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Saturday, June 28, 2008

Zoom Zoom!


Today, Dustin and a friend of his from work set out on a wild ride... How'd they get to this moment? Well, It started off as a quick hallway conversation at work earlier this year.. "Dustin's friend Cliff asked, Hey you wanna rent sports cars some time? To which Dustin quickly replied.. "@#$% Yeah!!" So not so long afterwards, Dustin, Cliff and his Cliff's brother found themselves standing in front of a fleet of rare sports cars at a local Dealership in Salt Lake that offers Exotic Sports Car Day trips.
The type of cars you only get a glimpse of as they blaze past you on the highway or a curvy back road.

The cars they had lined up for us were: a Dodge Viper SRT-10 Convertible, a Lotus Exige, a Porsche 911 Turbo, an Aston Martin Vantage (Yes James Bond's car of choice), & my personal favorite going in to the trip.. a Ferrari 360 Modena!
I have to tell you some of the best things about these cars.. Lets start with the first car I drove.. The Dodge Viper.. This is a 500HP V10 American made Muscle Car.. Theres so much power behind this car you really had to watch yourselves accelerating (that and there was no traction control system on this car). I think I actually heard this car growl at the other cars. My favorite thing to do in that car was to drive up along the side of a minivan and look over at a "beaten looking Dad driving along just under the speed limit.. and give him a quick wave or a nod.. and then goose it.. Gone before he could even smile or wave back.. So much fun to hear the tires squak in 3rd or 4th gear.



The second car was the Lotus Exige. This is a very curvy sporty looking car.. One that most people have never seen before. Almost looks like a match box car that was zapped with a ray gun to make it life sized. It only had a 4 cylinder engine somewhere around 200HP, but what was fun about this car was the fact that its a super light, seriously agile high reving go-kart on steroids. The interior was not much more than two seats, a steering wheel, some gages and peddles and a stick shift! It pretty much lived in the 5-7000 RPM zone... anywhere out of that and it wasn't happy.. Thats how I was told to drive it and by golly, thats how I drove it! I loved it!


The third car I drove was the 415 HP Porsche 911 Turbo. --Side Note -- Some of you might not know, but Jen and I were starting to wonder if we'd be having kids any time soon.. so we figured if we're not going to have a kid, why not get a sports car!! So last summer we almost bought ourselves a Porsche Boxter!.. Well a few days later Jen told me she was pregnant! Wow, close call. So the next time we want a second baby all we have to do is start looking for new cars again and POW!


Ok back to the Porsche 911... Have you ever wanted to know what it feels like to ride the Space Shuttle? You know how it goes.. 3... 2.... 1...... BLASTOFF! Well thats what it was like in the 911.. As soon as that Turbo would kick in... the whole back end of the car would sink down and you just braced yourself as the car rocketted forward. AWESOME.


Ok so the fourth car at first looked like something a retired golf pro would drive. Sporty looking, and with enough leather inside to have come from at least 3 cows. The Aston Martin Vantage is nothing to pass up if given the chance to drive a luxury power house.. This car was by far the smoothest, most refined sports car of the bunch.. Every creature comfort was satisfied 10+ in this car.. I can see why its a James Bond car.. You seriously feel like you could jump over cars or bust through walls in this sucker.. Its quiet until you punch it, then its like combining a Viper and a Ferrari into one! This was a fun car to drive.


Last but not least was the car I had been waiting for.. The Ferrari 360 Modena.. This is a beautiful car.. One of those type of cars you just want to run your hand down the side and imagine yourself driving along the coast or through the Rocky Mountains in.. The Modena is a V8 400 HP dream car.. The sound it made when you punched the gas is unique and amazing to hear. It turns heads lets just put it that way.. It had paddle shifters just like the professional race cars do which was really fun to drive.. Since this was the last car I drove for the day it was the car I drove back into Salt Lake City.. After driving through Park City, Heber and a few other beautiful curvy back roads of Utah I found myself squaking the tires around corners at street lights "just because".. This almost was a bad thing though.. Around one of the corners I gunned a little too much and totally fish tailed or as I like to say "drifted" around the corner making a loud squeeling noise.. It was AAAAWWEESOOOMMEEE!!! ........... Ok I almost crapped my pants.. Nobody wants to wreck a $170,000.00 car in front of a ton of people.. hah.. It looked cool.. thats what counts.. I didn't punch it as much on the remaining corners before returning for the day... hah!


Monday, June 23, 2008

IM Flash Friends & Family Open House

The company we work for - IM Flash Technologies - had its first annual "Friends & Family Open House" at work. They basically opened the building up (restricted to certain areas of course) to the family of employees and any friends they wanted to bring. Since some of the employees work a split shift (we are in manufacturing 24/7) they hosted the open house on two days. The first was on Saturday and the second day was on Monday - so all employees would have a chance to show their families and friends where they work. This event ended up brining in probably 4,000 people between both days.

Jen was in charge of creating a booth to display her process area - she was "volunteered" by her bosses, bosses boss to do this event seeing how she always ends up planning the party's for her group (her nickname is the "cruise director"). After some "ideas" from other team members they ended up making liquid nitrogen ice cream for the event, and then having some building activites for the kids (legos and lincoln logs). Believe it or not - both activities were a great success! People were amazed that you could make ice cream in less than 1 minute using liquid nitrogen...and it was probably the best tasting ice cream in town - so smooth and creamy (liquid nitrogen freezes the ice cream so fast it doesn't have a chance to form ice crystals...so creamy ice cream!). The kids loved "building like an Engineer" as well. Here are some snap shots:


We drew quite the crowds...


Jen mixing up some fun


Strawberry was the favorite flavor


Jen even let Dustin join the fun....see there is perks to being married to another engineer!

Building like an Engineer

Dustin's group had a corporate planning booth - where they let everyone putt golf! When asked why golf..the response we got was "we are corporate people...this is what we do!". Jen couldn't help but laugh (especially since Dustin hasn't been golfing in over a year now and we LIVE on a golf course!). Here is a picture of Zach trying out his golf game:


All in all we had a blast helping out with this event for two days. We are completely EXHAUSTED, but would do it all over again. We had to include some pictures of "family" things we did during this Open House as well:



Zach's 1st balloon - he was so EXCITED - he loved playing with it


OH - something shiny for me to touch!


TaaaaaDa!


Baby with a hairnet


Baby with a head smock on


Family shot...too bad Zachary wouldn't hold still with the head smock on...you can't even see his face!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Our 5 month old!

We are amazed that Zachary is already five months old! It just seems like yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. Last night when we finished giving him his bath - Jen got him dressed in his PJ's and Dustin just stared at Zachary and said "wow - he is getting so big!" So I guess now is a good a time as any to "brag" about how our baby boy is doing!


- He's sleeping through the night (10 hour stint) about 4 out of the 7 days of a week.


- He likes baby food more than rice cereal. He loves pears, not so fond of peaches. He can also down a 6oz bottle.


- He's wearing 6-9 month clothes.


- He weighs 17 pounds (according to our home scale).


- Zach LOVES to smile. He smiles the most right after waking up in the morning and after naps...and of course while playing with daddy.


- Zach also has learned to "talk" - he started vocalizing at a different pitch and can babble away.


- His hair is starting to get longer on the top that it no longer looks like a flat-top. Jen isn't quite sure how to "style" his hair yet. I guess we got 1 month until his 6 month formal portraits to figure it out.


- He loves bathtime - I think more for the relaxation. He doesn't splash or really play, he just lays and enjoys being pampered. He does the same thing in the swimming pool, just chills and enjoys the view.


- I swear this kid is going to skip crawling and take of running in the next little bit. Zach LOVES to stand up. If you put his hands on the ottaman he can actually stand up holding his own balance. When he stands up on your lap he pretend runs....always trying to go after something.


- We think he is smart! Tonight he was totally happy and then just starting crying like crazy. After a bit we decided to give him his bath to calm him down...well in the tub he turned over so he was on his belly (he rests his head on the side of the inflatable tub) to reveal to us that he had a small diaper rash in the upper part of his butt crack (sorry - not sure how to word that politically correct). THAT IS WHY HE WAS CRYING! He was hurting! So a warm bath and some Desatin and our baby is happy again!

Of course this list could go on and on and on.....but these are the little things that have amazed us about our five month old so far!

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Happy Father's Day


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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Go Bug

Go-Bug. Yes, Go-Bug....that is what Dustin said when this HUGE box arrived at our house via UPS. Now that the weather has turned a bit nicer, Dustin is DYING to get back into riding our bikes. Well, having an almost 5 month old child makes just taking off on a bicycle a bit difficult. Dustin solved this problem with a "Go-Bug"! He was pretty excited that it doubles as a bike buggy and a jogging stroller:





Sunday, June 8, 2008

Moab Day#2

So this was our second (and last) day in Moab. We decided to hit up Arches National Park. There was lots to see! We didn't do any crazy hikes - I think the longest we did was maybe a mile. We arrived around 10am and stayed until 5pm.



Isn't Zach just so cute?



Sarah holding up balanced rock




Us in the sand dunes




Jeff jumpin off a crazy rock...







After Arches we headed back home - 4 hour drive. Funny thing as we headed out of Moab - we passed the little municipal airport and noticed this upside down plane! It had been there for a while...but we just thought it was strange it was still sitting there. It obviously hadn't of crashed because it looked all intact and no fire. Maybe a windy day?

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Moab Day#1

Today was our first full day in Moab, Utah. Our friends the Krotosky's and Sarah joined us on this trip. None of us had ever been to Moab so we had a hard time deciding what to do first. Well....the "guys" decided we should do the off-roading first. The Krotosky's had a RAV4 and we brought our 4runner. We picked the "easy" trails to start with - Gemini Bridges. Jen was pretty worried with the bumpy ride and having Zach in the truck...but the kid SLEPT THROUGH THE WHOLE THING! All the bouncing actually put him to sleep! Here is our favorite shot of this area:



Dustin had to "climb" his first rock...I don't think this picture does justice - it looked like a bigger step up in person!




4runner handled it pretty well


Dustin and Jeff showing they are "real" men - they drove up a rock



Gemini Bridges


After Gemini Bridges we headed to the Utah State Park called "Dead Horse Point" - $10 to get in and about 30 minutes of viewing. It was beautiful...Zachary LOVED looking around at everything...




Pretty cool "blue" lake behind us - it is actually SALT!


You can see the Colorado River


No fear


After this the boys decided it was time to "off-road" again. Dustin's boss (a seasoned adventurist!) recommended Longs Canyon...so we took the plunge. This was an AWESOME trail. It is all downhill - moving from the top of the rocks down to the bottom so you are in the "canyon". Funny story about this - there is a point on this trail that is called "Puckers Pass "...we didn't get a good shot of it - but it is basically huge boulders with lots of open space around. The Krotosky's got to the spot first and radio'd to us that it "looked like a challenge" - Jeff then proceded to go over these bolders downhill. We all freaked out! We saw his RAV4 go on two wheels - we thought he was going to flip it! But they survived - just a little undercarriage cover damage. Next - our turn. Jen starts freaking out (basically since Zach is in the truck) - then it hits her...oh Dustin did this kind of stuff in the military - he knows how to drive it! Sure enough Dustin navigated us down - the Krotosky's caught our downhill adventure on video - we will get a copy of it and post it later. When we were watching the video later that night we heard "crunching" sounds as our 4runner was on three wheels - the next day after a closer investigation we realized that we bent the brackets (underside) on the running boards on the drivers side of the 4 runner. The only way you can tell is that the running board on the drivers side is about 1 inch from the back tire where on the passenger side it is more like 2 inches. So after that "adventure" we headed back to downtown Moab for a pizza dinner and some relaxing at the hotel pool.

Downhill the whole way

WAY COOL!

More down down down

Zach at the pool learning to blow bubbles!

In the end the women veto'd any more off-roading for day#2!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

What a great week!

This week has been WONDERFUL! Zachary started sleeping through the ENTIRE NIGHT...not just for 6 hours but for TEN HOURS!!!! All of last week we would just put Zachary in his crib, turn on his fishy aquarium and he would fall asleep by himself....now this week he is sleeping through the night! We hope this sticks...more hours of un-interrupted sleep is always in demand!

This weekend we are headed to Moab! We have never been, so we decided to head down for a couple of days and check it out! Watch for some pictures later on.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Happy Birthday Dustin!