Storms, Parakeets & Tubing!

Its been an exciting week! Thursday night after institute there was a HUGE storm. It was raining so hard that a couple guys with umbrellas walked girls to their cars. The parking lot got pretty flooded. I called my friends Kyle & Danny to see if I could go watch the storm with them, they only live a few blocks from me so I felt okay driving over in the 'elements'. I got some sweet shots here and what made the night even more exciting was that a couple transformers went out and a street light. The transformers were cool with there green glow that illuminated the sky around us as we heard a "zzz" "zzz" and smelled sulphur. The lights went out. I never knew that Arizona could get so much rain! Mesa got almost 1". Phoenix got almost 2". Lots of damage was done in Phoenix that night with over 100mph winds , or so the news says. Even long time residents of the area said they'd never seen such a storm. Oh what a night!

Friday after work I finally finally picked up 3 parakeets that my friend Ben, his mom Jessica, was giving away. I havent named them yet but I'm so excited because I've always wanted a parkaeet and now I have THREE in addition to my three cockatiels. Luckily these birds all get along well. Call me crazy, but I'm a crazy bird lady for reals now!

Friday night my friend Daniel invited me to go tubing down the river and I have never gone, in the day or at night so I said sure even though there was some rain and lightning outside. I invited a few friends and Rusty, Kimber and Bonnie came. As well as our friend Mike Brady, back from his internship in Washington finally! At first we all just played in the river , waiting for the lightning storm behind the mountain to pass. I did get some sweet pics though. We saw wild horses too, but no pics!

After the storm passed we decided to float/tube down the river and Rusty let me use his blue raft and he pumped up a small long skinny one and when he got on it in the water, he sorta sank! Since it was night with no sun out, the water was a bit cool. So he hung on to the sides of my raft and Kimber's and we floated down. Sometimes we stopped floating and just sat still so we had to paddle to get going again. There was so much grass, long and gross, under us. We went on some cool rapids though and sad night..Rusty fell off his flimsy raft and into the cold water (not super cold but still!) then a short time later he lost both his flip flops and only found one :( Poor guy. He had a rough night. But overall everyone had a blast and it was exciting to be tubing down the river in the night with no on else around...prob bc you arent supposed to - haha - but an adventure nonetheless.