Bono is hot

I have been listening to U2 Cd Elevation today. I love the music and it makes me motivated . I have my first enrichment party tonight and I wanted to be happy and motivated. I love this Cd . For my Bitthday last year my in'laws got Kerst and I tickets to there concert last Dec. Kersten's brother and little sister also came with us. They were incredible and amazing live. It is an experience I will always remember. It was so fun to scream and yell and freak out when they came on stage. When the U2 Ipod came out they had a commercial on tv where they sang elevation. I had never thought that Bono was Hot until that commercial. I commennted this feeling to my husband and he still teases me about it. But he is HOT. My husband is the one that got me into them and I am very grateful.

Flags

On friday my sister Emilee and I took our kids and niece to the Beehive House in downtown Salt Lake. Over Memorial we went to Brigham Young's winter home in St George and the older kids thought it would be cool to go see his house in Salt Lake. Spencer, Em's son kept talking about how they had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night in a pot. That was his favorite part. Kristin the oldest girl in the picture her favorite part was his daughter Clarissa Wedding room. I think that Noah my son favorite part was wearing his car backpack and the candy they gave at the beginning of the tour. Kara, my sister Audrey's daughter that we kidnapped for the day just loved running around .

We walked over to Temple Square after the tour and between the temple and Joseph Smith Memorial Bldg they had about 100 American flags set up on the lawn. We had to take pictures. When we set them free from picture taking Noah and Kara ran into the flags and started to play. Oh it was so joyful to see them run and jump and lay on the grass inside the flags. Noah still keeps talking about the Flags. It was so beautiful
to see all the flags waving as the children ran through them. Looking up with laughter and joy in their eyes. We had to pry them away to go have lunch.

It made me feel such gratitude for our country. I feel blessed to live here where I have so many freedoms. I know that I take them for granted. I love our country. I sing to Noah about it everyday without realizing it. When we put on his pants I sing "Stand Up For America". It also made me think that I need to take time to run through the flags. To have more moments of simple pleasures and take more time to be grateful instead of just trudging through each day.

I'm married to an Old Man

Today is my husband, Kersten's 30th birthday. When we woke up this morning, I gave him a big kiss and teased and asked him how it felt to kiss a much younger woman. He just laughed. I have been calling him today and teasing him that he is so old. Granted I am only three months younger than him. But hey, I have got to milk this for all it is worth. I should be more careful though since my birthday is after his.

Kersten and I started dating when I was seventeen and he had just barely turned eighteen. At that point in life it is hard to imagine yourself at thirty. Where you will be and what your life will be like. I am so grateful that my life has ended up with him and we are getting older together. He is a marvelous husband and father. Life is so much better, richer and happier than I could have dreamed at seventeen.

We are not doing anything that huge or dramatic for his birthday. Noah threw a fit today when Ten ( a nickname given to him by our niece Kristin) left for work. He screamed and cried and yelled "No work, Da, No work." When he arrived at work his team was standing in his cubicle singing Happy Birthday and his desk was decorated with black balloons and crepe paper. Kersten's work also took him to lunch and Noah and I met them up at the Cafe Rio. Tonight we have a babysitter and we might go see a movie. He did get a new Ipod which he has happily been playing with the last couple of days.

Kerst, here is to you and aging, may we grow to be old, wrinkled and hunched over together.

Water

With all my adventures with water lately, I have been thinking a lot about the different kinds of water in the world and how it affects everything around us. My favorite part of water is the ocean. I LOVE the ocean. If I had grown up by the ocean, I would have become a beach bunny (as my dad likes to say). My skin would look like leather and my hair would be permanantly sun bleached with sand in it's roots. I would know how to surf and know what a perfect wave looked and felt like. I have dreamed and thought about this a lot and I believe I was born land locked so that I would grow into a productive responsible person. I love all the oceans I have been to. The big waves of the California coast, the frigid waters of Oregon and Washington and the beautiful clear blue water of Florida. I would take any of them any day.

Recently, I went to California with my husband, Kersten's family. We went to the beach in San Diego. It was heaven on earth. It was overcast and just the perfect tempeture. Huge waves were coming onto the sand. My sister in law Christel and I were jumping up and down and screaming like little girls. We couldn't wait even one more minute to get in the water. I was lucky to have a husband who would make sure my son was happily playing in the sand and taken care of since I was not quite all there. The entire day we were there I think I might of been out of the water a half hour to eat lunch. At the end of the day they had to send Kersten and his brother Jason in to drag us out of the waves to go home. I think about that day I spent happily in the water, boogie boarding and body surfing whenever I need a lift. That day I was happy to be soaked with water to my bones and kept asking for more.

We had another Flood

Today we had another flood. It was another freak Hail and rain storm. Our front lawn looks like a swamp. It flooded in the laundry room again through the crawl space. We bailed water away from our house as a river from the street came toward us. I am numb and cannot handle this again. At least it did not get my beautiful cabinet. We are wet to the bone from bailing water and have dirt everywhere. Noah thinks it is great, water fun. I really think he believes this is normal. When it rains you run around like a crazy monkey and play with water

Floods

Over the last month we have had two floods in our basement. The first one occurred on July 1st. The storm drains on our roof went to just one place that drained into our basement stairwell. We only had a desk that we could live without damaged. It was a huge blessing that none of my photographs were ruined, I had just seperated them into piles and had moved them just days before from off the floor. It took almost 2 weeks to get the mold treated, the carpet cleaned etc and all the furniture put back downstairs. I got a beautiful new cabinet for my craft and scrapbook stuff and it was a nightmare to put together. The first one was defective and so we had to take it all apart and get another one. IT is a dream. It has doors so that Noah does not get into my stuff. It is amazing with what a barrier can do.

The second flood happened on Aug 1st. We had a monsoon type storm called a Lightening Cell in Salt Lake. Huge pine trees fell accross the street, trees fell on top of roofs, it made the neighborhood look like a war zone. I was in Noah's room and we saw out his window the storm, the wind looked like it was wrapping around itself and the rain went in all directions. I ran downstairs to close the window and the door in the basement had been blown open. There was at least a foot of water in the stairwell and I watched helplessly as the water came in the screen and seeped underneath the door. I closed the door and ran into the laundry room to shut the window, and suddenly I was into water up to my ankles. I grabbed the laundry I had sorted that morning that was now sopping. My husband called to see what was going on. As I was in the middle of the water with Noah yelling "Help, mom, Help." The conversation with my husband went something like this "Ok, Oh crap, O freak, Okay okay" over and over again. Kersten finally asked me to calm down and tell him what was going on I said I don't have time and yelled "Flood." Kersten now teases that this was one of our moments of pure beautiful communication. We got new carpet and the mold sprayed in 4 days. And since everything was organized I got things put back together pretty quickly.

We are all a little edgy at our house. I think that it is that we have been living in chaos for so long. I long for a day that is normal (whatever that means). We fixed all the problems of both floods so we are hoping that it will not happen again. We both keep wondering what will happen on September 1st. It is my grandparents anniversary that day so if anything does happen it will definitely be good.