SNOW!

This week has been absolutely INSANE! We haven’t been at work since Monday, thanks to unbelievably cold weather and LOTS of ice on the roads. Then, last night, the snow moved in. So, on top of the inch or so of ice on the road, we now have five or six inches of snow. Pretty amazing! Here are some pictures from our excursion out into the beautiful snow today…

It’s real pretty outside, but we didn’t stay out for long. With Jenn being pregnant, we didn’t want to risk her falling on the ice. And Maddie was too excited to put her sweater on, so she was freezing!

The ice and snow are really messing with plans for this weekend. This weekend is Disciple Now at our church, and the Super Bowl is on Sunday. Pray for everyone’s safety, it’s gonna get wacky!

Photoblog: Your argument is invalid, because BACON.

THOOP.

So, one of the main things we wanted to blog about as a married couple was our culinary adventures. Tonight, we’re gonna start that by offering up two soup recipes that we’ve enjoyed this week. The first one is a taco soup that Jenn cooked up by herself, and the second one is a recipe based on Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana, which is our FAVORITE thing to get when we eat there.

Taco Soup

1 lb. ground beef
1 onion (diced)
3 cans Mexicorn
2 cans chicken broth
1 can tomatoes (ours had green peppers and onions)
2 jalapeno peppers (diced)
2 large garlic cloves (minced)
1 1/2 tbsps. taco seasoning
1/2 cup water

Brown meat and add onion, garlic, 1 tbsp. taco seasoning, and water. Cook until onion is tender. Add Mexicorn, tomatoes, chicken broth, 1/2 tbsp. taco seasoning, and jalapenos. Cook to boiling, reduce heat to medium, cover and simmer until jalapenos are tender. Serve with cheddar cheese, sour cream, sliced avocado, and tortilla chips. Enjoy!

Zuppa Toscana

1 lb. Italian sausage (skinned and crumbled)
1/2 lb. smoked bacon (chopped)
1 qt. water
2 cans chicken broth
4 large Russet potatoes (sliced, skins on)
2 cloves garlic (chopped)
1 medium onion (chopped)
2 cups kale (chopped)
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Place water, broth, potatoes, garlic and onion in a pot. Simmer ’til tender. Brown sausage, drain and set aside. Fry bacon, drain, and set aside. Add sausage and bacon to pot along with kale and cream. Heat thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bon appetit!

IT’S A GIRL!

Well, in case you didn’t hear the news already via Facebook, Twitter text, phone call, laser message on the moon, etc… we’re having a baby girl! Allison Lynn Harvey is due on June 9th! Little Alli’s doing great, she’s a growing girl! I can’t wait for our little princess to be born. I’m already wrapped around her little finger. Kudos to the vast majority of our friends and family who predicted that it would be a girl. We personally didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl, but letting everyone run rampant on the guessing was just about the most hilarious thing we’ve ever experienced!

So, in the weeks to come, we’ll probably start posting pictures of the nursery as we’re putting it together. We’ve already bought Alli’s bedding, because there was a specific set we liked at Babies R Us, and it was on clearance. Obviously, we didn’t want to wait any longer and risk it being sold out, so we went ahead and picked it up. Bonus: It was a SWEET deal! We’ll post pictures of it soon, as well. We’ve got colors picked out for the walls, furniture has been picked out, and everything’s coming together really well. God has blessed us with a beautiful baby girl, along with the means to put together her room just like we want to, and we are so thankful to Him for all of this and more. We appreciate your continued prayers of support!

Bona Fide Certified… (Almost!)

Big news on the job front within the past week or so. I’ve finally been admitted into the Texas Teachers alternative certification program! This means that all I have to do is take the TExES 8-12 Social Studies Composite Certification Exam and attend a few classes with Texas Teachers, and I will be certified to teach any secondary Social Studies course in the state of Texas. Huzzah! God is good! I should be all ready for the classroom by the Fall, so pray that everything goes swimmingly!

Also, tomorrow’s a BIG DAY for us. We will be finding out if Baby Harvey is a boy or a girl! Jenn’s gonna drink a big glass of OJ in the morning, so hopefully the baby will be wide awake by the time we start the sono. We’ll announce our little junebug’s name on here, Facebook, etc., once we find out the sex, so stay tuned!

Photoblog: RUN, HONEY! SAVE OUR BABY!!

Photoblog: Awwww, Poor Baby!

18 Weeks & Counting!

Happy Friday, friends!

So, on Tuesday, Jenn and I took a trip over to Arlington Memorial Hospital. Only it’s not called Arlington Memorial Hospital anymore, it’s called Texas Health Arlington Memorial. Silly hospital. Anyway, don’t worry, it wasn’t an emergency or anything! In fact, we went to go take a tour of the Women’s and Infant Care Center. They offer a very nice little tour of the entire wing for expecting mothers and their SO’s. And hey, Jenn’s an expecting mother and I’m an SO, so we figured why not? HA.

I keed, I keed. Really, Jenn was born there (delivered by the current mayor of Arlington, Dr. Robert Cluck), it’s close to home, and they really do have an excellent care center there. Also, Jenn’s babydoc is housed there, so it was a no-brainer for us to decide we want to have our baby at AMH.

Getting into the tour is a pretty simple deal. Basically, the lady giving the tour shows up in the waiting room at 7:00 to pick up anyone there for the tour, and off we go. The tour guide was a very sweet lady by the name of Dr. Shunk, who happened to be a former professor of Jenn’s at UTA (small world!). She walked us through everything in regards to what we’ll be doing when we come in on that wonderful night when we finally have our baby. She showed us delivery rooms, the nursery, and everything in between. It was a really great tour, and Dr. Shunk was incredibly nice and informative.

I gotta say, though, my favorite part of the entire evening was one particular thing she said while we were standing out in the hall. She was talking about how they no longer give pacifiers to the babies while they’re in the nursery, because it can result in them having difficulty with feeding later on. Makes perfect sense, of course, Jenn and I both support that. But the way she put it was the best part.

“We no longer give out pacifiers, because it can result in nipple confusion.”

Not kidding. The only other husband there and I both snorted a little when she said that. It was SO hilarious, the way she said it in her very matter-of-fact tone. It was greatness! I don’t know if it was the way she said it, or if the fact that the word “nipple” is just giggle-inducing in general (I mean, come on, it really is), but that just cracked. me. up. So awesome.

Anyway, the entire tour was great, and it really helped Jenn and me get a better idea of what to do when it’s time to bring the baby into the world!

Also, we got Blizzards at Dairy Queen afterward. Awesooooome.

2010: What A Year!

Well, hi there!

Welcome to our new blog! With 2011 beginning, we figured now would be a good time to get started on this. We’ll be blogging about our life in general, whether it’s about road trips, culinary adventures, fun with family and friends, etc.. And obviously, we’ll be talking about the biggest news of our life this year… but more on that later. Let’s start off with a little recap of our life in 2010!

In case you don’t know us, let’s just say 2010 was one heck of a year for us. In May, I FINALLY graduated from college… on the ten year plan. Ha!

I graduated from the University of Texas Arlington with my bachelor of arts degree in History. It was a huge accomplishment for me, because as I alluded before, it’s taken me ten years of off-and-on schooling to finally get it done. One of the best nights of my life was finally walking across that stage.

Picture’s a little blurry there. Jenn was kind of excited.

In retrospect, that picture of me walking across the stage is a pretty good representative of how the whole evening was for me: a big blur! If you want to see the rest of the pictures from graduation day, feel free to check out the gallery on Flickr.

Graduating was a wonderful feeling, but we didn’t have a lot of time to enjoy that before it was quickly replaced by something even better. In June, Jennifer and I finally got married!

The wedding was just spectacular. God blessed us with some amazing family and friends who spent the whole evening celebrating with us, both at the church and at the reception afterward.

The evening was ended with one epic sparkler send-off:

Best wedding EVAR. You can check out more pictures from the wedding and the reception in the Flickr gallery.

The next morning, we set out for yet another incredible experience: our honeymoon in Hawaii!

We spent a week on the beautiful island of Kauai, which is the oldest and least urbanized of the island chain. The island’s known for it’s incredibly lush and pristine natural environment. Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean were filmed there, among other awesome movies.

So, how was it? Let me answer by asking you a question. Have you ever been to a place where you felt like you were in one of those cheesy “Come Visit [place]…” commercials every moment of your vacation?

Yeah. KAUAI. Seriously, this was the view outside our balcony the morning we woke up, after getting to the hotel at 10 PM the previous evening:

And friends, it never stopped. For an entire week, we were treated to breathtaking views at every turn. We stayed at the Sheraton Kauai resort on the south end of the island, and it was just magnificent. The food was amazing, no matter where we went.

All right, now that we’re all drooling…

We drove around the island in a Chrysler 300 we rented, which only added to the awesomeness of the vacation. It was a great car for the winding roads of the island, and since the speed limit rarely gets above 40 mph there, it was perfect for just cruising and soaking it all in.

Also, there was enough head room for me to wear my shiny new Panama while driving. Bonus!

One of the most awesome things that struck me about the island was the way God had moved in the population there. There were several beautiful churches there, my favorite being the Wai’oli Hui’ia Church of Christ:

There was also a great moment the night of the luau at the resort. The emcee for the night, a fellow by the name of Dickie Chang…

… led us all in a Hawaiian blessing of the food. We recognized the tune of the song as the Doxology. I got chills when I heard it in the Hawaiian language. So cool!

Time and time again, we were reminded of His power by the incredible sights we got to see.

Alas, we couldn’t stay forever. Believe me, we wanted to. But after a week in paradise, we came back home as newlyweds. We didn’t really show it or anything.

Teehee. Anyway, if you’d like to see all of our pictures from Hawaii, you can check out the gallery here.

The rest of the summer blew through in a hurry. We spent two weeks vacationing with Jenn’s parents in Hot Springs, Memphis, and Jenn’s great aunt’s home in Alabama. I have pictures from there, but I’m sure you’re all pictured out by now, so I’ll hold off on that for now.

As Fall came around, we both started back to work. Jenn started in her new position as a 1st Grade teacher at Garner Elementary in Grand Prairie, and I went back to my job as the computer lab manager for Sam Houston High School. Hopefully I’ll be able to get my teaching certification this summer, so I can look into teaching next year!

So yeah, 2010 was quite an incredible year! But all of this pales in comparison to what God blessed us with just a few months ago…

We’re having a baby!!! Baby Harvey is due in early June! We’ll find out on the 19th of this month whether we’re having a boy or a girl. We already have names picked out, so we’ll share that info after we find out what we’re having.

So, it looks like 2011 is already off to an amazing start! Sorry this post was so photo-intensive, hopefully that didn’t wear you out too much. We hope you’ll come by more often as we continue to update the blog. Jennifer and I will both be posting as often as we can, so stay tuned and God bless!