Alphabet Dating - X Date!

X Date was at the end of December so it was perfect for Xmas! We try to incorporate alphabet dates into anniversaries or birthdays so we can save money, so this was good timing. We celebrated Christmas together, which including putting up the trees together, going shopping for presents, and watching Moana on Christmas Eve. We had a moment to ourselves on Christmas Day when we opened presents from each other, and are still going to spend a few hours together where we play board games without distractions.

Alphabet Dating - W Date!

For W date I wanted to do a Wintery walk, but it isn't Winter until a few days before Christmas! I still attempted it but in Autumn. We wore coats and went for a walk to get some dinner and cups of tea. Then we got snacks from the shop to bring home so we could play Nintendo Wii and play Just Dance 2017. It was a lot of fun but I would like to do a round 2 of the date where we go for a walk, come home and make our own hot drinks and light candles while we watch a Christmas film. This is more suited to Winter so I think we will wait until nearer Christmas. The reason I did it this week was because we like to do one date every 2 weeks.

Alphabet Dating - V Date!

For special occasions - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays - we incorporate the alphabet dates so we aren't trying to find the money for 2 dates in one week. V Date falls in November around Kirsty's Birthday so it was Kirsty's choice for what we did. She decided to do another escape room for her Birthday. There were 2 escape rooms beginning with V - the one we preferred is called Vacancy and is themed around a hotel room. But that was fully booked. So we chose Virus which is about a Zombie outbreak. We failed. It was very hard. Possibly because we don't know much about zombies. We did really well in the first escape room we did because we were interested in the topic so maybe a Zombie themed room was a bad choice. We will not give up though! We will escape one day! After we did the room, we went in some shops and Kirsty bought a book which then set off the alarms in every other shop we went in. For dinner we had TGI Fridays with Kirsty's birthday money which was delicious as always. We sat on the upper level and it was decorated for Christmas and looked very pretty. We watched Arrival at the cinema which was really good, we knew there was a twist in but had no idea where or what it was so all the way through we were trying to work it out. When we got home we lit the Birthday cake and read together. Then while she was in bed I drew her a last birthday present - a flowery border around a cute love quote to give her the next day.

Alphabet Dating - U Date!

This date was probably the hardest to come up with. For months I had decided on 'underwater' so an aquarium. But we visited Sealife over the Summer and can't get to another one easily so I wanted to come up with something different. I searched everywhere online and finally found 'Unplanned date night'. So we wrote down 5 different games to play, 5 different things to eat and 5 different activities to do. We planned it so we would be able to do the entire date at home which saved us money.
The game that we picked out was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Trivia game. We bought this in a toy collectors shop a few months ago and had never played it. It was really hard to understand the rules at first but after that we just kept winning over and over again! The next thing we picked out was food: chips, cheese and beans. One of my favourite meals. The activity we picked was Drawing Competition. This is something we used to do a lot. We would pause a TV show and draw the person on screen then compare. It isn't really a competition, just something fun to do. The worse the drawing is, the funnier it is. We drew Santa's telephone, a meal and Dolores Umbridge. Then to finish off the night I put on Autumnal make up and we did sparklers in the front garden.

Alphabet Dating - T Date!

For T Date Kirsty came up with the best idea - Trapped! Escape rooms are really big right now but it's hard to find ones that are suitable and reasonably priced for just 2 people. Breakout Manchester's rooms are for 2-5 people and are one of the cheaper options near where we live. We chose a medium difficulty room, Identify, the story of this room reminded us of Cluedo. We had never done an escape room before so at first we were a bit wary of what to touch and try, but we did get into it and start digging through stuff. We did really well for our first time and got quite close to completing it! We are planning on going back to do another room for Kirsty's birthday in a few weeks. We also had our annual Halloween 'party' (Trick or Treat). We dressed as Mary Poppins and Bert, watched a few films, carved pumpkins, had Halloween sweets and Pizza Hut.

IVF with ICSI #1 Update

With our first IVF cycle we managed to fertilise 3 eggs, and 2 embryos made it to day 5. I had one put back and one frozen. Unfortunately the one put back turned into a chemical pregnancy so we are putting a lot of our hope into the frozen one. We have paid for a multicycle plan which means a lot of the pressure is off, we know that if the frozen embryo doesn't work out we have another cycle paid for. We would just need to pay for the medication. Our next steps are to firstly take a break! No medication or injections. No avoiding having a bath or hot water bottles. No wearing socks to bed. Just a chilled out break. And then we will see about what medication we would need for the frozen transfer and how much it would cost. We are definitely taking the whole of November off and depending on the dates possibly December too.

IVF with ICSI #1 Update

I don't update this blog much because there isn't a lot to say on a day to day basis (and I do forget).
But we started IVF injections on 25th September, did my Trigger Shot on 8th October, and went for Egg Retrieval on 10th October.
The Egg Retrieval was what I was scared of most because you have to go on an IV and be sedated. However, I just slept the whole way through, didn't feel any of it and recovered really well so we could go home. For that day and the next 2 days at home I was in a lot of pain. It was very uncomfortable to walk and sit. I lost 3lb because I didn't have much of an appetite. Today is Thursday, 3 days after, and I feel a lot better. I'm in a lot less pain and wanted to update this blog with the results of the retrieval.
I had 16 follicles at my last scan, they got 8 eggs at retrieval. The next day they phoned to let us know that 3 of those eggs were immature so couldn't be used. Of the 5 that were left they successfully injected 3 with the sperm from our donor. (I didn't even post about that on this blog! We managed to find a donor who has similar interests to us, and likes to visit the same places we do.)
They phoned again today to let us know how those 3 embryos had developed. This is what the Embryologist told us on the phone: “The good news is that the 3 of them are really nice. Theyre all at the good stage of the development and theyve got very nice grading. 2 of them are already compacting which is a very good sign. So theyre doing really well.”
I'm really happy and hopeful! I wasn't sure whether the low AMH results I had would mean my eggs are of a lower quality. But to have 3 embryos developing well is a good sign. I'm hoping that all 3 make it to day 5 and we are able to freeze 2. I know not all embryos survive the freezing process but it would take so much of the pressure off us if it worked. I will eventually post about the results of our first embryo transfer and what our next steps are.

Alphabet Dating - S Date!

For S Date I bought us tickets to go to a Sims event at Event City Manchester. When we got there we were given a raffle ticket and a prize draw ticket. We did the prize draw ticket first which was at The Sims Resource booth. I won the grand prize! I got Steel Series Sims 4 Headset, Mouse and Mousemat. Kirsty got a Mousemat too which we got signed by the Sims Youtuber, Deligracy. We then went to a booth called Similarish and bought a Plumbob necklace and keyring. Kirsty put her name in a postbox to win the Headset and Mouse. We watched a panel about Sims on Youtube. Then we created a sim called Patricia Schnell on the Sims 4. We tried to build but it was too hard to work out. We had a cup of tea before the prize draw. Then at the prize draw they pulled out 5 names from the postbox to win the headset and mouse, Kirsty's name was the 5th one called. Our numbers didn't get called for the raffle but they said everyone who hadn't been called could queue up to get a tshirt so I got a Simcity Build it tshirt and Kirsty got a Sims 3 one. After that we went to Lush and Kirsty bought me loads of the Christmas bath bombs and we got KFC to eat at home.