July 11

Last weekend we were in Utah for 4th of July. All of Bob's roommates had a reunion. It was fun to see all of them. We stayed at Linda's house. Everyone had a good time. We saw Casey at BYU, I got to see Wendy in Salt Lake, we had dinner and picnics with Bob's friends.

Rachel was sick for about 10 days. She's finally been feeling well for the last three days. She would be fine all morning, but then in the afternoon until bedtime, she'd have horrible cramps. We took her to the doctor and he couldn't really do anything for her. Bob's friend, Jeff, thought it was probably from when Rachel had the stomach flu and it stripped her intestines and she just wasn't able to digest food very well. It was horrible. She'd just writhe and cry for hours every day. We're so glad she's better.

We leave for Lake Tahoe on Tuesday. We're going to stay with Kevin and Amanda. I'm so excited to spend time with her and to be at Lake Tahoe with the kids.

Yesterday our air conditioning went out. I woke up at 5 am and it was 86 in our house and the air conditioner wasn't blowing. So we started calling people at 7 and got someone to come around 10. The problem was with the circuit board on the furnace--and the furnace is what blows the cold air from the air conditioner. Luckily they had the part in stock and they were able to fix it by about 2:00. By then it was really hot in our house! The kids were good sports about it, though. We went out and played in the sprinklers for a while and that helped. It cost almost $700 to fix it.

We are looking into getting a bigger house. We think that if we're able to save up a down payment in the next year, we'll be able to buy a bigger house. We'll keep the one we have now and we'll rent it for a loss, but the rent we do get on this house will almost pay for a mortgage on a bigger house because the houses have dropped in price so much. We wish we could just sell the one we have, but it's probably worth $200,000 less than we bought it for at this point. The Lewis's in our ward are selling their house. It's huge and has a big yard on a cul-de-sac and a pool. We just love it. And they are short-selling it so it'll probably take at least six months to get through the banks, which makes it possible because we don't have enough of a down payment saved up yet. She's talking to her realtor this week. Then she'll get an idea of how much they'll sell it for and if it'll be in our price range. It would be so great if it worked out. A lot of things would have to come together just right for it to work, but it would be so great. It's bigger than we'd need, but they've taken such good care of it and it has such a great yard and it's still in our ward, but different elementary school. We'll just see how it goes and if we can even afford it.