Crystal Clear

Early in May, before May blew up like it always does, I attended a church social focused on oxen and yokes and the best way to handle life's stresses. My friend Amy passed on some minutia she learned while traveling in Jerusalem; Christ, as the son of a carpenter, would have made hundreds of yokes in his lifetime because yokes were a high-demand societal item. Yokes were made-to-order back then. The carpenter measured each individual animal and created a custom-fit yoke. If the yoke was built right the animal would feel minimal pain from the load it was hauling. The Savior made hundreds of wooden yokes as an apprentice and craftsman; he would later make infinite spiritual yokes as the Son of God in Gethsemane, which is why he can say

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you...

and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

[St Matthew 11:28-29]

My favorite tidbit was learning when oxen are yoked together it is nearly impossible for them to move backwards. I've remembered that this month on days when my horizon was retreating. Man + Christ can only progress. Courage, and move forward!

Crystal Lund, my soft-spoken neighbor of ten years, was asked to talk about a time in her life when she yoked herself with the Savior. Crystal is Mrs. Claus meets Mary Poppins; she has rosy cheeks and a kind disposition and is either smiling, baking, or hugging children. Her other hobbies include kneeling in the dirt to help things grow, biking, and capturing her kids' personalities through a long lens. I was curious what she would say about relying on the Savior since I've never seen her flustered; she is calm as a morning lake.

Crystal opened by revealing she was an ETERNAL OPTIMIST and as such never worried about things working out because they always did. She thought about her life all week and couldn't determine a specific life event that caused her to need to yoke to the Savior. At this point I thought to myself, "What do you mean you can't think of a hard time that broke you? Has your life been that easy?"  

She continued:

My dad died when I was 14. Our house had just sold because my dad was going to move us all to Utah for his new job. My mom, now without a husband and a home, decided to stick to the plan and move to Utah. And it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

My mom went from a size 14 to a size 2 in less than a year because it was hard. She met a man who had lost his wife to health and they got married just 16 months after my dad died. He had four kids, we had four kids. He had just finished building his dream home with his first wife and we couldn't ask them to move out of their dream so we moved in. A new married couple, eight kids sharing rooms, and four of us were teenagers. Four teenagers in a house was...awesome.

After being voted captain of the school swim team I tore my ACL on a freak bike accident and never swam my senior year, nor did I attend BYU on a swim scholarship as previously anticipated. But I still went to BYU and school was easy for me. I took heavy loads of classes and flew through college, I only had two semesters left after I married Matt.

We moved to American Fork when we had two little kids and were in our prime. Life was awesome. Now I have six kids and life couldn't be better.

At this point I picked my jaw up off the floor and again thought to myself, "What do you mean you can't think of a hard time that broke you? Have you seen your life?!" Mind-reading what all the attendees were thinking, she said,

All those big things in life didn't break me. Everyday life did.

She confessed she found her tipping point shortly after the birth of her 5th baby on a day when the laundry was higher than the windowsill and sought help through prayer. Laundry, a sense of order, the kid that won't do homework regardless of clever schemes and reward systems; these are among the reasons she yokes daily. Her yokemate is more than just muscle, He is her mentor. At the bottom of her can of worms she shared two secrets to happiness:

Yoking myself to the Savior helps me have the strength to pick up my head so I see the big picture, not just the ground.

Yoking helps clear my eyes so I can see all the happy things around me.

No wonder Crystal is always smiling.

Blue-eyed Becca told me she is never afraid to ask Crystal for help because Crystal always responds with, "I'd love to!" So I asked her something myself as a secret little test and that is exactly how she answered. I thought of her when I heard the recent conference talk about being truly good without guile. Crystal is the female version of Shiblon, Charles Funke, and Gordon B. Hinckley combined. And she gave me permission to share her story in case you thought I was a big fat blabbermouth.

Tadpole

Two frogs fell into a deep cream bowl,

One was an optimistic soul;

But the other took the gloomy view,

"I shall drown," he cried, "and so will you."

So with a last despairing cry

He flung up his legs and said, "Good-bye."

Quoth the other frog, with a merry grin,

"I can't get out but I won't give in!

I'll swim until my strength is spent,

and having tried I'll die content."

Bravely he swam until it would seem

His struggles began to churn the cream.

On top of the butter at last he stopped

And out of the bowl he happily hopped.

*Baby Archer, 10 months. This one-toothed contented tadpole is a future butter churner regardless of his attitude because he NEVER. STOPS. MOVING!

Smiracles: Epilogue

Part III

God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged, the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to us the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that we might know the joys and glories of creation.
– Thomas S. Monson

I might add, "He left the babies unmade."

ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED

After the three amigos were implanted I had to wait out a slow-motion two week tick-tock before returning to Dr. A for the blood test of blood tests. I had no intention of cheating with an at-home pregnancy test in case a false negative tricked my pink stripes. 

Projects and putting my shoulder to the wheel have long been the well-worn tools that reduce my boiling anxiety to a simmer. To keep myself humming like a busy bee for fourteen sleeps* I designed Greg's Oreck store Christmas mailer, a task I generally complain about due to the total hours necessary for completion. I offered my template to all the franchise owners in the nation hoping I could add to the $50 freelance egg sitting in my business account. Nine franchise owners ended up taking my bait and I made $2700 in two weeks; an abnormal chunk of change for my thin wallet. It dawned on me I almost earned enough to pay for The Blast. I was only $400 short.

Four-leaf clover and giant horseshoe alert: Dr. A failed to inform me about $360 of eligible mail-in rebates for some of my fertility drugs. I copied the receipts, licked the envelopes, put the flag up on my mailbox, and cashed checks within two weeks. The Blast went from $3100 to $40 in less than a month.

The Lord pre-counted the cost and paved me a path to the bank; all I had to do was walk there one step at a time. This is why again and again I believe in the blessing of hard work, or as the Book of Mormon calls it: being anxiously engaged in a good cause. Only if I lift my foot to go somewhere can the Lord put it down in a good place. That good place is usually a shortcut to a better place. My heavy lifting + many guided steps = how I got from Kansas to the Emerald City without even knowing a technicolor world existed.

PRUNING TODAY HELPS TOMORROW GROW RIGHT

The last night of waiting finally arrived; in the morning it would be all or nothing. I needed assurance and calming so I got my ipad and pulled up the Mormon Messages channel on Youtube. I felt like I should watch Elder D. Todd Christofferson's message "The Will of God" since that very thing was about to be known. It is a true story about an untamed currant bush who only reached its potential after being cut down; the metaphor being God is the gardener and we are the wild bushes confusedly believing life means size, not fruit. After I watched it I secretly hoped I had already been cut down with the miscarriage and the failed IVF and the 12 years of no baby. I did not want to be pruned in the morning yet I loved God, so in the back of my mind I heard myself promise But if not...**

I slept like I had to catch a morning flight, meaning I caught 18 winks and tossed a kajillion times. Finally the sky turned light and it was D-Day, VJ-Day, Baby-Day, Deja-Vu-Day; either way it was the end of my war with infertility. I was pregnant or about to move on down another path. I dressed in my teal polka-dot blouse and orange lightweight cardigan. (I feel naked without a cardigan and need one within reaching distance. Same thing with a water bottle. Is there a legitimate phobia related to the absence of sweaters and water?) Greg was downstairs methodically putting on his man accessories; wedding ring, watch, wallet, earpiece. I heard the garage open. It was go time. I knelt on my side of the bed and offered one last sincere prayer. Heavenly Father, I will know in less than an hour if I'm pregnant. I want to be pregnant. I've done everything in my power to do so. Please let it be time for me to bloom. If it's not time help me accept it with grace and double help me to not become a bitter, angry person. I completely trust thy plan for me and feel peaceful within that trust.

I did, in fact, have a bud that would bloom in summer. (I still have the HCG test strip with its declarative stripe. I'd bronze it but the bronze would mask the celebration.) Four more weeks would tell how many embryos took. Greg joked about Huey, Dewey, and Louie a lot over the next month until one day I gave him my gorgon face and assured him I would turn him to stone if he toyed with me one second longer. Possible triplets never seemed funny to me. The 6 1/2 week ultrasound showed ONE baby with ABUNDANT MOVEMENT. Dr. A wrote that in his chart. He also noted the embryo had PERFECT PLACEMENT which didn't mean anything to me at the time; I wrote it down on my notepad nonetheless.

PERFECT PLACEMENT IS OFTEN UNNOTICED

After Archer had safely arrived and it was time for me to get wheeled to my room the L&D nurse gave me a parting gift of coral baby socks with anchors on them. Jesus, Savior, pilot me over life's tempestuous sea. As if I could have gotten Archer without my anchor. She casually mentioned how surprised she was he came naturally. I asked her what she meant. She explained IVF babies are often c-sections (90% according to her) because the embryo implants low which causes the placenta to cover the cervix and block the path for a traditional birth. I instantly remembered PERFECT PLACEMENT and knew what it meant. If I had known I was at such high risk for a c-section I would have worried myself crazy for nine months instead of savoring what I assumed was my last pregnancy. (I still assume it but a little part of me wonders if wonders have not ceased...my 40s could be magical.)

HINDSIGHT SMIRACLE

Archer was due July 4. All eight pounds of him were born a week early on June 27. Then the bills came pouring in. Cha-ching, cha-ching, I was happy to pay for a baby and wrote smiley faces on my invoices.

August 1 our insurance plan renewed and unbeknownst to us the new deductible more than doubled to a mind-boggling $13K. My mind went back to that Sunday at Dr. A's office where he presented me with The Great Choice: to blast, or to abort the cycle and wait another month. When Greg and I discussed our options we knew if we didn't blast we'd have to wait at least four months to try IVF again; the winter retail season would have to pass. If we had done a later IVF Archer would have been due far beyond August 1 and could have cost an extra $7K from what we paid. If I had not had perfect embryo placement and required a c-section he would have cost every bit of $13K. Yes, it's just money, but oh how thankful I am the Lord was aware of our insurance plan alongside our flock, field, and household.

THIS END IS JUST THE BEGINNING

If I learned anything in the saga of bringing Archer to earth it is how involved the Lord is in our lives. He is involved because we are the workmanship of his hands; an artist cannot forget his masterpieces. I also learned what absolute trust in God feels like and it feels better than anything I ever scrounged up left to my own devices. You can't outsmart Omniscient, you can't underestimate Infinite and Eternal, and you can't question the middle motives of one who sees the end from the beginning.

"Who am I, saith the Lord, that have promised and have not fulfilled?"

-Doctrine and Covenants 58:31

*My parents' technique for counting down to the things we could hardly wait for, i.e. "Six more sleeps until Christmas" or "Three more sleeps until school is out".

**Daniel 3:17-18 

Smiracles: Up Close and Personal

Part II

I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, mine angels round about you, to bear you up. -Doctrine & Covenants 84:88

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 30

The pharmacy called to confirm our $3100 order. Roger that. I hung up, put my head on the table, and felt like a very tiny person looking up at a very tall ladder. A knock at the door stirred me; the mailman left two parcels on the porch. One box plastered in international labels contained six vials of backordered Repronex fresh from jolly old London (they arrived nine hours before I had to use them-talk about cutting it close) and the other box was from Wisconsin. Jeanne Thalhuber, an old high school friend, had sent a miniature glass dolphin housed in a silky-lined fabric box with a tiny poem glued to the lid. The script font read:

We never know what we can bear until we face the deed;

It's then our inner strength prevails with power to succeed.

Other than exchanging annual Christmas cards I had not received anything from Jeanne in my life. Her note simply said I’d been on her mind and she woke up one morning determined to do something for me. The dolphin at the store reminded her of me so she threw it in the mail despite her not being a random gift-giver.

Something critical happened in that moment, something I’ll never forget even if I don’t write it down. I stood in my empty house holding a sparkly dolphin, the morning light cutting a streak across the kitchen, the countertop sprinkled with cardboard box confetti, as a realization clicked into place. I recalled yesterday’s inspired bishop while clutching today’s shiny treasure and simply understood the Lord was not going to leave me alone in the trenches of IVF. I thought I could do it on my own; He knew better. Despite my not telling a soul what was happening I had the inkling He would manifest his power, intelligence, or love for me in some way daily until I was through the mucky muck.

It was all I needed to know. I squared my shoulders, lowered my head, kept both eyes open to watch for the Lord's hand, and got ready to charge.

What follows are the smiracles (small miracles) I eagerly anticipated each day, originally recorded in my personal journal.

TUESDAY OCTOBER 1

The overnighted Follicle Rescue Kit arrived from Maine five hours early which enabled me to start my blast ahead of schedule. Every hour counts so having five extra seems like a blessing. Jabbed six vials. Waited ten hours. Jabbed six more.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 2

Six vials with breakfast. Follicle recheck was all the way after lunch, I couldn't think straight and repeatedly wondering if anything had grown since Sunday was causing me to emit nervous energy. I went to the gym and rode the bike until my legs and brain were still. I read Ensign magazine while I pedaled and a quote from President Hinckley literally jumped off the page and landed on my frazzled heart like a giant bandage:

Do your best, your very, very best. Work hard and pray hard and leave the harvest to the Lord.

He was speaking to missionaries in the article but no matter, he was speaking to me, too. "Harvest" is IVF slang for the day the eggs are retrieved from the female's body. Right there in the rundown rec center's smelly cardio room, below a quartet of TVs bellowing SportsCenter, Studio5, The Price is Right, and a soap opera, I turned the harvest over to the Lord and let go of the weight I had been clinging to. (It may be the last weight I lost in the cardio room.) Hours later Dr. A's monitor displayed five follicles sized 9, 10, 10, 10, and 11 mm. Success! We could proceed! Our next checkpoint: the 10s needed to be 16s by Sunday morning...which meant more injections, of course.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 3

A California care package containing dehydrated lime solids and a post-it note FROM YOUR FAVORITE CALIFORNIA FRIEND, LOVE YOU, KRISTI unexpectedly arrived in my mailbox. I had posted on facebook years ago (seriously, years) asking where to find dehydrated lime solids so I could make homemade fajita seasoning. Dehydrated lime solids were so random they could only have been inspired, plus the Lord knows how much I love fun mail.

My college roommate Heather texted me words of love. I'm glad her birthday fell in my week of need.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 4

Aunt Lynne sent me a Turkish scarf that doubled as a table runner and a coin-like silver pocket angel with EVERYONE NEEDS AN ANGEL engraved on the back. Yes they do! Little did she know she was mine for the day!

SATURDAY OCTOBER 5-GENERAL CONFERENCE

Jonny and Tiffany Poole surprised me with a visit as they were up from Vegas for the weekend. Tiffany even brought me a famous pink sugar cookie all the way from Swig in St. George. If I had harbored a cookie in my car for four hours it would not have lasted for a friend.  

Elder Bednar spoke on tithing and I realized gratitude has been a blessing in my life from paying tithing.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 6-GENERAL CONFERENCE

Watched the morning session and heard the "Move the Rock" talk which made me feel good as I had already asked the Lord to move my rock in the cardio room. Drove to Dr. A, the follicles were 16s and 18s, and my lining was a 15mm shag carpet about to offer a 9-month housing contract to any and all fertilized eggs. It was unbelievably believable that the Lord hears and answers prayers about millimeters, which are smaller than sparrows and not even living things.

MONDAY OCTOBER 7

Back at Dr. A's for morning blood work, a.k.a. My Zillionth Draw. I officially hate phlebotomists, even good ones. As I pressed a cotton ball on my used vein I told Dr. A I felt like Mater in Cars-like an old, rusty body trying to trick itself it was Lightning McQueen-which basically meant I felt older than 37 and sick of shots that made my pooch feel like it had five water balloons and a bag of splinters in it. Other than that I can't accurately describe the heavy pressure and pricks one feels when they are unnaturally full of eggs.

Dr. A called me at the house an hour later, "Good news, Mater. You only have to put the pedal to the medal for one more day. Your hormone levels have quit rising which means your body can't handle any more medical stalling; it wants to let go of the eggs. I need you to inject every vial you have left within the hour and do the Ovitrelle shot tonight at 10. Your harvest is scheduled for 36 hours after the Ovitrelle. See you Wednesday." (click)

Every last vial within the hour? I had 14 left. Greg was working in Salt Lake so he couldn't do it. Bishop Thornton was the only other person that knew we were doing IVF and was at school teaching choir, not that I could have asked him to do it. I was so deathly afraid of needles I had not opened my eyes once for any shot or blood draw in the past two years. And now I had to suck up 14 vials to make the juiciest injection of all time and give it to myself? Mercy.

My hands shook with palsy as I filled the syringe. I rubbed my tummy with an alcohol wipe and squeezed the fat. And then I froze. I couldn't override my own brain to stick myself. I folded my arms on the bathroom windowsill and prayed outloud for help. A minute later it was over. I stuffed the used needle in the sharps container with a triumphant heart and even shakier hand. Then I called Greg. He couldn't believe what I had done. I think it's the proudest he's ever been of me. He said that's when he knew how badly I wanted a baby. Giving myself the big shot was more of a miracle than a smiracle. That was huge.

Ate a late night snack with my refrigerated Ovitrelle shot at 10. NO MORE SHOTS FOR TWO DAYS! *painful happy dance*

TUESDAY OCTOBER 8

What to do, what to do? I needed a project to keep my mind busy. My neighbor Marcy invited Frenchie and me to pick apples from her brother's tree in Orem. I volunteered to clean up the rotten apples on the grass because I could do it on my hands and knees which disguised my abdominal pain. The Lord blessed me with enough strength to can applesauce all night which did two things: 1)killed time, and 2)kept me too busy to check the clock twice a minute to see how many hours away the harvest was.

My sister Suz called and left a message when I was picking apples "just because she had been thinking about me a lot."

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 9-THE HARVEST

Ol' Mater had TWO HIDDEN FOLLICLES who'd never shown their pretty faces onscreen. BOOM! Dr. A retrieved seven eggs which made me high-five my own body once I came to from anesthesia. Our IVF nurse Liesl left the clinic during my surgery to buy me fries from McDonalds because there was an office legend that every woman who ate one small fry after her harvest got pregnant. To be fair, I ate no french fry on the previous IVF. Not one to squelch an office legend I ate a singular fry and Greg drove me home relieved, eggless, and exhausted.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 10

When an egg is retrieved it is an oocyte. After it is fertilized and one day old it is a zygote. By day 3 it has grown to an 8-cell embryo. By day 5 it is a blastocyst. IVF doctors usually implant between days 3 and 5. Small hiccup: our renowned embryologist was going to be in Boston for a cryogenic conference (if I had a nickel...) on my days 3, 4, and 5. The office had hired a substitute embryologist for those days. Like I wanted a substitute embryologist at that point. I wanted Thomas Chang, Chinese genius, and none else. We had no other choice but to implant with 1-day old zygotes, something our doctor rarely did.

Of my seven fertilized eggs we got three Grade-A, two Bs and Cs, and two funky-looking yellowish ones. Those two got tossed, we implanted the three champions, and froze B and C just in case. Because I am never doing IVF again.

I spent the next two days (Fall Break) on bed rest reading cooking magazines, watching The Men Who Built America on The History Channel, and eating the half-dozen Dippidee cupcakes Pam Cardwell quietly left on our porch.

If I hadn't been secretive, if I had even whispered that I needed help, I would have had no less than forty neighbors and friends at my side in an instant. I have those kinds of neighbors and friends. What still gets me is how the Lord ignited so many people in the periphery of my life and caused them to aid me in my silence. Like a comet they blasted in, made a difference, and blasted out, unlikely to be seen again in my day-to-day lifetime.

There are no coincidences. There is only God.

*Greg likes to tell the story of me waking up after the harvest. Liesl offered me some snacks to help me wake up and held an apple NutriGrain bar in front of my face. I allegedly smacked her hand and made a nasty face at the bar. Then she held up Oreos and string cheese and I smiled all sneaky-like and whispered to Greg there were treats.

Smiracles: Preface

Part I

Behold, there shall be a record kept among you. -Doctrine & Covenants 21:1

If Paris Hilton can copyright "That's Hot" then I can certainly invent my own word. I invented the word "smiracle". It means small miracle. Patent pending.

The word came about after our first IVF. I couldn't believe how many small miracles I noticed when the big miracle didn't happen. It opened my eyes to the Lord's generosity and created a new habit. I see smiracles every day because smiracles are everywhere.

If you ever come across a smiracle the most important thing to do is WRITE IT DOWN. Write it down for your benefit as well as for your posterity. They say God is in the details; it's easier to remember Him if you remember what He did for you. I was the recipient of smiracles so good I swore I'd never forget them-but memory is limited and most of my mental RAM is spent organizing daily to-do lists. Happily I kept a meticulous journal the last three years and preserved the whole picture.

I don't expect one other person on earth to care about my story, especially readers with narrow comfort zones or personalities that cringe when they hear reproductive parts mentioned. (I think I used to be one of those people.) But I care about it. A span of ten days taught me more about the nature of God as my Heavenly Father than any other time in my life. It was ten days of drinking undiluted HE KNOWS MY NAME concentrate.

Our first IVF was a Minimal Stimulation cycle which used the least amount of fertility drugs with the shortest possible length of usage. Even though I made Grade-A eggs like an Olympian chicken they didn't implant, possibly because my uterine lining was a shallow, non-optimal 7mm. After talking to our doctor months later he mentioned Clomid blocks estrogen absorption and estrogen is what builds the uterine wall. After praying about it Greg and I chose to do Traditional IVF for the second and final round nine months later; it had more drugs and a higher cost but didn't use evil Clomid. We crossed our fingers, called the fertility pharmacy in London, and swiped two credit cards. We told no one about secret second round because if it failed no one would know. We only had each other to rely on when it got emotional, or so I thought.

IVF is a race with several checkpoints. Your body must respond to the injections and produce the desired results on time if the process is to happen.

29 September 2013

I snuck out of church and drove alone to the first big checkpoint where Dr. A was going to count and measure my growing follicles. (Follicles are the "egg cartons." Without follicles there are no eggs, without eggs there are no babies. It all starts with follicles.) Unlike the previous IVF I had been in sharp abdominal pain all week. Things were bubbling and sparking inside and I was positive the higher doses were paying off. I anticipated the first ultrasound free from nervousness knowing dark circles galore would reveal onscreen. (Follicles show up as black holes; nothing prettier than a huge black sphere on the monitor.) I was gobsmacked when the ultrasound proved a host of miniscule, completely worthless follicles. Dr. A was similarly astounded I had not responded to the drugs. He gave me six hours to talk with Greg and make a choice: we could either ABORT THIS CYCLE and wait another month or we could BLAST.

To blast meant we would overnight $3100 of extra drugs from a pharmacy in Maine and "blast" them into my system by dispensing the maximum dose allowed for a human over the next three days. If at least three follicles responded and grew to 10mm by Wednesday we could proceed. If they didn't we were simply out the money and could try again another month. (Why order from Maine? Because you can't overnight drugs from London even though the UK sells fertility drugs for 70% less than the US. Somewhere in Maine beyond the blueberry brambles, lobsters, and lighthouses there is a pharmacy owner richer than a hedge fund manager enjoying his billions from desperate, petite-follicled women.)

I drove back to church lightheaded yet peaceful in a déjà vu daze. This was the precise replica of the predicament we had in the previous cycle. And we blasted then, too. We forced my body to make eggs but those eggs didn't make a baby. I stood at icky crossroads for the second time in my life. The mumble-jumble deafening mess at that intersection was difficult to endure. The road behind me bantered You already tried this and it was a waste of money. Learn from your mistakes! while the road ahead cheered You miss 100% of the shots of you don't take! Try again, babyyyy! (in a Dick Vitale voice) and the side roads robotically chanted a baby - a baby not - a baby - a baby not.

Back at church I found Greg and pulled him into a private corner of the gym. I filled him in on our total lack of ovarian success and ticking time bomb. Decisions, decisions. Our sweet bishop passed us by three times inquiring if we were okay and the third time I caved. We went into his office and gave him Fertility Woes 101 in three minutes or less. What followed is too sacred to share but it suffices to say we went home willing to BLAST relying on godly promises to help us reach in faith.

And that is when the smiracles kicked in.

Photo of a poster I silkscreened back in the day. My BYU designmates jokingly named this print "My Star!". Classmate Milky texted me over Christmas and I texted back a pic of me reaching for my Christmas tree's star to which he replied, "lol. my star!"