Party Time

I was missing in action this weekend - too busy partying! Saturday April 1st was J and his twin sister's birthday. That night we went out to a local restaurant that serves enormous amounts of food. There were 7 adults there and we went through 2 bottles of wine; I think BIL and I finished off one all by ourselves! And of course, don't forget the huge chocolate cake for desert. G stuffed herself (especially on cake and ice cream!) and she didn't make it to bed till after 9pm. The next evening was another party and we had cake and ice cream again. This morning we had a huge breakfast with my in-laws who were in town. I'm stuffed and I'm sure I gained at least 10#.

Lorem recommended a vegetarian cookbook, Quick Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin. I have to second the recommendation. That one will go on my shelf as a favorite, as will The New Moosewood Cookbook. Last night my BIL dropped by with his sister for a quick tour of our house and I was making one of the recipes from Lemlin's cookbook. I can't remember the name of it but it is with barley and soybeans; not a likely combination but it turned out really good. She commented on how good it looked and smelled. Come to find out, she was once a professional chef. She was probably just being nice but it felt good to be complemnted on one's cooking.

This morning I went for what is hopefully my last beta for a while. I've been keeping careful track of all my expenditures to date this year for trying to get and stay pregnant. So far, I've been billed a little over $1600 of which the insurace company has allowed almost $1200. I've paid not quite $300 of that. Right now, that's 16% of what was billed and almost 25% of what was allowed which seems a bit high to me considering that only $39 was required to meet my deductible and the plan pays 90% of what is covered. Of course, $67 of it was the semen analysis which, in retrospect I shouldn't have had to pay for, but I'm letting it go.

The thing I will be interested to see is progesterone coverage. I've already called and been told they don't cover it but if I do get pregnant, I wonder if I can successfully make a case for them covering it since it's related to sustaining the pregnancy. Anyone have any experience with this? I thought about posting on the FF forums but I never have much luck with getting questions answered on there for some reason. Guess I'm not in the "in" crowd!

I'll close now and get to work on my scrapbook. At the start of every month, I scrapbook at least 2 pages of the previous month's pictures. It's the only way I can keep up with it. When Gracie was about 10 months old I decided to scrapbook all her pictures to date and it was such a pain. By the end of it, I wasn't even enjoying it; it was just too overwhelming of a project. So now I do a little bit each month and it stays fun. I would highly recommend this approach. Even if you don't scrapbook, just organize your pictures on a regular basis. Otherwise things will get out of hand!