Our "Crib List"

When you've been married for three years (next month), have steady jobs and now several empty bedrooms in your newly completed dream house, a lot of people start asking when you're going to have kids. We had always just said "eventually" or "some time," but now that we've finally finished building our nest, we've started to give it some thought and discussion.

What we've found is that there are still a few things we would like to do, learn and see before we're prepared to devote our lives to the next generation. I started calling it our bucket list, but after realizing that it would sound like I was comparing children to death, we decided the term "crib list" would be more appropriate. Building our perfect home was probably the biggest hurdle to us being settled enough to have kids, but there are lots of other things still to do.

To us, a crib list is a list of things we want to do before we have kids, to put it simply. For us, it's mostly travel. We've traveled a lot together already, but there's a lot more we'd like to see that we haven't, most notably Europe. Because our vacation time from work has limits, we'll have to pace ourselves, but that will give us time to plan. Our crib list is below, with items crossed through that we've already done since being together (we had to give ourselves some credit for our adventures from 2007-present).

Our "Crib List"

1.       Build dream house

2.       Furnish & decorate dream house - only two more empty rooms at this point! my goal is to finish the dining room before my best friend's bridal shower. the media room will come after that.

3.       Take lots of road trips together

a. D.C.

b. Las Vegas

c. NC Outer Banks

d. Chicago

e. Destin, FL – have been, would like to go back pre-baby

f. New Orleans – have been together several times, but would like to go back pre-baby

g. Houston – lived there together for 3.5 years, always want to go back

h. Austin

i. San Antonio

j. South Padre Island

k. Galveston

l. Dallas

m. Asheville

n. Charleston, SC

o. New York City – have been, but would like to go back pre-baby

p. Chicago

q. St. Louis

r. Springfield, IL

s. Adirondack Mountains

t. Miami

u. Myrtle Beach

v. Emerald Isle – have been, but would like to go back pre-baby. It's so good for a weekend trip.

w. Charlotte

x. Atlantic City

4.       Cruise the Caribbean together

a. Mexico

b. Jamaica

c. Cayman Islands

d. Costa Rica

e. Panama

f. Key West

g. Bahamas

h. US Virgin Islands – booked for July for our anniversary!

i. British Virgin Islands – booked for July for our anniversary!

j. Antigua – booked for July for our anniversary!

5.       Travel to Europe

a.       Italy 
b.      Malta 
c.       France 
d.      Greece 
e.      United Kingdom 
f.        Germany

6.       Travel to Hawaii with family – booked for November (thanks to Ross’s mom and step-dad!)

7.       Go out with friends

8.       Spend quality time with our dogs

9.       Volunteer – currently volunteering with one swim team & one animal charity but would like to ramp it up while we still have the time. I'm looking for a good veteran's charity if anyone knows of one.

10.   Buy a convertible - my car is on its last leg, so this one should justify itself before too long

11. Whitney learn to play the piano

12. Work on learning some French and/or Italian together before traveling there

13. Motorcycle trip between Ross and his dad in the NC mountains