My Awesome Spouse

In his class tonight Zander had to listen to a podcast.  It was about various kind of root beer, different aspects of root beer, and what makes a good and bad root beer.  What this has to do with digital media, I don't know.  He decided to test out what he learned by buying a bunch of different kinds of root beer, and some snacks to go with it, and surprising his wife with an at home date night.  So we sat and ate munchies, and rank various root beers, and watched 30 Rock.  Marriage is freaking awesome. 

Think I said 'root beer' enough?

Hogle Zoo

A trip to the zoo is pretty self explanatory, so I won't bother 'narrating' this post, until you get to the fun little surprise at the bottom. 

On our way home Zander was munching on the left over baby carrots.  Then he started playing 'carrot vampire' and was trying to scare the people in the cars next to us.  After trying for about 15 minutes he finally got someone to look over at him.  She about wrecked her car, then started laughing really hard.  It was hilarious.  My spouse is awesome.

Baking with the Kids

When I was young, any time we baked anything there was always a bit of a battle over who would get to lick the beater/bowl/spoon.  It was the best part of the whole baking experience.  Zander thinks eating raw dough is nasty.  I'm ok with him thinking that because it leaves more for me.  And evidently the boys.  Looks like I'm going to have to start battling them for the beater/bowl/spoon.  With Kaiden's newfound dairy allergy we haven't been doing a lot of baking lately.  This pumpkin spice cake that we made is dairy free and delicious, whether baked or raw.

The Neighborhood

This is how awesome my neighborhood is.  We had one really nice warm day, and this is what happens. 

Z & E - The Subaru, first break down

Zander and I had gone on one or two really great dates and were planning on just going and hanging out at a park after I got off work one night. I got to the park, and it was completely empty. So I figured he was just running a little late. Fifteen minutes later he still hadn't showed up, and I was starting to worry that I was being stood up and he wasn't going to show. So I sat for another few minutes, starting to get angry that he wasn't coming to the park when he was the one who had decided that's what we were going to do. So I called him.

He immediately started apologizing, and then very embarrassed, told me that his car was dead on the side of the road between his house and the park, and he needed me to come get him. He had spent the last 30 minutes trying to get it to start. I drove over to where he was to help him out. On our previous dates he had been driving a pretty nice Galant. Little did I know that was his mom's car and he actually had a really old beat up 1983 Subaru. It was a nasty old yellow color, and seriously falling apart. I was a little taken aback by the change in 'rides', but considering just a year or so earlier I had been driving an 87 Jeep, who was I to judge? I kind of loved the old Subaru, much trouble as it caused us for the next year or so.

(This isn't the actual Subaru, but it looks just like it)

Chance would have it that as soon as I got there it started up just fine, or at least as fine as that car ever started. Once it was running he didn't dare slow it down or stop, so we drove up a little hill that was down the street, and then for some reason rode in reverse all the way back to his mom's house. Terrified me, but showed me that he knew how to handle a car, and was obviously very memorable.

Year 6

Since I'm in a Z and E memory kick lately, I thought I'd give you some of the random memories from our wedding day.


Did you know that Z was late for our wedding? The morning of he started to get dressed and realized that his suit pants weren't anywhere to be found. He had made sure to get the suit dry cleaned and had picked it up the day before, but the pants weren't there. He was running around the house completely dressed, minus pants, having a slight freak out. Thankfully his cousin Amy stepped in and ran to get the pants. But he was still late. In the mean time I'm sitting in the waiting room at the temple where we were going to be married, watching the clock and realizing he's officially late. Some of our guests had started to show up, but I still had no groom. Good thing we had cell phones so that he could text me and let me know that he really was coming and wasn't standing me up the morning of.

In the serious run around of trying to get his pants, Z evidently forgot to eat breakfast. Our ceremony was later in the morning, and by the time we got done with that, greeting our guests for a few minutes, and taking some photos, he was HUNGRY. So we stopped at Wendy's on our way to our own wedding lunch. For some reason that still makes me laugh.

Between the luncheon and the reception we had a few hours of time to kill. Rather than hanging out with all the relatives that were sticking around for both events (mostly immediate family) we went upstairs at our venue, found a huge ottoman/bench sitting next to a wall, spooned and took a nap. It was quite nice.

During the reception Zander and I were greeting our line-up of guests and having a fun time talking to everyone. Then nature called and he needed to take a little break, but there wasn't a break in the line to allow him one. His friend Brian Smith was at the front of the line, so he talked to Brian for a second and then said "Here Brian, take my place for a minute", and he dashed off to take care of business. So there I was at my own wedding, standing with Brian instead of Zander. It should be mentioned that I'd never met Brian before, and he's really hard to understand considering he has Down's Syndrome. People that it was pretty awesome though.

The people who decorated our car did a serious number on it. Easter grass strewn all over inside, whipped cream and cookies on the windows, and Mt. Dew cans tied to the back. (have you ever tried to get Easter grass cleaned up out of a car? I was still finding it for about 3 years) Something in my head decided that it would be a really easy way to get the cookies and whipped cream off the car if we just used the wiper blades. This might have worked if it hadn't been so cold outside and the cookies had literally frozen to the window. So rather than cleaning everything off, the wipers broke on the dumb frozen cookies. But not before they smeared whipped cream everywhere. We couldn't see a thing. Thankfully my friends parents had some clorox wipes in their car and helped us get things cleaned off so that we could drive safely to the nearest car wash.

The next morning we were supposed to leave on our honeymoon. We accidentally got up late, for some delusional reason tried to take some money to the bank even though it was Sunday, couldn't find a parking spot at the airport, and ended up missing our flight. They were nice and moved us to the next day. By this point I was really really hungry. We hadn't really had dinner the night before, and hadn't even had time to eat any of the desserts either, though they had packed a box of them for us to take with us, and we sort of ate them for breakfast. Anyway, hungry Em starts getting grumpy. So we went to find me some food, not remembering it was still pretty early, on a Sunday morning in Utah. NOTHING was open. We drove to 3 or 4 places and they were all closed. We finally found a Subway that was open, and start ordering, and they were out of the bread that I wanted. I almost cried. Thankfully they had food in general, so I was mostly happy.

We decided to just head to our apartment and hang out for the day since we obviously weren't flying to Mexico yet. It started snowing really hard on our way from Salt Lake to Orem. Remember how our wiper blades had broken the night before? Well evidently I forgot and tried using them anyway. They obviously didn't work and just about scratched the windshield. We had to stop in Lehi and try and find somewhere to get new wiper blades.

That night we wanted to go out to dinner somewhere nice, not remembering that it was still Sunday and we were in Utah County. We drove to three restaurants before finally finding one that was open. It was Macaroni Grill. We didn't really want to eat there, but it was open, and had food. It quickly turned into one of our favorite restaurants.

Hogle Zoo

We took our first trip to the zoo this year! I've been wanting to go for a while, it just hasn't worked out yet. The weather was BEAUTIFUL for us today, and minus some hassle with the stroller (flat tire), we had a fantastic little trip. Nicole and her little boys joined us, and Noah had a lot of fun having his friend Paxton at the zoo with us.

Wine's Park

I knew the weather was supposed to be nice today, so we headed over to Wine's Park to play and have a picnic. And the weather man was right. The weather was fantastic, minus a breeze, but we pretty much always have that. We invited Triana and her boys along for the ride.

This is the first time that K has been on a 'big' swing. He did a fantastic job holding on, and was even holding on well enough for me to push him a bit.

Gavin taking care of his little brother

Kaiden and Anders were playing some little game together where they were swinging and kicking their legs at the same time. I didn't understand the appeal, but they both thought it was hilarious.

Luca

All of these entries are family oriented.  This man is considered family.  He's been one of my dearest friends since 1998, has been a great friend to Zander since 2005, and was there at the hospital for each of my children's births.  He's family.  And just all around awesome.

Z and E Memories -1

Because some of these things need to be written down before we forget...

Zander and I had been dating for a few months, things were going great. We were both in school and both working, and spending as much time together as possible. One afternoon I had some free time and was happily spending it on my own at my house doing I don't remember what. I got a call from work that they needed me to come in immediately. The regional manager was there and she was really upset about how much processing we had to do in our back room, and they needed me to come take care of it. Now. I was really irritated, but I got dressed and headed to work. 15 minutes after they call I walk into work, mad, but ready to clear out the back room as quickly as possible. Turns out the regional manager had already left and my manager said that I could go home. They just needed the regional to think that they were going to take care of it. They didn't think I'd be there that fast. By this point I'm full on mad.

I start driving home, and on my way call Zander to tell him how stupid the last 30 minutes of my life was. I really needed to just vent, and be slightly irrationally angry, but he was being weird on the phone and wasn't really talking or acting like he was listening. Like he was distracted, which just made me more mad. So I got off the phone with him, cranked up my music, and finished driving home. I storm in the front door and stop dead in my track. There are red rose petals strewn all over the floor up the stairs to my bedroom. In shock and wonder I slowly go up the stairs, following the rose petal trail to my bedroom, and find two dozen beautiful red roses sitting on my desk with a card from Zander telling me how much he loved me. It was amazing. I called him immediately to figure out how he had managed this, since I hadn't told him I had to run to work. He was already outside my house waiting for my call. Turns out he had orchestrated the whole thing. He bribed my co-workers with chocolate bars to get them to call me and make me come in, so that he could have a few minutes to set everything up.

Snowy Owl

Noah officially has his first imaginary friend. He's been around for about a week now. His name is Snowy Owl. He's a Snowy Owl. And he eats chocolate ice cream for dinner, and gets his hair cut at Wal-Mart.  He flies around our house fairly often, and almost always follows us when we're driving somewhere in the car.  

At one point I hadn't heard about snowy owl for a while so I asked Noah where he was.  I was told "He died.  He ran into that fence and got blood in his mouth, so I put him in this tree.  This is where I keep all my dead animals.  He'll be alive again tomorrow".

Sometimes Snowy Owl has other friends that fly around with us, and sometimes he brings a giant with him as well.