'09 AZ State Fair

To bid THE Ms. Karen Campbell a fond farewell and celebrate her last weekend with us in the good ol' U. S. of A, we decided to treat her like royalty, to associate with the highest quality citizens that our country has to offer. What better to do this than the Arizona State Fair; the place where dreams come true. Where you can go to get your smell of livestock fix, your annual dose of Indian fry bread, the best people watching around and to let the kid out, the occasional fair ride.

Brannon and Amanda came with too. Amanda was set on winning a stuffed monkey coming out of a banana. Poor Brannon spent a good $20 trying to win her the thing. We found this game that looked simple enough. We thought for sure we could do it. All you had to do was throw a wiffle ball off this backboard thing into a laundry basket. Easy enough right? Uh, nope...impossible. We had fun trying anyway.

If you're at the fair, you've got to ride the rides. They were giving out free tickets to ride the ferris wheel, so we hit them up and tried it out. We couldn't JUST do the ferris wheel though. Where's the fun in that? So we had a little competition. Julie and I, Brannon and Amanda all went down the EuroSlide, the stratified monstrosity you see in the picture up above. Uh, that's Rick by the way, in the front, coming from behind to steal the victory from the hopeful Dr. Gunnell. YES!

Last but not least...fair food. I mean seriously, where else can you get cotton candy, Indian fry bread or a deep fried pickle on every other corner? By far the best story of the night when it came to food was Kate Orme's corn dogs. Apparently little Miss Orme wanted a corn dog, so she went to one of the corn dog concession stands to pick one up. As she walking around, enjoying said corn dog, another man, at another corn dog concession stand called her over and said: "hey, if you throw the rest of that corn dog you have in your hand away, I'll give you one of mine for free." Apparently Kate hadn't had enough for the night, so she threw the 3 inches that remained of her foot long corn dog to get yet another foot long corn dog. And did she finish it? By golly she sure did. Way to go Kate, you make us proud.

Utrasound Pics

I went for an ultrasound and walked away with a CD full of pictures. I didn't know they were going to do some 3-D! Man, those are pretty crazy, makes it a lot more realistic. Here are some of baby's best poses!

Rick couldn't go with because of class, but I asked my mom if she wanted to come and meet the babe, so of course she came. They asked me if I was interested in finding out the sex....I was confused a little...I thought that wasn't happening until week 18, this was only about week 12. I hesitated a little because Rick wasn't there, but curiosity got the best of me. They said that it looks like a little boy! Rick was super excited when I told him. Sure, now he wants the baby...jk :) We aren't really picking a name yet though since 1 in 5 are wrong about sex this early. But it's fun to start thinking about. Oh, and the baby was actually measuring at about 13 weeks and 4 days in these.

Berry Baby!

We were trying to figure out what we wanted to do to get our weekend started on a Friday night. Our conclusion was to just get a movie and have a laid back night. While we were out I suggested we pick up a pregnancy test....we had been "trying" for a little while and I was late for my time of the month. When we got home we decided, "why wait?" so I peed in a styrophome Christmas cup and we watched as the 2 lines appeared :)

So, June 26th became a rather eventful night insead of just a laid back movie night.

Excited Daddy-to-be!

Baby incubator :)

We decided to wait and tell my family until every one was together. Everyone was going up to Greer for the 4th of July. Ted and Stef were driving in from Philly and I convinced Amanda and Brannon to come (I had to tell Amanda the news before-hand because they had decided not to go up because Brannon had to work, but the news changed thier minds and they came up). We called Rick's parents on our way up and told them the good news. This will be grandbaby number 12 for them and grandbaby number 1 for my folks.

Rick waited until August at his family's family reunion to tell his siblings. He blessed me and the baby in a family prayer...I think he caught them a little offguard :)

It's official, we are going to be parents...a little scary, life changing and very exciting!

Lake Time

We have actually made some friends in our new ward, Sarah and Jerry Johnson. They invited us to join them at the lake one Friday afternoon. It was a much needed break for Rick after finishing his final for his first 5 week course of the summer term. We had a blast!

Rick looking sooo good.

The beginning of one crazy ride!

Yep, it was a crazy one, but we survived and had a great BBQ after!

Thank you Johnsons!

Thank You Coco!

The other day when I got to work, I greeted the dogs as usual and played with them for about 5 minutes. Then, I went to the bathroom before getting started for the day. When I went to wash my hands, I noticed that something looked weird…a diamond was missing! That’s right, one of the “big” diamonds from my ring was gone. I said, “Shoot!” (ok, maybe I didn’t exactly say shoot…) then I started retracing my steps through the bathroom and bedroom.

Then, I remembered all of the stories from primary aged kids about praying to be able to find their toys…so that’s what I did. I said a little prayer. When I got into the living room I started looking on the rug where I had played with the dogs. I saw nothing, but then Coco got up from where she was laying on the rug and there it was!! It was definitely a miracle, because that dog thinks she is a goat and had I been a few minutes late my diamond would have found a new home in her little intestines. All I have to say is, tender mercies.

Spring Time in Arizona

One of the greatest things about Arizona is spring. I had a Spring break from school this past week and so Julie and I took some time to enjoy the weather, some fun activities and each other.

We went to a Chicago Cubs spring training game. Julie has lived by their stadium for the past 2 years and hadn't made it to a game yet, so we walked on over and enjoyed some of the game. We also went for a bike ride in downtown Mesa and stopped for lunch at Sweet Cakes.

Spring also brought us some visitors...we have had a few ducks stop by our pool and we also saved this grasshopper that we found clinging for life on the hose of the pool vacuum.

Indoor Skydiving

So Julie and I decided to satisfy our thrill seeking craving by going indoor skydiving. Julie's Aunt Mara had given us a gift certificate to "Sky Dive Arizona" for Christmas. It's a place in Eloy, AZ where they take a lot of military and civilians skydiving. There is an indoor facility for practice if anyone wants to go over things before the big jump. In fact, before our turn in the wind tunnel, there was a group of four people doing formations and all kinds of cool stunts in preparation for their jump. They then ran us through a little class where they told us what we needed to do, gave us some hand signals to coach us through our run because it was EXTREMELY loud in there (p.s. turn down the volume on your computer when you listen to the videos below, or it will scream at you), and then we had a ball.




We would recommend it to any one! Great time and no real risk of major injury :)