Utterly Dissapointed

So I just have to vent for a sec. I just found out that the movie Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince has changed it's release date from November of this year to July of 2009. What!!!! For those of you who are avid Harry Potter fans this may be as much of a let down to you as it was for me. (By the way Mike does not support this post:) I guess Warner Brothers wanted to release the film during the summer months in order to make more money. I'm sure they would make plenty of money as it is if it were released in November. It wouldn't be as unfortunate except for the fact that they already posted their release date and got my hopes up. Oh well. I'm sure it won't be as good as the book, which was my favorite of the series. I guess that gives me one more thing to look forward too (or wait for). So that is the end of my rant. I guess it's time for me to move on and not be so obsessed.:)

Albert Pujols, Arctic Glaciers, Kentucky, and No Bats

My wife is the best wife in the whole world!!! Not only did she decide to get a cat (which she loves), but she agreed to go see a baseball game with me (something she has been dreading). Yesterday we headed down to Cincinnati and it was a lot of fun (sorry there are no pictures our camera's batteries died). It only ended up being an hour and a half away. We first went to the Museum of Natural History. And although I think we both agree that we would rather see live animals than prehistoric bones from animals, it was really interesting. They have a full size cave and arctic glacier replica. They are supposed to have live bats in their cave, but we didn't see any. After the museum we were on our way to the stadium to see my favorite team the St. Louis Cardinals play the Reds, we got a little lost and ended up in Kentucky. It was OK though, because now I can say that I have been in 18 states. The baseball game was way sweet. Albert Pujols hit two home runs and the Cardinals won easily. I think that even Amy enjoyed herself.

"It's a GIRL!!!"

So after a long deliberation, we have decided to add a new addition to our little family of two. It has been quite the long and process. We are really excited to announce that we have officially adopted a beautiful 2 year old girl.:) She is soooo beautiful and very well behaved. She does like a lot of attention which we are both very happy to give. Unfortunately we both have to work and so we'll have to leave her home alone for a lot of the day. Hopefully she won't get too stir crazy.

O.K. so I FINALLY caved and today we got ourselves a cat. She is a lot of fun. She just loves to be with us. She truly just follows us wherever we go. We had to leave her for a couple of hours today and I was so nervous. (Mostly because she hasn't gone to the bathroom in her litter box yet, but luckily she hasn't gone anywhere else.) I guess we'll see how tomorrow goes. She is actually sitting next to me while I'm writing this. She wanted to help me write at first but that wasn't working out to well. We decided to name her Grace Melodee (Gracie) after her aunt Melodee who goes into the MTC tomorrow. YEAH!!!!! Melodee, we are so proud of you and Matt. It is so nice having 2 missionaries in the family right now. Matt is doing great and has been learning some valuable lessons. He has his first baptism soon. We are definitely going to be missing Melodee as well, but she is going to be an awesome missionary.

So life is going really well. We are loving our time here in Ohio and are having some great experiences as well.

Eventful Weekend

This has been a wonderful summer for us because we have luckily had a lot of time to travel and see a lot of sites out here. Mike doesn't start school until the middle of September and so we still have a bit of a summer break left. Once school starts and the machine that Mike is using for his research gets fixed then it will definetely be crunch time. As it is we were lucky to be able to go to Kirland last weekend. It is only 2 1/2 hours away and so we decided to make the trip in just one day. It was a great experience going to the church's visitors center. It was dedicated by President Hinckley a few years ago and has the original Newell K. Whitney home and store. We were also able to learn more about the saints in Kirland at that time. We also had a great tour of the Kirtland temple. It is interesting to see the Community of Christ's perspective on things. They've done a pretty good job of keeping the temple and the grounds looking nice. I was able to go to Kirtland about 11 years ago and things have changed a lot since then. We could really feel the spirit of the Restoration while we were there. I just wanted to break into singing "The Spirit of God" as we were sitting in the Kirtland temple. It was a nice weekend and then on Monday my Dad and Dorothy came out to visit. They were nice enough to come and visit us while on their trip out East. We had family night with them and a new couple in our ward. It was a lot of fun. On Tuesday we went to the Columbus Zoo. The last time Mike and I went it was raining and really didn't seem as big to me as it did on Tuesday. Wow they really had a lot to see and we pushed pretty hard. It was a good, but tiring day at the zoo. Mike was able to get some pretty good pictures of the animals. Now it's time to get back to work again. We've been very blessed to be able to see family so much this summer. We'll take every opportunity we can.

The Worst News of The Week

I just found out that Ken Griffey Jr was just traded from the Cincinnati Reds to the Chicago White Sox. Normally I wouldn't really care since I'm not a big Griffey fan, and I don't really care about either the Reds or White Sox. However, we have tickets for the Reds vs Cardinals (my favorite team) on August 16th, and I was really looking forward to seeing one of the greatest hitters in the game and the smoothest swing I've ever seen. We even have seats right behind where Griffey was supposed to play. What a joke!!!

On a related note, the ohio welcome packet hotline is going to need another spokesman. We were told about the hotline last week and when I called I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by none other than Ken Griffey Jr. Now that he's gone to Chicago, maybe I'll try out for the spokesman Job.

Duck Update

I just received word that our little duckling we saved a couple months back has been successfully re-introduced into the wild by the wildlife center!!! In other news, we've decided that for now we will not be getting a cute adorable kitty. A special sarcastic thanks to all of our family who convinced Amy against the idea.

Campout Crusaders

Although I would love to take credit for the beautiful testimony, that was shared by my sweet husband. It was even a suprise to me. He was reading this months Ensign and took Elder Ballards message to heart. He is a great example to me.

So we have had a crazy past couple of weeks. The trip we had been anticipating for months has come and gone and now we are getting back to normal, but first we need to relive some of the great moments we had in Utah.

Our trip started out with a few glitches. We arrived at the airport bright and early only to discover that our flight had been delayed 4 hours. This delay therefore prohibited us from making our connecting flight so we were delayed a few more hours until we could find a flight to Salt Lake City. The wait wasn't too bad, but we unfortunatley missed the Sugar House fireworks. The Sharp side of the family had a wonderful 4th of July planned and they had to change their plans pretty quickly. It was great of them to be so flexible. We were able to see some pretty good fireworks for the 4th and it was just great to see family. We were able to see our newest nephew Holland for the first time and he was sure a cutie. We had a great weekend spending time with family and enjoying just having a nice break. We then headed up to Logan/Tremonton. My brother David was nice enough to lend us a vehicle and on the way up north we stopped and took our nephew Ian out to lunch. He was luckily in Utah the same time we were and it was great to see him. He's great. That night we ran a few errands in Logan, had dinner with some friends and then I got my hair chopped off. I had been wanting to donate my hair to "Locks of Love" for a long time and this was a good chance to do that and have a change. Luckily Jackie was able to cut it for me and I am really happy with it. It is definetly not as heavy. We spent the next few days with the Pierce side of the family. We helped my Mom around the house. We accomplished a little bit, but there is quite a lot left to do. I wished we could've been able to stay long enough to finish it, but it was a big job. We went to the Pierce reunion/campout and had a great time. It was just nice to be around family. We don't get together that much and so it was really nice. We went "surfing" behind David's boat and we both made it up and surfed for at least a little while. It was sad to say goodbye, but good to see everyone. Luckily we were able to spend some more time with family as it was the Sharp family campout the same weekend. It was quite a different expereince because this time we were actually "camping". We had the firepit, tents, and bugrepellant to show for it. We had a great time. Mike's family loves to sing songs around the campfire and we also had a dutch oven cookoff. It's great when no matter what it is you are doing, it is just nice to be around family. Mike's sister Merilee and her husband Mark were able to come from Vegas and so we had all the sisters there. We don't know when we will be coming home again, but it was nice to have such a long visit. Coming back to Ohio has really made me realize, even more then before, that for Mike and me this is really "our" life together. It's a little scary not knowing where we will be for the rest of our lives, but the important thing is that we have each other, and everything else will work out for the best.

It has been nice being back in Ohio. I was really starting to miss the kids in my class. They were so excited when I walked in the door. "Amy, it's Miss Amy"!! they all shouted. I guess they had missed me just as much. It's nice that we are able to get so attached, but sad at the same time to realize how much more time they spend with us as the day care then their own families. Hopefully when we have kids, I'll be able to stay home with them. Unfortunatley not everyone has that opportunity. So we are trying to get back into the swing of things. Mike is just doing research for the summer and school will start back up in the end of September. It gives us a long Summer.
O.k. so I know this post is FOREVER long but I just have to put in a word about the movie "The Dark Knight". I was a little tenative about seeing it and probably for good reason. We saw it a couple days ago, and while it was VERY well done, it was pretty dark and disturbing. I could really appreciate a lot of things about the film, but it is definetly something you will not want to take your children too, and if you are looking for a fun, enjoyable movie, THIS IS NOT IT! (Just my opinion you understand)
I guess that's it for my soap box.

Well, we hope you all have a great 24th of July.