Los Hermanos is a restaurant in Utah County that has a couple of locations, one in Provo and one in Lindon. I have now been to each one and don’t plan to go to either location again. A couple of years ago I was in Provo for an event at BYU with three friends of mine, we went to Los Hermanos in downtown Provo for lunch. We arrived and were seated quickly, we had a waiter who was nice and I believe he had just started working that day or a short time before. We ordered our drinks and received those and some chips and salsa. After that we ordered our food. We waited and waited for our food. After a couple of drink and chip refills our waiter told us that our food was almost ready. We had been there for about 30 minutes by this point. We waited longer and saw no sign of our waiter or our food. During this time another table near us has ordered, received food, ordered dessert and left while we had not even seen our food. We were out of time and decided to leave, as we were talking about another employee told us to have a good day and asked us how our meal was. We told him we never got our food but had to leave. He apologized, got the name of our waiter and asked for our phone number. Aaron said, “Why, so you can call us when it’s ready?”. There wasn’t much they could do at that point, we needed to get back to our event. We were completely unsatisfied, but I guess we did get free drinks and chips.

I went to the Lindon Los Hermanos for lunch yesterday with 9 of my co-workers, with hopes that it would a better experience. We arrived there and had to wait for several minutes before we were seated, they were busy but had room for us the entire time we were there, so they were a bit slow to get us seated. The waiter we had was a good guy and has only worked there for three weeks. He got our orders and brought drinks and chips and salsa. We were sat in a table upstairs and when our waiter was bringing the food up something happened and he dropped the tray of food. We did not see this happen, but heard several items rolling down the stairs, so we went over to take a look and saw our food all over the wall and stairs. It was pretty gross. The waiter came up and told us what had happened and that it was going to be a little longer until our food was available. He gave us a 20% discount because of this. Luckily he did not get any of the food on him, he said he threw the tray when he noticed it was going to go crashing down to keep it from getting on him. When the food finally did arrive one of the items had a piece of plastic on the top of it that looked like part of a straw wrapper, the waiter noticed this, commented on it, removed the plastic and dropped it on the floor and still served the item.

My second experience at Los Hermanos was better than my first since I at least got my food (which wasn’t that great) and a little entertainment.

Jodi and I went to Kansas this past week to visit my family. We found a good deal on airfare and haven’t been out to see them this year so we decided it was a good opportunity to take a few days off and go see the fam. It was good to go home for a few days and spend some time with my siblings and parents. My sister even came out as well from Provo so we had everyone out there. My two younger brothers still live at my parents’. They were in school or working, so was my dad, so most of the time it was my mom, sister, Jodi and me hanging out together. My mom took a few days off work so that she could spend more time with all of us.

We went to the Sedgwick County Zoo on Friday morning. It is a pretty big zoo with a lot of animals, it hasn’t changed too much since I have been there a few years ago, but they do have a couple of new exhibits. They have a new penguin and chimpanzee exhibit that are pretty nice.

On Saturday my mom, Jodi and I went to Yoder, Kansas for their annual Heritage Day. Yoder is a Amish and Mennonite community. We only were able to spend a couple of hours out there but we saw the parade which consisted of several horses, horse drawn carriages, tractors, trucks, and old cars. After the parade we walked around town a little bit (not much town to walk around in) and ate some lunch, We had some excellent grilled corn on the cob and some good nachos. We also checked out a craft shop and a candle shop where we bought a couple of candles.

After we got back from Yoder the whole family went to Exploration Place near downtown Wichita. It is a place to explore science related things that relate to Kansas. They also had a Da Vinci exhibit while we were there. I have never been there so that was pretty interesting to see, but I don’t think it is a place that I could go to a lot unless they get some new exhibits. We also walked out by the new Keeper of the Plains thing they have, they recently built a new bridge and rock promontory for the statue that I haven’t seen before.

The rest of the time we spent hanging out with family, watching movies, and saw some extended family. Jodi and I also finally saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Harry Potter 5! It was a good trip and nice to get away from home for a few days. We are glad to be back and glad that our very bumpy return flight is over!

We put some new lights in our house this past couple of weeks in our quest to replace everything gold. A friend of mine just built a new house and his wife got a good deal on some nice new lights that they decided to put in. He gave us a good deal on some of his old lights (which had only been used for a couple weeks). We purchased some closet lights and a couple of dome lights from him. A couple of the closet lights are 2-bulb lights and the others are single bulb. The dome lights are 3-bulb lights. We still have a few more lights to replace, but most of them are done now. We want to put ceiling fans in the bedrooms and want to get a new kitchen light as well.

We also bought a new light at IKEA for our dining room called the KRYSSBO Pendant lamp. It is unique and we really like it. It has 7 halogen bulbs and gives off a good amount of light, but not as much as the old light. It was really easy to install and put together.

I’ve been getting harassed lately for not blogging. I have several reasons for my lack of blogging.

1. I don’t have anything to say. Anybody that knows me at all knows that I always have something to say, but for some reason when I try and blog I’m just at a loss.
2. I don’t have much going on. Ever since I finished school I have been kind of bored. Don’t get me wrong, I love being done with school. It’s just that life is kind of dull lately.
3. I’ve been kind of bummed out lately. I can’t really figure out what it is that is bumming me out so much. Life is actually pretty good. But I seem to be dwelling on the hard things in life a lot lately and I really need to get past it.
4. Bernd blogs so much that everyone knows what’s going on with us and I don’t really feel the need to elaborate.

So anyway… Here are a few thoughts!

First of all I’m going to be an Aunt! I just found out yesterday that I’m going to have a nephew born in January. I know Josh and Bina really wanted a girl so I hope they aren’t too bummed out, but I really wanted them to have a boy so I’m really excited. This little peanut will be my first niece or nephew so I can’t wait.

Bernd and I celebrated our one year anniversary on Saturday. I can’t believe it’s already been a year. For whatever reason Bernd and I are not really good about remembering special dates so I was impressed that we both remembered. Ok that’s a little ridiculous because how could you really forget your wedding anniversary? We had some family stuff going on this weekend that kind of put a damper on our special day but Bernd was great about it and tried to help me have a good day. He is such a great husband! Sometimes I wonder how I ended up with him. He’s so good to me and I love him so much!

We continue to work on our house. There is what seems unlimited ways you can pour money into your house. Since we’ve moved here we have painted almost the entire house, replaced the carpet, bought a new stove, fixed the dishwasher, replaced the thermostat, replaced all of the door stops, fixed the hand rails and upgraded the hardware on them and lots of other things that I can’t remember. We are currently working on replacing lights in the whole house. When we moved in everything was gold, and I hate gold. So we are slowly switching everything to silver. Luckily for us Bernd’s friend just built a house and decided to upgrade his lights so we bought his old (brand new) lights from him for really cheap. Also, Josh and Bina gave us a shoe rack thing that I finally got painted.

There have been a few things going on with my family lately that have caused us all to come together. I can’t help but think about how lucky I am to have a great supportive family. I know that we will all get through these hard times and come out on the top. But I honestly don’t know how we could get through it all without each other. Besides everything else my parents are facing the decision of moving to Arkansas. I can’t decide how seriously they are thinking about it but with everything that’s going on I think they are trying to play it down. I know that whatever they decide to do will be the right decision but for now I’m choosing not to think about it!

We went to Seven Peaks today in Provo. I have never been there before, it was fun! We went with Josh and Sabrina, the Spangenbergs, Jodi’s grandmother, and Jodi’s other cousins, the Bartons. It was a good group to have there and we all had a good time. They have some fun slides and even a ride that swirls you around and takes you down a hole in the middle kind of like a big toilet bowl, the line was way too long for that one, wasn’t worth the wait. They have another ride that is kind of like a half-pipe, it is a good one, kind of scary though.

My day at Seven Peaks wasn’t quite as fun as it should have been, I hurt my toe pretty good this morning. I was heading down the stairs at home and slipped on the last couple of stairs, my right foot slid down fine but my left foot didn’t slide quite as nice, my toes got caught under my foot. I didn’t fall, but I hurt my toe. I didn’t think too much of it, but once we were at Seven Peaks I noticed it was turning purple. Throughout the day it got more and more purple. It just made it a little painful to walk around and I was worried about hitting it on something when I rode on the slides so I didn’t do as many as I normally would have. I’m not sure if I broke it, it might just be sprained really bad, but just to be sure Jodi put some gauze around it and taped it to the toe next to it. Thanks to Lins for giving us advice to do that.