One thing that Memphis does have is excellent thunder and lightning storms. The bad thing is they are usually at night so they just keep you awake instead of allowing you to sit on the porch and watch them. We had another storm last night and I was sleeping peacefully through it until one particular burst of thunder, that I thought exploded our house, jolted me wide awake. After the thunder wakes you up the lightning keeps you awake by lighting up the room every 2 or 3 seconds. When the storms do happen during the day it's kind of neat to see how fast the sky goes dark and the clouds build.

Kelly is in North Carolina, at the beach with her family this week. After the beach she'll head to NY for a few days and then finally make it back here.

I only have about 5 weeks left here in Memphis and then I'll probably stay with the company for an extra month while Kelly goes back to Utah. I'm not sure where I'll be working the last month. Possible locations so far are Nashville, Houston, Reno, LA and somewhere in one of the Carolinas. No one seems to be in a real hurry to decide.

Happy Birthday Aimee!

Aimee is now 7 !

As you have seen by Dad's blog we had some interesting weather. We finally finished cleaning up the yard Saturday evening. About ten minutes after we finished, the rain started. It rained 1.5 inches in about an hour. It was awesome to watch that much water come down that quickly.

We are now in the middle of putting our house back together. We have an appointment to take the car into the adjuster on Aug 3. We'll see how that turns out. We also have an adjuster coming out to look at our roof, deck, and fence. We will end up getting a new roof and we'll see how the other two items turn out. I'm thinking about redoing the roof myself. I might use the extra money and put on nicer architectural singles. I've seen some nice patterns and colors around town.

Thanks Dad and Mom for the visit. We had a great time. Sorry it turned into a downer at the end, but hopefully you'll be enjoying a new car soon.

Brant

Our Trek

This is Kevin's dream mission, I suppose. Riding horseback and leading hundreds of youth up and down Rocky Ridge. How lucky is that. I guess, surviving the negative degree winters is the trade off. I'm not sure that is where I want to be mid-December.

Here is our family. The "Johnny Whoops" family. (Do you know that game? We learned it on the car ride to WY). Anyway, we had a superb family, a great time, and as always things fell into place. I'm sure we could tell stories galore, but at the moment I can't think of one to share. Unfortunately, my camera got plugged up by the Wyoming sand and grit, so it stopped working half way through day 1. Bummer. Luckily they posted some pictures on a website that I downloaded. It was a great week, and we'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Back to Normal

Well, we've been home a couple of days and things are slowly returning to normal. Matt and Kimbre were here when we arrived on Friday. They had come down for Matt's 10 year high school reunion. They had a BBQ at Walkers (for the LDS kids) on Friday, an activity at East City Park on Saturday, and then appetisers and dance at the Best Western later that night. Matt seemed to enjoy seeing old friends and visiting. They came to church with Mom and I this morning and then headed home to get ready for tonight's shift.
Mom and I did a little shopping yesterday afternoon and then drove by Paradise Ford to look at cars. We pulled into the lot and within 10 seconds out came a sales person and then out came the owner. We visited with them for a few minutes and got some info on new Explorers.
We hope that if we get a couple of thousand from the old car, my employee discount with Ford (through the church), and rebates, we might be able to afford a new (2009) vehicle. The adjuster is supposed to contact us this week and we'll see what he has to say.

Hope you all have a good week.