happy birthday colby!

on sunday we celebrated colby's 24th birthday (old man!) and i'd say it was a success!

it was a little bit difficult to get presents for him without him knowing about it...but i pulled it off! only having one car means ordering online and then hiding them all the way under the bed where i know he wouldn't look! i was pretty confident he'd love what i got him. he wasn't too subtle with his hints. a few weeks ago we went to the mall to look for hats for him (giants and royals) but he gave up on it because they were too expensive. he's also wanted a giants jersey forever, and would always tell me which player he would want if he ever got one...

 surprised face.

 new giants hat!

 pablo sandoval jersey. you'd think he was on the team.

he had to pull out the glove to get an official picture. love it.

and of course in true aimee fashion, these presents came along with a bunch of his favorite treats all wrapped individually. cause it's fun to open lots of presents!

a little later on we skyped with my parents while he opened the presents they sent him. i didn't get pictures, but a little while ago when we had too much time to kill at costco, this happened. my mom saw it and got him the exact one! it's hilarious. and he loves it. they also got him a kc royals hat, some good old fashioned money and more treats. (i must get that from somewhere...and it's killing me to look at the big box of candy on the table while he's gone and not eat any...)  

i've also been super excited to make a birthday cake for him! if you ask him i was probably a little too excited. but i've never really made a real birthday cake before and was stoked to pull out the frosting tips and food coloring.

can you tell we just saw spiderman?

i was so excited when i found a box with exactly 24 candles in it! yet after he blew them out, i found three of them still in the box we forgot to put on the cake! i couldn't believe it. so i lit them and made him blow them out after so he would officially be 24. i couldn't let him stay 21 cause that's how old i am. gross. 

                                     

 cute birthday boy!

here's to many many more birthdays to come! can't wait!

i don't really have an excuse for not writing on this thing a little more, even though I'm hard at work at my internship. (that 3 day work week really takes its toll...) 


it's been going well, somewhat similar to last year except scaled down by about 7.5. that was the biggest surprise when i first started. the control room is the same size as the one at byu. so yeah, kansas city ain't no d.c. but i'm getting the job done and am on track to officially graduate in august! woo!

with only one car we have to coordinate our work days to make sure that colby can drop me off and pick me up. we're lucky our schedules are pretty similar. unfortunately sometimes taking me to work means colby doesn't get as much work himself some days, but it's going as well as it could be so i can't complain.

we've had a little fun on our time off too. more bbq, royals game, more freddy's, amusement park, water park and some good old swingin' at the park. or elementary school. whichever you prefer.

life lately...

rock on.

.whatever makes you feel like a rockstar.

let me tell you a little about myself. tim mcgraw has been my favorite singer ever since i can remember, and this cd is the first one i ever owned:

p.s. lookin' good tim!

ever since this one, i've bought every single cd he's released and know every single song. i can't even explain how much i love his music. it's just what i think about when i think about growing up. cause if i remember right i got that cd when i was about 5 years old! 

then there's kenny chesney. i've loved his songs forever as well, but not as long as tim. but i've definitely made up for the lost time! also have every cd and love it all because i grew up with it. 

so last fall i happened to see online that my two favorite singers in the entire world were touring TOGETHER! is it pathetic that i remember exactly where i was when i saw it?? i seriously could hardly contain my excitement. i've seen kenny in concert twice, but surprisingly have never seen tim! it's always bad timing or he wasn't in utah...and so on and so forth. it may have taken me 21 years but it happened.

 as you can tell by our new friend, it was definitely a country concert :)

 seriously the whole time tim was performing, i kept thinking how i would have been perfectly happy if that was it. i couldn't get over the fact that it was just beginning!

 kenny came to the stage on a floating chair above the stadium. no big. 

both of them! hooray! they even sang 'indian outlaw' together, which is my first-ever favorite tim mcgraw song. 

i'll absolutely never forget this day, a little because my dreams of seeing these two together finally came true, but mostly because i got to share it with the love of my life!

thank you colby!!! 

one year!

she says...

one year ago today, I walked into the "new member" sunday school for the first time in my new dc ward. I saw a guy that looked exactly like the old spice guy and knew I had to get to know him. I didn't have much of a conversation with him that day, only when we were outside waiting to get our pictures taken for the directory. I found out he was from utah and only lived about 20 minutes away from where I'm from. he made fun of me for going to timpanogos and I tried to make fun of springville but it's not as cool when you just copy insults. oh aimee. after we went back inside the whole class just talked together for a while, and I didn't really get to talk to just him anymore, except to challenge him to a fight...he accepted. it never happened. darn.

I found out he was hilarious and the funniest thing that stood out to me is when he was telling the group that him and his friend wouldn't pay attention if they sat together in sacrament meeting so they needed some new friends to sit by...

silence.

everyone just stared. it was too funny, but i really wished i could be the one he sat by!

i also remember he always said "well played" to everything, which was also really funny. nothing much else happened that day, and we didn't really get to talk at church until a few weeks later. we didn't go on our first date for a few weeks either, but little did i know that the day me and colby met at church would change my life forever. i thought i was crazy for wanting to go all the way to dc by myself for a summer internship, but it's one of the best things i've ever done for one obvious reason. i found the love of my life and best friend. i never saw my life going this way but i wouldn't change a thing. i would have never believed anyone who would have told me last year i'd be married by the next march, but i've learned that things don't always go as planned. i'm eternally grateful for that. i used to make fun of anyone who got married so quickly after meeting someone, but i would've been absolutely crazy not to marry colby. i can't believe it's been a whole year, and it's most definitely been the most amazing year of my life so far! and the best part is i know each year will just get better and better.

he says...

One year ago I had a life changing moment that I didn't even know would change my life when it happened. I was talked into going to a singles ward in DC because Nate and Shayne heard that the ward was a good one. We are all from Utah yet they knew about a singles ward on the other side of the country. Of course the only thing we did the whole time was look for attractive girls that we would take out..... or chicken out when we tried to ask them out. It made it really hard to get girls when Nate and I were in the same room. We have a good time and people notice it, but we tend to take it overboard some times... most of the time... okay, always.

I remember we were just hanging out in the newbies class we saw some girls and obviously Nate called the most attractive one! I was bummed to say the least. But little did I know that he jumped the gun on that one. The most beautiful girl I had seen there walked through the door. Her eyes were the first thing I noticed and they pierced my soul. She was way out of my league. I mustered up the courage and spoke to her outside when we were taking pictures for the ward. I went with the ole, ask where they are from or what school they went to it and make fun of it. So I asked her name and she said it was Aimee. I knew I would remember it because I have a sister with that same name. It was going to be easy. Then we asked where she was from, Utah. I couldn't make fun of that because I am from there. Asked where she went to school, Timpanogos. Bingo. I knew I could make fun of that. So I made it seem like no big deal. It seemed like I had her hooked... Then I saw her with the pesticide guys. I, like always, kind of gave up but claimed that I was in love with her. Thats how I treat my crushes. I wasn't really in love with her at that time... I think.

But sure enough a year later, I am crazy in love with this girl. I don't think I could be anymore in love with her. She has changed my life for the better. Who would have known that me deciding to go out to Florida for a summer would take me up to DC and meet a girl that lives 20 minutes away from my house in Utah. I don't think I would have met her any other way. I am now the happiest man in the world and that is all because of my lovely wife. I am so happy that we get to spend forever together.

...

i (aimee) wanted to post a picture from the time we started dating...and i had to go with this one. it was about a week after we went out for the first time (and a few weeks after we met) at an orioles game in baltimore. we had no idea this picture was taken at the time...but i love it!!

gateway to the west

monday morning colb and i drove the 4 hours to st. louis before any human should be awake so he could do one installation for the company, and then we'd get the rest of the day to play. we got tickets to the cardinals game and were stoked to try some st. louis pizza. the job that was supposed to take about an hour ended up taking about triple that much...but no worries, I had fun sitting in the car waiting :)

when he was finally finished we were both staaarving, but had to find the hotel first. his job was in a suburb, so it took us a while to get there. then it was another 30ish minutes to drive to the pizza place i had found online and was apparently pretty awesome. you know that feeling when you're so hungry that you're past the point of being hungry? yeah. we were definitely there. but oh my goodness. was the pizza worth it. the one i got was honestly one the best pizzas i've ever tasted. garlic olive oil sauce with fresh mozzarella and artichoke hearts. colby said it tasted like glorified cheesy bread. i can't really argue with that, but it was heavenly. he got pepperoni and applewood smoked bacon, which was also delish.

also, this place gave us a jar of sea salt shavings to put on the pizza i guess? never heard of it, but no one enjoys her salt like this girl. and yes. we ate every bit of that.

next up was a stop at the supposedly pretty famous ted drewes frozen custard. obviously we had to try it after i saw it on man vs. food.

 cookie dough for both of us please. what else?

the verdict? it definitely wasn't the best i've had, but still great and worth trying. the big problem we had is that the cookie dough wasn't in big chunks like it usually is at other places and there were way too many chocolate chips getting in the way. those are just a road block for me. #firstworldproblems

last stop: downtown for the cardinals vs. padres game! busch stadium is an awesome stadium! it's literally right downtown, so the backdrop is amazing. it's also pretty new, but the red bricks they built it with make it look older and almost antique. i approve.

it was a great game despite our nosebleed seats! (they were only 3 dollars though! score.) the cards had a nice come-from-behind victory thanks to a nice home run. those are always good.

 and what would a trip to st. louis be without a picture by the arch? we didn't have time to get any closer than this, but we're planning on going back in august and will hopefully get closer, and maybe even ride to the top! woo!

the next morning we were up bright and early to get to the temple there before heading home. it's obviously beautiful, and basically everyone there told us they're happy to see some younger people. a lady in her 50's said to us that she's usually the youngest person there! happy to help. there was no one outside to take our picture except for the grounds workers..and i didn't feel comfortable enough to pull them away from their job to take our picture. so this is the best we got.

  yeah...i'm a nerd pants.

                                      
                                      

we though we were going home after this, but turns out he had to go back to that job and fix a few more things. which also took forever. we got back to good ol' kansas eventually, and had a great time on our little trip! 

st. louis: we'll be seeing you again soon.

best in the midwest

the title of this blog is not only a reference to the wizard of oz...but it actually applies to us first-time mid-westerners. both of us will always call utah our home, and it's basically where our entire lives have been lived. and there are things we will miss this summer. in n out. nielsens frozen custard (I could literally live off of that stuff. it's probably my favorite food). cafe rio/costa vida. mountains. dryness (i actually kinda like the humidity, but colby is not a fan). and of course our families.

but what would you do if I told you we found a place dare I say BETTER than in n out AND has frozen custard?!? Please contain your excitement for me.....

meet freddy's. apparently they started in wichita and grew all over kansas and various other places. none in utah yet, but colby said if we end up in utah it has to be st. george because there is currently a freddy's under construction in our favorite southern utah hotspot.

I know food pictures are boring-tastic and next time i'll try harder to get human beings in the pictures.

they even have fry sauce. 

colby went to ask if they had any spread-type sauce we could dip the fries in...he didn't even see the fry sauce dispenser right in front of him! who would expect that anywhere non-utah? the burgers are delish (in n outs buns are better, but there basically the same otherwise), the fries are ahhhhmazing (big advantage freddy's) and the cookie dough concrete reminded me of what heaven must be like. seriously, what is it about that stuff? oh and they have diet dr. pepper. hooray!

the workers were extremely nice and even gave us an extra custard cone for free because they made too many. score! we'll definitely became regulars at this place and will miss it when we don't live right down the street anymore. 

also, we know we're in the bbq capital of the world and will definitely take advantage! i've watched the man vs. food kansas city episode and have taken detailed notes. stay tuned...

have you laughed today?

not a day goes by that I don't laugh my head off. colby is the funniest person i've ever met, and he's all mine!

when colby was about to go into work, i got this gem on my phone:

the text said: yep....stuck it to my face.....

he could be left in a room with a napkin and have a great time. he says it himself. how did i get so lucky?!

we've called kansas home for a little over two weeks now, and I love it. it never ceases to amaze me how delicious the air smells at all times and how crazy the thunderstorms can get. tornado warnings, anyone? there are billions of trees and it's just beautiful. I love me some mountains, but I can do without them. at least for now.

this is right outside our front door! how gorgeous is this?

my life has been pretty low-key and boring since we've been here, but it should pick up soon. since colby sometimes works 15 hour days and I have yet to start my internship, I've had A LOT of spare time. we just barely got internet and a tv, so other than netflix and the daily trip to the complex's gym, i've been cooking up a storm. I love finally having my own kitchen to work with, and i've definitely put pinterest to good use. my page with all the favorite food and treats is right here. 

whole wheat sugar cookies (thanks to my sissy amanda) with greek yogurt frosting

 cheez-its

pizza hut personal pans (dead-on) and cinnasticks! TO. DIE. FOR.

having dinner on the table as late as midnight some days isn't something i'd like to do forever, but that's the life i'm in for now. and you know what? my life is fantastic.

welcome welcome

hey there! it's us. just in case you don't know already, here's a little backstory:

aimee interned in DC summer of 2011. colby worked in DC installing security systems summer of 2011. they met at church. it was love at first sight even if we don't admit it. we do. we came back to utah in august and september and resumed what began back east. engaged in november and married march 23, 2012. (for a more full version, go here. ah, the old blog.) now, here we are doing the exact same things as last summer, except now we're roomies and live just outside of kansas city. hence the clever blog title.

we think we way rule at being married.

follow us along in this unexpected, amazing life we both have been blessed with.