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.

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.

Get Some Guns & Ammo

Yesterday Z and I went on a date to Get Some Guns & Ammo down in Orem. This place was amazing. Literally hundreds of guns that you can purchase, with all of the ammo and accessories to go with it. They also have an indoor range, with a bunch of guns that you can rent. We rented 6 different guns, and really want to buy a couple of them. Z's been wanting a full sized hand gun, and I want something small that I can conceal, and going shooting at Get Some really helped us figure out what we wanted. We each went through a box of ammo, plus split a box on our shotgun (we have bruises to prove it) and then we each took one shot on the .50 BMG sniper rifle. There is nothing like the experience of shooting that beast. wow. It was amazing. I'm not a 'shooter' by any means, this is the first time that I've enjoyed shooting, and I might be a little hooked on it now.

Zander's shotgun bruises

These are the rounds for the sniper rifle. Literally almost the size of my face.

We decided to finish off this target with the shotgun. We almost sawed through the whole thing, but then ran out of rounds.

Link to me shooting the big fat gun is HERE
Link to Zander shooting is HERE

Double Date

We went on our first REAL date since having Kaiden last night. We've been out, but never for this long before, and it was really nice. We had plans to hang out with Luca and Live, and decided rather than hang out at the house with the little boys, we should all go out instead. Zander and I don't get out to movies very often, and Despicable Me looked pretty darn funny, so we all headed down to Provo to go see it. It was hilarious! I hadn't seen any previews so I went into it blind and with no expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. Really good, funny movie with a feel good ending that's not overboard on the cheesiness.


After the movie we headed down to Red Robin. I never ate at that place until I met Zander, and we go every 6 months or more now. The more I eat there the more I'm liking it, and finding more items on the menu that I like. Last night I got the Bruschetta Chicken Sandwich and it was AMAZING. Everything I wanted in a chicken sandwich.


After gorging ourselves on burgers and bottomless steak fries, Z and I went to go pick up the boys so we could get them home to bed. Luca and Live came over to the house a little while later and we all shot each other a bunch. Ok, really we just shot Zander a lot. He ended up being the Sheriff every game I think.


All in all a fantastic night with fantastic friends.

Saturday Discoveries

Things we discovered we like:

Cute little bistro in Highland. Really yummy, high-quality food


Really intense raspberry flavor


Surprisingly funny movie. Luca and Live came and watched it with us.

To Z

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!!!

Scheduling Update

Got a call just barely, I'm officially on the schedule to have a C-section tomorrow morning at 6:30, which means I have to be there at 5:15 at the latest, which means I have to be up disgustingly early.

The Waiting Game

Last night we called to see what time to go to the hospital for our C-section. They said that they were reconsidering the schedule because of how full they were and they would let us know. That's never a good thing to hear. About 8 different phone calls later, my Dr. called me just barely to let me know that literally EVERY room is full right now and they're not even sure what they're going to do with women who walk in already in labor. But my Dr.'s are awesome and are going to come in on a Saturday and make sure that I'm well taken care of. So Kaiden will be born tomorrow instead of today. Evidently having a baby this weekend is the thing to do.

So instead Z and I are going to take the day off. My dad's going to make me my favorite breakfast, we'll go to a movie, and just have a nice relaxing day, which all in all, won't be too bad of a thing. Noah is going to stay with Granma and Papa Indo rather than us picking him up for most of the day then just taking him back tonight.

Vegas

Ok, I know that this trip was back in the middle of March, but I'm lazy about importing pictures from my camera to my computer. So you get the story of the trip now.

We headed out after Z finished work on a Thursday afternoon, drove straight down to Vegas and got there around 10ish, and promptly crashed in our very nice room at the MGM Grand. The next morning we kind of wandered around the hotel for a while, got our bearings on where we were, then met up with our very good friend Craig (not Wardle, a different one) for lunch. Craig is one of the most amazing, generous, devoted people I've ever met. Seriously this guy is true to his friends, ALWAYS, and no matter what. He works at MGM, that's why we were staying there, and him being down in Vegas is a fairly big reason for us taking this trip in the first place. Anyway, we met up with him for lunch at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant that's there in the MGM, had some good food, made some plans for the next few days, then headed our separate ways. PS. Check out the bathtub in our room!!! It was so nice to relax in, especially with being pregnant.
Zander had never seen Phantom of the Opera before, and we figured that Vegas was the place to see it. We had tickets pre-purchased but wanted to go down to the Venetian earlier than the show to make sure that everything was fine with them. For some reason we decided to walk.....it was a long walk, and we took a cab back. That's a really really pretty hotel/casino though! We got some gelato, wandered around, and felt almost like we were in Europe for a bit. Later in the evening we headed back up to the Venetian to see the amazing show, and holy crap, it was worth every penny. Definitely the place to see Phantom, even if it is the abridged version. You can't take photos (legally) in the theater, so you'll have to be happy with pictures of the hotel instead.

Saturday morning Craig called us bright and early and invited us out to his home for breakfast with his family. He came and picked us up, we went out and met his family, had some breakfast (Tera, his wife, makes GREAT pancakes, and I don't usually like pancakes at all), and decided that we should all pack up in the truck and go see the Hoover Dam. If you haven't seen the dam, next time you're down in the Vegas area, take a little side trip and go out and see it. It's not that far from The Strip, and it was honestly refreshing to be away from the casino scene for a bit. We did the tour inside of the dam and saw all of the huge generators, then spent some time outside looking at the dam, and the cool new bridge that they're building so that people aren't driving on top of the dam anymore.
The original plan was for me and Z to go back to the hotel that evening and go to the Bon Jovi concert, but we decided it was going to be more fun to hang out with Craig and his family. Now don't freak out. They were free tickets, and we're not huge Bon Jovi fans anyway. So instead of Bon Jovi and a headache, we stayed with the family and did a crab boil. LOADS of fun. You buy a bunch of crab, and some shrimp, throw it all in a big pot with Crab Boil seasonings from McCormick, and then dive in. It's my new favorite way to do seafood.

Sunday morning we slept in a bit, took our time getting ready, then met Craig and family over at Mandaly Bay to go to the Shark Reef exhibit. I was honestly really impressed with the variety of fish, jelly fish, turtles etc. they had in there, and how big some of them were. It's not every day you get to see sharks swimming literally all around you, plus the occasional sea turtle. After the sharks we headed out to get some pizza and buffalo wings, then headed back to Craig's house and just kind of hung out for the evening. Next morning we headed home.

I know, you're thinking that we went to Vegas and didn't even do "Vegas" stuff. Well, your right, and honestly it was a GREAT trip. It was the perfect amount of touristy stuff, being lazy in a hotel, and hanging out with good friends. THAT'S the way to do Vegas, and hopefully we'll be going back again soon.

Net-flix Mania

About a week ago we discovered that Netflix has created an ap for the wii. You get a disk from them, and when that disk is in your wii, you can stream live through the wii straight to your tv. This has been wonderful, and a curse. We're watching SO much more. But it's led me to discover this really cool show called Dollhouse. Now granted I'm already a big fan of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), but this show is really really cool.

Wardle-Indo Birthday Bash

Stephanie and Zander's birthdays are only about a week apart, so for the past 3 years we've always celebrated the two together. And what better way to have that annual celebration than at Tucano's with a free meal birthday card?! We all met up Friday evening for the yearly meat fest, and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly.
Then we headed over to the Wardle house for games, movies, and overall fun. The trouble is by the time we all got there the meat coma started to kick in and we were TIRED. So we put on Lord of the Rings. I lasted about 3 minutes. Z lasted maybe 5. Amazingly Steph stayed awake for the whole time, which was crazy since she's notorious for sleeping through movies.

It got to the point where we all figured that the Indo's might as well just crash for the night. Noah was already asleep, and Z and I were more than happy to just sleep on the couches etc. In the morning we had Huffy Puffy (German Pancakes), hung out for a bit, then headed home. Overall a great little spontaneous sleepover weekend.

Friends, Food and Games

What a fun weekend! Saturday we had a great day cleaning and being lazy, then running a few errands. In the evening Asher and Aaron came over to play games. Asher took up his spot on the couch and played Mario Smash Brothers on the wii for about 6 hours while the "adults" played games. For those of you who don't know, Aaron is our resident game guru. He has well over 300 games, has published one, and is working on publishing another. He knows games, loves playing them, and is a great resource for learning new games.We played Dominion first, which as always, is a fantastic game. We've played it before and love it. This was a different setup than we've done before, which is always awesome to learn. Aaron won, by quite a bit.

Then we tried out Ubongo. It's like timed competitive Tangrams. Whoever gets their Tangram puzzle finished first gets first pick at which gems they want to collect, whoever has the most gems of one color at the end wins. If you don't finish your Tangram in the allotted amount of time then you don't get any gems. Aaron won again.

Next we broke out Cleopatra. It's a days of wonder game that we've seen around a bunch of times but haven't ever played. Essentially you're collecting various materials in order to build a palace for Cleopatra. The catch is that in order to build, sometimes you're forced to gain corruption points. At the end of the game, whoever has the most corruption (me) is thrown into the Nile to be eaten by the crocodiles and isn't even considered for winning the game. And are we surprised? Aaron won this as well.

Sunday we had a nice and lazy day, then Wardles came over. We hadn't seen them in a couple weeks, so it was really nice to spend some time with them. We did a crab boil for dinner with 6 pounds of snow crab, a pound of shrimp, and some fresh green beans. We dumped it all on the table (no plates or anything) and dove in. It was SOOO GOOOD. Then the games began.


First we broke out Witch's Brew. It took me and Z a while to figure out what was going on, but once we did, it was a lot of fun. It's kind of frustrating how little control you ultimately have over your own hand, but still a really cool game dynamic. Steph won this one.

Then we broke out Dice Town. This is a game that Z and I played with Aaron about 6 months ago, then went and bought a few weeks ago cuz we liked it so much. Once we got things going it was a lot of fun. After stealing everyone's property and robbing a TON of money from the bank, Craig ended up winning.

Marley's

i could have sworn I already posted this, but evidently I didn't. Last weekend Z and I took Noah out to Marley's. It's the sliders joint in the Harley Davidson resort in Lindon. I've been wanting to go pretty much since I discovered it was there, and that was over a year ago. It was really yummy and pretty fairly priced. the 3 of us ate for $20, which lately is a pretty darn good deal. Good food, kind of fun atmosphere, and the guys that work there were really nice and took great care of us.

Pizzeria 712

Saturday night we went on a double date dinner thing with Bob & Rochelle and wanted to try out Pizzeria 712. I've heard from several people that it's really good, and they weren't joking! I'd gladly go back again.

Bowling

Last night was date night, which we're now trying to do every other weekend. We went bowling at Jack & Jill in AF, then out to dinner real fast at Cafe Rio. It's been a LONG time since either of us went bowling, but our first game turned out surprisingly well. Z's second game was GREAT, mine was less than satisfactory. I'm going to blame being 21 weeks pregnant.

Pantrucas

Last night we went to Pantrucas with Wardles. We've been before and wanted to introduce them to it. It's one of those "mom & pop" type places where it's just a guy and his wife that do all of the serving and cooking. GREAT food, fully authentic Chilean, and just a good place to go for an evening out. You really should check them out some time.

Pantrucas Chilean Restaurant
3161 North Canyon Road
Provo, UT 84604

Sakura

Last night I stole Zander away for a date night. It's been a really long time since we went on a date and didn't end up inviting another couple to go with us. I've been wanting to try somewhere new, so we went to Sakura in Orem. It's one of those Japanese Hibachi steak house places. It was a lot of fun, and I definitely want to go to one of those restaurants again! It's a little pricier than we were expecting, but you really do get a TON of food, and you get a show while you're there. Lots of fun. If you've never been, you need to go.

Late Christmas

Last night we finally got around to doing our Christmas with the Wardles. We headed over to One Man Band for some yummy dinner. It was kind of nice going out on a snowy Wednesday night. There was NO ONE out. We got our food really fast, and it was nice and quiet in there. After dinner we headed back to our house for presents, treats (we were all too full), games and a movie. I got a cake decorating book and tip set, which I'm very excited to start playing with, and Z got noise canceling headphone things to use while he's shooting.

P.S. When your kid had just barely recovered from diarrhea, don't give him onion rings at dinner.

Game On

Yesterday our friend Aaron and his 4 year old Asher came over to play games with us. Asher enthusiastically played the wii for 5 hours while us adult types played our games. Z & Aaron played a couple without me while I was getting Noah and Isabella to bed. We started out with Dice Town, then got in a full game of Pirate's Cove before they had to head home. Both were really cool games that I would be more than happy to own.