America's Roller Coast

On Saturday, we spent a very full day at Cedar Point, an amusement park on Lake Erie in northwestern Ohio. I had never been in the fall before, but it was definitely better than going in the summer: shorter lines (although they were still pretty long for the good stuff), cooler temperatures, and fewer folks that were scantily clad.

Kind of hard to take a cute picture when you're looking directly into the sun.

Our favorites were:

• Millenium Force- 92 mph with a 312 ft hill that dropped at 80 degrees!
• Maverick- the newest roller coaster in the park. At only 57 mph it hardly sounded daunting, and it didn't have any ferociously tall hills that looked super fun- but it did have plenty of awesome twists and turns. At one point it stopped us in a tunnel and then shot us out at 70 mph. So cool.
• Top Thrill Dragster- the tallest ride in the park (it's the yellow one to the left of Spencer in the picture above). Accelerated us to 120 mph in only 4 seconds, then took us up and over a super tall hill. I'm pretty sure I was laughing the whole time, and Spencer said he pretty much couldn't breathe until it was over because we were going so fast.
  

We got home at about 1:30am and went straight to bed. Whenever I lay down after riding roller coasters, I feel like I'm still riding one. That's how it was when I fell asleep Saturday night. Thank goodness for 12:30pm church the next day, or it would've been a rough morning!

More Visitors!

Shelby and Johnny Hansen came to visit us last night. Shelby and I went to grad school together, especially bonding in the spring of 2006 when both of our husbands were gone for long periods of time (Spencer selling alarms in Southern California, and Johnny doing an Air Force training in Alabama). We both lived at Wymount during spring term, so I would sometimes go over to her place to hang out. We even had a few sleepovers with other students, one for fun and one to study for our final for Dr. Fujiki's class on multicultural issues in speech-language pathology. I think we all got about 2 hours of sleep that night.

They currently living in Dayton, OH where Johnny is stationed with the Air Force. They were up visiting church sites in Kirtland and decided to visit us for a bit before heading home.

I felt privileged to be the first fellow grad student to see and hold her 6-week-old baby, Sol. Doesn't look too happy in this picture, but boy was he cute! We loved that full head of hair.

Done Deal

This past summer, Spencer and I decided to apply for a Health Professions scholarship with the Navy to pay for dental school and to help with our living costs. It was a big (and scary) decision to make, but we felt that it was a good opportunity for our family. A few weeks ago, Spencer's Navy recruiter, Senior Chief Steinbrook, informed us that he was awarded the scholarship. I joined Spencer on campus today to meet with the Senior Chief and the lady below, who's name I can't remember. We read through and completed all of the necessary paperwork (I only got emotional once, but hid it well), after which Spencer was sworn in as an Ensign in the Navy (the most junior rank of a commissioned officer).

Taking his Oath of Office.

The only snag(s)? On his oath of office paper, the secretary typed in an F under "sex." They just crossed it out and wrote an M in pen for now, but he will have to re-sign another paper later. We thought that was the end of it, but then we read the first few lines of the certificate pictured above and noticed that it says: "Know that ye, reposing special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities of Spencer Weiss Bjarnason, I do appoint her an Ensign...." Don't really want to hang that on our wall, so he'll be getting a new one of those too.

Indians vs. Athletics

CADA, an association for dentists' wives, sponsored an Indians game on Saturday so tickets were only $5 each. Heather and Jason accompanied us, and our seats were back behind right field. It was a pretty good game, with back to back home runs by the Indians in 6th inning. We ended up winning 4-3.

We were pretty much surrounded by other dental students.

Celebrating their victory.

We were highly entertained by these little boys, who were so freaked out by the intermittent fireworks after home runs and such that one of them started crying. (Don't worry, his dad pacified him very quickly with some cotton candy.) We also had a good laugh when one boy told his dad that he wanted some apple juice. His dad, who's in our ward, looked up at us and mouthed "beer."

We enjoyed the fireworks after the game for "Fan Appreciation Night." And just like the 4th of July, the camera couldn't quite capture them. We actually thought this show was better than the fireworks we saw on the 4th in St. Paul. Always knew Ohio was better than Minnesota...

I.S.A.F. Club

Remember that book? Where the kid swallows a fly while riding his bike, and someone tells him that means he joined the I.S.A.F. (I swallowed a fly) club? Well, it actually wasn't me. It was Spencer. And it wasn't a fly. It was a fish. A goldfish to be exact. And the club was the Psi Omega Fraternity for dental students. They had their initiation meeting last night, and we were excited to see how everything would go.

We had a bit of a heads up about what the new members would have to do. Our neighbor 4 houses down is also a 1st year dental student, and his wife Becky had heard that last year they took all of the new people into a room and told them they would have to swallow a goldfish. They blindfolded them, took them out to the stage, and actually just fed them gummi worms that had been soaked in water. I guess their faces were completely hilarious because they were so disgusted, when it really wasn't that gross at all. The real kicker was that they gave the last girl who went an actual goldfish, so she was the only one who really did it.

Our husbands were prepared (or so they thought). They were taken into a room, but weren't told what they had to do. The audience was shown a bowl of real goldfish, and Becky and I were laughing that it was the real deal and the guys had no idea. Spencer later told me he thought it was a wet gummy worm and didn't realize he had actually swallowed a goldfish until he saw the people after him do it. Thank goodness no one threw up (we were worried about the very last guy, because he started chewing after he couldn't get it down. Bad idea).

Spencer during and after.

And for our friends:

Trent was one of the last to go, and he said the guys' hands totally smelled like fish by then.

Chase. See the girl in the back trying to get more fish out of the bowl?

Jason was completely unphased.

Note to Self

Never buy the $5 bamboo flip flops from H&M again, even if they are cute and the perfect level of flatness.

They won't even last you through the entire summer.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Last night we went downtown to go to an Indians game with Heather and Jason. One of Heather's former co-workers, who now does animation for the Indians big screen, apparently called in a favor and offered her free tickets for her help. Luckily, they invited us to go with them along with another couple in our ward. Heather said she heard that the seats were pretty good, but she didn't have any idea where they were. We were certainly surprised to see the word "suite" on our tickets, and totally excited when we walked into this:

A gi-normous room with nice tables and chairs, along with pictures of past and present Indians players (not to mention our very own bathroom!!)...

and a kitchen with a mini fridge that was fully stocked with Sierra Mist and Pepsi.

This was the view of the park from the windows:

Then outside there were two rows of nice, comfy office chairs and plenty of leg room.

The Gang: Jason, Heather, Suzy, Spencer, Hatsuho, & Chris.

The game was against the Chicago White Sox. I thought it was funny (and kind of mean) that Jim Thome, a former Indians player who now plays for Sox, was boo-ed every time he went up to bat. I think he struck out every time.

I was happy to see that Kenny Lofton was back on the team. He was my favorite player back in the day when my family actually watched their games- but pretty much only when they were in the World Series. How's that for dedicated fans?

Heather, Hatsuho, and I each took about a million pictures because we felt so spoiled! All of the husbands were referring to us as "the paparazzi" by the end of the night.

We stayed after to watch the post-game movie on the big screen. That didn't end until about midnight, and when we got to the parking garage where we parked, it was already locked up for the night! We had to wait for about 20 minutes for a security guard in a nearby building to come help us out. Oops.