in a basket :)So this was our weekend project last weekend. I know the pics make it look crowded and bad but my camera isnt the best and it is hard to stand back in a lil closet.

SAD SAD ENDING!

Ok I dont want to write this bc I might end up crying again and it will bring back bad memories and thoughts but you all need to know what happened.
So the other day the lil boy from across the street felt the need to update us once again and I wish he would just leave us alone bc I dont want to hear these things. He knocked on our door and told us that lil Hercules (the lil chihuaha) is apparently dead bc of a neighborhood boy. He said that a few days before Hercules went missing this lil boy who is 11 came over and was holding Hercules and torturing him and flicking Hercules lil boy parts and Hercules was screaming. The lil boy then asked them if he could borrow the lil dog bc he wanted to hurt him. (URGH!) (WHAT I WOULD DO IF I COULD JUST GET MY HANDS ON THAT BOY) They of course said no and then Hercules was missing. They think that the boy stole him. This boy is on house arrest and going to juvy and is on his way to jail apparently. They said that this lil boy is the one who smashed lil Hercules head in and made his eyes pop out and he must get a kick out of torturing animals! I cant take this. I think about it all day- what poor lil Hercules went thru! They reported him to the police but they can no longer find him and are not sure where he lives.

On top of this, on the news last week was a story about a puppy mill in Fort Worth. Animal control got complaints and have gotten them now for 10 years but finally reacted and went to the property to find tons of dead puppies and 497 puppies in cages all starving, abused and neglected. They seized all 497 puppies and are having a hard time finding somewhere to put them. They are all in critical condition. This is horrible and I cant sleep at night bc of stories like this!!!
Sorry I had to share this sadness.

Funniest video in the whole world!

Ok Jared, I am sorry but this guy is on Tyler Perrys House of Payne and I think that he kinda looks like u and dances like u and I have watched it around a million times and cant get over how funny he is. Sorry I had to tape it on my tv and so it is a bad picture, but hopefully u can see what I see! :) O my goodness it is hilarious!

Surgery :(

Ok so yesterday was surgery on my first big toe. I had the ingrown toe nails on each side of my right foot big toe removed. My appt was at 1 pm and I didnt know what to expect and let me tell you that it was way worse than I thought it would be! So first I go into the room and they sit me up in a car and put my feet straight in front of me and he gets a HUGE needle and says ok this will hurt and this is the worst part. O great, that is always good to hear. So he injected the needle in my toe 5 times and squeezes in the medication (Licatin) and counts to 10 and every time he counts he says ok this will feel like fire for 10 seconds each time. O great. AND IT DID! So after those 2 minutes of death pains my toe is numb alot faster than he expected. So he comes back take some plyers and pinches my skin all the way to make sure I am numb and I can feel pressure but no pain so I said ok I am numb I guess and he starts the worst thing I have ever seen in my life!
He take a knife and just cuts right down my nail about an inch from the outside of the right side of my nail and blood is gushing everywhere. And I am about to puke! Then he cuts down the other side of my nail and down into my skin as well. And still blood EVERYWHERE! And then he does the other side and he clips the whole nail off and I am like what in the world, that is way too much toe nail to cut off! I am going to have the ugliest big toes in the whole world and by this time I am wondering why in the world I ever agreed to this! I just want to run out but my foot is numb and bloody and so that wont work! Anyway then he stick some cue tips covered in Phenol down the sides of my toes and is shoving them in there like the liposuction tubes- real rough. He said that this is liquid that will create a 3rd degree burn in my nail and never allow it to grow back. By this time I am sweating horribly and hot and I black out bc it is too much to watch! IT was HORRIBLE. So they bring me water and paper towels for my head and finally let me lay back so I cant see the rest (although he was done so it was a lil too late for that). I have to sit there for a while and then they let me leave so that I didnt pass out completely. So then I walk my 3 miles to my car in the parking lot w a numb foot in the 110 degree sun and am still on the verge of passing out. I get to my car and realize- I cant drive! My foot is numb. There is no way. So I sit in my car for an hour and then drive home pretty much w my left foot! Good thing I wasnt too far away. And guess what? I have to do this all over again next Wednesday on my other foot!!!
I am horrified!!
At least Mandrae will be w me but I am scared outta my mind. I wish they would have done it all at once but she sd that since I am preg that they have to wait.
And on top of that the dr kept telling me that the medication should be ok for the baby. That is not reassuring and all I can do is hope that this wont affect the baby. That is the scariest part of it all.
Here are pics of my foot now at work. I cant take off that pink stuff later on tonite.

The Case of the Curious Hercules

Ok so our neighbors across the street have this tea cup chiuahuah (however u spell that) and his name is Hercules. He is TINY. And I mean TINY. Never seen a dog that small in my life. Anyway a few weeks ago I met him and he had bumps on his head and I heard all of the stories of how he is abused by his owners kids who are like 8, 9, and 10 years old. So I was MAD. And they told me they were selling him and so I went over to buy him and the parents thought I was crazy and told me they arent selling him and to pretty much get out. So anyway yesterday I went home and when I got outta the car, guess who was there? Yep the lil girl that lied to me about the dog being for sale and the one that told me all of the abusive stories and so I didnt want to talk to her AT ALL! So I ignored her and when she was looking at me or talking to me I pretended like I couldnt hear her (even though she was like 1 ft away from me). So finally she sd, "Remember Hercules, he ran away." And I said, "WHAT?" She sd that he either ran thru the gate in the backyard or someone stole him. And of course I was even more mad now! They cant keep a dog to save their lives! Their other dog ran away when he was a puppy and got run over! So anyway she sd that they had been looking for him everywhere and couldnt find him and he was missing for 2 days. So I was hoping that I could find him and not tell them and give him to my friend who wont abuse him.
Well I went inside all upset and was upset all nite about lil Hercules and decided this weekend I was going to go on a quest to search for him. Then around 10:00 PM (AT NIGHT) someone was ringing our door bell like 20 times and POUNDING on our glass on our front door and I was home alone bc Mandrae wasnt home from work yet. I was scared outta my mind. I decided I wouldnt get it. Well it continued for around 5 minutes and kept getting louder like the glass was going to break and so I went to the door and it was that lil girl. She said that they found Hercules in the ditch by the rail road tracks. O MY GOODNESS! First of all he crossed a busy street (and he is like the size of a frog!) and then went to the railroad tracks and could have gotten run over by a train, since around 5 trains go by every day. All I could say is, "Well THEN GO FEED HIM!! HE IS HUNGRY!!" And she took off.

Surgery

So I know this is disgusting, but I am having surgery on Monday at 1:00 pm on my big toe. Both of my big toes are infected due to ingrown toe nails. They look disgusting. So they are going to have to do surgery to remove the ingrown toe nail from each side of both of my big toes. I was planning on getting them both done but the dr. told me today that since I am pregnant and they are giving me vicatin in my toe to numb it then I might have to do one at a time. Which means I will have to go back later for the other one. URGH! So yeah anyway please pray for baby bc I am really nervous that this is not safe for her. THANKS!

Nursery

3rd Dr. Appt.

Yesterday was my 3rd dr. appt. and my dr. told me to bring my family bc we were going to get to find out what sex the baby is. Then when we get there she tells us that I am too early to tell and we will have to wait another 3 weeks. So I told her that my family came a ways away to see the sex of the baby and so they agreed to do an ultrasound for me for free and she concluded that it is a girl! She is not 100% but she thinks that it is a girl. I am so so happy! In 3 weeks I will find out 100% what it is but she is almost sure it is a girl. So I am excited. Mandrae wanted a boy but he is okay as long as the baby is healthy. And I know that once she is here he will be happier than ever that it is a girl. So after our dr. appt. we went and got a crib and some ABC baby bedding bc the girls name will be Anissa Beth Collins and that is ABC. So our baby room is almost complete. We have to spray paint the changing table this next weekend to match our dark cherry wood crib and then the room will almost be done other than decorations. I will take a pic when I get home and put it up tomorrow. Here are some pictures of the sonogram. Some of them are in 4D too and her legs and arms are SUPER long. She looks crazy. She is so cute.

This is her profile. (Sorry they are hard to see)

These are the 4D images that show her long arms and legs.

U can not tell at all , but this is showing that she is a girl, her legs are in the air.

This is how you know you look good!

Ok so yesterday my parents were here in Fort Worth with me and Mandrae and after my dr. appt they went to Souper Salad with us. While we were sitting there eating our salads in peace the waitress came to the table and told Mandrae that he had a phone call. (what in the world? Who gets a phone call at a restaurant and no one even knows that we are eating there!) So Mandrae gets on the company phone at Souper Salad and apparently some girl had just left the restaurant and saw Mandrae and thought he was extremely hott (which he is) and wanted to know if he had a girlfriend or was married. She apparently told the waitress to get the tall guy in the purple shirt to get on the phone! Crazy huh??? I have never in my life heard of anything like this ever. Who does that? All I know is that if you ever doubted the way you look then this would confirm that you are for sure HOTT! Yeah I know, I have the hottest guy in town. I just thought this was hilarious.