NYC bound!

Justin and me are leaving for New York City on Friday morning bright and early! We are so excited for a nice 5 day getaway and since I have never been to NYC before so I am beyond pumped! Justin has been before but he is excited to go back because he still has not gotten to see everything he wanted to the times before. We will be there until Tuesday and we are staying at the Loews Regency on Park Avenue. We have lots of plans on our agenda so hopefully we can get them all done while we are there! We have already gotten our tickets to 2 Broadway shows, Promises, Promises and the Adams Family. We have dinner reservations at a restaurant called Butter one night, and definitely plan on going shopping. We plan on going to Central Park and Bryant Park, seeing the sights, and going to The Met.

I have been wanting to go to New York since forever and I've always wanted to go during Thanksgiving or before Christmas. So this is the best plan we could come up with. We did not want to miss Thanksgiving with our families so we figured we could be back just in time for Turkey Day. We decided to go on our trip in September before I found out I was pregnant but we knew it was a major possibility that I was. Since we know our traveling will be limited this summer then we thought we should take advantage of "it's just the two of us " time while we still have it! It is really funny though because our best friends Amy and Scooter went to NYC last year in December and she was pregnant with Laundry who was born on May 28th which is Baby Rollings due date! So it is funny that I'm pregnant too during our trip to NYC! I told them that they probably think we are copy cats because we have always been a year behind them on everything we've gone through the past few years. We got engaged on there weddingmoon in St. Lucia, then we were married almost exactly a year later, which was right around there first anniversary then they had Laundry and now we will be having Baby Rolling exactly one year later! Haha. Too weird and funny at the same time!

I will take lots of pics of our trip and then upload them to facebook and some to the blog!

This is off the subject of our trip but I was so excited when I got home last night because our stroller we ordered for Baby Rolling had come in! We put it together and I strolled it around the house and put Murphy in it and strolled her around to test it out! Justin was so happy because it was so easy to put together!! And then when we get back from NYC we are meeting Justin's parents and making a final decision on a crib and dresser for the baby's room! CAN NOT WAIT! So exciting! Now we just have to find out if Baby Rolling is a boy or a girl! How do people wait the entire 9 months to find out?!? I could never do it!

Till next time......

Southern Living's Potato Soup

I made a new recipe last night out of my Southern Living cookbook. It was delicious! I made there Homemade Baked Potato Soup. It was very easy and I think the best potato soup I've had in a long time. It makes a lot so it would be perfect for a warm winter night with friends and family.

Homemade Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients

5 large baking potatoes (baked in oven or microwave)

1 medium onion, chopped

1/4 cup butter

3/4 cup flour

4 cups half & half (reduced fat)

3 cups of milk ( I used 1% milk)

1/4 tsp pepper ( I'm sure I used more than that, so use to your liking)

1/4 tsp salt ( I also used a lot more salt, so again use to your liking)

bacon, cooked and chopped

shredded cheese

Directions

Peel the skins off the the cooked potatoes and then mash potatoes with a fork. Take the butter and onion and saute together in a pot over medium high heat. After onions are tender add the flour and stir until smooth. Add the half & half and the next 3 ingredients. Then add the potatoes and stir until well blended. Heat to medium high heat stirring occasionally until soup is thick and it heated through.

Serve with bacon crumples and cheese. Also, I added chives to mine and it was great!

Hope you enjoy this wonderful easy recipe!

Baby Rolling...

It has been a while since I have posted anything. Since we moved into the new house at the end of the summer it seems like we have been focusing on getting the house decorated and finished how we want it.

I have not been making any new recipes either. I have just been recycling through all of the ones we've used in the past. I have tried one new recipe Kristen gave me that she got from Laura Bradley, which is a wonderful cook by the way, and of course it was delicious! I will post the recipe. Kristen just gave me a new one Laura made for them when they were in Cincinnati a few weeks ago. I can not wait to try it out because I know it will be amazing! I am actually making a new recipe tonight I found in my Southern Living cookbook, Homemade Potato Soup. So if it turns out good I will definitely post that recipe as well!

Baby makes three.......

I think just about everyone we know, knows that Justin and I are expecting our first child this May 2011! We are beyond thrilled and can not wait to meet our bundle of joy! I am 12 weeks on Friday! We have had a busy year so far and it looks as if our life will continue to get busier! But hey that's ok with us, we like to stay busy!

We decided this summer before we moved that we knew we would want to start a family a lot sooner than we had planned originally. Like most married couples, we said we wanted to wait 5 year before starting our family because we wanted time to travel and so on. Well we do love traveling and have tried to travel as much as our life has let us but I started having second thoughts on 5 years. Our best friends Amy & Scooter had there first child last May and then my sister had the twins in August so I started thinking we can not wait 5 years because our child will have no friends! My sister and me did not want our children to be too far apart in age and Justin and me certainly did not want our child to be too much younger than baby Landry (Amy & Scooter's little girl). So we came to the agreement we should start our family a lot sooner than later. Once we were settled in our new house we really started thinking about how Justin would be turning 30 in December and how hard it was for my sister to conceive Ashlyn Kay. So after thinking about everything we thought well why don't we just see what happens and not worry about it. We said we would have the "If it happens it happens mind set". So with that plan in place of course as always me being the impatient person I am decided to start keeping track of all of my monthly girl stuff and after only 2 months of doing that BAM! Yep, I was knocked up! :) We found out when I was only 3 weeks pregnant so as you can imagine I have felt like I have already been pregnant a life time! It has really killed us not to be able to shout from the roof tops that we are having a baby but I knew how easily something can happen so I made our families promise not to tell until we went to our 2nd appointment. So now the cat is our of the bag we love sharing our news with everyone. We can not wait to find out what we are having. It is killing us! The way my appointments fall each month we will not be able to find out till the first of January what we are having. We all wish we could know for sure by Christmas but it is not going to work out. I go back to the doctor December 2 but since they have already done 2 ultrasounds they are not doing one this time and I will only be 15 weeks which may be too early to tell anyways. But, I have a very string feeling that I am having a boy. Justin, and some of our friends all feel the same but I have had a few people tell me they think it is a girl. So we will see who is right! We will not be disappointed either way though, that is for sure.

We have already started buying some baby stuff and I know once we find out the sex the shopping will be on! We bought our stroller already because the particular stroller I wanted was a bit pricey and we did not want to register for it because of it's price so that is one thing we wanted to splurge on. Most people think we are crazy for wanting this stroller but if you compared all the things this stroller has and all of it's functions it is totally worth it. So many people buy multiple strollers for all of there different needs, like a snap and go for the car seat, then one for when they are not infants anymore and some people buy a jogging stroller too and then have to buy a double stroller once they have a 2nd child. Well our stroller is every stroller I just named in one. It is designed to convert all these different ways depending on what you need the stroller for at that point in time. So Justin being the math whiz he is definitely agreed this stroller might be expensive at first but by the time we do not need a stroller anymore it would have paid for itself plenty of times!

I also am so lucky to have a sister and friends that all have children and who are giving me all of the things they do not need anymore. So that is going to be the biggest help ever.

That is all for now but I will continue to keep everyone updated as I progress.......