Fun Friends & FABULOUS Food!

This past Saturday night, we went out with our friends, Cameron & Amanda Skinner, to the Market Street Grill in South Jordan. Cameron was one of the electricians that worked on the building. Gastronomy (the company that owns Market Street Grill, and half a dozen other FABULOUS restaurants in the Salt Lake Valley) gave everyone that worked on the building invitations for four to the "Pre-Grand Opening". The best part was...everything was FREE! Well, except the alcohol...darn it! :) Actually, that wasn't the best part. The best part was that Cameron and Amanda invited US to go with them!

We got a babysitter for all four boys (two Storrs boys and two Skinner boys--poor babysitter!) and headed out. We thought that, with it being free and all, we were going to have only a few select things on a partial menu to choose from. Not so...we sat down and were handed a full menu! I knew this meant trouble! Let me explain...

If you've ever been out to eat with Mike, you know that the boy can NOT make up his mind when it comes to food. I think it takes him longer to order dinner than it did for him to decide he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me! Usually, he has to ask the server to come back several times before he's ready! The first time the server comes, he says, "Give me a few minutes". The second time the server comes around, he's narrowed it down to about half the menu. The third time, he has narrowed it down to three or four choices. The fourth time, he asks the server which one they would recommend. Finally, on the fifth or sixth trip back to the table (when the kitchen is about to close), the server actually gets his order. This is especially obnoxious to a girl who grew up in a family where asking the server to come back was not acceptable! Usually, when my family goes out to dinner, we will have been seated for about 2 minutes when my dad starts calling the server over to get our orders...and you better be ready! As you can imagine, going out to dinner can be quite the conflict in our marriage! Most couples fight about money or how to parent the kids...we fight about how long it should take to order your dinner! I say, "It shouldn't take you half the night to figure out what you're going to eat for dinner!" He says, "I'm just trying to help you gain the attribute of patience, Lindsay!" OH, he makes me so mad sometimes! I don't think Mother Teresa would have enough patience to go out to dinner with him! :)

Anyway, as we looked over the menu to choose an appetizer, Mike started doing his usual I-can't-make-up-my-mind routine. Then, we remembered that everything was FREE...so we ordered EVERY SINGLE APPETIZER ON THE MENU!!! Two servers were required to bring them all to the table...and how we fit them all on there is one of those mysteries that will never be explained by science! Of course, since it was Market Street Grill, they were all seafood...not my favorite...but, I was a big girl and tried almost all of them...salmon, calamari, etc...it all went it my mouth...and didn't even come back out! :)

Main course ordering was fun...once again (yep, you guessed it) Mike couldn't decide. After about twenty more minutes of staring at the menu, Mike combined two entrees into one and finally ordered. I ordered Prime Rib (one of the two entrees on the menu that did not have some sort of shrimp, fish or lobster attached to it). It was some of the best prime rib I have ever had in my life!

Then, as if that wasn't enough, we got dessert afterwards. Rather than wait for Mike to decide for another hour, we just all got something different and passed them around the table. Each was fabulous!

After gorging on free food for about two hours, we got the bill (or at least the pretend bill so that you could figure out a tip)...$196!?! WOW! We ate $196 worth of food in one sitting! Honestly, we ate it all...I think we had two little tiny "to go" boxes that we took with us...the rest was happily in our digestive tracts!

We got home about 10:00 to one sleeping boy, three boys that should have been asleep, and a babysitter who looked like she was going to collapse any second! It was a great night! Thanks Amanda and Cameron! We love you guys! --Lindsay

I Can't Believe I'm a Blogger

We have now officially entered the 21st Century! Several of our friends have created blogs recently, and after much coaxing from a couple of them, we have decided to create our own. I honestly don't know how often I'll actually be able to write; in fact, this will probably become yet another one of my many projects that I never work on. Then I'll have all sorts of guilt over it...but what's new, right?!? It's an easy way to post pictures and tell funny stories about our crazy little family (believe me, we have several everyday) so that we can stay in touch with family and friends that we don't see as often as we would like. Mike will probably post from time-to-time too, but you can just skip past his posts because they'll all be about his '67 bug, and who wants to read about fuel pumps, cam shafts and ways to sound-proof your tin can...oh, I mean car? Anyway, here's a quick update on what's going on with our family for those of you that we haven't seen in awhile:

Mike is a busy man! He works full-time, goes to school part-time and still finds time to play with the rest of us. He will graduate in a little over a year with his MBA. As I said earlier, he is still working on his '67 bug, and continually talks about how when he finishes it, he's going to work on his '71 or '72 911 Porsche. Just what we need, another car for our TWO car garage! Luckily for me (and my indoor parking space), he probably will NEVER finish the bug.

I am still working at KUTV as their weekend morning meteorologist. I love it, except for the 3:00 am wake-up call. During the week, I'm home with the kids and keep busy working on Primary stuff. I was asked to serve as Primary President back in October. Our ward split about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I was off the hook for about 4 hours, then our new bishop asked me to serve again as Primary President. I do really enjoy it though, and it keeps me busy when Mike is at school two nights a week.

Connor is going to Preschool two days a week, and he really enjoys it. In fact, he enjoys it so much that two days a week is just not enough. The stretch between Thursday, when he gets home, and Tuesday, when he finally gets to go back, seems like an eternity for him. Almost every morning he asks, "Is it a preschool day?" The look of disappointment on his face when I tell him "no" is so sad! He'll start going three days a week next year. Is it August yet?

Aiden is almost 18-months-old now, but he thinks he's a four-year-old. He is always following Connor and his friends around the house like a little shadow. Connor's friends don't appreciate it much. I constantly hear, "Connor's mom...can you come get your baby? He's annoying us!" Then, I have to go pull Aiden (kicking and screaming) out of Connor's room. He doesn't understand why I'm taking him out because, in his eyes, he's just one of the big boys...and for some reason, I'm not a good enough substitute for 2 or 3 four-year-old boys. Go figure?!?

Anyway, that's us in a nutshell right now. Hopefully, we'll find a few minutes from time-to-time to post on our new little project. We'll see! --Lindsay