Amy and I got rear ended 1 week prior to our Hawaii trip as a little going away present. Amy had a sore neck for a few days and a headache, but other than that we were ok. The car is totaled. So, now home from our trip we have to decide on a new car and how we are going to pay for it. My dad is a dealer and mentioned that we can go to a car auction. Maybe that will be successful. It has been a bit stressful, but I think it has gone well, and acts as a blessing in disguise considering we probably got more for the car than we could have sold it for.
I figured I would give just a minor update. Amy and I have had some fun adventures over the last year, and I only have some of the pics, but oh well. For Valentine's day Amy got dressed up all purdy and we went out for a nice date. We have taken 2 trips to Las Vegas so far this year. One was to see her friend Summer for her bridal shower, the other was with all the Aunts and cousins. The card and flowers were for Amy's b-day. We went to dinner at the roof in the Joseph Smith Memorial building, and we saw Jerry Seinfeld live, it was a hoot. Amy also got a nice card from her mom, and from my mom a late b-day present last Sunday. My mom gave her some nice new clothes, Amy really liked this wrap around shirt she got. Another day this summer I got some free tickets to a Bees baseball game and Amy and I went, I guess she kinda had a thing for the Bee mascot haha. He was pumping his fist as she gave him a smooch, it was pretty funny. There are some vegas photos, in two Amy and I are standing next to a wax version of our favorite fictional hero, Indiana Jones, outside Madame Tussad's Wax Museum. The other photos were from our first trip there when we tried all the sodas around the world in the Coca-Cola factory. Amy had just tried the nasty one from France, and the people behind her just did, were watching as she drank it, and laughed. I was thinking if I liked the taste of the one I had, I think in that photo it was a kiwi-strawberry soda from South America. The last photo is when Amy and I went to a costume store for fun called Pibb's Exchange in Sugarhouse. I think we then went to a movie but I don't remember. Last night, for an early anniversary, Amy and I went to a 311/Offspring concert, I didn't take a photo, but it was really really fun. So...that is about all the fun updates, I guess we haven't been topping Mark and Tara in their adventures in Cali, but we try. :)
As for now in our busy lives...I am plugging away 3 hours a day in summer school killing off my last Spanish class and it's really tough. Amy is kickin butt at her job at Discover Card, and she is still brushing up on her Arabic. Funny story, she was writing in her journal on her break at work, her boss came by and said, "Oh, catching up on your Arabic?" Amy said, "Yep!" and as she walked away mumbled..."and I am complaining allll about you.." hahaha. Thanks for reading if you did, love you all. Calvin and Amy.
Hey all, A few weeks ago we had a fun snowboarding trip with some family. (My brother Sam and his wife Rachelle, Amy and me, my cousin Ethan. My cousin Ethan is the head of the ski school at Snowbird and he hooked us up. We got free rentals (I put a boot on the wrong foot like a doofus) and 2/1 all access passes. Ethan started everyone off on the beginner hill as a warm-up. Ethan lent a hand to the girls (and is very much so more patient with them than Sam or me lol)and they enjoyed that. Amy was getting the muscle memory of the sport coming back almost instantly, but still struggled to use her toeside to effectively carve, but she is becoming a great snowboarder!Rachelle is a beginner and did really good as well. After lunch, us boys hit the bigger slopes while the girls agreed to stay at the beginner hill. It was a cloudless day and we had fresh snow come in just a few days earlier. It was a bit icy, but overall perfect.
As some of you may have heard, I lost the group and decided to try the ski jumps in the terrain park, which didn't turn out so well. I know all you readers are thinking...wear a helmet...yeah...I learned my lesson ok? Here is what I remember though. I stopped and waited to see someone else to it as general rule of thumb. The kid going said, "Ok, watch me, the trick is you need some speed to master these jumps." He did them with precision like a graceful bird. I have done jumps like these hundreds of times, but not these particular ones. So I guess I got to thinking it was a piece of cake. All I remember is going off and I think doing kind of an awkward backflip that must have landed me on the lower left side of the back of my head. I was told I blacked out for 5 minutes, when I came to I saw the ski patrol all hovering over me. I must have babbled off info earlier than that because they seemed to know a certain amount already. That nice kid saw my wreck and he flagged them down for me and waited to see that I was taken care of. He asked me several times if I remembered the phrase red 12 and he kept laughing when I got it wrong saying red 28 or red 15. My cousin must have gotten them on the radio and came to see me pretty quick. He chuckled, got my snowboard from me, and took some photos exclaiming he had family blackmail for facebook, (which he still hasn't posted the pics yet) However there is a video of our day and footage of me going down on the stretcher.
Yeah, they put me in a dorky neck collar and a stretcher. My brother said he couldn't keep up with the flying ski patrol when they hauled me off down the mountain to the ambulance. I said to the guy, red 12, my memory all come flooding back. (A really weird feeling, I didn't even know where I was or that I had a wife there on the mountain). I was told I was babbling off concerns about our insurance coverage haha. He also asked me a TON of questions I don't seem to remember. Like my name, where I go to school, what I do for a living, who I was with that day, etc etc. I bet this guy never heard a patient say this, "Wow, I'm in an ambulance, like in the movies, I've never been in an ambulance before." He chuckled and said, "Well, its technically not an ambulance, its more a van." So, I guess I really am halfway there to a real ambulance, maybe I'll end up in one someday lol. Anyway, they took me into the resort medical facility and I saw Amy there fighting back tears of worry and my family all chuckling at the pictures Ethan was showing them. I guess you Erwin's are more sentimental than us Smith's haha. They did a series of memory tests about 3 times, I nailed them so they skipped the x-ray, then they looked over a chart about the symptoms of a concussion. They said it wasn't critical, I need to take some prescription strength Ibuprofin, and in 2 weeks I would be fine. Dearest Amy was there to hold my hand and drive us home.
It was then the following Tuesday that Amy went in for surgery. She has given me permission to say what it was. She had Endometriosis, if you are not familiar with it, here is a link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis
She had been a real trooper over the 8 months of this condition with me, which has been very hard on virgin newly weds. We are blessed that she has a job at Discover Bank that offers her a great Health Insurance package for us both. A lot of women, and especially the ones at work have told her, if doing "that" hurt as bad as she described, there wouldn't be any. I guess that is just how amazing my wife is. One lady at her work even made her a nice little card with a gift card to the bookstore for her.
We went in to Alta View Hospital at around 10:30 and ended up waiting until 3. They had some issues with 2 earlier patients that took longer than expected. Amy was huuunnn-grrrrrrry, she had fasted 24+ hours by this point. We would have been mad, but I had a laptop with movies so that passed the time. (I still wish they could have given us a discount or something on the surgery haha.) After the nurse, the anesthesiologist, and the doctor all came in to see her, they wheeled her off to surgery. Amy complained that the anesthetic was a bit painful, I think she has veins that like to hide haha. Amy seems to have bad luck with that, she tells me lots of stories where nurses try to stick her veins with a needle and fail. One nurse she said even moved the needle around in her skin and hit a nerve making her scream for another nurse. Nevertheless, they got her in, and got it done in less than an hour. They made incisions through her belly-button and just below it. In this operation they went through these holes with a fiber optic camera and a small lazer that cauterizes all the red inflames areas she has in there. The doctor showed me the pictures and explained the anatomy, what he typically sees, and kinda a color code as to the age of the inflamed areas. White the newest, Red a bit older, Brown longer, and Black is the oldest. She had quite a few red spots and a few brown.
I went ahead and got her prescription, stayed with her a bit until she could use the bathroom, then pulled the car around and got her home in bed. She was a bit woozy from the anesthetic and slept and slept. We had been abstinent for 2 weeks and she needed to avoid soaking in water. She saw the doctor this last Wednesday and he told her everything is healed and fine. This was GREAT news for me! We are both glad she is not in pain anymore and everything went fine. Friends and my mother provided dinner and company and it was very nice. Thank the lord above. :)
Life now has been busy still for us both. Amy has been back at work and I have been slaving on final projects for school and fitting in work. We have our date nights each weekend and oddly enjoy cleaning the house together. There hasn't been a time when I have taken the garbage bag out to the curb and Amy has already replaced the bag when I have gotten back. I love to grocery shop with Amy because she lets me get goodies. :P. Amy recently got a new laptop with some money we saved and she LOVES it!! We are also talking about getting a new car to replace her Malibu, but don't really have any concrete plans yet. We are hoping to buy my grandmother's Subaru Outback that she only put 17,000 miles on. That would be a really nice upgrade! But, we'll see what happens. We have happily been moved for 3 months here by our family workshop. Amy is still hunting for jobs and I am trucking away at school. We love all family that reads these and cares and loves for us.
Amy tells me people are asking for the update on our lives since marriage. To this Amy responded, "Um...well, I can't think of anything off the top of my head." It made me feel like we lead boring busy lives haha. The last blog about our honeymoon was a good one and I guess now every following blog will feel like it's in its shadow since it was so fun and epic. But, here is the updates to the best of my knowledge...sorry again for the length. I have a hard time keeping short blogs. (Especially since I am bad at updating them, and sorry we don't have lots of pictures, we don't take many photos and Amy's camera sucks the life outta batteries that we neglect to replace.)
About 4 months ago Amy got laid off from her job at Qqest being there for a year 1/2. Amy had a real jerk of a boss (Richard) that laid her off because he thought she didn't want to stay with the company for a career and was planning to make changes to her job. When he let her go, it made the other ladies that had worked there for years nervous at his actions. The new girl that took her place was a real beast from what we heard. Of course the boss thought she was tremendous. He wanted Amy to train her, yeah right. Everyone had a good laugh when she quit after 1 month of not handling the heat. Amy even got frustrated calls from her about how to do her job a few times. To Amy's credit she did not return the calls, for had she, she might have opened a can of you-know-what. All the girls there gave the boss a big "told you so" and suggested he never should have fired Amy. After that, he fired another lady there Amy was close to named Greta after he had promised that he wouldn't for months. Then he hired a new lady to take Greta's old job and Amy's. This was an unfortunate time for Amy's friend Greta because she just spent $6,000 fixing a busted sewer line in her basement. Bummer.
Our marriage has had a few speed bumps in the beginning, but for the most part, we are grateful for whatever works and stay happy. Amy and I seem to have a reputation for bad things happening to us though, we laugh, and a lot of times only us does it happen to out of many. So we have a common catch phrase for it and we say, "of course." I remember Amy came home from being on the job her first week at Discover card saying, "OF COURSE I had to have the one computer out of all of them that didn't work right, of course!" I had a big "of course" this last week for car insurance. My brother and I had an old policy together when I lived at home that we shared. When I had my accident finally clear in late January, my old insurance company mixed my name for my brother's (Carson) and I got his accident on my record. I had to really jump through some hoops for that to get cleared up. I was almost going to have to pay more a month for another year 1/2 for their stupid mistake. I straightened it out after paying some fees for it and gritting my teeth saying, "of course." Now those insurance guys are history, got a new guy, and we are much better off. I complain, but I know that we all have these "of course" moments, and I'm sure a lot of people much worse than me. But sometimes it feels like life is fabric and Amy and I get dealt a lot of little wrinkles haha.
After being fed up with the bad management at our last apartment, Amy and I now have moved into a duplex my dad owns. It's not far at all from our old apartment. We live in the upstairs and its just adjacent to the shop where I work. The place wasn't quite ready to move into the summer we got married. We spent a month before our lease was up fixing it up in our free time, (new shingled roof, drywall work, painting, cleaning) Amy came to help in her spare time. Bless her heart because she works a 5am-Noon shift at Discover Bank and was often tired. So far we have liked the move. The ward is the one I grew up in, lots of kids grown up and people gone. The duplex is old and has quirky things but we are so blessed to get a killer deal on rent and have assets like a washer, dryer, and a dishwasher.
Other than that, I have been busy knocking off more classes the past year. I am in the Electronic Art Engineering (EAE) program at the U of U. I have maybe another 2 semesters left I'm hoping. The classes are very task oriented and time consuming so I just fill below full time hours. Some projects take me hours. A lot of students in my Major don't finish in 2 years and my counselor suggested not taking big loads unless you are full time and devoted. I just found out they are opening an MFA program which is exciting. Maybe that might happen in my future, who knows? But for now I am really focusing on that BA. Amy says that I should post some of my work on here, maybe I will sometime if anyone is interested. I also have a bunch of stuff I have worked on on facebook. I keep up to date on there better than on here haha.
So sorry to everyone that wants constant updates, but Amy and I tend to run busy schedules with our jobs and all my schoolwork generally keeps me pretty busy. So, keep nagging us to post more blogs and stay in touch with facebook. To family reading this, we love you all, and family away, we miss and love you all.
