It was first created in the 1880s by George Renninger of the Wunderle Candy Company, the three colors of candy corn are meant to symbolize actual corn. Each piece is approximately the size of a whole kernel of corn, as if it fell off a ripe or dried ear of corn. Candy corn is made primarily from sugar, corn syrup and honey. Working by hand, the original manufacturers first combined sugar, corn syrup and water and cooked them into a slurry. Fondant was added for texture, and marshmallows provided a soft bite. The final mixture was then heated and poured into shaped molds. Three passes were required during the pouring process, one for each colored section. Few changes have been made to the process or recipe, with machines now performing the tasks formerly done by people.

As you can see, its really healthy for you as well! I mean, what’s not to love, it’s got sugar, corn syrup and honey!! Have you tried the carmel apple candy corn? It’s simply amazing, a sweet carmely (is that word) taste of candy apples…MMmmmmm I need to go find some of those now! Happy fall ya’ll!

Ok, I’m getting old! I’ve never really been one to go to concerts or like them. I just don’t enjoy standing the whole time and especially 2 inches away from the person next to me. Jonathan and I went to the needtobreathe concert at the House of Blues Thursday night with Tim and Kara and lets just say we left before the main act. By the time two other musicians played we had been standing like 3 hours and were ready to go. I can’t stand for more than about 30 minutes without being in quite a bit of pain from my back so 3 hours is asking A LOT of me. Our legs were tired and sore and my back was killing me so we left. But before we left we got to listen to a guy named Matthew Mayfield and then a girl from Canada named Serena Ryder. They were both pretty good, I like the style of Serena Ryder, kinda folk-popish. Over all we had a good night, other than coming to the realization I’m old.

We have decided to do a foster to adoption with CPS. Basically we would get a child that is in CPS custody and foster them for a while and then adopt them. You have to foster a child in your home for 6 months before you can legally adopt them. We started filling out the adoption application this weekend and our orientation is next week. The first week of november we start our foster parent classes and then after that (mid December) we’ll complete a home study (wherever we’re living at the time- hopefully not here) and then we’ll be certified to accept a child. There are a million and 1 papers to fill out, get notarized and send in. Plus inspections by the fire department, health department and all other kinds of stuff we’ll have to do but it will all be worth it in the end.

Now for the most common statement I have heard since telling people we were starting the adoption process…drum roll please……..”Now that you’re doing this, you’ll get pregnant”. To be honest, this statement never really bothered me until now…now everytime I hear it I cringe and take offense. I’m sorry but if it hasn’t happened in almost 2 years, why would it happen now!! Statistics show that a whopping 5% of couples who stop trying to get pregnant and adopt get pregnant after they adopt…the same as people who simply stop treatment for infertility. I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m just saying there is a very slim chance that it will. And, the next most common statement or question I get since telling people we are adopting is…”what will you do if you get pregnant?” What do you mean, what will I do?? We’ll be thrilled! I for one, am not going to just sit around and wait 5 years for us to get pregnant. If we adopt and then get pregnant–GREAT, we’ll just have 2 babies. On the other hand, if we get pregnant while we are going through the classes and beginning of the process, we may put it off for a while, but we’ll cross that bridge when/if we get to it. We will adopt though, just maybe not in the next 6 months.

As thrilled as I am about the possibility of adoption and bringing a baby into our home – at the same time, I’m also sad, angry, disappointed and a part of me feels like I’d be giving up on the possibility of us having our own biological child. But I can only handle the emotional roller coaster we call our lives right now for so long. The tolls the treatments are taking on me physically are getting a little too much to handle as well.

Stay tuned for updates on the whole adoption process – I promise I’ll keep you updated.

“Couples experiencing infertility often receive well-meaning but extremely insensitive “advice.” We can all list the most popular ones: “Just relax and you’ll get pregnant,” or “adopt and you’ll get pregnant,” of the most painful from those who think they’ve got the goods on God’s plan, “Maybe God never meant for you to have children.” The sheer audacity of making a statement like that never fails to amaze me.

These same people would never walk up to someone seeking treatment for cancer and say, “Maybe God never meant for you to live.” However, because I am infertile, I’m supposed to get on with my life. It’s hard to understand that people cannot see infertility for what it is, a disease for which I have to seek treatment. What if Jonas Salk had said to the parents of polio victims, “Maybe God meant for thousands of our children to be cripples, live in an iron lung or die.” What if he’d never tried to find a cure? Who could think for one minute that that was God’s plan?

What do I think God meant when he gave me infertility?

I think he meant for my husband and I to grow closer, become stronger, love deeper. I think God meant for us to find the fortitude within ourselves to get up every time infertility knocks us down. I think God meant for our medical community to discover medicines, invent medical equipment, create procedures and protocols. I think God meant for us to find a cure for infertility.

No, God never meant for me not to have children. That’s not my destiny; that’s just a fork in the road I’m on. I’ve been placed on the road less traveled, and like it or not, I’m a better person for it. Clearly, God meant for me to develop more compassion, deeper courage, and greater inner strength on this journey to resolution, and I haven’t let him down.

Frankly, if the truth be known, I think God has singled me out for a special treatment. I think God meant for me to build a thirst for a child so strong and so deep that when that baby is finally placed in my arms, it will be the longest, coolest, most refreshing drink I’ve ever known.

While I would never choose infertility, I cannot deny that a fertile woman could never know the joy that awaits me. Yes, one way or another, I will have a baby of my own. And the next time someone wants to offer me unsolicited advice I’ll say, “Don’t tell me what God meant when he handed me infertility. I already know.”

One day God will give us the gift of a child, it may not come all wrapped up with a nice shiny bow on it, but it will be a gift from God. And, I for one will say that there was no way I was not meant to be a mom. We will have a family one day, whether it’s biologically or through adoption.

Each November Brian, our pastor at Encounter, does a series that talks about storms. One year it was titled “storm chasers” and another was called “chase the lion”, it’s where he sits down with couples/individuals and talks to them about a “storm” they have gone through. These “storms” as we call it could be dealing with grief from losing a loved one, or a spouse who had an affair and they worked through it and recommitted their life to one another. Well, this is our storm and how we handle it will be our testimony to others. This topic always reminds me of the Casting Crowns song, “Praise You In The Storm”. As we sang it on Sunday, it has a whole new meaning now! I love this song:

Praise you in this storm

I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth

But in the end, it’s time to move on.

We finally did it, we put our house on the market today…It’s for sale! I love our house, I really do. I don’t love the location of it. It’s not that I don’t like Red Oak and the area, it’s fine, just not for me. Both Jonathan and I work in downtown Dallas and both of our families are about 45 – 50 minutes away. For most people, that’s plenty close….for me, it’s too far. I want to be able to call up my sister-in-law and in 15 minutes we are meeting for lunch or going shopping or whatever. We spend so many weekends in Dallas and do a lot in the Dallas area after work that I feel like we live in Dallas but sleep in Red Oak. Here has been my dilema…Jonathan would prefer to stay here or even further out than we are. I haven’t really pushed the issue of moving before now because I didn’t want to take Jonathan away from the area that he wants to live. He is a part of a Wednesday morning mens group with our church and if we moved he wouldn’t be able to keep going to that…and I didn’t want to be the reason for that. So the dilema comes in when I have to decide, do I stay in a place that I don’t like, an area that I don’t have but a few friends, and always wanting to be closer to my family. Or, do I try to talk him into moving and ultimately pull him away from his friends and church that he loves. So after a lot of thinking and going back and forth it comes down to the fact that I was so unhappy I had to talk him into moving but at the same time feel guilty about it because I know he doesn’t really want to move and I’m taking him away from friends. (It’s not like we are never going to see them again, we won’t be moving that far)

One day, somehow, we are going to have a family and I want to be close to our family when that happens. Another factor in our decision is that we weren’t sure we would get what we needed/wanted for our house. We don’t know what will happen with the housing market in the future….if we wait, will it get better or worse? After talking to a few realtors and seeing what other houses are going for, we decided to go for it. So for the next few months or longer (hopefully not that long) we will be living in a house that is neat and tidy and ready for potential buyers to view it at any moment! Anyone wanna buy a house?!

Here is the news release:

Cystic Fibrosis Screening Legislated for All Newborns by 2010
Martha Kerr

July 9, 2009 (Bethesda, Maryland) — The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) announced this week that mandatory screening for cystic fibrosis (CF) in all newborns will be in effect in all 50 states and the District of Columbia by the end of this year.

Connecticut will begin mandatory CF screening October 1, 2009, and Texas will begin screening in December. These are the last 2 states to pass such legislation.

“Newborn screening for CF was adopted nationwide at a rapid pace,” according to a statement prepared by the CFF to announce the enactment of mandatory screening. The first states adopted mandatory screening only 4 years ago, in 2005.

“We congratulate Texas and Connecticut for joining a nationwide effort to ensure that every child born with [CF] gets the best possible start in life,” said Robert J. Beall, PhD, president and chief executive officer of CFF. “Newborn screening is critically important for this disease because early diagnosis is tied to better health. We extend our thanks to every volunteer and advocate who fought to establish screening programs across the country.”

“When the [CFF] was created in 1955, few children lived to attend elementary school,” the CFF said in its announcement. “Today the median age of survival for a person with CF is more than 37 years, a result of dramatic improvements in research and care during the past half century.”

I’ve struggled for a few months with whether or not I was going to post this, simply because we weren’t ready to tell people and also because in the back of our mind, we just knew that it would happen and there would be no point in telling everyone.

Well it hasn’t happened and it is a very real reality in our life right now.

Jonathan and I have been trying to extend our family for about a year and a half now (surprise!).

And as a small disclaimer, here comes a lot of information that you probably wished you never knew about me. I’m sorry, but it’s a part of the process so get over it.

Anyway, I have always had sporadic cycles and my doctor said it wouldn’t be a big deal until I was trying to get pregnant, so we never did anything about it. I went in to see my doctor for my annual visit, about 9 months after we had started trying, and she did some blood work to see if anything was abnormal. Voila, there’s my problem! I had increased prolactin levels from a prolactinoma on my pituitary gland (a small benign tumor). The tumor doesn’t really cause a problem until you are trying to get pregnant and then you can’t because you don’t ovulate. Now, here comes the technical part… Prolactin is one of many hormones produced by the pituitary gland. It is primarily responsible for milk production during lactation. With increased prolactin, there is an increase in the hypothalamic hormone dopamine which tells the pituitary to stop releasing prolactin. In some cases the dopamine can’t reach the pituitary gland (like from a tumor). When that happens, there’s no signal to suppress the secretion of prolactin, and the pituitary continues to release it. When prolactin levels rise, the hypothalamus manufactures and releases more dopamine in an effort to stop prolactin production. This increase in dopamine has other effects. In particular, it suppresses the production of the hormones that promote release of FSH and LH. This in turn, leads to a drop in LH and FSH, causing low estrogen levels and therefore no ovulation.

Now that wasn’t too bad was it…still with me?

So we discovered I had a pituitary tumor and my doctor started me on a miracle drug to “shrink” the tumor and bring my prolactin levels back to normal. Well within two months, the tumor had shrunk and my levels were back to normal, YEAH! But we still haven’t been able to get pregnant. My doctor thought that’s all it would take but it didn’t. I have been to many office visits with her, tests, blood work, you name it and she can’t explain why now… it’s basically just unexplained infertility.

Everyday woman get pregnant, it’s what our bodies were designed to do, but for some reason my body is broken in that department. There are many different treatment options available each with their own side effects. I am still on the medication to keep my prolactin levels low but I have now started a fertility drug that will hopefully help as well. There are many undesirable side effects from the medication that I would love to live without but I’m willing to do anything, within reason, to have a baby. So over the next few months I will have many more visits with my doctor and many more blood tests.

Now granted, I said I would do anything within reason to have a baby because Jonathan and I have talked about it and we will only go so far to try to get pregnant. We can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on treatments that still only give us a “maybe” chance of getting pregnant. We would rather spend that money on adopting a child that is in need of a family but we will cross that road if and when we get there. Either way we would like to adopt a child at some point in the future, but that’s another story for another time.

So basically what it boils down to is this, after months and months of disappointment and heart ache we need some prayers… prayer for strength, patience and understanding. Personally speaking, it’s taking a toll on me emotionally and physically, because of side effects of the drugs.

As a final thought, I know everyone will want to call, e-mail and ask us if we’re pregnant yet or how things are going (we get that enough of that as it is – without anyone knowing all this background ). We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers and know you mean the best when you ask, but if you’ll promise not to bombard us with questions, we’ll do our best to keep you posted and let you know if anything changes.

I will never give up the hope of becoming a parent, whether it’s our own or through adoption, one day it will happen!

Our small group was just that, small. It was just me, Jonathan and Preslsey, so we headed to Home Depot to get some stuff to plant a small garden. Jonathan got some jalapenos, cucumbers and tomatoes and I got some potted flowers to put in the back yard.

Monday Jonathan and I went and had brunch at Ihop…I know, we go all out! Then headed to Ft. Worth to the botanical gardens for a while. We had a great time at the gardens and of course took some photos. It wouldn’t be a day in the life of laurie and jonathan if we didn’t take pictures.

And that was the extent of our weekend, not extravagant but it was perfect for us!

Jonathan and I, along with Tracy and Keri and Aaron Lehmann hosted “Fresha Peppa” cafe for Brian and Heather Treadaway and had a blast doing so!

This is “tiny” -Jonathan and “Fredrique” -Aaron. Keri was the chef, I was the paparazzi and Tracy was the local bar fly…fun times in deed. I think Brian and Heather had a good time, I hope so anyway!

The last two weeks of April I was out of town for work. I had an investigators meeting for some research trials we are doing. I was in Orlando, Fl first and was able to go over to Universal Theme park for a while….the park itself was closed but we were able to walk around and then eat some dinner at Hard Rock Cafe.

The next week I went to Atlanta, Ga….not as much fun there! We flew in on the 28th, had meetings all day and then had meetings the next morning and flew out that afternoon. We waited on the tarmac for about 2 hours before we could leave Atlanta due to bad weather in Dallas. Then when we were close to Dallas, we had to circle around a few times because there were so many planes trying to land at DFW from delays. We eventually made it back home about 5 or 6 hours later.

Jonathan and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary and unfortunately I was in Atlanta on the 28th while Jonathan was back in Dallas! Not the way we thought we would spend our anniversary, but life goes on. Friday night we went to Outback Steakhouse for a delicious dinner and then Saturday we were going to go spend the day in Ft Worth but because of the rain we decided to shoot for next weekend instead.

So that’s been our life for about the last month….hopefully it will be a little less crazy around here for a while!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I thought making the switch from pediatrics to adults would be hard for me, but it really hasn’t been that bad, I actually like working with the adults, and I’ve had a few kiddos come in to see me so I still get some pediatric patients.

I am so glad that I made the switch from Children’s to Baylor because it was just what I needed, I actually don’t dread getting up in the morning to go to work!

They even let me play with needles!! Well not really play with them, more like poke people with them-wuaaahahahah

Last weekend we celebrated Jonathan’s 30th birthday at Kobe Steaks, sorry I didn’t get many pics…

Then on Tuesday, which was Jonathan’s actual birthday we went to Red Robin for a delicious burger.

I started going to the Bible study at my old church in Dallas with Jen on Wednesday nights and love it. I have missed having an actual women’s Bible study and simply just needed it. So I called Jen up because I knew she was going to the one at Northwest Bible and luckily a new study was starting this month so I was able to start it. So every Wednesday after work I get to see Jen and then go to a Bible study–it’s great!! We catch up on what’s going on in our lives and helps me get through the week. I’ve missed getting to see her and spend time with her as often as we used to…I guess that’s what happens when you live that far apart and both have busy lives. But, I’m thankful for the times we do get to spend together.

We have started getting ready for spring around our house. Last week we pulled up some bushes and planted two rose bushes in the front and today we added more mulch to the flower beds and I put out the weed killer…and in a few weeks it’ll be time for the fertilizer.

The last week has been kind of stressful for me health wise but we're hoping it all gets better soon and I'll keep you posted on it. In the mean time, here's a picture of my handsome hubs I took last night showing off his new shirt and hat I got him for his birthday! PS, he looks really good in his new hat!! But I'm not biased or anything ;)