On August 7 we received our new daughter. We didn’t have a great experience with our two Chinese exchange students last year but we still need a little extra money to pay our bills so when another company offered us the opportunity to have a girl from Taiwan, we jumped at the chance.
Because Angelina was born in the states, she can attend a public school so we will get a) more money, b) have only one student and c) she can go to school with Lisa, it seemed like a no brainer. As it has turned out, she is wonderful.
August 12th was my birthday and we were invited out to Arizona to spend my day with two of my kids. I should have known better, but for some reason I thought we were going to go have dinner at a nice restaurant and that would be the extent of the celebrations, we could just relax for the rest of the weekend. There was no relaxing involved.
The weekend didn’t start out well. We were on highway 238, about a half hour from Maricopa when our transmission went out. The motor ran fine, but no power was transferred to the wheels. I called our insurance company but they were pretty much useless. We spent a good half hour just trying to explain to her where we were. She wanted a land mark such as a nearby store. I kept trying to tell her that we were in the wilderness and we weren’t close to any stores. She asked me to look out the window and tell here the name of a store close to me. I told here the only thing out my window was a cactus. This picture is close to what I saw when I looked out my window.
Luckily the motor still ran because it was 110°F outside. The AC didn’t work great at an idle but it kept us from dying. After sitting there for a while I realized that if I kept our speed under 35 mph we could move so we finally gave up on tow trucks and insurance companies and drove into Maricopa. We also called Kira and Ben and Kira came out to pick us up. She met up with us about 12 miles from Maricopa so we dropped the car off in a Walmart parking lot and rode into Chandler with Kira.
Everyone was a little worried that we would miss our 6:15 reservations at this fancy restaurant but we made it just fine. We should have had a couple of hours to relax first but we got home, cleaned up, left the boys (and Angelina) in charge and we went and enjoyed a great meal at this nice restarant. I was told to bring my swimming suit so I knew I was in for some great fun after dinner. I correctly guessed we were going for a night time trip down the Salt River.
No one wanted to jeoporidize their $2,000 iphones to take pictures, but this is pretty much what it looked like. It was long after sunset so probably less light but we had some good moonlight.
Every year on my birthday I get one of the best meteor showers ever. The Perseid meteor shower is spectacular but I rarely get a good show because I’m in the city. In the middle of the night in the middle of the desert it was great. We saw several bright meteors.
So then I thought the party was over and I planned to spend a lot of the day in Kira’s pool but nope, the party continued. I was handed this fancy banner that declared to the world that it was my birthday and a cake hat with candles on it. I was told to wear that all day long.
We met up with Ben and his family for lunch at Joes Farm Grill which is always a great meal and then we headed to a fancy community pool that was also a mini water park. They had some small slides, a lazy river and diving boards. I don’t think I’ve been on a diving board since I was in my twenties and it took some getting used to.
I finally got my rythmn back and made some fun dives. Kira took some pictures of some of my dives.
In this picture it looks like I’m going going for a belly flop. I love how it looks like I’m flying.
I had to include this next picture just to prove that I didn’t belly flop.
Angelina was game to try anything. She told me she could swim but just not very well. As it turned out, she couldn’t swim at all.
She ran down the board very akwardly and pretty much fell off the end of the board. She then came to the surface but couldn’t stay there. She kept going under but would come up again. Justin finally swam out and grabbed her and dragged her to the edge of the pool. I thought sure she would be so freaked out that she wouldn’t go again but she did. I told her to not bother trying to stay on the surface but to just put her head down and swim to the edge. I also made sure that Justin was there to grab her.
Justin then did a summersault, I have always wanted to do a summerault but I’ve never had the guts before. This time I asked myself what is the worst that could happen? I’ve done belly flops before. So I did my first ever summersault.
That evening we had my birthday dinner and my cake was donuts. I absolutely love donuts.
Sunday morning we had a big surprise. We walk into sacrament meeting and instead of sitting with us, Kira walks up and sits on the stand. She was giving a talk. She gave an amazing talk and shared the story of her struggle with infertility and and how the Lord got her through all her struggles. It made me cry.
Sadly, after dinner we had to return to our normal lives. Justin let us borrow his car until our van was fixed so right now we are driving in luxury.
---------------trivia---------------
An octopus has three hearts.
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