Our New York Experience

This past week, Ryan and I had the amazing opportunity to fly to New York City and be interviewed by non other than Katie Couric herself! It was a really fun experience since neither one of us had been to New York and this was my first time flying. I suppose I'll start at the beginning so everyone can know the whole story about how this came to be.

It all started the afternoon on January 29, 2014.... I had just gotten home from substitute teaching and I turned on the TV to relax a little before thinking about making dinner and cleaning the house. I tend to watch The Ellen Show because Ellen is hilarious! As I was watching this time I started to laugh when she began talking about these interesting online dating sites that she had seen or heard about. I laughed because my husband and I met on a unique dating site- FarmersOnly.com. As I'm watching, I just had this feeling that Ellen was going to bring up the dating site that Ryan and I met through...well turns out she did! After seeing this I quickly sent out a tweet.... the pic is proof that I actually did this!

I also included FarmersOnly in the tweet. Soon I got a tweet back from someone at FarmersOnly saying that they would love to hear our story. So I sent them a private message that looked like this....

I emailed Nicole from FarmersOnly and told her a little more about our story. Then she asked if she could call and talk about it in more detail. I said sure why not! It's fun to talk about our love story. Little did I know that when I would talk on the phone with Nicole that she would share a really fun opportunity. After telling her about why I used the dating site, how long we talked before we actually met, how we got engaged, the wedding and that we are expecting this coming July, she dropped the news....Nicole told me that people are always looking to interview people that "Found Love" using the FarmersOnly.com website. Hearing this I thought that it would be a magazine or a newspaper looking to interview. She asked if Ryan and I would be interested and of course I said yes. That's when she threw out there that The Katie Show (hosted by Katie Couric) wants to interview people that met through the FarmersOnly dating site. She then explained that they would be flying us out to New York on February 12 and interview on the 13th. Mind you this whole conversation happened on February 3rd. I told her I wasn't sure what Ryan would say to this because we had already planned to go to the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville, Kentucky that same week, but I told her I'd let him know. 

I thought Ryan would want to go to the Farm Show, but he was all for doing this! The following are the text messages between Ryan and myself....I'm the Blue boxes and Ryan is the Grey...

After this things just seemed to fall into place for us to go to New York! After a few more days we were finally contacted by the assistant producer of The Katie Show wanting to pre-interview us for the show. We both talked with her separately to get our views on how we met and the whole story. Then it was left up to me and the travel coordinator to get things rolling and find a way to get us to NY! Before we knew it we had plane and hotel reservations in our hands that said destination: New York!

We flew out on February 12 around 1pm. This was my first time flying and Ryan was having a good time trying to make me freak out while on the plane. He tried to tell me that one of the bolts was loose on the plane wing while we were mid-flight! 

Goodbye, Chicago! 

We arrived at the Newark, New Jersey airport and we were greeted by our chauffeur who would be taking us to the Empire Hotel in New York City. I will honestly say that we were both happy to have someone else driving us around...New York is not some country back road! 

View from our hotel room.

Arriving at our hotel we promptly dropped off our luggage and headed in the direction of food! We ate at an Italian restaurant just across the street from our hotel, Cafe Fiorello. The food was delicious, or we were just  really hungry! But we also met a fun older couple that we ended up talking with throughout dinner time. Their names were Agnes and Elliot. Tables in the restaurant were so close together that another couple seated next to you was like they were at the same table, so we started up a friendly conversation. We discovered that Agnes was the co-founder of Community Food Advocates: Fighting Poverty & Hunger in New York City and Elliot used to be a violinist. He played several times at the Lincoln Center in New York, but he also told us that he was the recorded violinist for the song "Cat's In The Cradle" by Harry Chapin! How cool is that! Agnes and Elliot were also the couple that told us that if we wanted the real "New York experience" that we should take the subway to Times Square. 

So our next adventure that night was to Times Square! We jumped on the subway after being helped by a nice lady to buy our Metro tickets and most likely pissing some people off because we had no idea what we were doing! But we followed Agnes' directions to take the subway and get off after 3 stops, go any further and we would end up in the Bronx! The subway was scary. Nothing like taking the train to Chicago. We did make it to Times Square. And it sure is bright up there at night time! Here are some pictures that we took!

Can you find Batman?

After having to ask a cop and a nice young lady how to get back to our hotel using the subway we made it back to the "comfort" of our hotel room. "Comfort" as in it's not our bed and the traffic is so loud all the time! We woke up early on February 13th because a car was to be picking us up at 7 A.M. to take us the studio. We woke up and it was snowing. Waiting for our car we learned that our flight home that afternoon was already cancelled due to the snow storm that just so happened to wreck havoc on New York and the surrounding East Coast. Anyways we got to the studio and were quickly taken to the green room of The Katie Show. We sat there talking with 3 other couples that were also going to be on the show with us. There was Andy and Megan who met on FitnessSingles.com, Pia and Dale who met on GlutenFreeSingles.com, and Arni and Helena who met on chat room for singles 50 and older. We then were moved to hair and make-up (the men just had to be powdered), we were prepped on what questions Katie was going to ask us and then we were moved to back stage. We briefly met Katie while we were all being seated on stage and then the filming began! 

Ready for the camera!

Ryan and I were up first to talk and share our story....talk about being nervous! First of all, you are talking to Katie Couric. Second of all, you have like 5 cameras and all these really bright lights in your face. Third of all, you are in front of almost 100 people that have no idea who you are and probably think you are weird because you had to use an extremely unique dating site to find love. But to all those people that think using a unique dating site is weird....how many of you can say that you were interviewed by Katie Couric???? That's what I thought, so keep your comments to yourself! The interview took no time at all and we were quickly escorted off the stage back into the green room. 

We are the couple to the left of Katie when looking at the picture

Here is the link to the "Unique Love Found Online" episode:
 http://katiecouric.com/videos/unique-love-found-online/

That's when I felt like I could finally breathe again! But then came the question of how and when we were getting home. I talked with Hannah our travel coordinator and she quickly found us a new flight home...the next day at 7:15pm. We were kind of glad to be spending another day in NY, but we had no idea what to do! That's why we were glad to make friends with Arni and Helena who were on the show with us. We went to dinner with them and they showed us around Times Square a little more. We even went to see Jersey Boys (Ryan loved it!) 

At M&M World in NY...3 floors all dedicated to M&M's!

On our flight home the next day, Ryan and I decided that New York was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for these two country bumpkins! When you are used to the wide open spaces and quiet of the country you can't get used to the hustle and bustle of the city life. 

10 Things We Learned About New York:

1) There is a lot of people always moving

2) Water in the hotel room cost way too much! $7.50 for a bottle of Fiji

3) Times Square is really bright at night

4) People look at you weird when you ask for help finding your way around this ginormous city 

5) Everything is crowded or really small: restaurants, subways, hotel rooms...

6) They put snow plows and salt on their garbage trucks...genius!

7) Our New York Chauffeurs were not as nice as the chauffeur we had when we landed in Chicago

8) Even 8 stories up you can still hear cars honking their horns and the buildings just amplify the sound!

9) There are Purdue Grads there too! Ran into one at the theater when we went to see Jersey Boys. Boiler Up!

10) 20 city blocks equal 1 mile in the city. 1 mile normally equals the distance between two county roads in the country!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Stop!

This has been a year of snow for sure! I can't remember the last time that I've seen a year this snowy before. I do remember the Blizzard of 1998 where we were out of power for days and we kept warm by sleeping in the basement next to the fireplace. 

This year has been an interesting one for sure with all this snow.  With the wind blowing we definitely had some interesting snow drifts pop up around our house. It really made it hard to get in and out of the house!

The drift had to be downsized a little so that we could get in the house, but the top of the drift was halfway in front of the door! 

This winter it's been hard to get out and do things outside with temperatures being so cold. But I've found that cold temps do not keep my husband from doing what he loves: Ice Fishing. He is out on a lake or a pond just about every weekend trying to catch those fish (or sometimes just a cold!) I've learned too, that if you want to spend time with your hubby you will try new things that he loves, so I went ice fishing with him! I've only been once and out of the 24 fish that we caught, I caught 3 of them....3. I'm a competitive person sometimes and I wasn't happy with my catches of the day, but it was still fun being on the ice and spending time with Ryan.

Having a winter like this makes me really excited about spring and summer. I can't wait to start planting my garden and harvesting the fresh produce....nothing like biting into a freshly picked sun-warmed tomato! YUM! And of course with the return of summer means that we get to welcome our little bundle of joy into the world! We are getting excited and can't wait to start working on the baby's nursery! 

The start of our garden last year, 2013.

As I'm sitting here watching the snow fall again, I can't help but notice the beauty of freshly fallen snow. Its very calm out today and everything has a clean white blanket on it. The trees are beautiful with their snow covered branches.  But it's cold out and I'm tired of snow, so I wouldn't mind if this all melted and we had some 60 or 70 degree weather! Bring on the warm weather! 

County Fair, Summer 2013

First comes LOVE. Then comes MARRIAGE. Then comes BABY???

Happy New Year!!!!! I hope that you all have had a wonderful Christmas and are starting the New Year off right!

Now let's get down to the nitty gritty of this post. You probably think there is some big news that I'm going to drop today if you've just read the title of this post....well, you are absolutely RIGHT!!! 2013 was full of surprises and Ryan and I cannot wait to meet our little surprise that's due July 10! That's right folks, we are going to be parents! 

The last 13 weeks have been a whole new life experience that are just going to keep getting more exciting! We found out we were expecting on Halloween weekend. I was one day late (I'm usually never late) and I just had this feeling that things were different. Going into freak-out mode, I started balling my eyes out and luckily my wonderful husband comforted me and told me everything was going to be just fine. I wish that would have helped me to stop crying....I wasn't crying because I don't want children. I have always known I wanted to be a mother. I was crying more because I had all these thoughts running through my head...am I ready to be a Mom? Can I handle taking care of someone else? Will I be a good Mom? Is my child going to like me? What is the future going to be like now? How big is my belly going to get? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

I finally pulled my self together and went to the drugstore to pick up a pregnancy test....but I chickened out and ended up buying tampons just in case I was wrong....turns out I was wrong buying more tampons! The next day I went and actually bought a pregnancy test along with a bunch of other crap so that I could hide the test in my basket!

When I took that first test I honestly thought I was going to have mini heart attack....talk about the longest 3 minutes of your life! Ryan wasn't home and I thought I could handle this. Well, I did my thing in the bathroom and then waited and looked and waited and LOOKED.....Was that second pink line supposed to be there???? This is when I started to mildly hyperventilate. And it was just moments after I looked at the pregnancy test again that Ryan called me. Let's just say that I cannot lie to save my life and Ryan knew the instant I answered the phone that our lives were going to change for the better. But I didn't believe that test was correct, so like any other sane person I took 3 more tests!

Eventually, after the 4th pregnancy test, I came to the conclusion that this was real. Monday morning I called the doctor's office and set up my appointment. I still laugh about this moment because when the receptionist asked me why I wanted to make an appointment all I had to say was, "Well, I just took four pregnancy tests and they all came back positive. What's that tell you?" I'm glad she had a sense of humor and just laughed with me!

That first doctor appointment was so awesome! It was the first time I was able to see our little surprise. Even though I took four pregnancy tests, I still didn't believe I was pregnant until I saw the ultrasound. The next best moment just happened the other day at my 13 week appointment when I got to hear the heart beat for the first time....such a cool sound!

It's funny to think how much a year can change things. Last year at this time Ryan and I were counting down to our wedding day, July 6, 2013. This year we are counting down the next short 6 months until we get to actually meet our little surprise!

Fun Facts About the Pregnancy:
Morning sickness: Yes! It was all day long and sometimes during the night. It only lasted from about weeks 8-11. But I never puked!
Cravings: Meat and potatoes
Maternity clothes: Not yet! But clothes are starting to get tight and I love using my Belly Band so I don't have to zip or button up my pants and feel uncomfortable all day!
Weird dreams: Been having a few!
Tired: I'm up by 5:30am and in bed by 8pm sometimes!
Felt the baby move: Not yet, but I can't wait!