Sugar & spice and everything...Mmm!

These pictures are mainly for my two sisters...they should bring back some good memories. I took Bella and Ava on a special outing the other day to our local mall. I hardly ever go there...and very rarely bring the kids. In fact, other than a couple of trips to the attached Chuck E. Cheese, I don't think they've been there more than 3 times in over 4 years.
So it was a pretty special thing to go to the mall with mommy- and even more fun for them when they had their first cinnamon pretzel sticks at Auntie Anne's. I almost felt bad that they are 4 and almost 6 and this was the first time they'd had hot, fresh-out-of-the oven pretzels. You can probably guess what one of their new favorite foods is now! I couldn't help but tell them about how their own Aunt Jacque loves hot pretzels too. At least she did back in the day...
Speaking of back in the day, one of MY favorite foods has always been Carrot Cake. I especially love it moist with coconuts and walnuts and not too much cream cheese frosting on top- just enough to bring it altogether. Chip and I had carrot cake at our wedding reception and we also met and worked at a restaurant that for quite a long time served Carrot Cake Haagen Daz ice cream on their dessert menu. I loved it so much- it was no secret among the employees either! I'd sometimes skip my employee meal and just have a bowl of ice cream before my shift. And you can imagine how sad I was when they stopped making this favorite flavor of mine. I've craved it for years since then...but never found it anywhere.
Until this weekend.
When I had to make a stop at Wal-Mart. Some of you know that I don't particularly care for grocery shopping, but with the number of people in our household, it's a weekly chore for sure.
The only craving I've had during this pregnancy has been ice cream, and it's only been for about the past 3 weeks. The kids have been very happy with my new-found obession with ice cream for dessert and we've been going through lots of fun flavors too. I was just finishing up my grocery list and headed to the ice cream section at Wal-mart fully expecting to grab some plain old vanilla so that we could make some malts at home. I went straight for their 'cheap, store brand' knowing we would add our own fruit and malted milk when suddenly I spied "Carrot Cake" on the shelf. Needless to say, I am now a huge fan of Wal-mart, and I am hoping that enough people start buying this flavor so that they make it a staple in their freezers all the time! The best part isn't the bits of spices that you can see in the ice cream, but the swirls of cream cheese frosting. Mmmm.
My biggest concern is that I still have several weeks to go in my pregnancy and with this ice cream craving I've had topped off with this new found flavor, I will blown my total weight gain long before the 9-month mark! And if 'you are what you eat' really is a true statement, well then I have a feeling that this baby boy I'm carrying is going to be a whole lot more 'sugar & spice' than he will be 'puppy dog tails'. And that's perfectly okay with me.