Summer

I love summertime for a number of reasons. The most important reason being late night slurpees from 7-eleven. The one by the Provo Library has a new flavor - Dr. Pepper. I am in love.

Another reason is because everyone in my family has their birthday in the summer. And when I say everyone I mean my mom, sister, both sisters-in-law, brother, grandma, some aunts, some cousins, and myself. Seriously, by the time August comes around we all want to barf at the sight of birthday cake. My birthday was last week. On Father's Day, actually. For Father's Day I got my dad the greatest gift a Father could ask for - me being an awesome daughter. Also, movie tickets. And he and my mom got me some amazing mascara. Am I the only one that thinks good mascara is tricky to find? My mom is a genius when it comes to knowing what kind of makeup to get me.

Since my birthday was on a Sunday (and Rick has to work on Sundays) we decided to celebrate on Saturday. My day went something like this: Wake up. Rick is gone. No idea where he is. So I get ready for the day. I get a message from my mom telling me that she and my dad just realized that I'm not turning 21 this year, I'm turning 22. Apparently my parents were out shopping and my dad kept talking about how he couldn't believe I was going to be 21, and he knew that I was going to turn 21 because I was born in 1988. I get my math skills from my parents. The lady at the check-out counter informed my dad that she was also born in 1988 and she was 22. Thank you, Nordstroms employee, for knowing how old I am.

Rick came home and surprised me with these.

There was a little card with the flowers and on the card Rick wrote me a little Happy Birthday message and then at the bottom he put the date "06-21-10" which was neither the date that day (the 19th) or my birthday (the 20th). I pointed that out to him and we laughed, and then I told him the story of my parents thinking I was 21. Rick starred at me, wondering if I was kidding or not.

"What?"

"Wait...you're turning 22?"

"Are you serious?"

"When I was getting you the flowers people kept asking me what the special occasion was and I kept telling them it was my wife's 21st Birthday."

High five to Rick and my parents.

I asked Rick what the plans were that day. He said lunch at Red Iguana and then I had 2 choices. We could either go shopping and I could get some new clothes, or we could go buy a saltwater fish tank.

"FISH TANK! FISH TANK!!!!" was my exact response as I was jumping up and down clapping my hands and possibly getting teary eyed. I have ALWAYS wanted a saltwater fish tank. We had fish when I was little and I loved to just watch them, it was so calming. I love fish, I love the ocean and everything in it. Except for oil spills. Which apparently one of the only things that can help clean up the oil spill is human hair. My vote for Rick growing his hair out changed from short to long after I found that out. He still hasn't decided yet, by the way.

We bought the fish tank from a guy on KSL who happened to be a fish expert, which was lucky for us, but also kind of overwhelming. I had no idea how much time and effort goes into saltwater tanks. I can barely keep the plants in our house alive, and most of them are cacti. We spent 3 hours with the guy. He went with us to the pet store where I was ready to buy some fish, and instead he directed us to the salt and sand isle. Did you know that you need ocean sand in your tank, and then the organisms in the sand will bring everything to life? I didn't. So then I ask the guy how much salt are we supposed to put in the tank, and can we PLEASE PLEASE go pick out fish now? He gave us a thing to measure the salinity and specific gravity of the water. Um, what? I need to do that? How do I do that? So he shows us how to measure everything and get it perfectly balanced. And to answer my question about picking fish out, no, you can't. Why? Because you need to set your tank up first, get the salt water at the perfect salinity, specific gravity, and temperature, and then let your tank sit there for a month. Why? Because then everything will be perfectly balanced and it will have the organisms needed for fish to survive. I also asked him if we needed to buy those fake rocks or plastic plants. I think that's one of those questions that fish experts make fun of fish morons like me for asking. "Uh, no, you don't need any of that. Everything you will need in your tank will grow on its own." Turns out having a saltwater tank is like having an entire ecosystem, which makes sense, but I guess I just never thought about it. It's like having a tiny piece of the ocean in our house, which is really cool, but like I said, overwhelming. After the store we went to the guys house where he showed us his tank, talked about how fish aren't cool, coral is cool, and then he referred us to a website where fish lovers unite, told us to sign up, and said that meetings are on Thursdays. Seriously, this happened.

We finally got our tank set up today, and at first it looked like this.

I, too, thought that it looked like we had filled it with water from the lake. But after it sits for a few hours and lets the filter do it's job it will be clear water. The rocks in it are coral, but I guess they are dead. So in a week we will go buy a piece of live coral and the live coral will magically spread it's alive-ness to the dead coral and the dead coral will come back to life. Cool huh? I'm scared we're going to become those weird animal people. But usually people like that have cats or dogs or animals you at least can touch. This is like a whole new level of weird. And I totally plan on naming the fish too, and probably bonding with them. I'm sure I'll have blog posts dedicated to them (kind of like this one, this is already becoming quite a lengthy post) and we'll celebrate their birthdays. At least I admit that we're kind of crazy, right? But you'd be proud too if you were about to be parents of the entire cast of Finding Nemo/The Little Mermaid.

So back to why I love summer. The 4th of July is one of my favorite Holidays. The parade, the fireworks, the BBQs. It's perfect. We have family members coming into town and I can't wait. The whole weekend we will be spending with my family, but on the 4th we will be going up to Duchesne for the pow wow with Rick's biological family. I really hope I'm not the only white person there. I don't want it to be like I'm crashing the party. I mean won't there already be tension at a 4th of July pow wow? Celebrating the white guys taking their land, forcing them onto reservations, and then taking credit for everything and declaring the land theirs? Maybe I should bring a gift so there's less tension. I hear they like small pox. I'll look into it.

It's when I say stuff like that that I hope that people who read this know I'm kidding. I love Indians. I married one. We will have fun at the pow wow and we will take lots of pictures. We will also (hopefully) get Rick's birth mom to finish the Native American papers so that Rick will be a member of the tribe. We need him to join. It will be a huge blessing for us if he does. I work with a lady who is also Native American and who happens to be the same tribe as Rick. She said that all we need is his biological parents names and we can sign him up ourselves. No one will tell us the name of his biological dad and so we have to try to sign him up other ways. So far nothing is happening but we're hoping that talking to his biological mom again will get the ball rolling.

Happy Summer!