New Car!!!

Hooray! Jon and I finally found a car that we can buy! It's a broken little car, but that's why I'm so glad that Jon is so talented when it comes to automotive repair. For those of you who didn't know, Jon used to work for an auto collision repair shop, so he is a professional autobody repairman! It's really come in handy, because the accidents that car-which-shall-not-be-named was is were all repaired by Jon! Plus we're getting a really nice car at a fraction of the price because it's broken and he's gonna fix it! :)
So the new car is a 2007 Mazda3. It's black with black leather seats (I know, sounds like a summertime sauna!), and it has the stereo controls on the steering wheel as well as seat warmers! It needs a bit of work - all on the passenger side of the car. It will need at least new front and rear bumpers, new passenger headlight and taillight, back windshield, passengerside quarterpanel, a new antenna, and some dents fixed. When we're done we'll have repainted the majority of the car (again, I'm so happy to have such a talented husband!) which means we can paint it any color we want. After painting El Diablo earlier this year, I'm not even nervous about helping!
Anyway, if you'd like to see it (for the time being), you can go to http://www.getwwa.com/vehicle_details/5216/MAZDA/MAZDA3. I just put the deposit down today, and we should be getting our loan approved within the next day or two (takes longer when you don't work the same schedule!) and then the car is ours! Once we get it I'll post some pictures, along with our progress as we fix it! :)
Well that's all for now!

R.I.P. El Diablo (aka: Monty the Cavelier)

In Memorium

So, some of you heard that I wrecked my car Monty (yes, that was his name even if you didn't know it). Well, it's true, I did. It was on the 18th of this month. Here's the story:

I was driving back from having dinner with my bff Katie, and I was heading west on hwy 201 at about 7:20pm. Some of you know that at this time the sun is directly in front of your face practically, so you don't see cars in front of you - you see a bright orange light and some shadows that you assume are cars or some sort of horrible monster. Usually they're cars. Anyway, it just so happens that there had been another accident that they police were still taking care of, so traffic was stop and go past there so everyone could "rubberneck" to see the damage. Once we passed the wreck, traffic started going faster. Thinking that we were done with the whole stop and go, I decide that I'm being completely blinded by the stupid sun, so I try to adjust my sun visor to cover it better. Well, because I was focusing on my visor and the sun, I didn't see the shadow cars in front of my come to a stop until it was too late. I had just enough time to see the cars, panic, slam on the breaks and then slam into the poor little Prius in front of me. Anyway, the people I hit yelled a lot - which I don't really blame them too much but I was afraid to talk to them because they were so angry - and one of the cops from the other accident came over and took care of us, but my car was leaking antifreeze and the driver's side headlight was dangling on the side of the car, so they had to tow it away and I had to call a neighbor to come to my rescue (thank you Lynsay!)

Now I didn't get a good look at the damage before it was towed away because frankly I didn't really want to know how bad it was - I was really upset about the whole thing and didn't want to make it worse. So the next day Jon and I (I got work off to take care of everything and see the doctor for whiplash) went down to the tow yard to look at it and the second I looked at it I decided that he - the car - was no longer Monty. No, now he was El Diablo. I'm convinced that this car is cursed and is not happy unless he's broken. Here's a rundown on his story:

1. When I bought him he had been a salvaged car from a front end accident, the damage reaching parts of the engine compartment as well as needing to replace the whole front end (fenders, hood and bumper).



2. After buying him, the air conditioning didn't work.



3. About a month after buying him, I was driving on Bangerter Hwy and after a stoplight was trying to shift from first to second and the clutch went down but didn't come back up. I had to drive from I-15 and Bangerter all the way to Redwood Rd in first gear because the clutch wasn't working. Apparantly a cable with clutch fluid had sprung a leak.



4. About a year after I bought him, while being polite at work and waiting for someone to pull out of their parking spot with plenty of room (keep in mind my car is in neutral and I'm just waiting), a Ford Explorer backs up into me. I saw him coming and blared my horn but he couldn't hear me over his music. He broke the bumper, the headlight, and dented the hood as well as the latch for the hood so it wouldn't catch on it's own - to close it you had to open the latch completely then shut the hood then close the latch. Then to top it off he gave me expired insurance and ran off, but because it happened on company property they couldn't even fine him for it!



5. A month (or less) after that, after Jon had bought a new replacement bumper and headlight (this is also when we found out that originally it had been replaced with 2002 parts instead of 2004), we were almost ready to paint the new bumper. We were at Jon's parents in Bluffdale (our house was still being revamped), so after wet sanding the bumper he told me to drive it out to our new house so we could paint it and that he would meet me there. Well, I got onto Bangerter Hwy and right about the time I hit 65mph, my hood flew up into my windshield, shattering the window inwards, wrapping the hood around the car and denting the top of my car in about 6 inches. Luckily there was about four inches under the hood that I could still see so I was able to pull over to the side safely. A cop drove by me and didn't even help, by the way.



6. Last winter - approximately 1 1/2 years after purchasing him - Jon is driving back from school. The car in front of him has to hit his breaks hard and is sliding a bit. Now even though there was more than 2 car lengths between him and the car in front of him, when Jon hit his breaks he slid all the way into the other car. He only needed about another foot to stop, and barely tapped the guy, but for some reason the other guys car didn't even have a scratch, but half of our bumper blew up/broke off. The cop just laughed at him for it because it looked so ridiculous.



And that brings us to the incident I first mentioned. So, it is with great happiness that I tell you that El Diablo has been declared a total loss. Hooray! Now, while this does mean that I have to buy a new car and I'm completely broke so that kind of sucks, I'm just glad that I'm not longer having to drive a kamikaze car anymore. I think Monty was just unhappy that he was yellow at first, and he had a trailer hitch that made absolutely no sense. Of course, we painted him black this year, and it didn't make a difference, so yeah. I love that Jon can paint and fix cars...Anyway, rest in peace El Diablo, your work is finished until they fix you and sell you to some other poor sap who can deal with your curse. :)

Jon's Birthday!

Ha ha, so this is almost a month late, but that's okay! Jon turned the big 26 on August 10, and since the last two years we have been too poor to buy any real presents for him (we always had to use the money to fix the house or pay for school or fishing or whatever), this year I was bound and determined to make up for it! So, for his birthday, he got a Nintendo Wii and a new 16 piece set of golf clubs! I had so much fun planning his present, and originally it was going to be the golf clubs or an iPod and fishing lures or the Wii, but once I decided to get the golf clubs (because I couldn't find the Wii), my sister called and said that she found a Wii and that my family would go in on it to pay for it, so we got both! Anyway, I didn't get any wrapping paper because I decided it would be a futile effort to try and wrap the golf clubs, so Julie (who came to bring the Wii for Jon) and I improvised our wrapping jobs! :) Here's the pictures!

Jon's reaction to the golf clubs! (And just the birthday surprises in general!)

This is called Redneck Wrapping Paper.

This is cooler than any wrapping paper you'll ever find! It's fleece!

He's laughing at my wrapping job - I thought it was creative! ;)

Unwrapping the presents

He was soooo surprised to see a Wii!

The Clubs

The Bag

Julie showing us how to use the Wii

Jon's turn to play!

Jon trying out his swing

Even Ricky liked the golf clubs. Here he's playing "Dog Pound".

It was a way fun birthday - it felt good to finally be able to get Jon something nice. Jon went golfing the next day before work to try out the new clubs, then we went on the Saturday after. Anyway, that's it! Happy Birthday Jon! I love you!

Vacation!!!

Alright, so to make up for the last few blogs with no pictures, I'm going to have a LOT of pictures in this post! So be prepared! This post is in regards to the vacation we took August 1st through the 3rd. We went up to Strawberry Pinnacles with a bunch of friends and it was so fun! Here's the pics!

Me four-wheeling! (BTW, I'm terrified of things without seatbelts!)

Me and Amber being our fabulous selfs on this rock that we totally conquered!

Me and Jon

We are such daredevils, hanging off of the side of cliffs and what-not.

Jon and Josh actually getting along! This picture will be worth money someday!

Secret Agents!

All us girlies!

The Preggos

Dipping our feet in the river (It was freezing! It took me about 10 minutes before my feet got numb enough not to feel it anymore!)

Jon is so cool. :)

Shawn and Stacy (With a small glimpse of Jon's boat in the background, he'd like that mentioned.) ;)

Tiff getting "Practice" with Amber's baby Owen

Owen and Dillan on Dillan's very own 4-wheeler

Dillan is such a rockstar!

One of the pinnacles

I'm pretty tired in this picture, having stayed up all night fishing and reading the Twilight books again.

I caught the first fish the night before (we spent the night on the boat, way fun!), and after that I sort of tapped out. But Jon was catching at LEAST one fish every 15-20 minutes all night and throughout the next day. This is the only one we took pictures of though, because they were all pretty smallish.

Dillan getting ready to tear it up! (He had some pretty wicked moves on that thing! Drove over every hill he could find!)

Cute Dillan!

Brian and Tiffany with Owen

Amber and Owen

Brian was the first to brave the freezing waters of Strawberry River...

But it soon turned into "The Man Test", where all the boys had to see who was the toughest and could stand the cold waters.

Overall it was a way fun vacation! Sorry it took SOOOO long to get this posted! Pictures take forever to download. :) Anyway, it was very fun and I enjoyed it a lot. Someday I'm going to get around to posting pictures from Jon's birthday and then I'll tell you all the scary tail of El Diablo. Until then, I hope you enjoy! :)

Random Questions

So, I finished reading Breaking Dawn, and OH MY GOSH!!!! That book threw me through SO many loops! Oh I love it though! LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!! If you haven't read the Twilight books yet, then you absolutely have to! I have them so you can borrow them from me if you need to! In fact, I had pre-ordered Breaking Dawn back in May, and it was delivered yesterday, however being the impatient person I am I had already bought it on Monday but it was too late to cancel the online order, so I sold my second copy to a co-worker. Anyway, I love it so much! Stephenie Meyer was right in that everyone is happy in the end, it was perfect! Anyway, other than that everything's been pretty basic. I just finished training one of my classes at work yesterday, and I start another 5 week class on Monday - still working an AM shift. For those of you who don't know, the last four weeks I've been working AM and Jon has been working PM. We overlap by about 30 min, and that's all we really got to see eachother, and now it's going to continue for 5 more weeks! (Sigh) Oh well, if other people can do it then so can I. I'm just so used to being spoiled and seeing my husband everyday and carpooling with him and working with him, so this is an adjustment for me. But I will persevere! ;) We went on vacation last week, and that definitely helped a lot.

Okay, so until I get my lazy butt up and post all of my pictures from my vacation last week, here's a happier post than my last one! :)

Rule: One word answers! No exceptions!

1. Where is your cell phone? Purse
2. Your significant other? Jonathan
3. Your hair? Curly
4. Your mother? Spacey!
5. Your father? Hilarious!
6. Your favorite things? Books
7. Your dream last night? Highschool
8. Your favorite drink? LifeWater
9. Your dream/goal? Mom
10. The room you’re in? Office
11. Your church? True!
12. Your fear? Alone
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Cache
14. Where were you last night? Home
15. What you’re not? Tall
16. Muffins? Blueberry
17. One of your wish list items? Baby!
18. Where you grew up? Hyrum
19. The last thing you did? Drove
20. What are you wearing? Jeans
21. Your TV? TiVo
22. Your pets? Ugh.
23. Your computer? Slow
24. Your life? Wonderful!
25. Your mood? Tired
26. Missing someone? Jon
27. Your car? Monty
28. Something you’re not wearing? Heels
29. Favorite store? Costco
30. Your Summer? What?
31. Like (love) someone? YES!
32. Your favorite color? Yellow
33. Last time you laughed? Today
34. Last time you cried? Yesterday
35. Who will re-post this? Someone...

So, just to avoid questions later, yes I'm pretty boring, yes I'm baby hungry and no we're not trying. :) That should cover it! I'll actually post pictures and fun stuff from our vacation last week later on today when I'm off of work. After I shop for Jon's birthday, of course! ;) Anyway, that's all for now, so be sure to comment! :)