My Once Upon a Time...

When Katie and I first talked about having children, the discussion about what last name the baby should have, came up every once in a while. Hers, mine or both?  You can basically name your baby anything, it doesn’t even have to be any of our names and we could’ve changed our last names to whatever we wanted, which I thought would have been a little weird.   I didn’t like the idea of using both of our last names, it would’ve been a mouthfull to say all the time and I already felt bad for the child to have to deal with that.   Although, I liked my last name when I lived in Germany, I learned to hate it living here. First of all, no one was able to pronounce it correctly, I tried to teach Katie for 5 years and although she came close, it wasn’t really my last name after all.   Second of all, the letter my last name starts with is really hard for ME to pronounce in english and every time I had to spell it for someone, they didn’t understand what I was trying to say...

You probably all know by now that I love to get freebies. Mostly through couponing. Granted, not everyone likes to clip coupons and whip out coupon policies at the check out register to prove to the cashier that you're the one who is correct. Katie mostly disappears and acts like she doesn't know me when I pull one of those! I don't blame her.  So today I wanted to share two easy and fast ways to get some freebies and even earn a little money on the side.  I was introduced to Bzzagent.com through another Blog. They basically want your opinion on products and in exchange, they will send you a full size sample.  It's super easy. Your initial time investment is about an hour, signing up and answering a bunch of random questions about things you like. But after that's done, it's smooth sailing, I promise.  Within a week of signing up, they sent me an invitation for my first campaign. Once I signed on, they sent me the product. I have at least a month to t...

Our #1 wish for a new house is a 3-car garage. 2 for the cars and 1 for all the crap we've been hoarding. Seriously, our garage has been so out of control lately, we had to jump over boxes, squeeze between half finished furniture pieces that are waiting to get painted and trip over brooms just to get to our cars in the morning. It was quite the sight for the neighbors.  Since the bigger house with the 3-car garage (and walk in pantry, thank you very much) is nowhere in sight, we had to work with what we've got. The first step was to sell all of our well traveled 10 suitcases (serious, who needs so much luggage?), since Santa brought us some really nice luggage last year. Step 2 consisted in Katie and me fighting over things we wanted to throw away. I can be somewhat of a hoarder and I'm sure the neighbors got another good kick out of us fighting over keeping some empty packaging that once held our vacuum cleaner, hairdryer and headphones. Yes, I'm that lady. Just f...

I’ve written many times about Katie’s awesome family who’ve always treated me like a daughter/sister/granddaughter. I love them so much and feel so blessed to be part of their family. Katie’s grandma has given us an unbelievable gift and it’s hard to wrap my head around the generosity and love she has sent our way. A few weeks ago she offered to pay IVF for us and although Katie and I had many conversations about it and how and if we could accept her gift, we ultimately accepted her offer and she is so excited about becoming a great-grandma! I still can’t believe it! I never thought we had to go here, IVF that is, but when my mind allowed me to think about the possibility, the thought just overwhelmed me, thinking about how we could ever finance or afford such an endeavor. It’s crazy expensive. So, a few weeks ago we lined up several consultations with different clinics to find just the right doctor for us, preferably one that didn’t suggest crazy diets and bee stings . ...