Happy St. Patrick's Day...

Today as I sit alone in my apartment wearing my four leaf clover pin, trying to recover from yet another sleepless night, I can't help but compare this day to the same day last year.

Last St. Patrick's Day was and will forever be the best St. Patrick's Day of my life.

I spent it in one of my favorite places: New York City...

with one of my favorite people: my Dad...

participating in two of my favorite pastimes: parade watching, and sight seeing.

It was the most perfect day ever but on this, the anniversary of that day I'm left feeling melancholy, wishing I was someplace else.

Like getting lost in a festively green colored crowd

or feeding hot nuts to bold squirrels in central park.

Mall Secret

Friday night I discovered something that has somehow escaped my attention for the 10+ years that I've been a frequent mall patron.

With nothing else to do on a Friday night Brady and I went to the Galleria at closing time. We had half an hour to wander around aimlessly and look at things, my typical mall strategy.

As we passed Mrs. Fields I felt bad for all the uneaten cookies that were going to waste and jokingly asked Brady to see if they'd give us some for free. I was pretty confident that he'd get shot down but they told him that 15 mins before closing time they sell leftovers for $o.25. Not a bad deal considering they're delicious and normally about $1.50. So we walked away pretty happy with our 25 cent cookies.

Emboldened by our new discovery we walked up to the food court pizza place to see what they'd give us. We got a greasy slice for a dollar instead of the usual $3-4.

Even though we had actually just eaten cheeseburgers before arriving at the mall we thoroughly enjoyed scarfing down our cheap food and plan on going back again to see what other closing time deals we've been missing out on all these years.

(Next time I think we'll try Auntie Anne's Pretzels and Panda Express.)

31 Weeks down

The weeks we have left until the big day are in the single digits now and we're really starting to accumulate a lot of baby supplies.

Last week we received our lovely crib. It only took four people and a little bit of bickering to put together. Of course we could have waited and left it in the box for a few more weeks but it was too tempting just sitting there all in it's cute little pieces.

We also have a stroller from craigslist that I've pushed around the apartment a time or two for practice. The look on Brady's face is pretty indicative of his interest level when it comes to picking out baby things.

My grandma got us this infant car seat. Brady decided to go for the deer-in-the-headlights look for this picture.

Since last week we have also acquired a bassinet and a swing among other things. I've quickly realized that babies need a lot of stuff and our cozy apartment is not really equipped to hold all of these necessities.