The Family Life is the Good Life: Life can be such a roller coaster

Tristan turned 12 Monday. We had a great birthday party for him and Aiden at the Warehouse climbing centre Saturday. With Aiden's birthday being during summer break the chances of friends being able to come is slim. They each had eight friends come so we had a big group of 18 kids climbing for a couple of hours and then had lunch and cake. It was great. Cory and I enjoyed watching them. Lidia stayed home with Avery. Tristan got his Faith in God Award in sacrament and had his priesthood interview. He and his friend Tiege will be ordained to the priesthood this Sunday. I am hoping that having some responsibilities during sacrament meeting will help improve his behavior during that meeting. He is looking forward to passing the sacrament.

On a very sad note, Cory's coworker and friend Kristen passed away Sunday night. She was 35. Her children are 4 and 6. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April. It had already spread to her liver which was what caused the pain and decrease in liver function that led them to find it. Her brother died of cancer when they were teens. It's hard to believe she's gone. My sweet neighbor in Utah, Kathy Wilson, also died of cancer recently. She's been battling colon cancer a little over a year. She was diagnosed right before her daughter went on her mission but didn't make it until she returns this summer. Kathy was in her forties. Another neighbor, Casey Wheeler, in Utah passed away a few months before Kathy. He was younger than me and had brain cancer. His two children are very young, like 2 and 4 I think. It's all so sad and depressing. Cancer sucks. We need a cure. A friend of mine here in England lost her mom to cancer this past year too. It's everywhere, takes anyone.

We have a renter in our house for our last year here! I am soo relieved. I was really stressed. It was listed for a while and everyone either wanted a two year contract or they had bad credit or a million pets or something that made it not work out. Once our current renters moved out and my agent asked if we could lower the rent by fifty bucks a month to get more action on it I was getting depressed. I had a really bad day. Well, it was made worse because I ordered Chinese takeout and the delivery guy was soo rude to me. I have never had anyone speak so rude and condescending to me and it caught me really off guard. I should have told him where to go and not paid for the food but I just wanted him to leave. Cory called his boss and told him off and that we would never buy there again. Right after that was when I got the message from my agent to lower the rent to get more action and that the previous people that were gonna rent my house fell through. That really knocked me down. I spent the next day in bed reading and crying and feeling homesick. I think the thought of my house sitting empty made me want to go home and live in it. Sometimes you just need to take a day and it did help me feel better. Lucky for me the house being empty and the price dropping did stir up interest and we had a renter within a few days and they moved in right away. It turns out that they are relatives of one of my nice neighbors. They are building a new house and need a place to live while building it and I am sure it will be so fun to live so near her sister for a year. They will move out end of June next year and we will get home right about that time. Perfect. :)

Cory and I drove to Wimbledon Monday. We got there around noon and got in the queue at the park and set up our tent. They have officials there telling you where to set up and writing a description of who you are and where in line. One of you has to stay by the tent until they pass out the numbered queue cards around 5 pm. We were numbers 466 and 467. We made the first 500! That was our goal. They issue 500 centre court tickets each day as well as 500 to court one and 500 to court two and 500 grounds I think. If you only want grounds you can just show up early in the morning and get in line. They also keep selling grounds tickets as people leave during the day. Camping in the queue is nice though because you end up relatively close to the front of the line so you're not standing in line as long as the people that show up on the day. We just laid around and relaxed and took turns going to get food or to the toilet etc. We could have left our things with the tent neighbors and gone together to eat but I didn't want to chance it. I was happy to just chill at the tent anyway. It was unfortunate timing for my monthly annoyance so I didn't feel like running around anyway. I paid for parking for both days ahead of time but then found out they don't allow overnight parking. I was worried but it worked out fine. After eight we could just park on the street. Cory went and moved the car that night and again in the morning. The street parking was actually closer than the paid parking on the golf course so it was nice that he didn't have to haul our stuff so far in the morning to put it back in the car. I was able to sleep and it did rain but our tent kept us dry, barely though. The tent felt pretty saturated but it never got us or our stuff wet. We got up about 5 am and packed things up and changed clothes and ate breakfast. We started lining up and moving around 8 I think. They have some interesting things along the way in the line. It moved pretty quickly for us. We turned out being number 200 or so in line for centre court because many people chose court one instead once they found out Federer was playing on it. Federer has a huge fan base. There were tons of Asians there to see him wearing hats and shirts and all with his logo on it. Of course there were Swiss fans and others too but I noticed nearly all the Asians wearing Federer gear. You don't know who's playing on what courts until the night before. We chose Nadal on centre court and don't regret it. It was awesome! The other matches were great too. We saw Lisicki, Nadal, S. Williams, Halep and Petkovic win. I have never watched that much tennis in one day but didn't get bored at all. It's way more fun live. There were many other matches I wanted to see that were going on but I couldn't be in two places at once. I'm glad we did this. I was nervous about leaving the kids and camping for tickets but it all worked out. We will be back in the states when Wimbledon comes round next year so this is probably a once in a lifetime thing for us. It was awesome. Cory loved it too of course. :)