If you haven’t yet heard the news, Chad and I are expecting our first child in November. We are very excited, and hopefully, that means more posts. We knew our families would be excited too, so we decided to surprise them and capture their reactions on video.

NOTE: You may need to turn up the volume on the ones taken with my phone (Jill, Travis, & Jessie)

We planned to tell all of Chad’s family together, but Ashley, Brock, and Brody came by earlier in the week and I had accidentally left out our camera and a sign that said 10 weeks. I knew Brock saw it, so we went ahead and told them.

A few weeks before we planned to tell my family, Travis (my brother-in-law) texted Chad and asked if he would be interested in going with the other guys to the Bengals/Raiders game. Travis and Brendan (other BIL) love the Bengals and my dad loves the Raiders. The game is on November 25… my due date! Chad told him that he would talk it over with me and let him know. That is how the idea of the game tickets came about. We told my parents, Jill, and Travis that we had already gotten tickets for that day. Unfortunately we couldn’t get them together all at the same time.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to tell Jessie in person, so I wanted to tell her before everyone else. I tried to FaceTime with her Wednesday (the day I went to the doctor), texted her and tried to FaceTime twice on Thursday, and then tried to FaceTime again Friday right after we told my mom and dad. She finally called me back Friday night at about midnight after I had already gotten ready for bed. I thought for sure she had to suspect it, but she had no clue… even after telling her.

Jerry’s birthday had been earlier in the week, so on Saturday, Peggy had the whole family over. Chad and I had made a cake that said “We’re having a baby” and kept it covered and in the garage until after we had eaten. He brought it out as we sang happy birthday. Jerry thought I was taking a picture, so perhaps he was more focused on posing than actually reading the cake.

We are so happy to share this time with everyone!

The new year always means a couple things for me. Lots of regret for the 10K calorie days the weeks before and resolutions. Can’t do much about those fatty days weeks back, but I can try to move forward on some resolutions. I do have some this year and I thought it might help me to put them out there.

• Run 60 miles a month – Really this is just on here to make me exercise. I can’t say that I like running, I just don’t think it is that hard to do anymore and it is an quick way to knock out some cardio. I really like the app RunKeeper to track my running.
• Drop 15 lbs – I have gained back about 15 lbs from my lowest point. I really hate that. I am trying to start the calorie counting again using The Daily Plate. That is what helped me so much the first time. I don’t want it to take a year I want to have those 15 lbs dropped by March. I feel that is totally doable if I stick to the exercise and stick to the calorie plan.
• Read a book a month – I say this every year.
• Start a side business – I say this every year.
• Blog more – I say this every year.
• Read through the Bible
• Take more trips – I want to make more time to get out of town. Jennie and I plan to try a long trip this summer where I can work from our location while she is out for summer break. That was one of the main reasons I wanted a work from home job, so that I had the freedom to work from anywhere. I want to put it into practice this summer and see how it works out.
• Play more video games, watch more football and UK basketball games – Just putting this on here so I have something to point out to Jennie if she says I am doing to much of any of those. Sorry honey, it was a new years resolution…why do you want me to fail?
• Play more volleyball and basketball. Last year we played lots of volleyball and basketball. This year we have the potential to play 2 nights of vball a week but the basketball has kind of fizzled out. I need to get back on that. I do want video of me slamming a basketball two handed during a game just to show my kids I was able to do it at one time. That brings up something else I should put down as a resolution.
• Dunk two handed – I can dunk one handed occasionally, if the time of day is right and the moon is such that it pulls me closer to the basket. Not consistently. This is something else I think I could easily do with just a few months of work. I turn 32 this year, I don’t think I have much jumping left in me soon.

If I do two of these things I will be happy and if I could do all of them that would be pretty good too.

Maybe I will blog tomorrow about weight loss stuff or books I want to read. Maybe I won’t post again till 2013. I never did that last day of NYC post.

Maybe I should just say until we speak again and leave you with a picture of Jennie and I in a giant rocking chair.

Today I made this cute little ornament tree to go in our guest bathroom. It was like something I had seen in a store, but I didn’t want to pay $30 for it. It was really simple.
To make it, all you need is: a Styrofoam cone, garland, small ornaments of different sizes, and a hot glue gun. You will need more ornaments than you might think. For this small tree, I used 36 medium-sized ornaments and 40 small ornaments.

1. Dab some hot glue on the bottom of the cone and attach the garland. Wrap the garland around the cone all the way to the top, periodically gluing, so that no Styrofoam shows.
2. Remove the tops of the ornaments so that they will be able to pierce the Styrofoam.
3. Hot glue the ornaments on the cone. Use larger ornaments on the bottom, smaller ornaments on the top, and mix the sizes in the middle. Cover in any gaps.

We got up this morning with the idea of using another one of our City Pass tickets to take a boat ride out to the Statue of Liberty and then over to Ellis Island. Lucky for us we were the only people with that idea, so we were able to just hop right on the boat and see everything. Just kidding there was like a 3 hour wait. So we waited in about the longest line I have ever seen to hop on the ferry over to lady liberty.

Once we finally got on the ferry over to Liberty island it was a nice ride. We decided to stay below instead of being out in the sun on the upper deck. We had just about enough sun while waiting for the ferry.

This french chick was much larger than she looks. I was surprised.

In the picture below it looks like she is about to give that cloud some freedom.

Long story short we walked around the statue a lot, took a lot of pictures, and were basically exhausted. We skipped Ellis Island, we will see it when we go back for Jennie’s 60th birthday.

Once back in the city we had lunch and then headed back down to ground zero. We took a few more pictures and visited the 9/11 memorial center. I also saw Steve Nash walking down the street with his kids.

Our hotel was about a block from Wooster St. Social Club, which is the tattoo studio for the TLC show New York Ink.

We walked down to it, but then chickened out about going inside. Jennie wanted to get a pretty sweet UK tattoo, but I wouldn’t let her.

The next day was our final day in NYC.