A little surrogacy related stuff and a little that is just normal life!

Yay!  Our image for the weeks changed from a bundle of cells to this ummmm cute? thing that we are growing.  Its a hybrid between a tadpole and a shrimp and in a few months, it will be come a cute chubby baby!

Ohhhhh remedies for morning sickness.  Perfect timing!  I sip ginger tea all day.  Capsules?  Interesting.  My OB called in B6 to take three times a day.  So I will be picking that up tomorrow.  I love her natural approach with medical care.

When the agency owner heard I was pretty ill, she sent me this package.  They just got here today.  Who knew that ginger was so spicy?  They definitely have a large amount of ginger in them so I will be sure to tuck some of these in my purse for when I am out and about and feeling queasy!

If we had an ultrasound, this is what we would see right now-- the yolk sac and maybe a little blob of baby!

The blob being the size of an orange seed!

They think I waited until now to start peeing on test strips?  They don't know me very well!  And nope, no terror about this pregnancy, just sheer bliss that I get to gestate the baby and someone else gets to wake up with it! Perfect combination!!

Heart and brain and spinal cord are starting to form!  Science is so amazing!

So just a little more on the surrogacy side - Yesterday the Nurse Coordinator from the IVF clinic called me and said that results were beautiful but that she would like for me to have another beta done tomorrow as it was clinic standard.  So I will run back over to the hospital and have that drawn in the morning and report those results tomorrow afternoon!  Then a week and a half wait for the ultrasound!

Next up the non-surro stuff.  On the Friday after transfer (April 17) the little teacup hitched a ride to the In Their Boots Day!  It is a event on the Marine Corps Base where you get to do simulators that Marines do for training.  We got to shoot guns (and by shoot guns, I mean they were air powered so no chance of lead poisoning like you might have with real firearms).  The first stop was the shooting simulator where we got to shoot targets on a screen.  Turns out that I am a real hot shot and was one of the best shooters that day! 

Gold team was the best!!

Not too shabby  11 targets hit with 14 shots fired!

The one wayward shot on the right (green one) was the instructor discharging the last shot in the weapon (the air canister had run out).  But the rest of my shots were pretty close to the target on the hand gun.

This weapon was one that you would find mounted on the top of a humvee.  This thing would rock your world.  It shook bad when you were shooting!

Bestie selfie!  This lady is such a ray of light in my life!  She is also the Family Readiness Officer for the Battalion but we have become great friends over these last few years!

Next up was lunchtime!  Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) are a staple for the Marines in the field!  All of this meal fit into a package the same size as a box of legal envelopes.  And Chow wouldn't be complete without trading your hot sauce for gum or your pound cake for dense brownies!

This is a great video about civilians trying MREs for the first time!  Its interesting to see how civilians feel about MREs and it was quite entertaining.

After chow, we checked out the Humvee and MRAP rollover simulator.  In this, they strap Marines in with their weapons and turn them this way and that way and then come over the speaker and say that someone is injured and needs help getting to safety inside the vehicle so the others must help.  Then they have to put black out goggles on and be able to reach safety with no visual help! Also there may be a gunner in the turret so the Marines inside the vehicles must pull this guy down to safety in the event of a roll over.  The picture of me is going to check out a bird's eye view out the top of the simulator.  We didn't get to actually 'ride' in it, just check it out in a stationary position.

Finally, we got to get into a humvee simulator where it was a 360 screen.  The humvee was driven by the driver in this simulator and three of our drivers got motion sick.  You would actually have to put the vehicle in gear, turn the wheel, it just didn't actually move-- just the scene in this room.  Also the rooms were all connected with each other and the other room's humvees so we were all driving around Fallujah at the same time.  You had to shoot at adversaries (again with air guns) then hop back into the humvee.

So this was a very interesting day for us!  We got to 'play' Marine while being safe.  It was a ton of fun!  So that is all about the personal side of me!  I just wanted to share some of the things we get to do as military spouses! 

Okay so this is a silly one.  We got to handle a lot of weapons that I have never seen before. This is one of my favorite women!! Anna.  She has the best disposition on a woman I have ever met and I love her sweaty hugs after a run with the Stroller Warriors!!!