Bay of Play, Flags, and Planters

If you haven't been there, I love the new Bay of Play at Sea World. Ari had such a good time on a recent visit. I didn't get a lot of pictures, because a lot of our time there we were just the two of us, but once my mom joined us, we caught a couple of cute pictures of Ari getting to meet Grover. She was so excited!


For the fourth of July, every year, there is a really nice real estate agent that comes to our neighborhood and deposits these little flags in everyones yard. It always makes for a nice fourth of July surprise. :)
Remember me alluding to a planter in an earlier post, well here is what my husband and his father built during this most recent visit. We wanted a raised garden so it was easy to maintain without bending over and they did an amazing job! This is just the first. We plan on doing two more. :) Isn't it beautiful?

This next picture shows you starting from left, that we have two roma tomato plants and an artichoke plant.
Next to that, we have four strawberry plants and finally 4 Japanese cucumber plants.

We are not sure how all of these will do, but we can't wait to see and eat! In the next two planters we plan on putting some herbs and other vegetables. We may even get a second artichoke plant and move the strawberry ones over to one of the other planters since they tend to grow out a lot and who couldn't use more artichokes. :) If you have any suggestions for things to grow, we are all ears. The things we are considering but were told some are more winter season while others we could plant now are: peas, baby carrots, onions, string beans, and maybe even corn. For herbs, I'm sure it will be like basil, thyme, mint, oregano, and pretty much all your basic herbs.

As far as how I am doing personally... for anyone still interested in knowing more about miscarriage, read on, others feel free to skip. So today was the worst. Apparently, all that minor cramping pain was leading up to a big tahdah and that was today. Intense pain (took 2 motrin) and loads of ickyness. By tonight though, I'm back to moderate bleeding, so I hope that means I have made it through the worst and am cresting over that hill.

As a good friend pointed out in the comments of an earlier post, it is a process. I am a big believer that medicine is best used when it is absolutely needed. Our bodies go through so many day to day process and then there are big events. Just because they are big events, for me, doesn't make them less a process. I am a big proponent of natural birth. I think the birthing process (notice the word there) is something that the body just goes through and when you go through it, certain things like hormones and such are all released at the appropriate times, the body reacts to things at the appropriate time, etc. When these process are altered, who knows what we are doing to our bodies experience and reactions. Maybe I'm just coming off as some big tree hugger. Truth is, one day, for those that haven't heard it before, I'll post Ari's birth story, but needless to say, neither I nor she would have made it without modern medicine, so I don't dispute the wonders that medicine does provide us with. I just believe, like with Ari, it should be used when there is no choice. I decided that principle held true with this as well, and I think, letting it follow its own path has let me come down from the hormonal high of pregnancy at a steady pace. I definitely couldn't imagine dealing with todays pain on top of all the pain from previous days all mushed into one. That seems like it would be so hard. There was definitely a part of me that wished to just get it over with, but.. ouch! The gradual definitely worked for me.

Anyway... this means there probably won't be too many more posts touching on this subject. :)