My career choice

I have found what I want to do with my life. I want to be an Event Planner. Or rather a CSEP. Certified Special Events Planner. In June I helped at work with our yearly convention, I ran the registration desk, worked on the sales floor. Played bouncer for the VIP events. It was all chaos and noise and long hours. I loved it. Three months ago I got to help again with one of our regional coventions in Anaheim. It was smaller but I'd say way more fun then the big event and I realized on the flight home that I could that over and over. There is something supremely satisfying in watching an event go from ideas on paper to an experience for other people. Since then I have been harassing the Marketing department to let me on as an assistant to the Events Team and finally this week I really got somewhere. My involuntary mentor Carly pulled some strings and did a little political maneuvering and got me part time in the department training for an actual promotion that is meant to happen after 30 days of training. Ironically the event we are working on right now is in a month. That will be kind of like a job interview I imagine. To even start to get certified I need to have been in the industry for at least 3 years so the sooner I can get an events title the better.

Jason let his mechanic at the shop go and started focusing again on his sales and then taking smaller jobs in the shop and has been turning quite a profit thankfully. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for the business debt.
I might as well mention this here. Last weekend we took a trip to Idaho and picked up a Dodge Stealth Jason bought online that he is going to part out and use to get his car running. He is really excited to turn the $500 he spent in getting the car into the projected $3100 he should get for parts. My lesson learned in that weekend excursion was that we need a truck before we do anymore trailer towing. Time to get rid of the Jetta and get me 4 wheel drive I think.















August Anaheim Convention
Amber, Christian, Mickey, (world of warcraft character), Carly, Me, Chase

*While we were at the Anaheim Convention Center there was another Convention for the makers of World of Warcraft. We snuck in and ran around taking pictures with people in costumes and going to the Ozzy concert.

A wedding and funeral

3 weeks ago my aunt shot and killed her two sons and herself in a murder suicide.
The shock you are feeling after reading that sentence is a small portion of the shock I felt when my parents sat us siblings down and told us. Surreal is the best word to describe it. We found out Sunday, and by Wednesday everyone including Jason was loaded into the minivan headed to Phoenix. There was a memorial at the boys junior highschool that night. It was weird sitting in the auditorium listening to these little people talk about the grief they are feeling and how much they loved my 2 cousins. It made me realize how little I actually knew them. The grief and regret I felt in that hour was pretty horrendous. Unbearable actually, as I was in denial until..actually I might still be in denial.
That Friday morning September 25th was the funeral at 11 am. At home my best friend Brittany got married in the temple at 11 am Utah time. I was supposed to be there celebrating with friends and family on the temple grounds getting my picture taken in my bridesmaid dress, not staring at caskets. Life felt really unfair. Sometimes I get angry that my aunt took my cousins but I know that she loved those boys more then anything so I think in her temporary insanity she must have thought she was doing the right thing. Protecting them maybe. She had found out the night before my uncle wanted a divorce, the sheer mental pressure of that and other life challenges must have made her snap. I think everyone has hit that point at some time where they would rather sleep forever then face another day.
Jason and I went to the funeral service at the mortuary and then Dad hustled us over to the airport to catch a plane so I could go to Brittany's reception that night. A funeral and a wedding in one day. It was sort of an ultimate low for me.
Brittanys reception was awesome. Wadley Farms is a cute outside reception center with a garden and gazebo right by my parents home. Brittany did lollipop center pieces with pictures of her and Jeremy glued to them and a candy table, cotton candy and ice cream center. Sugar Sugar. She had a cupcake cake. I had to stand guard to make sure no one took any of the gourmet cupcakes from the wedding cake stand. When they cut the cake they chased each other around the garden trying to smear each other with a cupcake. It was cute. A happy ending to a hard week. She went to New York the next day for the honeymoon. :)

The Wyoming... adventure -Pictures

Here are the pictures in follow up to my last post. Enjoy.

The Wyoming...adventure

Last weekend we went to Cody, Wyoming for vacation and to see family. My Dads side is from Wyoming and so it is kind of my childhood playground. However, the trip turned into....an adventure.
We were meeting with my cousins the Smiths in Idaho because they were coming from Washington but they only had one driver and their trip is about 13 hours, ours is only 8. We decided to meet in Pocatello and have one of our 4 drivers (our car held me, Jason, Chandler, Rachel and my Dad) hop in their car to give my aunt a break. Unfortunately our journey didn't start til about 8:30 that night so when we met it was like 1 am. Everyone except Chan and Jason were really tired by the time we got to Rexburg. My Dad and Aunt decided they wanted to look for a hotel room for the night so that we didn't show up in Cody wiped out. But fate had other plans.
All the hotel rooms in Rexburg were full because it was graduation weekend. So we decide to carry on and have Chan and Jason drive the next 6 hours there.
Now if you know the area you know that to get to Cody from Idaho the shortest trip is through Yellowstone Park (I think I've been to Yellowstone at least 50 times, honestly.) A couple of miles outside West Yellowstone (that is a city and the gate entrance to the park) Dads van bent a rod. Something about it being on cruise control hitting a steep hill trying to accelerate too much or something. Dad decides to drive into the city and see if we can get a hotel room for the night and figure out what to do with the car in the morning as it is about 4 am now. No luck again, every hotel, and note there are 75 in the city, is full. My poor aunt went everywhere looking while Dad called triple A to see about getting a tow.
Triple A tells us that our towing range is 100 miles and we were at 120 miles from Cody so we would need to get closer or pay the extra fees for the tow. We decide to sleep on it. So from about 5 am to 8 am everyone (so thats 5 in our car and 5 in my Aunts car) sleeps in their seats. No fun. At 8 am my Aunt wakes up our car, she couldn't sleep) and we drive into Yellowstone praying the car will make it at least 20 miles. It makes it about 50 and then the engine quits. So Dad waited for a tow truck and the rest of us pile in my Aunts car and go to Cody.
While we are there we go to a canal that is at the ranch with some of my cousins that live on the ranch in Cody. This canal is a fun place because it has what is called a weir. That is where the water goes under a bridge over a cement bottom and then drops like a water slide. Jason has never done this before and I forget to give him the run down on how he is supposed to go down. I'm out of the water on the side taking pictures. He decides to go down this little water slide standing up! Any sane person in my opinion would have sat down to go through. As Jason hits the bottom of the slide he hits a part of the cement that has been beaten away by the water and is now rough and broken. He completely eats it tumbling through the rest of the 'ride'. Poor kid when he gets out he has gashed his hand and seriously scraped his knee, down to bone. Good thing he was last to go, my little cousins have never heard the words that came out of his mouth.
Now the trip is over it's time to leave and we have to figure out how to get the van home. Let me explain the van. It is an Astro which is a equipped with a V8 and truck frame. It's a truck with a van body really. Dad calls up Uhual to rent a truck and a flatbed to take the van home. But it's Wyoming and the only truck large enough to move the flatbed in 100 miles is a moving van. Which only has 3 seats in the cab. Instead of renting another car Jason and I just sit in the back of the van, up on the flatbed, with the windows open because we can't get A/C in a broken car, for 8 hours. Not so bad except when we went through construction, which blew dust and gravel into the car and in the rain. That felt good at first but then combined with the construction dust and no real ventilation it became miserable. By then end of the 8 hours I felt like I had been in a box hauled around by UPS.
I'll post pictures up later.

Jasons hospital scare

The last couple of months have been hard. I have a hard time writing when I don't think I have anything fun to post.

The business is wobbly right now, we had a couple of fraud charges come in over the internet that, coupled with some big equipment purchases we had to make, has created a ripple of being behind on money. What a pain in the A that is-many hard lessons from that. Things are slowly turning around but it amazes me how easy it is to get into a hole and how long it takes to get out of it.
You may have seen my facebook status about Jason being in the hospital over the fourth. That was a crappy weekend, Jason was having stomach pain on Monday and by Wednesday it had progressed so much that he was doubled over in pain. By 4 am that morning he woke me up and said he needed to go to the hospital. Well we get him in there and the doctor gives him morphine, does an xray and tell us he thinks he sees intestinal blockage. They give him an enema and it helps but it doesnt fix it he is still in pain. So then they do a cat scan worried its something serious but that comes back clean so they do bloodwork and that doesnt pull anything up either. 7 hours into all this they tell us they dont know what it is and to take percocet and come back if it doesnt go away in a couple of days.
Thankfully it went away about 2 days later but we still don't know what it was. It was terrifying sitting there watching my husband writhe in pain and not be able to help him or help the pain. Go prescription pain killers.

Jason, in a gown, with morphine.

My new goal

Blogging via phone is my new best friend. I'll be on here much more now.
So Jason and I are all moved into my parents basement (huge thanks to my family for their help with this task.) and the move went surprisingly smooth with a few fights of me trying to get Jason to do manual labor :P. For those of you who haven’t heard yet my parents are getting divorced and Jason and I decided to move into the basement so as to help financially with the split and so i can be with my youngest sister. It’s been nice so far being at home. Also, Jason’s shop is going really well, he is picking up a hoist this weekend so no more jack stands. We have enough referrals now that people are stopping by because they heard someone talking about us. J gets a real kick out of that, our conversations after work usually start with, "So I had 2 guys stop in the shop today..." I nod and smile and am excited for him.
I have been learning some hard things about marriage the last couple of months. A couple of nights ago I had a meltdown- I have really been struggling with the transition to wife. I didn’t think much would change since Jason and I lived together before the wedding but wow. I’ve got a lot more respect for ‘wife’. I didn’t naively think that getting married would be a fairy tale and I felt prepared walking down that aisle but man. Anyway during my crying I kept wondering why I was so sad and I realized I was having a hard time loving myself. I felt down on myself because I am not working toward anything and do not have a clue what I want to do with my life. I work and go home and do it over again. Luckily I have Founders training in 2 weeks, I’m hoping that will light some type of fire but I have also set the goal not to be so hard on myself. Does anyone else have this goal?

My 21st and moving

Quick run down on my birthday. It was the big 21 on the 5th.
I ran errands with Jason in the morning and hung out at the shop for awhile. Then that afternoon I went to Platos Closet and my best friend Brittany foot the bill for my shopping spree (she is store manager there so it worked out nicely for both of us.) And Jason gave me a $150 gift card to Forever 21, that I haven't used yet. That night Jason and I went out to dinner with Brittany and her boyfriend Jeremy at Chilis and then played arcade games for a while at Miracle Bowl while we waited for a lane to be open. It was a pretty fun day. Also, Susan paid for me to get a hair cut at her salon which I used the next day,my new hair is so cute. It's not shorter but it has layers and long sideswept bangs now. And then that Sunday we went to my parents house where my family sang me happy birthday and my Dad made my birthday cake. (Mom gave me another gift card to Forever 21, score, and Dad gave me money.) So I guess it was more like a birthday weekend.

Other then that things have been fairly quiet, we are settling in to the new shop and getting ready to move out of the apartment. Right now as I write this Jason is at a car meet for all of the Mazda enthusiasts in Utah.

I'm human ok?

Sometimes I write a post and then forget to post it because I will write it and then feel 'wow this is really lame I'll just save it as a draft and edit it later and post it.' Well thats what I did with that last post so I am doing a more updated one right now, this is why I am posting twice in one day.

So yes last week as most of you know by now was Jasons 23rd birthday. I can't believe we met when he was 19..... Anyway, I threw him a surprise party which had to be one of the scariest things to do ever because I knew it would mean a lot to him but I was so worried that people wouldn't show up and instead of feeling how loved he is he would feel bad that a lot of people hadn't shown up. Thankfully of the 25 people I invited, 30 people showed up! My parents kitchen was super packed. Here is a picture of his cake, it's kind of dark:

I am giving myself a pat on the back with this cake because I designed the picture that is printed on there and it was such a hit, a lot of our friends were shocked that I had designed that. I feel pretty good about myself looking back at that picture lol. My parents got video of the party so when I get that from them I will post it too.

I was really pleased the night was such a success, Jason kept saying I can't believe everyone was there, I can't believe how many people were there, I can't believe that all my friends showed up- after a while I was like ok ok I get it. I did an amazing job haha.

Also, this last weekend Jason moved into his first shop!! I am so so so so soososososo thankful he has this place now because the car parts in our dining area were really starting to cause problems with my feelings towards him.
On a more relevant note, it is starting to bring in a lot of business. Jason said the other night that he didn't realize before how much more credibility a shop would give him. Before we started moving stuff in we had to seal the floor using that garage floor paint and omg I am so sick of painting. If I have to edge a floor ever again I think I'll die. I'll post pictures of the shop later because there isn't much to it right now.

PS My birthday is this Thursday so feel free to leave me a note about turning the big 21! ;)

And life speeds up

Let me tell you about our month. Two Tuesdays ago I came home from work not feeling so well, not really sick but more like achy, like I had had a long day (which we always do at Zrii eh Amber?) Anyway, I get home about 7 and at about 830 I got really tired, couldn't keep my eyes open, I thought 'Ill lay here for a bit and unwind'. Well I woke up the next day at 2 pm! Somehow that morning I had managed to call into work to let them know I wasn't coming in but I don't really remember what I said. And man did my body hurt. It was an achy and a sniffly and a foggy feeling. From Wednesday to Friday I stayed home and over the three days I'd say I slept about 40 to 45 hours. I could not stay awake! Until Friday afternoon, what I think was my fever, broke and just like that I was up. I took a shower and was good to go. It was the strangest illness I have ever had. And even today when I was running errands I could tell my reasoning skills aren't all the way back yet, I kept forgetting to shift or I would stop on green lights.



Jason on the other hand has gotten very little sleep this week. He has some big events coming up with PriceMatchedParts (that I am not allowed to post about until after they happen) that has him swamped. We have had customers and business associates over every single day this week, sometimes 6 or more stacked into our little apartment. He had his biggest day last week doing over $6,000 in sales!! It was so cute when he added it up that night because he procceded to call everyone in his phonebook and tell them how much he had done, including my parents lol. I am so proud of him.

Business ventures

I have posted before about Jasons business PriceMatchedParts.com (http://www.pricematchedparts.com) where he sells performance car parts, ie aftermarket turbo kits, front mount intercooler kits, online. When he, and me as web designer, first started pricematchedparts he was working at Barber Brothers and only was able to work on it at night, well about 4 months into it he was laid off from Barber Brothers (he was the first cut in their downsizing because of the economy crisis) and he threw all his weight into PMP which is now his only source of income. Well pricmatchedparts is becoming so big that now we are keeping in stock some of the more common parts that he sells because customers will call him and want to swing by and pick the part up and give him cash. It's amazing. And if that isn't enough he received so many requests for PMP to install the parts that we sell that we are now getting a shop here in Orem where we will be able to stock parts and offer installations for those customers that would prefer we do both for them. Right now we have a Nissan 350Z sitting in our garage. The owner wanted to make sure he was first on the list to have Jason build his motor so he brought it over so that Jason could get started even before we moved the car to the new shop!
I am so proud of Jason taking his talent with cars and selling and turning it into something tangible.
Well we decided now that Jason is up and running doing what he loves it is time to get me moving. I had been putting in a lot of time learning more web design principles knowing that I want to go into Internet but not sure exactly what part. One day we were at Bretts house and I was showing him some things on Facebook and Brett said to me, "If I was you I would teach business owners how to use things like Facebook for their marketing. I have clients ask me all the time if I have someone that does that kind of stuff." And it hit me. Brett, the genius he is, had just defined for me what part to go into. I went home that night and started researching. Now this might have been fairly easy to just slide into but like Jasons employers when he started his business were laying people off, my work has started to lay people off. So now I am in this catch 22 of needing to show up really well at work to keep my job but at the same time really get this new business moving so that I have another means of income in case I am the next to go! I've got the groundwork laid out so far, http://www.socialnetworkyourbusiness.blogspot.com is where I post how to's so that I can market and get a following. But then I have http://www.socialnetworkyourbusiness.com which is my official selling site. It isn't the doing it that is hard for me so far, it's the where-to-start that seems to be getting in my way. Like chipping away at a glacier.
Anyway, this post has turned into a novel so I am ending here but please if you have any ideas for me or referrals shoot me an email babytwoshoes@msn.com or socialnetworkyourbusiness@gmail.com. I am all about networking now :)

Our first Christmas and New Years

The best perk of being married is I get to hang out with my best friend all the time, even on holidays that normally I didn't get to see him on when we were dating.
Christmas was lots of fun. We spent Christmas eve and day at Bretts house watching movies and playing on the ping pong table we bought his family (actually Brett and Jason played ping pong, the rest of us decided to just keep out of that competition ha). Then the day after at my parents house we played with everyones Christmas toys including the ping pong table we bought my family lol. Yes you read right, we bought two. Target FTW. We are extremely lucky that our families live so close to us to play with all the time.
Then New Years I made a nice steak dinner and at about 10pm we went to Jasons friend from highschools house and played Rock Band and chatted. It was more of a regular party then a New Years party. Next year I told Jason we are going to Vegas to watch all the big shows they have on the strip.