So this happened last night.

Yup, my husband and my dog both have fractured knees.  It happened in a split second and I'm kicking myself for not preventing it.  She was coming to the edge of the bed to welcome me home and slipped down the 3ish foot drop snapping her arm to the side.  Poor baby was in so much pain.  Thankfully our vet was open for another 10 minutes and is only 7 minutes away.  They took her in, did x-rays and bandaged her up sending us home with a bunch of instructions and pain medication.  We'll find out in the next day or two if she'll need surgery to repair it but the vet seems to think it will heal fine on its own.

Today I have both patients at home irritating each other while they commiserate.  I guess we're going to have a lot more nights in than I was expecting.

I turned 30 over the weekend.  I turned 30, my husband fractured his knee and we found out we qualify for IUI cycles. You could say it was a pretty eventful weekend.  

First, Babe should be fine.  Although he's in a lot of pain and rather uncomfortable from crutches and a leg immobilizer, he's hanging in there.  Like the kind man he is, he helped some EMT's carry another man down some stairs and his knee just didn't hold up.  An old fracture emerged which landed him in the ER for the rest of the day.  

In the meantime, we received notice that Babe's SA had improved significantly.  Enough that with our combined medical problems we have a shot, albeit small, to attempt IUI's.  After reviewing our insurance, our finances and the cost to do each round, Babe and I decided it would be worth it to try.  

We'll be waiting a couple cycles while our RE is out of the office and potentially clear up some endometriosis.  Once he returns full-time, April or May, we should be ready to start our first medicated cycle.  The plan is to be on oral Letrozole, a medication usually used to help treat cancer patients.  Then the we'll jumpstart ovulation with an injectible HCG followed by the RE doing two back-to-back inseminations and then Progesterone supplements.  

My only knowledge of IUI's has mostly been negative or ineffective.  Maybe this is because I was a part of an infertility board where anyone who had a success usually moved on.  So against my better judgement I Googled IUI success stories. I just needed to know that although it may not be our result, it's still possible.  Since this may very well be our first real chance to conceive I want to stay positive.  Call me naive but it has to be part of my process.

So while we're waiting, I will be visiting my new OB/Gyn to talk about my pain and possible endo.  Clearing it up probably won't make our IUI more successful but I hope it would make conceiving without intervention more of an option.  Crossing fingers.

My stomach is in knots.  Twisting and turning waiting to hear back from our RE.  Babe did his SA last week and was told the results would take 7-10 days.  This morning as I was emailing them to be sure my referral made it, the nurse asked when we wanted to begin our IUI cycle.  What?!  Could this be a small oversight in our records from when the Dr. didn't have his original results and thought we should move right into IUI?  Or could this be them accidentally slipping up and telling us we're good candidates for an IUI before we've actually received the results?  

I'm trying to remain a realist optimist.  Is that even possible?  It would be amazing if the numbers have improved and it's not a hurdle we have to be concerned about.  There would still be so many questions I would want answered.  But that's for another time.

She said she was verifying the numbers with another nurse but that they would get back to us to soon.  It would just be unbelievable if it truly is an option for us.  We'll know soon I guess.

I'm well into my way into this years reading goal and I'm feeling good.  After last years goal of 20 books was beat, I decided to up it slightly giving myself a goal of 25 books finished in 2015.  So on my Christmas wishlist, as always, I asked for books.  And this year ! got them!

To help me finish off the series, my brother-in-law purchased the last three Maze Runner books which I just now completed.  Then my co-worker bought me a couple NY Times Best Sellers to complete my collection.  And although I'm not completely done with them, the first I read was pretty damn good.  In fact if you're looking for a book rec, I highly suggest We Were Liars by E. Lockhart.  It's supposed to be a teen read, which I can see, but it was also done so well and left you scratching your head in disbelief.

Anyway, here are my reads for the year so fart...

1.	Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption	Laura Hillenbrand
2.	The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner, Book 2)	James Dashner
3.	The Death Cure (Maze Runner, Book Three)	James Dashner
4.	We Were Liars	E. Lockhart
5.	The Kill Order (Maze Runner, Prequel)	James Dashner

Though I loved them, now I'm excited to read anything but the Maze Runner series.  On my list is A Higher Call by Adam Makos, Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver and a book by Joyce Carol Oates that I can't quite seem to remember the title right now We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates.

I'm so happy I'm crying happy tears for only the second time in my life.  I just got the call today that our referral for our RE was finally and officially approved!  Over the past couple of months, okay like 14 of them, I never expected to finally make it to this point.  The road ahead of us is a bit scary and unknowing, but I'm so beyond ready to go down it finally.  

What perfect timing too because yesterday Babe picked up his repeat SA kit from them since we were going to be paying for that out of pocket anyway.  Now any follow up appointments, testing or treatments will be covered as well. I'm so grateful to have all of that behind us now.  

Life has been hectic and wonderful and tiring all in the same breath lately.  Roxy girl is acclimating well to us and our schedules as are we to her.  She's a little fire ball who loves napping and cuddling close to mom and dad at the drop of a hat.  All of this means she's been given multiple nicknames.  She's foxy Roxy, Roxy Hart, my Parrot, E's Billy Goat and my favorite, sour patch kid.  She's super smart and quick to learn.  

In fact, during the day, and only while she's young, we keep her in a play pen while we're at work.  When she's old enough to not get hurt and she's closer to being 100% potty trained, we plan to change that.  But for now, that's her little home.  Unfortunately for us, she's way smarter and learned to scale the side and escape into the living room. Thankfully I think we've got it under control now, but for a second I thought we were doomed.  But more than that, I was afraid she'd hurt herself badly in an escape attempt.  

We're trying to stay one step ahead of her antics but she's definitely outsmarting us.  Hopefully soon we'll be able to enroll her in obedience training to fill in the gaps.  For now she's learning to come and sit on command and has had no accidents in the last couple of days.  Things are looking up.