Memorial Day Weekend in Review-Part 1

What a weekend! Josh mowed faces. This was Josh's first paintball tournament. It was held in Syracuse UT not too far from us. Mannie Jessica and their new little baby Damien came for the tournament. Mannie and Josh played on the same team.

This is Josh preparing to slide into the snake (a type of paintball bunker no real snakes were harmed during the tournament). He looks totally fierce and ready to do some damage.

 

Here we find our hero ready and posed to snap shoot some unfortunate soul. The bunker Josh is hiding behind is the snake. Josh did a lot of damage from this bunker all day; to the other team and himself. We'll expand on that latter.

 

This is the coolest action shot ever! Josh has gazelle intensity in this picture. I think he was picturing his debt snowball on the other end of the field. Also notice the high water pants, they help him move gracefully across the field of battle. Natalie took this shot and it is rad. She is a freelance photographer now, available for weddings, cage matches, and birthday parties.

 

If you look closely you can almost make out the other players soul exiting his body. Josh once again snap shooting around the snake bunker to eliminate an opponent. the team they were playing was undefeated up to this game, Josh's team swept them in under a minute.

 

RUN THROUGH! The jersey says "Magician", I'm not really magic. It should have said "Mind freak", cause I blow minds constantly. The last player is behind that angled looking bunker. Josh is performing a run through to clear the last player.

 

On your marks, Get ready, Shoot Faces!! Josh is on the right, DL (I have no idea what his real name is) on the left.

Everyone came out for the event. It was cool. The parents brought down Mitchell who kept suggesting to just throw a grenade and it would be easier (why didn't I think of that?). Kyle, Kadee, and John were in SLC for a concert and crashed at our place the night before. It was way cool to have everyone there.

Ever watching, ready to pounce. Josh looking on as Mannie takes the field with the rest of Team Suppressor.

 

Ok so this is a really funny story, especially if it didn't happen to you. This is the last game in the semi-finals. The semi finals are best of three and we were down one game. So this was the make or break game, if we won we would continue, if we lost we were done for the day. My job was to get to the snake, which I had been doing all day no problem. So on the break I start booking it to the snake and I notice "Hey there is another player running right at me, huh what should I do about that?" So I start to raise my gun to shoot him out on the run, "No problem" I thought. Well while raising my gun I stubbed my toe on a mound of earth, which pitched me head over heels into the bunker. I landed on my shoulder and my head ended up under the bunker. The other player (laughing hysterically I'm sure) reached his bunker with no problem and shot me and my team out. That sucked big time. That game put us out of the finals. But it was still fun and I can laugh at it now, at the time it was painful. Over all we did really well for never having played together before the day of the tournament. We were ranked in fifth place out of twenty teams entering the semi-finals. It was super fun and Natalie even enjoyed it. She never new she was married to such an action hero. 

Ridiculous . . . Gas Prices

A few weeks ago Josh and I were driving around Salt Lake and we saw this installment. It says,"I laugh at high gas prices." I really wish i could laugh at gas prices also, but I can't ride my bike to work. It would take me hours. 

Today I took this picture when I got off the freeway on my way to Rusty Pickle. I remember when i first got my car I paid $1.63 for gas. There was a lot of talk back then (meaning 6 or so years ago) about "high gas prices." I just feel so helpless. $3.83 a gallon is a lot to fork out. 

Modern society makes it so you have to drive to most things. Maybe I should invest in a horse.  

Exercise

I have decided that I am not good at exercise without a purpose. I discovered this when running last night with Josh. I was running and I thought, this isn't that fun. Why am I doing this? I know you can run for exercise which is a purpose, but there is no motivation in it for me. This is when I discovered i am better at Life or Death exercise. Josh volunteered to run at me with a knife, but i declined. I have never enjoyed running.  

I love life or death exercise. 

Example: The ocean. You have to watch your self! You can't just go and stand in the ocean because you can be taken down by a wave, stung by a sting ray/jellyfish, see a shark etc, get hit in the face with a board, etc. Before entering you have to scope out the surf. Its just a lot more exciting staying a float then running.  

Another Example: The Mountain. When Snowboarding, you also have to watch your self! There are hidden holes, deep powder, rocks, tree, crazies, branches, frost bite, skiers, etc.     

I really just wish we lived by the beach. The swimming/surfing/body-boarding in the ocean is such great exercise.  Will someone build me an ocean?

The Man, the Myth, the Oldest

Natalie and I were able to visit with Matt this weekend. He was on his way to Idaho to treat some patients from mom and dad’s ward. It was fun to spend time with Matt, even though it was short. We gave him an inflatable bed to sleep on and a Subaru to drive in, so we figure we were being a good brother and sister-in-law. We had some pretty interesting conversation. Matt is always the source of fun conversation though. He told me about Jason’s wicked snowmobile wreck this weekend. I guess Jason was climbing a ridiculously steep hill (no surprise there) and his sled over exerted itself and flipped out from under Jason. This was in no way foreseeable by Jason, the sled just simply had too much horse power (may be that second nitro-fed supercharger wasn’t necessary?). Anyway the sled bucked Jason off and then fell back down on him and smashed his hip pretty good. This was one of the few times that Jason quote “Thought I was going to die,” but only for the split second the sled’s 135 inch track peeled out on his head at maximum RPMs. Jason emerged unscathed for the most part and I’m sure he got the whole thing on film. Apparently he has a pretty nasty bruise; Matt described it as the craziest “fluorescent green” bruise he has ever seen. I so wish I could have seen that. That got us to talking about how much of a rock star Jason is. The man is hardcore to the max. I’m sure we all have our favorite Jason stories. Working with Jason was awesome because I was privy to some pretty fantastic stories about some sub-contractor thinking he could get away with skimping on some material (oh, you poor fools, your kung-foo is not strong). Jason is the best story teller in the family. I think that is an un-refutable fact. The man can spin a yarn out of his visit to any gas station in south-eastern Idaho.

Some of Jason’s greatest hits (by topic):

Any story involving Don Bosworth. Ask Jason about Don making him straighten nails, classic!
Snowmobiling antics and/or conquests. Always a crowd pleaser (usually accompanied with video).

Funny stuff Mitchell or McKenna have said or done. Granted most parents have funny kid stories. Ask Jason about the time Mitchell relieved himself on Dave, on second thought you should just ask me about that one.

Fishing, boating, or hunting stories. My personal favorite is the story about him fishing a half frozen, almost dead, drunken Indian out of the Snake River. Priceless.

Church stories. These are awesome. Jason would be (and was) the greatest Elders Quorum President of all time.

Indeed we have a tremendous treasure in our oldest. Matt and I were saying that Jason is like the Bear Grylles of the family. If anything goes down, like Russian and Cuban terrorists invading America, Matt and I conclude that we are heading to Jason’s house. Jason is awesome. How can you not love the guy? If you ever need good advice about anything, call Jason. I speak from experience. I don’t think I’ve made one serious or major decision without talking to Jason first, and you know what, he has given good advice every time. So I guess that makes Jason like the Bear Grylls and Alex Trebek of the family.

Financial Peace University

We are graduates of Financial Peace University! We took an excellent 13 week course about managing finances; courtesy of ThomasArts. The person who started it all was Dave Ramsey. DR is the man!



It has been really beneficial for us. It was a great time to take it because we have both started out the new year with real jobs and this was a great way to learn how to manage our money. I highly recommend this class to anyone regardless of your financial situation. He teaches how to save money, how to get out of debt, how to stay debt free, student loans, bankruptcy, retirement, managing your cash flow, monthly budgets, real estate and mortgages, mutual funds, investing, how to purchase things both small and large, insurance etc. This is seriously the best class ever! Its amazing what happens when you take control of your money.

Josh and I have really buckled down and have started to save and are on our way to becoming debt free. Needless to say "we are living like no one else."

I am done

I am so done with living in this apartment. It is the most ghetto place which I have lived. This of course doesn't say much coming from Rexburg, but I did grow up in Chula Vista and I have seen my share of ghetto. Josh and I have been talking about how we really, really want a house and how tired we are of sharing walls. I've been doing the apartment scene for the last 5 years. I feel the need for unshared walls.

Reasons why we want to leave:
1. Second week living here we have to cops knocking at our door around Midnight. To back track. This was a few days after Christmas and we had just got back from picking my mom and Michelle up from the airport. We had been inside for about 5 minutes. So the Police knock and say that someone called saying that we were really loud and fighting. The call came from our paranoid neighbors across from us. I'll get to them later. We were like no that wasn't us we have been here for like 5 minutes. Check it out, we still have our coats on. So they questioned us and realized that nothing was going on. Then they come back 20 mins later to tell us it wasn't us! It was another neighbor fighting.

2. Diaganolly across from us. Mr. Reefer. We were coming back from Target one night and I notice a guy standing on his balcony in the dark. A little creepy. Then as we walk up the stairs we smell the weed. You can't deny the smell. He gets his smoke on all the time. He even hot boxes in his apartment. He has kids too!

3. When I go out to my car in the morning the maintenance men are working. One of them hollers, "hey I found a needle." The other guy says, "Man you find all the good stuff." Gross there are possible heroine addicts.

4. Mr. paranoid, our neighbors across from us. The guy is always opening his door randomly to see "whos out there." A few weeks ago Josh and I were going to the laundry room. We walked out of our apartment and Josh was holding the Basket. Josh was all watch this. He spun the basket in the air and it came to a thud on the hallway. He accidentally dropped it. about 4 seconds later Mr. Paranoid rips open his door. He's crazy.

5. Mr. Paranoid again lives up to his name. Josh and I come back from dinner one night and there is a fire truck in the parking lot. We go inside and decide that our trash is really smelly and needs to be taken out. So Josh goes to take it out to the dumpster and he finds firemen crawling in the dumpster. Apparently Mr. Paranoid earlier had taken his trash to the dumpster and heard a beeping noise. So of COURSE he thought is was a BOMB! Idiot! There was no bomb it was a toy or a clock. I couldn't hear exactly what they said when they came up to his door to thank him for alerting them of the "possible" bomb.

6. Sales idiot. He comes to the door and proceeds to try and sell Josh some sort of magazine rewards thing. Josh says no thanks. Then the Sales Idiot asks Josh if hes Mormon and then proceeds to call Josh a hypocrite. (of course persecuting someone always makes then want to do business) Josh was like what! This is all because in the bible the sales idiot says that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover. Then Josh was like, "Excuse me? Do you live here. Is your name Mika(Josh thought he said his name was Mika)." Then the sales Idiot comes up to Josh and was like, "i should kick your ass for saying I have such a gay name like that." He was a real winner. Then Sales Idiot walked away and we called the cops. I really thought that he might come back. It was scary.

7. This happened this past week. We come home from work and there is a verbal fight going on in the hallway with our neighbors next store. Lots of creative curse words making both parties seem Oh so intelligent and illiterate. The cops came again.

8. And finally back to Mr. Paranoid. We come home today and see a cop car sitting in front of the apartments. Yep Mr. paranoid called them for reasons unknown. At this point I am sooo sick of it all.

I want to leave so so so so so so so so so so so so bad! I have never lived around such people. On top of everything they all smoke. We can't open our windows because it reeks of smoke. I am so over it.

On the positive side we are house hunting again. Hopefully we will find something really soon!

Its been 2 Years

We celebrated our 2nd Anniversary on April 29, 2008. It was a pretty awesome day. Josh surprised me at work with a dozen roses. I have never had flowers delivered to me at work before! I felt pretty special. Josh had a surprise for me for that night and he wouldn't tell me about it. I got off work and drove home and then he took me to our surprise. We drove to SLC and drove around and around and I totally didn't know where we were headed to. Then we parked by the temple and josh was like, "we are going to the JSB to the Roof Top restaurant. It was really nice there. My favorite part was the desserts. The view was awesome and Josh is so romantic.

I also had a secret surprise planned for Josh. Im really good at surprising Josh becuase I get him really confused as to what I have planned. The surprise took place last saturday. I tricked him into thinking it was a day at Lagoon. He was not excited about going to Lagoon, but pretended he was. so at 11 am I surprised him for brunch at Mimis Cafe and then massages. It was a relaxing day. We both never had had massages before and were a little freaked out by massages (from people we didn't know and if they were pervey) (more Josh then me). At the end of our hour massages we both concluded we had been missing out!

Its crazy how fast these 2 years have gone. It seems like yesterday (4 years ago) Josh was trying to win me over at Tommasitos with 6 meatballs in my spaghetti. He was Spaghetti Guy and I was Pink Backpack Girl. We were nameless to each other until we worked up the courage to have a conversation outside of what i wanted to eat for lunch. Im sure glad Josh asked me out because look at us now!