a happy 1st

Celebrating our first anniversary together this weekend was so fun! I am so glad that we were married in the summer so we can always party for our anniversary instead of having to worry about school or other things. We headed up to Salt Lake City for the weekend for a little get-away trip, and we had a blast. We didn't manage to make it to a lot of the things we had planned to do, but I guess that will give us an excuse to return again soon!

Of course, most of the pictures I managed to take were of the food. Go figure. 

We decided that on Friday night we wanted to try the Red Iguana. I have heard so much about this place, and have watched it on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and we both LOVE Mexican food, so we knew we had to try it.

Look at that cutie as we pick out our meals! (He has the menu upside down...silly)

Our server was SO nice and friendly! He brought us out a little sample plate with each of the different kinds of mole (mole-ay) that they make at this restaurant -- there were 8 kinds! There was a mole negro (rich dark taste), mole verde (much more mild, chile flavor), mole amarillo (yellow, sweet), almond mole (our fave), mango mole (the special of the day, not shown), and more. They were all so flavorful! It was incredible! It is insane how many different things go in to making each of these special sauces, and they had such a unique and delicious taste.

Owen decided to order the Puntas de Filete a la Nortena, which had sirloin strips sautéed with bacon, jalepenos, other peppers and more, all served on top of the almond mole. It was kind of like a fajita but oh-so-much more delicious! Talk about a flavorful sensation! It was incredible!

I decided to order the special of the day, which was mango enchiladas. The mango mole was a great mix of sweet and spicy, and they filled me up so much! It had carnitas (pork) inside, and even though they seemed very simple, they were heavenly! I've never liked carnitas as much as I did with those enchiladas!

We also decided to splurge seeing as it was our anniversary and get some wonderful beverages--I got a virgin peach margarita (it was like a delicious frozen peach dessert!) and Owen got the most delicious horchata I have ever had in my whole life. I am now inspired to figure out their recipe, it was amazing. Plus, free refills--that's what I'm talking about!

Here was the view from our hotel room at night. Even though it probably would have been a cooler view on the north side of the hotel, it was still really fun being on the top floor and looking out over the city. Plus, who doesn't love to take slow exposure shots at night, right??

The next morning we woke up and went to the Salt Lake temple. Three weekends in a row -- woo! It was so fun to go the temple on our anniversary and see all of the other couples getting married, and to remember back to our special day and the promises we made to each other and to the Lord last year. I feel so blessed to have been married in the temple and there was no better way to remember it than to take another trip there!

Unfortunately, the temple took a lot longer than we were planning on, and we didn't get out until around 2 p.m.! Sadly this meant that we missed the farmers market at Pioneer Park which we had been planning to visit, and it also meant that we were starrrrrving! So we decided to go to lunch, and since we loved it so much, we decided to go to the Red Iguana AGAIN! Why not? It was so good! We decided to walk there to hopefully burn off some calories from our wonderful Mexican feast the night before, but there was construction in the way, so instead of being a straight shot from the temple like it should have been, we had to walk all the way around the city to get there through some kind of shady neighborhoods, which was kind of scary since I had both my camera and computer with me!

These tacos are the best thing in my life. Owen ordered them, and I was so jealous of his meal. They are the famed Tacos don Ramon, and they are too amazing to describe. All I'm saying is, you gotta try them. As soon as you can.

I got the Enchiladas Suizas, which are one of their more popular items, and paired it with a wonderful Jarritos beverage, because Mexican food seriously tastes so much better with Jarritos on the side.

I was so hungry that I forgot to take the shot before I started eating! This came with SO much mole sauce, which was delicious! You definitely don't need to order the beans & rice on the side because this is sooooo filling! These enchiladas were stuffed with shredded chicken and avocado slices, with the mole poblana on top. Mmmmmmmmm....

After finishing our meal, Owen decided to run back to the car on his own while I waited at the restaurant with our bag full of the two expensive things we own, since he swore he saw some questionable looking guys following us after we passed the liquor store. We may have been freaking out or overreacting, but better safe than sorry!!! We went to the Salt Lake Public Library after lunch to enjoy the AC while it was SOOOO hot outside. Plus I've always heard that it has some crazy cool architecture, and I wanted to see it for myself!

Unfortunately it closed at 6, so we didn't get to stay there very long, but Owen got to read some Captain America comics and I got my pictures, so I supposed that's about all we can ask for.

Plus they had the coolest bike rack there that I have ever seen!

We did some shopping around the Gateway mall after leaving the library, drooled over the Mad Men collection at Banana Republic (I would seriously love to own every piece of that collection), laughed at all the ridiculous prices at Anthropologie (while I secretly wanted to buy everything in that store as well), tasted some unique olive oils and balsamic vinegars, and played in the water fountain. I wanted to check out Les Madeleines, because supposedly they are one of the few shops in SLC that makes macarons, but they had closed at 4! Ridiculous! Around 8, we headed down to West Valley to go to our drive-in movie! Apparently this is the only drive-in theater left in the state of Utah, and we've always wanted to go to one. Unfortunately, the only movies that were playing that a) weren't rated R, b) we hadn't seen yet, and c) weren't going to make me vomit (umm Smurfs), was the double feature of Planet of the Apes and Cowboys vs Aliens. Both of these movies were seriously dumb (Planet of the Apes was shockingly boring and predictable, while the aliens in Cowboys vs Aliens were AWFUL), but it was fun to experience movies in this way!

Plus it was cool because when you got out of your car, you could see all of the other movies playing around you as well! I hope they don't close this place down because I would love to go there again if there were movie I actually was interested in watching and if we parked next to someone who wasn't smoking the whole time (we had to keep our windows closed, it was seriously gross).

And this is the only picture I got of us together. From the whole trip. And we are in the car. Go figure. Oh well, at least we have lots of wonderful memories and had a great experience together! And we can plan on getting lots and lots more pictures together soon!

Thanksgiving "Break"

What a "vacation."


We started out at 5 am on Tuesday morning, skipping classes and work because we only had one class each. Devynne and our cousin James (age 9) spent the night at our house the night before so we could leave nice and early. We stopped in Farmington and picked up my other cousin Malachi (13) and then got on our way. Wasn't it nice of my mother to volunteer us to bring two young boys with us to make a nice full car with 5 people? Anyway, we made great time through Utah, and made it to Idaho just after the sun had risen. Once we hit Idaho, the winds started picking up, blowing the snow everywhere and reduced visibility to practically nothing. Awesome. Somewhere in the middle of Wendall and Jerome, we got stuck in drop-dead traffic. For an hour. The good part was that Owen and I had plenty of time to learn how to put on the chains because by this time, the snow had definitely started to pick up. For all of you Utah Valley-ers who mocked the so-called "blizzard," well be grateful because we were stuck right in the middle of it, and it was not pretty.


We made it through eventually, and since our windshield wiper fluid wasn't working and our windshield was getting pretty nasty, we decided to stop at a rest stop about 7 miles outside of Boise to clean it off. We weren't even going to stop to use the bathroom because we were just going to stop in Boise anyway because one of our chains had broken so we were going to buy new ones before heading into the Blue Mountains. Windshield cleaned, we got back in the car to get going. Owen started in reverse and then the car just died. He tried restarting it, and the engine would turn over (whatever that means) but wouldn't actually start! I was already distressed about having waited in the snow for an hour, and started freaking out at this point. Just what we needed--to be stranded in the middle of Idaho with two kids not our own!


We tried calling family to see if someone could find an auto repair place for us, and Owen's mom got us a number of the place closest. Unfortunately it was a diesel truck repair place. But we asked the truck people if there was a repair place they recommended, we got their number, and arranged for a tow truck to come get our car. The bad news was that they could only carry 4 people in the tow truck. Owen tried to convince them to let us double buckle or ride in the car as they towed it, but no luck. We would have to decided who was going to stay behind at the (freezing) rest stop.


I went into the rest stop because I think it was warmer than the car and sat there feeling sorry for myself and looking depressed. A man came out of the restroom and asked me how I was doing. "Terrible," I replied. Taken aback, he asked me what the problem was, so I went into our whole story and how we were supposed to be in Washington in like 4 hours and how I hate snow and car problems. The man started to walk away and said, "I wish there was something I could do to help..." when Owen popped around the corner and said, "Well actually, there is something you could do." He then proceeded to ask the man if he could wait for the tow truck to come and take some of us to the auto repair place so we would only have to take one trip (the tow truck costs per mile!) Despite the interesting moustache, 80s glasses, "Geek Squad" t-shirt, and story about how he has to carry around a shovel in his car in case he gets buried in the snow, we decided to trust this man. Basically we didn't have any other choice. We sent Malachi, James, and Owen with the stranger and Devynne and I went in the tow truck. I'm not sure which was worse. But we all eventually made it to Dowdy's Automotive and no one got kidnapped--thank goodness, because we most definitely do not have enough money to pay a ransom.


So the five of us took residence in the lobby of Dowdy's Automotive for the next couple of hours, waiting around to see what the story was and reading up on People's Sexiest Man Alive (Ryan Reynolds? Really?) and eating all of their chocolate in the meantime. Two and half hours later, they still didn't know what was wrong with our car. It was a little after 4:30 at this time, and they closed at 6, and it was looking more and more like we were going to be stranded in Boise for the evening. Which I did NOT want to have happen. So we started to look at our other options, and decided that we would rent a car and drive it to Washington and let the mechanic people have lots of time to look at the car and decide what was really wrong. We drove to Baker City that evening, stayed the night at a lovely Super 8 with Pizza Hut for dinner (they didn't have a Wendy's in all of Baker City!) We tackled the Blue Mountains the next morning and made it through all of Oregon without getting a ticket and eventually made it to my beautiful Camas, Washington.


Our time in Washington was great, even though it did have a few ups and downs. Everyone at home had been hit by a crazy flu and had been throwing up all the weekend before, so we were scared of that the whole time--Devynne was fortunately the only one who came down with it (okay not fortunate for Devynne, but at least she got to lay around the whole time like she likes to do and no one yelled at her). The food on Thanksgiving was pretty good for a bunch of amateurs. Normally we let Dad handle everything on this holiday, and I have no idea how he did it. We were running around like crazy because the turkey was done fast and we still had to bake everything but it all turned out in the end and was delicious. I made some pretty awesome stuffing and my apple pie was a beautiful work to behold (pictures to come. I'm really proud of it). We had a killer Black Friday, even though both Walmart (no products in stock) and Target (SUPER huge lines) were kind of disappointing...JCPenney's actually pulled through for us, and we finally got Owen a brown coat! Yay!


The car repair place called us on Wednesday bearing bad news. Turns out the problem was our Engine Control Module (the computer that runs your car basically) and it needed to be replaced. We sort of freaked out when he gave us the estimated cost, and called a mechanic we trusted in Washington. Unfortunately the ECMs typically cost between $800 and $1200, so at least the Dowdy's people weren't trying to pull a fast one on us. So we told them begrudgingly to order the piece, and they said it should be in by Monday. Great. Another day missed of school and work. But what choice did we have?


We left Monday morning at 6 and got to Boise around 1:30. We went by Dowdy's Automotive to see what the progress was and the piece we needed had not arrived yet!! Are you kidding me. We couldn't afford to waste another day, so we debated our options and decided to extend our rental car until Saturday, and then Owen is going to drive up to Boise to pick up the car and then drive back down to Provo (hopefully) in our repaired car. Just what he needs--10 more hours of driving. But I guess that's how it is when you are poor and don't want to pay for a plane ticket up to Boise or just buy a new car.


So there is our Thanksgiving story for this year. At least we got to spend the holiday with family and our car broke down in Boise, not some tiny town in the middle of Idaho somewhere. But next time, we are definitely going to fly.