A New Quest for the Quigley's...part 1

It has been a long time since December 2012. So long, I don't even know where to begin without overwhelming all of you readers!

I'll take you on a journey through the various seasons of our life! *Side note: While determining the timeline of events, I had a hard time with the year! Where did 2013 go?

January 2013 - June 2013

    I re-entered the work force after a 3 1/2 month maternity leave, thankfully my brother, Kenny, was able to watch the girls. The girls loved going to Uncle Kenny & Aunt Rebecca's house daily. It was a blessing having them love and care for our girls.
 
    My first month back to work was a whirlwind! I jumped right into data meetings, reviewing data, making game plans for FCAT, and working hard. Everything continued seamlessly when I returned.

    It was an adjustment making myself sit down and eat for a half hour lunch so that I could pump. However, I was able to successfully be a working mother and pump enough breast milk for my twin girls. The girls continued breast milk until April, when I got the flu and it dried up my entire supply.

     In May 2013, I had horrible cramping at work one day. I even remember telling a co-worker that if I seriously thought I could get pregnant, I would be having implantation cramping. But I brushed off my cramps as "Maybe I'm actually starting my period!"

    *Flashback - If you have read my blog, you know that we struggle with infertility. Since going off birth control in 2012, I never re-started my monthly cycle. We tried to conceive a child for 8 months prior to discussing fertility treatment. On our own,  we tried ovulation prediction kits, charting my basil body temperatures, different diets, foods, etc., everything you could think of. Then we spent 2 months using fertility treatment through Fertility C.A.R.E. and ended up with a successful twin pregnancy! So when I had cramping in May 2013, I thought this was my period coming back and my body regulating itself!

   Moving on to June 2013. Now, I'll be modest. After having my twins I lost a lot of weight, nearing the 70 pounds mark. I was wearing clothes I had not fit into since college. I bought new clothes to fit my new body (in sizes from college!). It was wonderful. I had worn several pairs of shorts in this spring and summer season that were looser fitting. One afternoon, one pair of shorts felt significantly tighter. "Weird, I know it's summer but I haven't been eating more than normal" I thought to myself. I told Brian I felt like I was gaining weight and as the comforting husband that he is, he said, "No you aren't, you look beautiful."

    I was bloated. Another interesting thing that happened, my palms were chapped and peeling. This was also a symptom I had when first pregnant with the girls. Strange symptom, I know. I drove Brian's car one morning while helping out with U-Games at Discovery. I needed to do this because I was leaving early and he was watching the girls. While driving, I noticed my hands were peeling. I assumed as this time that my hands were peeling because his steering wheel was sticky and gross. Again, I brushed this off when I arrived home that night and chalked it up to a disgusting steering wheel.

     Then, one day in mid-June, I began to feel sick. I told Brian that this was so abnormal for me to feel this sick and went straight to the bathroom. I told him I had to be pregnant. He laughed and said, "Yeah right, you haven't had a cycle since before we got pregnant with the girls. You aren't even ovulating!"

   That afternoon I had to run to the park to reserve the pavilion for the girls' one year birthday party. So I left the house and on the way home we agreed I would pick up a pregnancy test.

   When I got home, I took the test. I didn't even wait for "first morning urine." I figured there's 2 tests in there, if this was negative I could use one tomorrow morning. Brian was cooking dinner, I was taking the test.

   Not even 2 minutes later, I spoke. "Brian, I'm pregnant."

    He didn't believe me because of the way I said it. If you ask him now he would say I said it so nonchalantly and matter of factly that there was no way that I was pregnant. I showed him the test itself and said, "Yes, I am pregnant."

    I remembered we prayed right after, we rejoiced, we freaked out, we contemplated finances, and probably did more worrying then we should have. I mean, it was summer, I had at least 3 glasses of wine that week! AND, the kicker, we just purchased a box of Lakeridge wine! That's 12 bottles of wine just sitting in the closet for 9 months because of this new bundle!

     I don't remember when, but I know sometime between that night and the next 2-3 days, I called Genny. I had to get it out. She was away, but I had to tell someone and just hear from my best friend that everything would be fine.

   We told family on Brian's birthday in July, told my boss in August...and then went on with daily life. It's kind of funny because some people at work didn't find out until November, they just assumed I was getting larger. Haha.

   We were blessed with Gemma Josephine on February 13, 2014. Not my ideal day (because of its proximity to Valentine's Day and my birthday), but I will live with it.

Here are maternity pictures taken in November.

 
Here is Gemma Josephine and her sisters!

Gemma born at 9:22, 8 pounds 5 ounces, 20 1/4 inches long. 

All of the girls on Valentine's Day! 

So part 1 of our new quest...adjusting to a family of 5, with 3 children under 2! 

Stay tuned for part 2 of our new quest! 

20 weeks!

              Well, I am "about" halfway through my pregnancy! I will be 20 weeks tomorrow and surely, a lot has gone on! We have finalized a lot of our house to make way and prep for these two babies. Our last preparation comes today between 10-2...a new couch! :)

               I'll back up to after we purchased our Flex. We have been saving money as if we Dec 21, 2012 was right around the corner (haha). We put about 700-800 dollars in baby savings every month. Yes, we've been blessed by God to have that additional money every month. God truly has taken care of us in the financial field. We continue to tithe to Z Radio and Discovery, we give above and beyond when we feel called to, and God is gracious enough to pour out additional resources back to us in various ways.

            We know that our max out of pocket is around $4000 with insurance. We want to ensure that we have that money in our savings account plus an additional 500-1000 for any baby items we need, that we don't receive at my baby shower.

           Onto preparation, so we host a weekly bible study at our house for Young and Married couples. It's great, a wonderful mix of people. We have some newlyweds, some couples like us that have been married 3-5 years, and couples who have been married longer. We have some children that attend (2 to be exact) and of course, 2 on the way. :) Every week we see the children want to run and play with our entertainment center. Here's a picture of the old entertainment center:


See how open it is? Everything was at the children's reach, and the TV was low too. Brian's main complaint was that the television/satellite box was too low and you had to bend down to turn on the TV.

 Knowing the frustration with this, and the potential problem when we have walking toddlers around the house, we purchased a new entertainment center!  Our new entertainment center looks like this:



Pardon the blurriness of the picture. I snapped it really quickly.  But, either way, you can see now that everything is child-friendly, everything is closed in or tall enough placed. We absolutely love it because it opens up the room more!

Our next adventure in purchasing was a new couch! Our couches, though appreciated, was a hand-me down from my brother. He had the leather couch and chair/ottoman in his garage and he wanted to know if we wanted it. Well, surely, being newlyweds, we would take anything since we did not have the money to pay for a nice one. Being, at the time, 17ish weeks pregnant, getting off that leather couch was a nightmare. It is sloped so it takes double the effort to get up or a husband's hand to lift me. Either way, we knew we wanted a new couch.

So, then we discussed, where are we going to get the money? Well, being a teacher you have the option of taking a certain percentage out of your paycheck every 2 weeks and put it into a "Summer Deferred paycheck." I take out about 12% every 2 weeks. Being the planner that I am, I already looked at my summer finances and paid the bills. Brian's paycheck is a steady amount and then we would just tap into the deferred check when needed. Well, after all is said and done, all bills paid for and Brian's birthday celebrated (July 31st), we will have about 2900 left in my deferred pay. We discussed back and forth many decisions for this additional money. Everything from just splitting it with debt (the Flex loan) and putting it into baby savings, to spending it all on a vacation and putting some into a baby savings.

After many discussions, Brian and I agreed that we would spend 1800 of it on a vacation and 1100 of it would be placed into baby savings. Brian and I were set on this. We were okay with it because we truly have never taken a vacation together, outside of the Florida border. Next dilemma was our decision on where to go. After many troubles, we decided Philadelphia (for family and history) for the week and would stop a day in New York City (because it's the city, I've never been, and to meet his family for lunch/dinner). We started planning things that we would do, Monday - family day, Tuesday - Eagles stadium, Wednesday - historic viewing, Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, etc, Thursday - NYC, Friday leave.

Then, one crazy, hormonal evening, I blurt out, "Let's just buy a living room set and do a small vacation somewhere in Florida." Brian, being the fiscal conservative Jew that he is, said "Sounds like a great idea! I wanted to do that all along but I knew how dead set you were on a vacation and seeing your family." Now our new dilemma was to find the perfect, cream leather, reclining sofa and chair to fit into our living room.

We did some searches online and found minimal results. There was a piece here or there that was decent, but nothing that we were "sold" on. A few items from Ashley's Furniture caught our eye, but their website sucks and does not show the prices. So last Saturday, after running a few errands for Mother's day and our niece's birthday present, we decide to do some furniture window shopping.

Needless to say, we walked in, found the set we adored, they had a sale going on, we purchased a new couch. We just transferred money from savings into our checkings and cha-ching, it was ours. The sale was perfect, buy a reclining sofa full price, get the reclining love seat or chair for 1/2 price. The sofa was 700, the chair was 200 (after the 1/2 off) and there was 100 dollar delivery charge (that we could not get out of one way or the other :( ).

Now I am just awaiting the delivery of our furniture. Like I said before, it is coming anytime between 10-2 today. I'd also like to go to see "What to Expect when you Expecting" movie today, so I'm hoping they come sooner rather than later.

I feel as though our savings account is depleted, since our baby fund has been spent on items not necessarily for the baby but for the house. However, I know that I will get what I need through my baby shower and Brian said if we don't pay off the hospital bill right away he's not worried. The $1100 spent on furniture will be replaced in the baby savings account once I get my deferred pay in June. We found a great hotel to stay at in Melbourne Beach, with an ocean front suite, breakfast in bed package for $350. We are budgeting $250 for anything we want to do during our weekend getaway. And, once all is said and done, we will still be able to put an additional $1100 into the baby savings at the end of the summer again.

But I guess you really want an update on the babies huh?? :) :)

Well, since I last wrote, we discovered that Baby A is a Baby girl!!! We have our little Emily! :) Baby B was a very conservative baby at our last appointment and did not reveal itself. The technician took a guess and said girl as well, but not fore sure.

We will find out THIS Wednesday what Baby B is, how well each are growing, take a look at their organs. This is the big targeted 20 week ultrasound! :) We are excited and can't wait to share with everyone what they BOTH are!!

When we checked their heart beats Emily had a heartbeat of around 127, Baby B had a heartbeat of around 153.

I have been feeling them move more and more lately. At first they were little flutters, but now their more frequent and I feel them on both sides. I was hesitant to call my flutters them, but because I feel them more I totally know it's them. Baby B is more peaceful than Emily. Baby B doesn't often move, so when I get the opportunity to feel he/she move, I absolutely LOVE it! I know that Baby B is just more passive than Emily. :) Emily moves all the time. Flutters and rolls, it's fun!

I feel bad because I tell Brian that the babies are moving a lot and by the time he runs with his stethoscope over to me, it's too late. I want him to experience the fun in the baby movement, but he will have to wait a few more weeks I presume.

I am going to schedule our Lamaze class soon and our hospital tour. It is crazy how truly, our twins could come SOON! Of course everyone hopes to make it to 30+ weeks, but that isn't always the case. I'm not saying we WON'T make it til at least 36-38 weeks, but there are always possibilities of having the babies way too early. Either way, we are scheduling our Lamaze class and hospital tour for sometime in June (making me 24-26 weeks). I was also told that hospitals prefer if you're having twins to do all your classes by 28 weeks just for potential risks. With my Lamaze class I get 3 free additional classes. We are looking at a breast feeding class and a few others. :)

My mother in law, best friend, and sister in law are in cahoots about planning my baby shower. It's difficult since my best friend has a crazy summer schedule. I hope something gets worked out! :)

We are also checking into scheduling our 4D sonogram. We would like to schedule something for our 24-26 weeks time, but we shall see how crazy our June schedule gets! At least our vacation is being planned for July. :)

I'll check back in with you all after our appointment on Wednesday and let you know what Baby B is. And of course, tell you how everything is developing with both of them! :) I leave you with this:

Tuesday April 3 and beyond!

Tuesday, April 3, unfortunately nothing too exciting had happened at our appointment. Probably a good and bad thing huh. The twins heartbeat measured 160 bpm and 150 bpm.

The nurse played with the sonogram machine (circa the 1980s probably)and saw them. They were playing and jumping around and having a good ole time in my belly. We couldn't see anything spectacular because it was an old machine and she was the nurse not the sonogram technician.

My doctor said that starting at 16 weeks we are going to be seen every 4 weeks. Which meant only 2 more weeks until we got to see them again.

We asked the nurse while she was doing the sonogram if we could see the baby genders. She said no way, only at 20 weeks, no earlier. We were a little sad. But when we talked to the doctor she said we could most likely see them at 16 weeks if we go to the downtown office. She said the technician is really good at finding out earlier. So what did we do? We made our 16 week appointment for downtown! The appointment is April 26th, sonogram at 2:20 and Dr visit at 3. Deal. I hope hope hope hope that we can find out the sexes.

Other than twin news, we've been busy in the Quigley household. We ordered our dresser and changing table. Those came in last Thursday. Brian was a trooper and put together our items. It looks beautiful and fits wonderfully. We've also looked at sticker decals for the baby room decorations. The one we are pretty set on is found at etsy. We just need to find out the genders so we can pick out the leave colors. :-)



Another thing that we did 2 weekends ago was register! It was really fun scanning things we need. But of course, after that I want to purchase everything already. Brian is trying to contain me but its so hard when you have the 20% off coupons.

The last thing we did this weekend was...BUY A NEW CAR! Its sad and happy all at the same time. It all started on Saturday. We knew we were going to shortly purchase a new car, not realizing it would be THIS soon. We changed the oil, put full tank in (again we thought it would take at least a month before we got the new car), and then had my brother detail the mustang. The mustang looked showroom ready. Spotless, inside and out. Almost tempting me to keep it. While we were with kenny and Rebecca they told us they thought we should the at least a 7 passenger car. Rebecca said think about it, if we want to keep this car for 10 years, the twins will be 10. When we want to go to the beach they each will want to bring a friend. So right there we would need at least 6 seats. Any escape or edge we were looking at wouldn't work.

Now, that didn't sell us 100%. After a long day we went home around 10:00. We got home and started doing more research (we had been researching cars for about a month now). We looked at Edges and Escapes etc. There were quite a few in our price range and nice. But then Brian and I just started looking at 7 passenger vehicles, all makes and models. We looked up forums that told us each 7 passenger vehicles and more..We looked up Mountaineers, Explorers, Expeditions, Suburbans, etc. But the gas mileage sucked and even the older ones (2007-2008) models went for 17,000+. Then, I went to one forum and a lady asked for all 7 passenger vehicles. Well 4 people wrote in about the Ford Flex. They said to get over the look of it, get it in and test drive it. I told Brian about this and he started looking up information about them while I started looking at autotrader and cars.com for them.





Interesting enough we only found 2 in a 50 mile radius of us. One was going for 17,500 and another was going for 15,800 (and that was recently reduced). When Brian searched he found the same two, but the 15,800 one was listed for 16,400. On that website they hadn't reduced the price yet. Adding to the oddity, the Ford Flex was being sold at the Orlando Hyundai dealership. LOL. Well either way, the 17,500 Flex was too expensive.

We had our car demands and were sticking to them. They were:
1)APR must be lower than 6%
2)Trade in value for the Mustang had to be at least 11K
3)Whatever car we get must be cheaper than 16K with tax, tags, and dealer fees.


The way we worked the math would only add about 6,000 to our current loan (for the mustang) and we were willing to live with that. We could use next year's tax return to pay it off (since we're getting some money back from the babies).



So after talking, Brian and I decided to go look at the Ford Flex tomorrow after church. We had already talked about going car shopping after church but with Escapes and Edges in mind. 

Sunday: After church we decided to head home and eat a quick meal. We weren't very hungry so we had a small lunch (big mistake for prego me). We drive to the Orlando Hyundai shop and spot the Ford Flex right away. We go over to it. The tag on the window says 17,800 - Now reduced to 16,400. Brian and I both look at each other and think, oh yah, it's reduced even more now. No one at the dealership came up to us, we actually had to walk inside the building and one salesman came up to us.

He didn't have to do much work, we told him we wanted to look at the Ford Flex once he verified the price was 15,800 for it. We looked at it, examined it, sat in the car. Played with all the gadgets. He asked if we wanted to test drive it. So we did. It drove very nicely. So now onto the negotiations!

After filling out some information the salesman (TJ) went back and ran some numbers, looked at the mustang, etc. After everything was said and done the 48 month payment was about 20 dollars a month cheaper than the mustang. However, they were only going to give us 10,000 for the mustang. We were a little unsure, you know, playing it as "walk away power." So then Brian calls my brother Kenny. Kenny gives him a few tips to look at (since he couldn't come with us to look at cars), see if there's any unmatching paint, dings, dents, etc. Well Brian noticed one fender was slightly off - really only in the sunlight when you really examine it. We brought the salesman back and asked him about it. We asked if this vehicle had ever been in a wreck. Well he pulled the "car fax" on the car and it was. Later we found out that it was in a fender bender, but nothing serious.

Now we go back for negotiations with this new found knowledge. Brian, in his slick, negotiating ways, says "well, ya know, we're really not sure about this price still." So the salesman asks, "what can we do then for you." Brian again, "Well, I don't know, I mean that car was in an accident." Playing the "I'm on the fence" card. Then Brian says, "Well, you know, we really wanted 11K for the mustang. We were really hoping for that to be the final offer on it." The salesman says, "well we were really stretching it with 10, it's a 2007 mustang." Brian counter with, "Well, ya, but the Mustang has 33,000 miles on it, show room ready, gorgeous condition, and to be honest, the Mustang was never in an accident." The salesman has to agree because he also said himself that Mustang was beautiful. Brian continues [of course this is after we discussed if we could get a little more for the Mustang we'd be happy], "Well, since we were hoping for 11k and you're offering 10K, can we meet in the middle? If you can at least get it to 10,500 for the Mustang, we'd be willing to the sign the papers." The salesman looks a little happy, a little unsure and says, "I'll see what I can do."

Needless to say, the salesman came back and we signed the papers.  They gave us 10,500 for the Mustang, got the Ford Flex for 15,8000. Of course, they tried to get us to go the longest route, 60 months, with the cheapest payment (because "hey that's what I would do, lowest payment you know" says the salesman). However, we opted for the highest payment (which was actually 50 dollars less than what we are paying now for the mustang) and lowest time.

The downfall of it all was waiting hours. I mean I swear we finalized the deal with the salesman at 4:15 and didn't sit down with the finance man until 5:45. Luckily they had water and chips for us or me and the babies would've walked somewhere to eat.

We drove to my dad's so he could check it out. He liked it and approved of our purchase. Then we got home and played with getting it into the garage safely for about an hour. Needless to say, we didn't go into our house until about 7:30. I took a shower and ate quickly before going to bed that evening. LOL. And of course, we had to call and text family and friends. :)

But now, we are the proud owners of a 7 passenger vehicle, with top features like sync system, leather (those were our 2 priorities), better gas mileage than any other 7 passenger car that we looked at, spacious, fold up seats, heated seats, back air conditioner controls, front controls, memory seats, different color lights interior, a legit PLUG!...I mean the list goes on. Seriously, if you know me, you need to come over and check out the amazing-ness called my Ford flex!

So, I will leave you with beautiful pictures of the car:

Me, sad to get rid of my first car, Mustang.

I have to get rid of my first baby to make room for my two new babies!

Our Ford Flex!

My man flexing with his Ford Flex! :)