Leaf Raking

Our church does an annual community service day. For the last few years, they added helping out at the neighborhood elementary school as an option. Since Mr. Bean attended that school, he can point out such historic locations as the door which he cried at every day for a week when kindergarten started and the place he got beat up in first grade.

We went to the school to do some yard work. Because of the economy, there isn't much room in the budget for anything beyond mowing the grass and removing the snow.

When we arrived, since String Bean was with us, we requested a work assignment without a playground view. We were given rakes and paper bags to fill in the side yard of the school. String Bean was given her own rake which was the perfect size.

For the first hour of the event, String Bean did a great job "helping" us clean up the side yard. Then, she hit herself in the head with the handle of the rake one too many times. Luckily, our friend Fred was in charge of collecting the full bags of leaves and depositing them at the garbage site. He had a wagon to assist him which made the perfect perch for String Bean as she then assisted Fred with his assignment.

Mr. Bean and I both walked out of there with a few blisters. I think String Bean managed to not have a bump on her head, and we all enjoyed spending a few hours out in the sunshine!

Trying to Conceive

A coworker asked me today if I had any resources for trying to conceive (TTC) as he and his wife have decided it is time to start a family. Rather than keep all these resources to myself, I thought I'd share them with you!

Two Week Wait is an excellent community for those looking for support while they start their family. The name comes from the 2 week time period between ovulation and the time a home pregnancy test could be positive. This community has a large amount of women who have fertility issues, but a fair amount who are just starting the process of starting a family and who want the support of others. As an added bonus, there is a pregnancy community for those who graduate from the TTC community.

Pregnology is a great site for helping you calculate when you'll be ovulating, when your next menstral cycle should be, when your due date might be, and a calculator to measure how far along in your pregnancy you are. I like this site because you can plug in your stats and bookmark the site to keep tabs on where you are in the process of TTC or pregnancy.

Fertility Friend is a site that allows you to chart your basal body temperature and symptoms of pregnancy while TTC. There is a free place to store data, but for the computer analysis portion of the site there is a fee.

Amazing Pregnancy offers tons of articles on TTC and pregnancy.

I am of the opinion that you should not have to pay for information or support while trying to start a family which is why I used the sites I mentioned when TTC our daughter.

Are there free sites you recommend to my coworker's wife as she starts the journey?