Happy Halloween!!!

It is funny how many people have asked Mike and I if we celebrate Halloween. I guess celebrate is a funny term, but Yes we enjoy the festivities of the Halloween holiday.:) For Family Night we got to carve our pumpkins. I remember while growing up I would ask my mom back in September when we could carve our pumpkins. It was my favorite part, besides dressing up and the candy of course. We always had to be patient though and wait until a few days before so our pumpkins "wouldn't go bad."
Last year we bought pumpkins and never got around to carving them so we had to show off the awesome finished products. We had to do the cat in honor of "Gracie Lou Hoo". It was fun and definitely a lot easier when you have a pumpkin carving kit. (I am a big fan) I guess in our county the kids will be going trick or treating on Thursday instead of on Friday. This makes it so the kids won't be out so late since they schedule it on a school night. I guess it makes sense, but seems a little odd to me at the same time. We are going to our friends the Gardner's for a Halloween party. We will be watching "Watcher in the Woods" and for those of you who know me well, you will know that the scariest movie I have ever seen and have previously refused to watch since, is Watcher in the Woods. I know, it's pretty tame, but I HATE!!!! scary movies, so I will hide my head in Mikes arm and enjoy the fun of being together with everyone. I'm sure I'll be fine. It has been nice to have other couples to do stuff with. It's nice since we are so far away from family.

For work last week we had a "Boo Bash" , basically a Halloween party for families. There were games, costumes, candy, etc. For months my co-workers have been asking me what I am dressing up as. Apparently they all take it very seriously and go and buy elaborate costumes. This was my perception anyway. I am pretty lame when it comes to costumes. I usually just find something in my closet and make it work. This year I wore my pajamas, a bathrobe, put my hair in curlers, and put a green mask on my face. I thought it was pretty lame, but since only 1 other person dressed up for the day at school, my costume was a hit. It was really funny to see all of the Dad's and their "double takes" of the crazy teacher in pajamas. "What was she thinking?" Luckily the other teachers finally got in costume by the party. So we have had a fun and eventful fall so far, and although we might not be able to go home for the holidays we are excited for those as well.

So I know this is silly to post a picture of my Prego body, but my sister Jackie wanted a month by month update of my growing belly. Since I always thought is was fun to see her getting HUGE, I guess I an afford her the same pleasure. So here ya go Jack. This is me at 15 weeks.

A Weekend in the Life of Mike

One of the nicest things I can do for my wife is to write on our blog. So since we had a fun weekend, I thought I would write a few words about it and surprise Amy. I'm imagining when she finds out she'll probably get a little teary eyed with excitement, then she'll probably want to hug and kiss me a lot.
It started with a Friday night excursion to our favorite pumpkin festival in Circleville. Circleville is only 30 minutes away according to locals, but it took us an hour to get there in the "everybody in Columbus is trying to get to the same little small town" traffic. We ended up going with some of our friends from our Ward, which was fun. The festival was a really good time besides the elbow to elbow people traffic that we had to shimmy our way through to get from place to place. There wasn't as much pumpkin stuff as I was expecting, but I was still able to try some pumpkin cake, pumpkin scone, pumpkin donuts, and even a pumpkin burger (which surprisingly didn't taste very good). They also had an enormous thousand pound pumpkin and the largest pumpkin pie probably in the world, but maybe just Circleville. Either way, it was larger than Amy's nephew's could probably eat, but maybe not.

Saturday morning was an amazing adventure in taking my little brother Mike to the zoo. Since my real little brother is serving a mission in Seattle I decided to get a new little brother by becoming a mentor with the Big Brother's Big Sister's program. So far it has been a lot of fun. I made the mistake yesterday, however, to let little Mike get a Volt soda pop. I'm not sure why I thought letting an already attention deficit seven year old drink a highly caffeinated and sweetened drink would be a good idea. He was all over the place, but the zoo was a good place for that. There is so much to look at that he could just bounce from one animal to the next. He wanted to look at every little thing as well, so even though he didn't want to look at anything for too long, we still didn't make it around even half the zoo. It was funny because he decided that he was going to be my zoo guide. Whenever we would go to see a new animal he would tell me what it was and other random information. For example "oh Michael! look here is a flat green snake, it is poisonous and can eat a whole kid, I mean man whole, it lives in Texas." He told me when we left that I should quit school and work at the zoo so that we could go all the time.
Saturday night we played some games with some of our other friends here in Columbus. We ate some Delicious soup compliments of Chef Amy, and played a couple of games. Of course I dominated! Today has been a really good Sunday. We are helping our primary kids practice for the primary program next week. Our primary presidency is pulling out all the stops, singing in different languages, chimes, sign language. It should be pretty fun. Well, this post is over. Now I just have to wait for the tearful hugs and kisses.

Introducting........Baby Sharp!!!!!

For those of you who were under the impression that we would be forever cat owners and never parents, we finally have some good news! We had our 2nd Ultrasound today and everything is going well with Baby Sharp #1 Yeah!!!!! We are currently 3 months along and counting. I am crossing my fingers and praying that everything will work out o.k. For those of you who know me well I am the biggest worrier! I guess I take after my mom in that respect. So although I worry and want everything to work out o.k. we are also really excited and hopeful. I feel really blessed that after a long wait I will hopefully get the opportunity to be a mother. Mike is going to be a wonderful father and I am so thankful that I have such a great companion to help me through everything that is to come. It's definitely a changing point in our lives. It's funny to think back to when I was younger. Everything seemed so easy and effortless back when I was naive and had no clue what to expect. Since being single for awhile and now being married, it will be an adjustment of my time for sure. It's amazing how selfish you get with your time when you don't have too many other responsibilities needing it. So, while I am obviously STILL naive, (of course you can never truly prepare yourself for something like this), I am excited and have a desire to share whatever time, means, etc. will be necessary for our growing family. We truly have been blessed.

P.S. We weren't able to get any fun pictures of the baby because the ultrasound machine wasn't working so stay tuned for official baby pictures in 6 weeks.

Big Fish Story

So for those of you who think we lead a very busy and crazy life, our evening conversations tend to go something like this, "So what you wanna do?" "I don't know, what you wanna do?" "I don't know..." This conversation usually ends with us watching something on t.v. or a movie. This tends to get old, so in order to break the monotony a little bit I decided it was my turn to plan something different to do. Mike is really good at doing this on a regular basis, but I'm just not quite as creative. So on my way home from work I picked up some sandwiches and headed off to pick up Mike from school. He had noooo idea that I had something up my sleeve. He had recently taken his "little brother" fishing, and so the poles and tackle were still in the care. (The "little brother" story is Mikes for another day) So I picked him up and slyly drove to the river to have a picnic and go fishing. We aren't avid fishers but we like to fish now and then, but had yet to catch a single fish the whole time we've been together. Our luck was about to change. I had no sooner cast my line when I got a bite! And boy was it a big fish!!! (The guy in the picture is the one we found to gut it) It was a bass and I am used to trout. Well, after an enormous struggle on my part we finally reeled it in. We were TRIUMPHANT!!!! Well, it wasn't exactly the biggest fish I had ever seen. It was actually only about 4 inches long, but it was a catch none-the-less, and we let it go. Now we know where and when they like to bite so we'll have to go back before it gets too cold. Even if we hadn't caught a fish it was just nice to be out on the beautiful river spending some peaceful time with my sweetie. Well, until our next adventure!

La Michoacana

Most of you know that I (Mike) went on my mission to Detroit speaking Spanish. Since then I'm always craving good authentic Mexican food. Columbus, even according to locals, is pathetically void of good Mexican food. Last night, however, we were able to find a diamond in the rough when we ate at "La Michoacana". It is a small Mexican market in a somewhat dicey area (the best place to find good Mexican food), and in the corner of the store is a quaint little taqueria. I had to teach Amy a couple of Spanish words to get by, because the waitress didn't speak any English, which was another good sign. Compared to other Mexican Restaurants the food and prices were awesome, however compared to some other authentic places, it was about average.
After eating we grocery shopped in the Market. We got killer deals on some meat and produce. All of the products and smells and people, really took me back to my days in Detroit. It was a lot of fun!

Sick Kitty

So some may say that we are overly obsessed with our cat, which is partly true because she is pretty spoiled, but she is also not feeling well lately. Awhile after we got her we started to notice a sore patch above her eye up to her ear. She likes to scratch it which makes sores. We took her to the vet and they told us that she probably just has allergies. So when she continued to sneeze and have eye colds we just chalked it up to the allergies. Well, we decided to take her to the vet again, and just make sure that she was o.k. or get some kind of medication for her eyes. 2 hours later we had received multiple possible diagnosis's including "ring worm" as a possibility for the patch over her eye. So we're getting that checked out and our cat now has a stack of medicine for eyes, upper respiratory infection, as well as a flush for the possible fungus. Wow!!!! I hate to think what all of our outside cats had while I was growing up. They sure didn't get this kind of special treatment. Although we are trying to help, Gracie sure doesn't think this anything too great. She puts up a fit whenever we try to give her her medicine. Hopefully she'll get used to it, we'll discover there really isn't that much wrong with her, or we'll just stop worrying about every little thing. (We, meaning Me (Amy)) Mike had decided that when we have a kid that I am going to take it to the doctor every week!!! I don't think I'll be quite that bad. At least I hope not because it sure is getting expensive. She's worth it though.