"Whatsoever ye shall ask in faith, being united in prayer according to my command, ye shall receive." D&C 29:6

So I got a call from my grandma this morning telling me that my birth dad's wife, Terrie, has been in the hospital since last Thursday, with multiple health issues. One of these issues was that they found a tumor on her kidney and it turns out that it is cancerous. I just would like everyone to keep her in your thoughts and your prayers. She is such a sweet, wonderful, nice lady and has been especially great to me. She's been married to my birth dad for less than two years and has made a great effort to get to know me and has been so kind and nice to me. She and my birth dad even flew out from California to Missouri to be at my wedding reception which was so great of them! It was so nice to be able to meet her in person and have them there to celebrate such a happy occasion. (This was right after her father had died, which was very hard for her, and yet they still came out to be there for me). She and her family (she has three children of her own-all still teenagers) needs all our prayers now to get them through this hard time. Thanks so much and much love to all!

"I like you...have a nut."

Mark and I LOVE watching movies, and we do it a lot (first of all cuz it's generally cheap, if we have it or go to the $1 Theater, and it's just plain good entertainment!) I love it though because he'll watch pretty much anything, so if there's a chick flick or something that I want to see, he'll see it with me, no problem! It's so great. I'll generally watch whatever too so we're just perfect for each other. :)

Anyway, this past week I've seen two amazing movies. The first one was "Batman: The Dark Knight" which, if you haven't seen already, you need too! It was seriously one of THE BEST movies I have EVER seen in my ENTIRE life! I LOVED it!
First of all Christian Bale is an amazing actor (and not too hard on the eyes either....plus that voice! mmm..... :).
Second of all, it just had an all around awesome cast: Morgan Freeman, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal (I am SO glad they didn't use Katie Holmes again! Maggie was so much better!), and everyone else was great too. They all just did so well together! A good cast that meshes well is so hard to find in movies sometimes and this one definitely has it.
Thirdly, it was just....amazing! It had so much plot and depth and an amazing screenplay and awesome action and it was funny but dark and just all around awesome! I loved that they made it so long though! I hate that movies nowadays are so short, this was almost three hours long which just made it all the better! It didn't seem that long while you were watching cuz it's so engrossing and all of a sudden it's over and you're like...wow!
Fourthly-Heath Ledger is a freaking genius! He was such a talented actor and this movie sure did prove it! You can also see why he needed those darn sleeping pills though! The Joker was so freaking creepy! Heath did a FANtastic job in portraying him. It's just so so so sad that he died! (He generally is pretty darn good-looking, but not as the joker...he was so....creepy!).
I loved the first Batman though. I'm usually not too much into all the comic book movies and wasn't too excited to watch the first Batman but I did and I loved it and this one was even better! Mark and I are very excited to see it again. It's definitely one we're going to buy for ourselves. :)

The second movie I saw was "Mamma Mia!" My old roomie Whit and I went up to see our other awesome roomie Maria (who is leaving on a mission to the Ukraine in 3 weeks...eek!!!). We wanted to spend some time with her before she left (we won't see her for a year and a half!!! I don't know what I am going to do....she's seriously so amazing, one of the most amazing people I've met in my whole life :). Anyway, we went out to dinner at Chili's and then went to see the movie and we LOVED it! First of all, we love musicals anyway. Maria is ALWAYS singing- seriously....always....and musicals are a fav to belt out. This movie was SO funny though! It was completely random and crazy and so much fun and the music was awesome! We were slightly obnoxious in the theater though, we hadn't all three been together since my wedding and I haven't had a lot of contact with girls much since then so we were in very girly, giggly, excited moods and we laughed so much and so hard during the movie and kept singing along and I think some people were annoyed by us. But we didn't care. We were having too much fun!!!!

The only downside to the movie though was that Pierce Brosnan CANNOT sing! I have no clue why they had him in the movie and be the main singing guy but whoever did it was crazy. Maria, Whit, and I agreed that they should have used Hugh Jackman who is very good looking and CAN sing...quite well actually....but oh well, can't be changed now! The main girl though, Sophie, was a girl who played in the movie "Mean Girls" (a personal fav of mine) and she did an awesome job! And she's a pretty darn good singer too!

Overall though, it was just a very fun, entertaining movie, of which I also want when it comes out. I just absolutely love movies and am SO glad that musicals are coming back!!! I absolutely love old movies, Doris Day is my all time favorite actress. I think she is absolutely fantastic...as well as Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Danny Kaye, James Garner (he was good lookin' when he was younger!!!), Rock Hudson, and the like. I think they are some of the best movies I've ever seen. I love all the musicals and such they did back then and am excited for the comeback, although they're mostly remakes of things and such. We've had some pretty good ones so far, one of my other favs being "Hairspray." I LOVE that soundtrack and the movie! Also a very good, fun, entertaining movie, with an Amazing cast.
Anywho....I think that's all for now, except that I thoroughly recommend "The Dark Knight" and "Mamma Mia" and anything with Doris Day!!! Also, I have two of the best friends in the entire world and I am going to miss Maria when she leaves!!! Whit's just getting married...she'll still be around but Maria is leaving me! Although technically I've already kinda left her by getting married myself but...meh.... :) Donkey!!!

Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.

Mark and I's first home is a small one-bedroom apartment pretty close to campus, which is convenient, except for the massive hill I have to climb, which means stairs, and my knees just do not go well with stairs (you know I mean G-ma Rose.... :) But I don't have to deal with that til fall so I just won't think about it for now. Anyway, it may be small but it works for us since it's only the two of us. It's furnished, which was nice since we don't have anything yet, and don't have the $ to buy everything :) Yay for being poor, married college students! That's the life right there. No but really, life is pretty great.

So our apartment has three main areas: the living area/kitchen, bathroom area, and the bedroom. I like it a lot cuz the kitchen and living are open to each other so it doesn't seem so small and it has tons of counter space (for my lovely KitchenAid mixer to be displayed, which is the most important thing right? :) :) The kitchen has lots of cupboard space too which is nice. Mark and I have a lot of fun cooking together and trying out new things with all our new cookbooks we got from the wedding. We've found some really, really good stuff, and the great thing is they are all simple and easy! I love simple and easy recipes :) They're usually the best tasting anyway!

I've also had some fun decorating the apartment too. It's kinda fun to have your own place where you can do whatever you want! Although my new place doesn't let you paint like my old one so I'm kinda of disappointed on that account cuz (as all my sisters know) I do enjoying my painting and have done my fair share of it in the past years :) I can't wait to have my own actual house one day and kids and be able to paint cute things in their rooms. Course I'm going to have the help of my hubby who I hear is quite the artist but have yet to see any of his work so I'm waiting on that. He said he'd make something to hang up in our apartment (I'm currently working on a painting since I've had so much free time but I'll do more on that another day, when it's done).

The next part of the apartment is the bathroom and vanity area which has a nice large closet with cubby holes and hanging space/vacuum space. We bought a new vacuum cuz the one that came with the apartment doesn't work at all. Is it weird to be excited about a brand new vacuum? Well I don't care if it is cuz I really like and it's pretty! :) (bagless too! gotta love those...).

Last of all is our bedroom, which is decent sized with two closets, where I have on display my Ikea storage/organizing stuff where I put all my clothes. The first time Mark saw my closet he almost freaked out cuz of all the stuff I have compared to him. I had to tell him that this was pretty good for a girl (it really is, you should see how much clothing my old roomie has! holy crap that girl has a lot of clothes....). I told him that in my place I had to keep all my winter clothes in tubs and switch them out when the seasons change but in my new closet I have every piece of clothing I own so I thought I was doing pretty good being able to fit everything plus extra bedding in my closet. He's just shocked cuz guys have so little clothing compared to girls and don't understand the need for all the different things we have. So naive... :) Funny boy. Keeps me laughing and entertained though!

Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation

Now for the fun part...the honeymoon! :) Thanks to Mark's awesome parents we were able to go on a Caribbean cruise for our honeymoon that made a stop in Cozumel, Mexico for a day. It was a lot of fun and we plan on going on another cruise sometime in the future. The cruise left from Mobile, Alabama so after everything in Missouri we flew down to AL for a few days to spend time with Mark's family and to have a small open house for all their friends down there. We got to spend some time with Mark's brother and his family as well which was fun and his sister-in-law even made us a delicious cake for the open house. She is an amazing cook, let me tell you! Anywho- it was great to be able to spend more time with his family and get to know them all a little better.

I don't even know where to really start for the cruise...except it was awesome! There was a lot to do on the ship and TONS to eat...what they say about cruises and food is completely true. I don't think I've ever eaten so much or felt so disgustingly full in my entire life! But it was so amazingly good! First of all there was a buffet for every meal, a 24-hour pizzeria (which had very good pizza), a 24-hour ice cream thing (we certainly made use of that! I don't think I've ever eaten so many ice cream cones!), and then at night we had dinner at the Seven Seas Dining room where we were served like kings and queens.

We had the same server every night and ours was this kind of intense Russian chick (she wouldn't let me order a gourmet hamburger cuz she thought it wasn't appropriate for a nice dining room like that...) who was pretty funny in her own way. They had amazing bread to start off with, then appetizers, the main course, and dessert! It was so hard to eat everything cuz we were usually still full from lunch and breakfast but we couldn't pass up the good stuff (as my nephew Joe would say :) so we made room for it. The menus changed every night so there was always something yummy and new to try.

We also had the same dining group every night and ours was pretty interesting. There was a middle-aged couple, a younger couple, and then a couple I wasn't sure about cuz he was pretty darn old and she was fairly young but none of us ever got the full story on that one and they only came twice to eat with us. Our last night there was pretty cool though because they brought Mark and I out this special dessert after the meal and sang a happy honeymoon song to us, quite embarrassing but the cake was D-licious!

As I said, there was quite a bit to do on the ship. Every night there was a show (they have a dance group that had a themed show every night) and one night they had an amazing juggler and comedian perform. During the day they had bingo, dance classes, games, swimming, mini-golf, and a bunch of other stuff I can't really remember at the moment. One thing we liked was they had this demonstration class for the towel animals they make. Every night they come and clean up your room, leave the itinerary for the next day, and next to it is a towel animal they make. So they had a class showing you how to make them so we went and did it and it was pretty cool. They had an entire book of things you could make with the towels and they were really neat. Mark really seemed to enjoy making them as you can see :)

One other thing we enjoyed was just walking around the ship and going up on the top front deck and looking out at the ocean. It was so pretty, especially the sunsets and the moon, but very windy! I couldn't leave my hair down hardly at all cuz it was so windy outside all the time. Mark was always on the look out for dolphins and such but the only thing we really saw was a flying fish which was pretty cool.

So we finally made it to Cozumel and it was SO gorgeous! We couldn't get over how freaking blue the water was. It was amazing. There were a lot of things to do in Cozumel to choose from- swimming with dolphins, snorkeling, scuba-diving, sailing, etc. We chose the snorkeling which was so much fun! We were out there for 3 hours and went snorkeling in three different spots along the reef. The reef was damaged in a hurricane so it wasn't as amazing as it could have been but it was still fun and we saw lots of fishes. The coolest probably was this huge school of fish, it was massive, and it had this huge barracuda swimming near it. We bought an under water camera but a lot of the pics were pretty dark and the school of fish didn't turn out, although you can kinda see the barracuda. We did look pretty funny with all the gear on though. The only downside to the whole experience was that I did get burnt, but only on my back since we had our backs to the sun pretty much the entire time. I put sunscreen on like 3 times and still got burnt! So not fair. It was pretty bad though and was still red three weeks later...curse of being a redhead! :)