Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July, everyone!!!

It's that time of year again. The time of year that we let the kids play with fire, and light deadly flaming objects for our enjoyment. Oh, and the noise too... can't forget that. Who could forget the 4th of July? haha

Kids on our street have been playing with fireworks since early last week, and it's interesting to go out the next morning and see the "war zone" by which you can tell whose kids were making all that racket the night before. The huge trail of used explosive wrapping leads right back to their driveway!

Flight Pictures

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for! Here are the pictures I took from my flight with Noah. Unfortunately I got so wrapped up in the fun that I forgot to take pictures that included US! Next time... guess we'll just have to go fly again!

Click on the link to view the pictures from our first flight together...

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x219/nkbrown81/First%20Flight%206-30-08/?albumview=slideshow

Here is a map to get a better idea of where we flew:

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x219/nkbrown81/First%20Flight%206-30-08/?action=view&current=FlightMap6-30-08.jpg

Noah did a great job, and even checked my seat belt. So if my door opened I wouldn't fall out of the plane. :) haha! Just kidding. He was a great pilot and I hope we can fly together again soon.

Well, there you have it guys 'n gals!

I need to scoot... we have 3 parties to go to this weekend, and one starts in 20 minutes. Gotta go!!!

Lots of love,

Krista & Noah

June 27, 2008

Hi Everyone,

I thought it was about time to update our blog again. Until now there hasn't been too much out of the norm.

Midwest Flooding
Maybe you have heard about the flooding that's occuring down here. It's not affecting us or our house, thankfully. Our house is on high ground in St. Peters, more than 6.5 miles away from any river. If the flood ever got to our house I think the whole entire city would have to be underwater!

The weather service keeps having to update the crests for the rivers because we keep getting more rain to the north, which is obviously not helping.

Here's a map of our area, north of St. Louis City...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=11+Santa+Fe+Trail+Ct,+St+Peters,+MO+63376&sll=38.78242,-90.48204&sspn=0.120166,0.211487&ie=UTF8&ll=38.964748,-90.482025&spn=0.479429,0.845947&t=h&z=10

The red dot is where our house is. You may have heard about Winfield, which has been in the news a lot. It's pretty far north of us. We have some friends from church who live up there, but fortunately they are in the western part of the town on high ground. They are affected though - they can no longer take Hwy 79 anywhere, which is a major road up there. They're forced to drive on side roads to get back to the city, which warrants a longer trip. Winfield just had a second levee break early this morning and most of the town along the river has gone underwater.

Here are the flood levels for the map north of St. Louis:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=lsx&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1&toggles=10,7,8,2,9,15,6

You can find local info about the flooding at any of these websites. They've been pretty good about keeping up with information:
http://myfoxstl.com/
http://www.ksdk.com/
http://www.kmov.com/


There's a Pilot in the family now!!!
Yep, Noah has gotten his pilot's license! Congrats to him!!! I'm pretty excited myself because he is planning to take me up for a flight in the next few days. I'm his first official passenger! We're going to get some pictures and I'll post them soon.


The ol' Hum Drum...
Nothing else really that exciting going on down here in the "south", which incidentally is actually the central midwest.

Noah will begin studying for his GRE exam so he can continue grad school. The GRE is required for engineers to get into the meaty portion of their grad school, sort of like the SAT or ACT is required to get into undergrad. So he will be taking the GRE in a few months so he can continue taking classes for his Master's degree. He is REALLY excited about that, let me tell ya... haha!

I'm continuing to play tennis on Wednesdays (every other or sometimes 2 weeks in a row). It's fun, a chance to get outside and get to know more people. I'm actually going to play tomorrow with a friend I met through the league and then we're going to go shopping and do lunch. Fun!

Work is going well for both of us. I just had my 2 year anniversary yesterday, and plan to stay a lot longer! :) Noah has been busy with some local wind tunnel testing and the usual stuff (whatever that is!).

I hope all of you are doing great! Hope to hear from you soon.

Love,
Noah & Krista

April 18, 2008 - "Not the Big One"

Don't worry everyone... it's not "The Big One"!

You may have heard on the news that we had an earthquake down here this morning around 4:30am. And yep, it woke us up!!! Don't worry, we're fine and so is our house.

At first we thought that someone was in the house because we heard this loud banging coming from the middle of the house - sort of like someone was intentionally stomping their feet as they were walking down the hall. But we soon realized (after everything started shaking!) that it wasn't someone in the house - it was an earthquake!

It's a strange feeling to be in the middle of something like that - you feel completely confused, anxious, and out of control. We had no idea what was going on because we'd never experienced that kind of thing before. It seemed like everything was happening for a long period of time, bit it was only for about 15-20 seconds and then it was over.

Later this morning around 10:15, we experienced an aftershock, which I am assuming came because of another 4.0 shock near the epicenter on the eastern side of Illinois. It's a very creepy feeling, let me tell you! When you hear things rattle for no apparent reason... yikes! The aftershock was not as noticeable but I heard one of our shelves rattling as I was pouring my tea, which was just plain weird. Noah emailed me saying he had felt it too at work, and my boss's mom called saying she'd felt it too in a different part of town.

The epicenter was near the border of Illinois and Indiana in Bellmont, IL - about 128 miles east of St. Louis. The quake was felt or picked up on seismographs as far north as the UP of Michigan, Madison, Chicago, Kentucky and Tennessee. Indiana and eastern Illinois had some damage, but most people around St. Louis just felt the shaking - no injuries or significant damage here.

I was doing some research on the US Geological Survey website, and there had actually been a small quake, about 1.4 on the scale, on April 13th. Maybe it was leading up to this one? Hmm...

Most people don't know that the Midwest has a significant fault line - the New Madrid Fault. It is actually comparable with the big fault line out west, but we don't experience as much action around here (thankfully!). We have earthquake drills along with tornado drills in schools here, and also have earthquake insurance.

Here are a few links to what happened this morning and about the fault line that caused the quake:

Earthquake History of Missouri: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/missouri/history.php

List of Earthquakes that happened today, 4/18:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US10/32.42.-95.-85_eqs.php

Photos & News:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24195650/ (FYI... the quake did NOT rattle skyscrapers in Chicago or Cincinnati. Don't you just love the media?)

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/NEWS06/80418008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/85FD230AAFCED4D08625742F003769F5?OpenDocument

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/story/254D71E25C1248C78625742F003D49C0?OpenDocument

Here are some photos - the sidewalk photo is NOT from St. Louis. It's from a Japan quake, FYI.
http://iwitness.stltoday.com/mycapture/photos/Album.aspxEventID=498374&CategoryID=21355

April 15, 2008

Taxes - did ya git 'er done? :)


Yes, it's been a VERY long time since our blog has been updated. Sorry about the wait, folks. Our schedule has gone from full to fast 'n furious the last few months! Here's what we've been up to:


Uncle Eric came to visit the week of February 18th, and we enjoyed dinner with him and some catching up. That weekend, my parents came down and enjoyed a weekend out on the town - going to the symphony, dinner on The Hill (an authentic Italian part of town which has lots of Italian restaurants, bakeries etc.) and we also went Bald Eagle and pelican watching! The weekend was perfect for the eagles and pelicans. Yes, we do have pelicans - the Great White Pelicans, which are the largest species of pelican in North America, stop here on their migration route each year, along with the Bald Eagles. We must've seen about 30-40 Bald Eagles and well over 200 pelicans. It was amazing! If you're interested, come down in February and we'll take ya!


The next weekend in February we went to Springfield, IL and visited with Noah's parents and the Boones, which is always fun.


We had an early Easter this year, and we spent the holiday up in Wisconsin. Of course, it decided to snow 15 inches our first day there! But we made a fun weekend out of it, visiting a lot of family.


The last weekend in March our church hosted a big men's conference, led by one of our pastors. We had a pretty good turnout of over 70 guys from all over come. Noah and I were involved in the group that put the conference together, and that involved mailing over 400 packets of information out to local churches, monthly and bi-monthly meetings, planning lunch, marketing and lots of other details. It was so much fun, we're going to do it again at the end of 2nd quarter! Actually, the pastor that is leading this mens group has a vision to take the conferences across the U.S. and grow attendance. It's an awesome opportunity to serve and our goal this year is to have one conference every quarter. We are truly looking forward to expanding the horizons of the conference!


April is another busy month for us so far. As many of you know, I helped organize a spaghetti dinner at our church that took place on Friday, April 4th. It was a blast, and I got to experience being a waitress! Noah collected tickets at the door, and helped with our raffle - the prize was a $100 Macaroni Grill gift card. Mac Grill is like a better version of Olive Garden - it's one of my favorite places! A member of our church is a regional director and worked with his boss to donate all of our spaghetti, bread and salad for the dinner. We raised a lot of money, which will go towards buying new equipment for our worship team. Yay!


The following day - Saturday, April 5th - was American Family Insurance's annual Spring Convention down in the Ozarks. This year we had a competition amongst all of the District Manager Assistants for who could design the best door prize drawing box. I am just a little bitter because I was one of two people (out of 9) that actually followed the rules, and didn't win. But... here are some pictures:











Mine is the one on the left.... with all of the little flags and guys climbing the mountain. It played the American Family Insurance jingle when you inserted your business card. :)





This year's Spring Convention was better than last year's - a little shorter and had a break in between the 2 1/2 hour awards ceremony. We ended it all with dinner and a very funny comedian as our entertainment for the evening.


The best part of the weekend was that we had a convertible for the weekend! Noah often has a rental car through work and can earn free days. We had 2 free days of rental car we could use, so we took out a shiny new Sebring Convertible and enjoyed a beautiful ride home with the top down. We stopped at a few wineries along the way and had lunch outside, which was great. I could get to liking that!


We have a few things coming up for the rest of April, but nothing too spectacular. However, come May 2nd, we will be heading down to South Carolina to attend Noah's cousin Marissa's wedding! We'll be driving down with Noah's parents, and staying the next week to hang out with all of the family that will be down for the big day. It will be a really nice getaway!


Noah is almost done with this semester of class and is looking forward to the summer and being off of school. He did great on his last test, and hopefully the rest will be a breeze for him!


We'll be sure to post pics of our vacation after we return. We hope everyone is going well and send lots of hugs your way!


Love,
Noah & Krista.