Ward Talent Show

On October 18th, we had a ward talent show. They seemed pretty desperate for people to participate, so we decided we'd better do our part. I displayed pictures of some arts and crafts decorations that I've made for our house. Levi and Sam preformed the classic Flip Flop maneuver. The crowd loved it! (They don't see toddlers very often...) The movie clip is below. Unfortunately, I turned off the camera too soon. After they finished and everyone clapped, Levi totally started bawling. He wasn't crying because of the Flip Flop, it was because of everyone clapping. It scared him. Poor kiddo.

These are a few of my favorite things...

Mom's homemade strawberry jam...straight out of the jar. (Who needs bread?)

CARS! (Or as I currently say, 'ars). Here I am holding just four (but one is a monster truck). I often have even more in my hands and will play for hours with my cars. I also have to go to sleep holding a couple of them.

BALLS! (I have actually started saying the "b", so I'm pretty much an expert on this word.) I can spot a ball anywhere... and every circle is a ball to me. Here I am at Old Navy... it took me two seconds to find the balls here. For a while, I liked throwing balls most of all. Now I spend most of my time practicing running and kicking balls. Mom says I have lots of coordination and that I'll be quite the athlete.

Sprinkler Blowouts

Nice house, huh? I have no idea whose it is... I Googled it. I just wanted a visual representation of what has been occupying most of my time and has kept me from posting anything for a shameful amount of time. Sam's dad has a sprinkler blowout business and this year we volunteered (can you call it that when you are getting paid?) to help out. I am in charge of contacting and scheduling people and organizing the blowout routes. This takes a lot more time than it sounds like. Sam is helping his dad do the actual blowouts. So... that's pretty much the update on our lives... yay. This is supposedly the busiest week for blowouts, so maybe next week I'll get around to an actual post... that is, if you're lucky. ;-) (Just pretend like it means that much to you. Thanks.)

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Jaime, Allison, Taylor, Alison, Paige, Sam, Kelsey, Levi, Amy, Brittany

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to host 7 high school girls at our house. Sam's brother, Joe, was on a committee in charge of the WASC (Washington Association of Student Councils) Conference. To help him out, we volunteered to be a home stay family and have student leaders come stay out our house. It was a fun experience. Levi loved all the attention. I was really impressed by the caliber of these girls and how polite they were. One of the girls who stayed with us, Jamie, is highly functioning mentally retarded. Her friend and mentor, Amy, also stayed with us. Amy was absolutely amazing with her, and I was really impressed at how well all the other girls did with her as well. The girls were also so thoughtful as to bring us gifts! I think it is something we would definitely do again in the future. The only downside was that Levi lost out on quite a bit of sleep staying up late and waking up early. Then on Sunday, we switched church times to 1pm... Levi usually goes down for his nap around 12/12:30. So he only got an hour nap on Sunday. Well, yesterday he really made up for it. He woke up at 9am. At 9:50am, he went back down for a nap... AND SLEPT UNTIL 2PM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Needless to say, he has been much happier since catching up on his missed sleep.

Hut! Hut! Hike!

Levi has become a sports fanatic. In fact, ball-or rather "mall"- is one of the only words that he says consistently and that everyone can understand. After going to several of Uncle Joe's football games, Levi has become particularly fond of the pigskin pastime. One day, he picked up a small football, crouched down, yelled out some sounds (that are rhythmically quite similar to Hut! Hut! Hike!), stood up, threw the ball, and then ran after it. We have no idea where he got the Hut! Hut! Hike! from since you can't hear the quarterback yell that from the field. I guess maybe it is just innate. Now he does it all the time, whether with a football or any other ball he can get his hands on. I was able to catch this adorable new ability on camera, but I was holding it the wrong way and you can't rotate video... so feel free to watch with your head at a 90 degree angle!

Carmel Apples

The astute among you (or perhaps simply those with more time) may have noticed the Fall Activity List in my sidebar. I love Fall! Something about the cool, crisp air and changing colors just makes me happy... or maybe it is the baking and goodies that I associate with it. :) But lately, there has been this weird phenomenon in my life called "time flying by". Summer was pretty much over before I knew that it had begun. Granted, we were pretty busy buying a house, moving, and me trying not to throw up (so glad my morning sickness doesn't last throughout the pregnancy!). But, I didn't want the same thing to happen to Autumn, especially since it is such a sort season.

So for Family Home Evening a couple of weeks ago, we sat down and made a list of things that we wanted to do this Fall. One of those things was make Carmel Apples. Back in college, my roommate, Michelle, and I had a tradition of making carmel apples, and I've decided to continue this tradition with my own family. This years carmel apples proved to be quite funny, though. After making the carmel apples, I realized that I had no room to store them in the fridge. (I was a co-chair over food for our Stake Relief Society activity, so my fridge was chock-full of that food.) I had no choice but to leave the apples out on the counter. Well, I guess by doing that, the carmel never got the chance to really set. It pretty much just ran down the apples and pooled on the tray. By the time we got around to eating the last apple, there was a ring of carmel about 3 inches in diameter around the bottom of it! Moral of the story: store carmel apples in the fridge!

Woe-Be-Gone

Thank you everyone for your comments and concern. It is always nice to have people sympathize with you! I felt like I should let you all know that I actually feel TONS better. I realized that since this whole insurance fiasco started back in the beginning of September I've been stressed out. In the back of my mind was always the worry about if and how we would get insurance. Now that the issue is resolved (even if the resolution really isn't that favorable), I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off of me. I don't have to worry about the situation anymore. I know what needs to be done (saving up money), and now I can just set to work doing it.

We really aren't going to be that bad off. First, the doctor and hospital are giving us a pretty decent discount. Also, I did have insurance for the first half of the pregnancy, so that will all still be covered. On top of that, we haven't had to pay an insurance premium since May, so we've actually been saving a few hundred dollars every month. On top of that, we've been in the habit of trying to save at least $300 each month, so our savings has really built up. It is reasons like this that you are supposed to save money, right? Basically, what it comes down to is not being able to get cute matching Living Room furniture (and all those other things on my wish list) as soon as I was hoping to. But that's alright, because we'll have Brinley, and there's nothing I want more than that.

Insurance Woes and Pregnancy Hormones

Alright, here's my first vent session on this blog. You all wanted to keep up with what's going on in our lives, right? Well, right now what is going on is insurance... or rather the lack thereof. Here's the story.

We had coverage while at CMU that lasted for an entire year, even after we graduated. So when Sam started his new job, he deferred enrolling in his employer's insurance until the school insurance had run out to avoid paying a double premium. Brilliant plan... except that we had the termination date for our school insurance wrong. We thought that our school insurance terminated on August 31st, but it actually terminated on August 1st. For those of you unfamiliar with the wonderful world of insurance, you only have 31 days after a life-changing event (i.e. losing previous coverage) to enroll in your new insurance. Since we thought we were covered until the end of August, we didn't even look into the matter until the first week of September. By then the 31 days had passed, and we were informed that "sorry, it is too late... Best of luck!"

Actually, the HR people at Sam's work were as helpful as they could be. The told us that we could appeal to headquarters to get insured through Sam's work. So, we hurried and wrote an excellent appeals letter and sent it by certified mail. In the meantime, we tried to be proactive. We assumed that we would be able to sign up for COBRA (extended coverage under your previous plan). Well, it turns out that CMU does not offer COBRA. So then we turned to private insurance. I applied with two different carriers, just to be on the safe side, because you only have 62/63 days (don't remember which) to get new insurance after your old insurance lapses otherwise pregnancy is considered a "pre-existing condition" and they do not have to cover it.

So, it all come to a head today. We received a response from our appeals letter basically saying, "Nice try, but too bad. We still aren't going to allow you to enroll. But feel free to sign-up during open enrollment. You'll be covered starting January 1st." Hmmm... that's going to be a little too late for this baby. Then we also got a response from the applications for private insurance saying I had done my applications wrong. This is true, but only because the instructions are VERY misleading. Anyway, private insurance is out the door now because the 62/63 days has already passed, so they won't cover maternity anyway. Enter pregnancy hormones. At this point, I just begin bawling. I get a grip, compose myself, and then look up maternity options for people without insurance. Then I find a good option and feel tons better. It is called Maternity Card (offered through Afforable Healthcare Options or AHCO) and basically what it does is negotiate with providers to get you a lower fee and audit your hospital bills so you aren't charged outrageous rates or for things you didn't get/use. All this for $99 a month. Sounds like a dream, huh?

I felt so much better and much less stressed. I called up Sam and told him that I had signed up for this doable option. Well, when he comes home from lunch an hour or so later, Sam tells me that he Googled AHCO and found out all this horrible things about the company (pretty much, they rip you off). I didn't really want to believe it, so I decided to check them out with the Better Business Bureau. Well, according to the website, they are rated "unsatifactory". Basically, I got duped. Good news, though. I was able to call back and cancelled, so I shouldn't be charged anything. A little ray of sunshine in this whole mess.

So now we are working on going to our providers directly and seeing what they can do for us as cash patients. Luckily, we've had a little bit of good news. My doctor gives a 30% discount for cash patients and will allow me to make monthly payments (of my choosing) without interest. We also called the local hospitals. The one I was hoping to deliver at, Kadlec, only offers a 20% dicount and that is if you pay in full within 30 days. The same goes for Kennewick General Hospital. Lourdes offers a 45% discount if you pay in advance. Lourdes as a hospital in general doesn't have the greatest reputation, but I've actually heard some good things about their maternity ward. We'll probably end up going that route. I also talked to my doctor's office, and they are going to give us a 30% discount. So, this baby is still going to end up costing a bundle, but atleast we are getting some sort of break.

Now imagine going through all this with pregnancy hormones in full force. Anytime I tried to talk to someone on the phone, I had to fight back tears. I was so embarressed! Luckily, Sam was home and did a lot of the calling. He has also done a lot of comforting and sympathizing. He's a really good husband... boy, did I luck out!