Living a Blessed Life

Darek and I are the proud new owners of a LG, he, energy star, *coldwash washing machine! YAY! It will be delivered and hooked up on Tuesday and I am actually excited to use it. (It even has a 'baby wash' setting so it will be perfect for our growing family. I can't help but wonder, however, if that makes me 'old'!! When I was little, I was always so excited to grow up and have a home and family of my own. Now I sometimes wish I could just go back a few years in age and stay there for a while (but still have my family). :-) Darek and I were out with a large group of his high school friends last night (and their wives) and the topics of conversation consisted of home repairs. Haha! We were all laughing, because those are now the exciting things to discuss in life. I suppose that's better than some un-intelligent conversation that probably take place by people our age who still haven't moved beyond their high school 'glory days'. Still, it was eye-op...

This weekend, much like every weekend, Darek and I went shopping and browsing through the baby aisles and stores. We were at Target and scored a GREAT deal on a Pack - n- Play that we know we will get a lot of use out of. We quickly did a google search and found the reviews on that particular model to make sure it was going to be a worthwhile purchase. Of course it was! (I really should have taken a picture to post here. Maybe next time.) When we got home we proceeded to set it up and make sure all of the pieces worked. Everything was great, and it looked really cute! I'm excited to have this for traveling as well. We can easily collapse it and haul it down to Waseca or check it on the airplane. Look out, Arizona, we are getting prepared for baby/airline travel! :-) We also took a couple of trips to Babies R Us to check out a few more necessities and make sure we knew what we wanted to register for. There is a whole lot of learning to be done regarding baby supplies! Darek is soa...

Well, The title of this post should be an obvious give-away. Darek and I are expecting our little miracle on July 18th 2011!! We are very excited, to say the least! We have an appointment on Feb. 24th to have our '20 week' ultrasound. It is at that appointment that we can find out the gender of the baby. We are planning to find out, but not sure yet if we will share the news with anyone when we do find out. I really like surprises!! :-) The name game has been an interesting one. We are fairly set on a few names that we like, but I am still not keen on the idea of Darek Jr. We still have some time, so it will be interesting to see what happens from here. :-) Also, probably not sharing until the baby is born. There is a lot in a name, and it might just help to see the baby before naming him/her. Short post, but that's all for now. Happy Day!

Sad, but true... This is our last day in NYC. :-( We woke up to the ting of rain hitting our window air conditioner in the hotel room. It was grey and cool outside. I suppose that means that our trip is finished. We are leaving on the perfect day! After packing our belongings and great ‘finds’ into our luggage, we headed out for one last meal in the Big Apple. The hotel desk staff recommended a little diner called The Red Flame. It was about 1 block from our hotel, so we headed out with our umbrella’s (that matched the lining of our purses) held high. I know. The Red Flame… Sounds like a mix of Japanese & Asian cuisine. BUT, let me tell you that it was a very busy, quaint little diner with delicious home cooked foods. Between the six of us, we had omelets, waffles, French toast, eggs, and pancakes. Delish ! The aroma of coffee and breakfast was quite appealing. Love it!! Time to head back to the hotel and check out. Darek and I looked up some more travel options to the airport tha...

Once again I am writing today about the previous day. :-) Yes indeed it was my 21st birthday, again! Crazy how that works. ;-) No, really, it was my 28 th birthday. YIKES!!! That's pretty darn close to 30! What a wonderful birthday celebration I had, being in NYC. First things first. I had to get my morning breakfast cupcake from Magnolia bakery!! Haha !! It was delicious, as I knew it would be. They even sold candles and cupcake toppers for birthdays, so Emily bought one of each and we found a smoker with some matches to light the candle. It was a fun, quick birthday morning celebration. :-) Next, we headed to the #1 subway and went all the way to the last stop 'South Ferry'. This is where we checked in for the Statue of Liberty cruise and climb into her crown. It sure was a good thing that we bought our tickets a few months ago, because they were sold out for the day - AND the wait in line just to get to the island was going on 3 hours. WOAH , baby! We went to the 'r...

Sunday was a VERY productive day of fun and sight-seeing adventures. It was so much fun, in fact, that I didn't have time to blog. We were up so late that I could barely keep my eyelids up by the time we got back to the hotel room. Let the adventures begin! We slept in a little longer this morning, and took the 'R' train to Ground Zero. We were able to get a glimpse of the memorial site, and the current building projects. They are in the process of building 2 new 'freedom' towers (even though the current name of them is supposed to be something different). There will be 1 main tower for the World Trade Center, and another for residential living, as far as I understood. Mike, Emily, Jerry & LuAnn took a tour while Darek and I decided just to hang out. We ended up finding a fun, HUGE store that Emily C told us about called Century 21. I thought it might be a real estate store, but it was nothing like that. It was great fun!! Tons of designer things at great disc...

Saturday turned out to be a fantastic day, despite the Twins loss. This day was particularly devoted to the Yankee's / Twins game, and anything that had time to follow. Here is the day in a big nutshell. :) 9:30 - Breakfast at the Cranberry Cafe' again. It's such a great place, and I really love how close it is to the hotel. I guess you can't get much closer to 'next door'. Once we were finished eating, we headed to Grand Central Station to catch the #4 bus to the Bronx - Yankee Stadium. We were really proud of ourselves for knowing where we were going and how to get through the station with our 7 day unlimited ride passes. We were starting to feel like 'regulars'. Haha ! That being said, we waited for our train for about 15 minutes, only to learn that our train was not coming. That track was closed for weekend maintenance, so we were switched to another train that was running the #4 route. We had a great ride to the stadium, and we talked to Twins fans ...