Cute Kids

So I have to gush a little bit about the cute little ones in my life right now. Now that I am no longer working with toddlers, but with 3 year olds, my work days are definitely a lot less stressful and the kids are sure cute. I just wanted to post a few pictures of the kids in my class. It is always nice to walk into work and hear 5 kids yelling "Miss Amy, Miss Amy". They really help to start the day off right. It isn't perfect all of the time, but they sure have their moments when they tug at your heart. One of my favorite little girls just left to go to a different "center". I am really going to miss her. I hope she does well at her new school. A new school year is starting and so we are getting a few new students as well. There is always a transition time for student and teachers and we are getting a couple younger students from the toddler class. It is amazing to see the difference in the students who have been in our class for a few months compared to those who are just coming in. This new little girl has no desire to sit during circle time, or follow many directions. She is presenting an interesting challenge for us, but I'm sure she'll get the hang of it. She's still pretty young as well. I'm also enjoying my co-workers a lot more. I've finally gotten to the point where I feel more comfortable being myself around them and they basically know what I'm all about. I felt a little unsure how to fit in at first because I was new to the state, and just had different ways of doing things since I am from Utah and am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but it has been a great learning opportunity for me and I've had some great opportunities to share the gospel with my co-workers. The Lord definitely has some wonderful things planned for us here in Ohio.

The other cutie in our lives right now is our CAT!!! She is so adorable. I guess our lives pretty much revolve around her right now. She is such a novelty.:) Gracie loves to sleep with us at night and play during the day. It's sad that we are gone so much because she gets so bored, but Mike has come up with some homemade cat toys which she loves to play with. She also just loves to sit and look out the window. I'm guessing the birds are pretty interesting. She gets sad that she can't go outside, but for her own safety we want to keep her inside. Hopefully she'll get used to it soon. Gracie and our hamster Deb are the best of friends. Gracie is facinated by Deb in her little ball. Deb loves to run full speed in to Gracie. Of course we don't let them play unsupervised.:) So that is our fun life for this week. Life is going well and we are truly being blessed.

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.