Valentine's Day: Portland, Oregon

For a couple of weeks we've been trying to decide what to do for Valentine's Day. We had a hotel booked in Port Townsend, but decided to cancel it. I mentioned wanting to go to Portland for the zoo but wasn't sure what else to do and I never pursued that idea. But a few days before Valentine's, Brandon presented me with a whole list of things to do in Portland, and he booked a hotel!

We left early Monday the 13th, and drove the 4.5 hours to Portland. We went straight to Multnomah Falls, which is about 30 minutes outside of Portland. Brandon was hoping to fly his drone but it was so windy that he decided not to! We didn't even end up walking close to the falls because it was so cold and windy. The falls were beautiful, though, and I'm glad we drove out of the way to see them!

Multnomah Falls

Multnomah Falls

After checking out the falls we headed back to Portland. It was about 1:00 at this point and we were starving! We headed to the Grilled Cheese Grill for lunch. This place is amazing. It's a little food truck that serves all sorts of grilled cheese sandwiches, and then you eat them on an old bus! It was honestly the best grilled cheese I've ever had, and I've eaten a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches! I got a regular grilled cheese, and Brandon had a BLT Grilled Cheese. We got a dessert grilled cheese as well that was on cinnamon swirl bread with nutella, bananas, and cream cheese! To die for! Poor Brandon smacked his head HARD on the bus door when he went to grab our food, despite there being two "Watch Your Head" signs right by the door.

The roof of the inside of the bus was covered in crazy paintings!

Our food!!

Brandon's poor head after he smacked it on the door of the bus!

After eating lunch we headed to some local antique shops! Brandon and I are suckers for antique shops, and the ones in Portland were amazing! I collect Little Golden Books and I found a ton, including a first edition copy of The Alphabet From A to Z! 

Next we headed to the Clackamas Town Center Mall. It was stinking huge! We bought a bath bomb from Lush and ate pretzels from Auntie Anne's, and then went to Dave and Buster's! Dave and Busters is a huge arcade. We're children at heart and love arcade games! We spent the rest of then night playing arcade games, and got some pretty great prizes with all our ticket winnings!

We were exhausted by the end of the night so we headed to our hotel. We stayed in the Portland Inn & Suites which was fantastic. Our room was a fantastic size, with a full bathroom and a Jacuzzi! We ordered pizza and sat in the Jacuzzi for over two hours, haha. I've never been so relaxed in my life! I could've fallen asleep in there, truly, and I almost did.

The next day, Valentine's Day, we slept in, and then got up to head to the Oregon Zoo! This was one of the best zoos I've been to. It was plenty big, and unlike some zoos we've been to, wasn't confusing at all to navigate! It was a little bit chilly so some of the animals weren't out, but the ones that were were so fun to see! We even made it to watch the penguin feeding.

This cute Orangutan had this sheet draped over his head and was just sitting staring at all the people!

After we finished up at the zoo we headed downtown to Glowing Greens, which is a mini golf place! We were terrible about taking pictures this trip, but this place was so fun! It was all glow in the dark and pirate themed. Brandon ended up winning by 3 points, I believe. I'm terrible at golf. We ate Jimmy John's for lunch and then decided we needed to get out of downtown! We are very much fans of small, unique shops. We were downtown with all the ritzy, expensive shops and weren't feeling it at all. So we headed to The Peculiarium! It's a little shop full of super weird stuff! It was really neat and right up our alley!

This is Al Capone's actual safe! Pretty neat!

At this point it was getting to be kind of late, and we still had a 4.5 hour drive home, so we decided to head out! For dinner we decided we were going to stop at Golden Corral. There's one about an hour and a half from our house. We arrived at Golden Corral at 9:04 pm, 4 minutes after it closed. We were both on the verge of peeing our pants and STARVING. I was not happy about it! So we jumped back in the car and decided we would just stop somewhere to use the bathroom, so we ran into Burger King. The Burger King we went into had locks on the bathroom doors that needed a key, and there was no one at the counter, so we left. There was a Denny's only ten minutes away so we decided to stop there for dinner! We finally used the bathroom, and sat down to eat! Service was slow, despite the restaurant being nearly empty, but it was just what we needed!

I'm so glad we decided to go to Portland, even if it was a quick trip! We needed a small vacation before Brandon heads out on deployment, and we're trying to get to all the places on the West Coast that we still want to before we get a new set of orders! There were a ton of places in Portland that we didn't hit, but we hit all the places we wanted to go! 

To see more of our trip, check out our vlog! Krampus Baby! Valentine's Day Vlog

Journey to Baby-The First Steps

We started trying for a baby over three years ago. Given, we have had two-6 month deployments in that time so we haven't quite been trying for three years. I don't think we realized something was wrong until the end of 2014. We watched as people around us started to get pregnant and we kept saying we were next. We had been trying just as long, if not longer, than all of these people so surely we would be pregnant any time. Months kept passing, and we still weren't pregnant. But we hadn't officially been trying for a consecutive year so we weren't yet considered "infertile". Brandon left on deployment in August of 2015 and we decided that when he got home we were going to go see a doctor.

I made an appointment for the week after Brandon got home from deployment in the Spring of 2016. My doctor recommended we have Brandon get checked out first, because usually if the problem is the man it's easier to fix. So, we got a semen analysis order. Brandon went, and when the results came back abnormal they ordered a second analysis to make sure that the results weren't just a one time thing. He went in for the second time, and the hospital didn't test his sample for the right things. So, he had to go in for a third time. My doctor called me and, sure enough, the results were abnormal. She told me that they consider a semen sample "abnormal" when more than 32% (or around there somewhere) of the little swimmers are abnormal. Over 70% of Brandon's were considered abnormal. She gave us the number for Seattle Reproductive Medicine (SRM) and suggested we head there to figure out what to do next.

I started to do some research on SRM to find out if our insurance would cover treatments there. Because it's Brandon with the problem, my doctor couldn't give him a referral. Without a referral, we would have to pay everything out of pocket. So, Brandon had to go to his doctor to try and get a referral. His doctor told him they couldn't do anything until we had a year of documented trying and infertility, which we already had. Brandon went in and did another semen analysis for his doctor, and the results came back abnormal again. His doctor wanted him to do a second analysis to be sure the results weren't a one-time thing. But as you can imagine, Brandon is kind of done doing semen analyses at this point. So, we had his other results faxed over to his doctor. That was over two weeks ago, and his doctor still hasn't called us back. His doctor also had him tested for a variety of different things, including Klinefelter Syndrome. All of his blood tests came back normal, which is good, but also frustrating because we haven't figured out what's going on.

So now we're stuck, waiting on other people so that we can move forward. The only problem is that Brandon is leaving for deployment fairly soon. I'm not sure that we really have time to do anything before he leaves. When he gets home, we will have less than 3 months before we head to a new duty station. It's frustrating because I don't know if we should keep trying to figure out what's going on while we're here, or if we should just wait until we move and really kick it into high gear.

So right now, it's up in the air, which is more frustrating than not being able to have a baby. Feeling like we can't even move forward for almost a year is so hard. We're considering all sorts of different angles, including adoption and getting a sperm donor. Adoption is something I have always wanted to do, and we will probably do it regardless of whether or not we have our own kids. Using a sperm donor is also a tempting option, considering it is much cheaper than adoption and other infertility treatments. Not to mention I could do it while Brandon is gone, even if it might be a little unconventional.

I never thought it would be this hard to get pregnant. It's something I struggle with every day, and at this point we're willing to try just about anything. If any of you have adopted or used a sperm donor, I would really appreciate your advice and experience!

-Harmonie