Our modest beginnings... (part 3): Cars

Part 1...Part 2

Cars have been a fun part of our early marriage years... especially the first year or so. As mentioned in the last post, our first car when we were married was the 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (see last beginnings post for picture).

As I mentioned, this car was originally my sister Andrea's car. She eventually gave it to Chris, who drove it around for his first couple years of college during which he was rear ended. This provided him with a nice chunk of cash... which he did not use to fix the car. Because of this, the rear brake light was broken, and subsequently covered with red plastic tape. The latch for the trunk was also broken, so the trunk was held closed with a bungy cord. This worked pretty well... except when I went over any bump and the trunk would pop up then slam down again. That got old pretty quick. When the car was given to me, it would not start, so I had to pump a bunch of money into it. After that, it got an economical 11 miles per gallon. It was a real beauty. However... it was free, so I don't have much room to complain.

This car died when I was driving it to the store one day (a couple weeks after buying our next car)... and a girl walking by had to steer it to the side of the road while I pushed. We left the car there for a good 6 months before having a junk yard pick it up.

This is pretty much what it looked like... but ours was uglier.

The aforementioned "next car" was a lovely mint green 1994 Hyundai Excel we bought from Chris' roommate. I use the phrase "we bought" very loosely... since the whole $550 purchase price was paid through a loan from Chris. I think he had to give us a couple loans like this in our early months. We got this car 2 months after our marriage, and it had incredible features like no radio, no AC, the driver side front window was stuck down a couple inches (thus making it a loud drive... especially on the highway), and the letters H - O were scratched quite largely on the hood. It was a truly classy ride.

Since then, we've owned 5 other cars. None of them have been really new or otherwise super awesome... but they were all about 10 steps up from those first two... so I won't write about them. These first 2 are fun to remember, because of their ghetto nature, but we sure are glad those days are gone!

Our Modest Beginnings... (part 4)

Read all of Andy's "Our Modest Beginnings" posts here

Dates:
Alright, here are a few of our common date nights while we were extra poor. Interesting how we still do a bunch of these.

#5: Nicklecade - There is a really cool arcade in Orem where it costs a nickle or 3 to play the games. This is always fun, especially all of the racing games, skee-ball, and air hockey. We went again a couple weeks ago for the first time since Avery was born. Still fun, and it cost us all of $10.
#4: Dollar Theater - We love the dollar theater. Who would want to pay $5 (or especially whatever the evening price is... what $7-8?) when there is a $1 theater. We don't go very much anymore, unless someone stays with the boys (we're too big of chickens to try and take the boys to a movie... I'm not sure why). It just requires a little patience to wait for the good shows to come.
#3: Burger King - Our first apartment was a couple blocks from a Burger King that had $0.59 cheeseburgers after 4:00 PM. Ya... that was awesome. We would frequently dig through our pockets and couch cushions (seriously... we did), find $2.50 or so, and go for a little walk. Why don't they have $0.59 cheeseburgers anymore? Geez.
#2: Sampler Platter - This is what we'd do when we wanted to be big spenders. We'd go to Applebees or Chile's and get their sampler platter (usually around $10), and just share that for dinner. That way, we got to feel like we were going out and getting served... and did it cheaply.
#1: Monkey game - This is about the coolest game ever, and completely free. I learned it from a friend when I was going to Missouri Western before my mission. For those of you unfamiliar, the basics of the game are as follows. You go to Walmart, and then you go to the toy section and grab a stuffed monkey (if monkeys are not available, I've also used pillows, granny underwear, and canned hams... the sky's the limit!). Once you have your ammo, you must find your target. You look for an unsuspecting person pushing (or abandoning) their cart. When the opportunity arises, you sneak your monkey into the cart and then walk away, and don't turn back. Best case scenario, you can circle around and watch the person's response (people get really confused... and sometimes they even swear! woohoo). It is especially fun to hit the same cart several times. However, on more than one occasion, I got caught and they made me take it back. Give it a try.

Our modest beginnings... (part 2)

Read Part 1

Here, in part 2, I(Andy) will briefly recount my pathetic financial beginnings (pre-marriage).

When I arrived in Provo, I quickly got situated, and got an incredibly high paid job as a campus custodial worker (insert sarcastic facial expression here). Along with this, my school expenses were covered by pell grants and a Stafford loan. I also had a lovely 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme that was handed down to me from Andrea via Chris. Things were looking bright.

(much like this...but crushed in the back...silly us, we didn't think to take pictures of it!)

A few problems soon arose for me. First, since it was my first time getting a Stafford Loan, that money was not dispersed until part-way through the semester. To cover this, I received a short-term BYU loan. A couple weeks before the short term loan was due, I received the Stafford Loan money, and was shocked and saddened to see that the amounts didn't match. I needed about $300 more to cover the short-term loan amount... in just a couple weeks. In order to make that payment, I used my entire 2 week paycheck (which was usually around $250), and whatever else I had left.Kizzie had also come out to visit me prior to this time, I think, which meant that some of my money had gone to activities with her, as well as silly little things like a wedding ring and a new cheap suit for our wedding.

After all of this fun stuff, I had absolutely nothing. I had no cash, and my very low limited student credit card (used mostly for the ring... which was a bargain I might add) was essentially maxed out. For about a month or so, while attempting to get things back to normal, I made my minimum credit card payment of $25, and then used the newly created available credit to buy my groceries for the month. That left me about a $5 a week for a grocery budget. This was generally enough to keep me stocked with peanut butter, jelly, bread, cereal, and milk. That was all. When talking with Kizzie about this the other day, we were both embarrassed a little that we hadn't even considered sharing some of Kizzie's incredibly high paychecks(ha). Oh well.

When the opportunity arose for a free ride to Missouri at Thanksgiving (to go to the Temple with Kizzie), I jumped at it. With $25 of pity money from my parents, and much kindness from those with whom I was riding, I set out on this journey. When the time came to return, I did so with a bag of turkey sandwiches (thanks Mom), and another bag of canned food, macaroni and cheese, and things like that complements of my parents' kitchen.

Luckily, shortly after my return, we began receiving some wedding gift checks, which helped me live a semi-human life for my last few weeks of single life, and also cover rent and deposit for our apartment the following month, as well as a few other basic home items.

Sadly enough, though not surprising, our financial situation did not take a dramatic up-turn as soon as the marriage was finalized. Fortunately though, they are funny to think about and at least make good stories right? More of these details will be forthcoming.

Our Modest Beginnings... (part 6)

To read more of our beginnings go here

Our TV:

This may not exactly fit with the other topics I've discussed so far, but our first TV (and especially our remote) was just plain awesome. This was one thing I bought right after my pre-marriage poverty (see 2nd post) from some young BYU couple who was moving. I also got our super swank microwave, which was probably about as big a lot of mini-fridges. Anyway... without further ado, behold the digital command center!


This thing was the state of the art when it came out in 1983, and was still pretty darn cool when I bought it in 2004. It required 4 AA batteries and really was as big as the picture makes it appear. The TV itself was built to interface with a number of peripherals, so had way more input/output slots than anything else I've seen that old. The first time we used it, this remote even worked for our VCR, without any programing. Good times. Probably no one else thinks this TV/Remote was as cool as I do.

Our Modest Beginnings (Part 7)

To read more our beginnings go here

Jobs:

As would be expected for young kids with little education or experience doing much of anything, we started out with some less than desirable jobs. I tried to get Kizzie to come up with some funny stories from her first job, but she was unable to do so (perhaps her post-traumatic stress is so great that she is just blocking all of those memories out).

Anyway, here we go.

Kizzie: Quickdown.com

Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else. Quickdown is a down-payment assistance provider. (I think they essentially do something to roll the down-payment into the final purchase price, or something like that) Kizzie worked there for about a year and a half (joyfully quitting the month before Avery was born) and had a couple different roles here. For the first while, her main task was to get registrations. For this she had to call up loan officers and try to convince them to sign up for their program (for free). Later on, she would just call those who had already signed up and get them to do something (I don't know... and frankly I'm tired of writing about Quickdown... BORING!).

-Kizzie Here, I took over to write my funny stories....or whatever-

From the begining my experience with Quickdown was crazy. I never had an interview, some guy names Mark just called me and said I was hired. (I applied for the job before I moved to Utah)

When I got there my training was crazy too, I can't remember specifics, but some really weird and off the wall questions were asked that had nothing to do with the job. Mark was crazy (can I get an Amen? Cari-Ann, Lindy, Jess??) It was all very wierd. And boring.

So mostly at first I was a good little worker, making my calls trying to stay focused. But I sat next to Lindy, so we talked a lot. And I think I braided her hair a few times too.

When I got comfortable with my job and the people I worked with I started doing cross word puzzles and word searches. I think I finished 2 whole books of those babies in a year.
I also took the Ikea catalogue with me when I got it in the mail and would pretty much spend the majority of my shift dog earing and underlining things I thought I had to have.

We made a lot of trips to Will's Pit Stop on breaks, but I think we got in trouble for that once, so we had to stop.

There was also a Secret Book that floated around. People wrote secrets in it and tried to disguise their handwriting. But if you read something in it you had to write something. I read it a lot, but I don't think I ever wrote anything. There were some messed up people that worked there!!

Towards the end I was a "supervisor" or some word like that, they were trying to fancy it up to make us feel important and special. But it basically meant I didn't have to do anything. I got to observe people making calls. So I did some crafts and read and during breaks I would make everyone have word search races. It was exciting.

After Avery was born we went back to show him off, and I got a little bit of anxiety as we drove the ever familiar route to QD. I was afraid they were going to try and make me stay!!

I did meet some really good friends there, so at least I got something good out of that job. And a few free dinners and movies. Those were good too.

back to Andy

This may make Kizzie look like a bad employee... but she was actually really good at that job (though I'm not sure what that says about her). She was always one of the top (if not the top) employee at getting people to sign up, which meant lots of bonuses and even some prizes for us. Her starting pay at this job was $8, and she was making $8.75 by the time she quit. However, with her bonuses, she probably made at least $10-10.50 per hour... which isn't bad for around here I think. It did, however, build in her a hatred for the phone. She cringes everytime I ask her to make some phone calls. Anyway... we'll talk about my jobs later this week.

Blog slacking

I feel like such a blog slacker!
We were in Cedar City this past weekend visiting my brother and his family, it was a lot of fun hanging out and playing games! (we played Settler's a lot...!) We attempted to wash our cars since the weather was so nice, but after washing our van in the driveway we discovered that the water spout thing was leaking all over the drywall in the garage and making it mushy, so we didn't make it to washing Silas' car! We did hang out outside for quite a while though, it was so nice! I got a nice burn that quickly faded and is the beginnings of my summer tan! :)

We also headed down to Hurricane on Saturday evening to spend some time with some of Andy's family that was in town for a great aunts funeral. It was fun meeting some of his aunts and uncles I've never met before. It certainly was convenient for us that we were already planning on being down in Southern Utah for the weekend!
Andy's mom flew in for the funeral and stayed for a couple days to visit so we had a nice family dinner last night at Andy's brother Mike's house.

Now we have a few days to relax and get ready for camping on Friday! But we are all feeling MUCH better! Andy thinks he just has some mild allergies.

Our Modest Beginnings... (part 5)

To read more of our adventures written by Andy go here

Our First Apartment: (down the stairs behind that bush/tree)

Our first place was quite special. It was a little 2 bedroom basement apartment just southwest of BYU campus, on a street filled with single people. The people in the main part of the house were 3 single guys. We only lived there for six months, but it was quite the experience.

The "main" part of the apartment was the kitchen/living room area. The living room was probably a 5x6 foot space, that was more of a walkway to the kitchen than anything. All there was room for was our couch (well most of it... it kind of hung over into the "kitchen") a 2-3 foot walk space, and then our TV. That's it. The kitchen was decent sized, compared to everything else in the place, but everything was just tiny. Here are a couple pictures that show the little-ness of the place.

Check out that awesome small stove/oven!

Both bedrooms were down one hall, and the bathroom was down another hall that had clearance of about 5'10" (because of heating ducts). The bathroom, of course, was tiny. My favorite part of the 2nd bedroom was the doorway. 1st, the top of the door frame was not straight. Even if it were straight, it would still hit me square in the middle of the face. Between that door frame, and the hall to the bathroom, it was a miracle I didn't really hurt my head.


This place was far from sound proof. We could hear movies upstairs all of the time, and could even hear one of our neighbors (whose bedroom was also downstairs, just on the other side of a wall) talking on the phone. Oh yes... the wall. The wall that separated our unit from the upstairs unit (with its one downstairs bedroom) was a large piece of wooden wall-paneling from floor to ceiling (no wonder we could hear everything). When the downstairs guy moved out, he actually came down and asked us to take the wall down, so that he could get some of his stuff out. Awesome huh?

Another fun thing, since it was so close to campus, was parking. Most of the time, there was little to no parking available for us on the street. When this was the case, we would have to park in the driveway. This driveway was only one car wide. This meant that if we parked in the driveway, and one of our neighbors was in front of our car, they'd come down (at who knows what time) so we could go out and move the car. Of course, this went both ways. At this time, I worked at 5:00 am doing custodial work. One time I forgot that I had parked in the driveway the night before, so I actually had to angle out through the yard to get out and drive to work. We were SOOO excited when we moved somewhere and had our very own parking space! Woohoo!

Our modest beginnings... (part 1)

So, Kizzie and I went out to dinner last night, thanks to a birthday gift card from my parents. On our drive to the restaurant, we started talking about where we are now vs how things were when we first got married. So... we thought it would be fun to write about some of our fun old poor stories from our early months.

Therefore, I'll start with a very brief history of how we ended up together, and some other background information.

Kizzie and I met probably about 11-12 years ago in our ward in Missouri. I was friends with some of her brothers, and would do things with them on occasion, and would thus run into Kizzie every now and then. We probably actually became friends a few years later. We'd mostly talk at church, or correspond through emails... things like that. Obviously, it was nothing terribly thrilling. We would have fun talking/hanging out at church, and I think it was safe to say we were good friends, but it never really went beyond that.

When I was 19, I went on my mission, where Kizzie became one of my most diligent letter writers (as she was for most missionaries coming from our ward). We had our ups and downs through this correspondence, but remained close.
The day or so after I returned home, Kizzie came to visit. The next day she came back with Karen, another friend of ours, and I asked them if they wanted to come back that night to watch a movie we talked about. Karen was unable to come, but Kizzie said she would come.

So it began.

Over the next couple weeks before leaving for school, we spent a ridiculous amount of time together and had a lot of fun. The whole thing went much differently than either of us would have ever imagined. Within about 1 month of my return, we were engaged. 4 months after that we were married in the Winter Quarters Temple.