donuts in albuquerque

now that i have your attention: would the giver of four perfectly amazing tray tables please make yourself known?

now that i have discovered the blog's ability to solve problems (i think we eliminated the volleyball coaching deficit with the last blog), i figured i would give it a shot with the tray table predicament. we would love to thank whomever gave us tray tables for our wedding, but we didn't find a name attached to the bags they came in. from the looks of things in our house the day we got back from the honeymoon, though, it's a wonder we even found the kitchen. (we did find the kitchen, as you may remember, and we were in it just long enough to almost burn it down.)

as for the tray tables themselves, we love them. we have a kitchen table, but the tray tables are way more fun to use!

on an entirely unrelated note, weird al has this song...something about albuquerque and donuts. it is about 27 minutes too long.

in desperation

Okay, kids. I come to you blog-readers in desperation. I have been looking for a second assistant coach for the Central freshman volleyball team for about 3 months now, and I have no leads. (Every other lead has been a dead end.) I figured this is my last-ditch attempt to find someone. If you know ANYONE with 60+ college hours who is looking for an easy J-O-B, please send that person my way. If that person doesn't know a lick about volleyball, trust me, he/she can learn pretty easily. (You can get by just saying a few key phrases. and encouraging the kids...) I just need a warm body in the gym, preferably someone who likes HS kids and can be a great influence on them. :o) The assistant coach pay is pretty good, and you only spend about 2-4 hours in the gym per night.

Sidenote: I have worked with the Central girls all summer, and I have thoroughly enjoyed being around them. They are such good kids and so much fun to be around.

Okay, I am getting off my begging knees now, in order to preserve a small ounce of dignity.

keepin' it HOT in the kitchen

i have been called upon by mr. coacher to share our first 'good' story of married life, which happened only 13 days into it.

we had a ton of food left over from the wedding, which was taking up most of our freezer space. so, we decided to heat some up and take them over to the tucker house (where we intended to plan a costa rican adventure....details still tbd). incidentally, we have found that taking good food to people helps maintain friendships.

i spaced the wings out on the pan to be placed into our gas oven (which we don't have much experience using). then i went into the living room to wait a few minutes before putting them in. (didn't want them to get cold.) while i was out of the room, mr. coacher turned the oven on and put the wings in. no big deal. at least, not until i started smelling something burning.

"it smells like something's burning." (me)
"yeah, but i just put them in." (coacher)

a few seconds later, we both realized that, in fact, something was burning. rushing into the kitchen, coacher opened the oven door to find flames engulfing the wings and everything around them.

i ran to the back room to grab the fire extinguisher (this may or may not have been necessary, but the flames were pretty intimidating and, as father bybee says, "safety first.")

"here, use this. i don't know how it works, but it looks like a good idea..."

coacher saved the day by extinguishing the fire. however, the powdery stuff from the extinguisher went all over the kitchen and everything in it. (and we still have its dust on the ottoman in the living room.)

turns out you are not supposed to store your stuff (ie a couple of pans and a pampered chef stone in its cardboard box) in that drawer at the bottom of the oven. it's a fire hazard. (but we needed storage space. it seemed like a good idea at the time.) we saw the written warning, "do not use for storage," in the drawer while cleaning the powder and ash the saturday after all the excitement. too bad the broiling pan was covering the warning before.

a few comments about this story:
1 -- none of our fire detectors went off. not good.
2 -- the fresh rice krispy treats that were sitting on the counter still went to the tucker house, possibly with a little extra powdered "seasoning".
3 -- we both thought about taking a picture to share, but at the time it was more ridiculous than funny. since then we have found that this sort of thing happens to a lot of people.
4 -- to our new neighbor, ashley: we might not be coming down to borrow a cup of sugar. we may, however, come down to borrow a fire extinguisher or two every now and then.
5 -- finally, i would like to formally state that neither one of us in the newly-established lotz household are pointing fingers at eachother. (however, i think i'll go ahead and partially blame this on those of you who didn't eat enough wings at the wedding. if you had done your jobs, none of this would have ever happened.)

but you have to admit, our kitchen's hotter than most.

and so it was

you may have noticed the new blog name. i felt it was necessary. we'll see how long it lasts. it was a random thought.

we have now been back from "me-hee-co" for a couple of days and this house may never be "normal" again. at this point it looks a lot more like a storage unit than a dwelling place. and brad's stuff...well, i have tried to make room for it, but it may take several attempts at closet-clearing to get the job done. i guess i need to let go of some things i keep telling myself i'll wear and get on with it. and we definitely need to have a garage sale.

me-hee-co was great, but i must admit we were ready to get home. i can only handle so much 7-up (didn't drink the water) and haggling in the streets (but i must say, we got pretty good at ignoring people. maybe that is not such a good thing?) i wish i had a recording to share with you to demonstrate the way they would croon, in very thick accents, "honeymooners" as we walked down 5th street.

a few things we did:

1 -- rappelled 45 feet from the earth into an underground, fresh-water (ie COLD), 60-foot deep cenote. the water was unbelievably clear; you could follow the ray of light (from the opening above us) all the way down to the ground under the water. after hanging out in there for a while, we climbed a very tall rope ladder. fun!
2 -- jumped off several cliffs (if you could call them that, compared to missouri cliffs. BUT, it was in mexico, so it's different.)

3 -- climbed a 130-foot ancient pyramid at the coba ruins.

4 -- volleyball on the beach.

5 -- hiked through a jungle, then zip-lined it across a cenote while looking straight down at two crocs in the water below.

6 -- watched a cards game from some sweet seats right behind home plate. (cards lost...minor setback.)


as for the wedding...it was wonderful. i have said this before, but i could not have imagined anything better (i feel it's worth repeating because i can't really get over it).

a couple favorite pics so far (nice work, hillen):




the music was absolutely incredible. i would be willing to pay a decently large amount of money for a cd of the performances so i can listen to the songs every day.

i was told there was a rainbow right before the wedding. now i have a hard-copy of a pic to prove it. (and can you believe it wasn't a usual HOT july afternoon? the rain (which frightened me weeks before the wedding, helped make everything green and full of life. what a blessing!)

we were also told some guy in a boat watched the wedding from right behind us. this story has yet to be confirmed.

my parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law worked practically all day to help set up for the shindig. not sure what we could have done without them. (and the wedding planner my mom hired to ease her level of stress at rehearsal and the actual ceremony--while she was a bit MUCH for us-- actually turned out to be a big help in the end.)

we had some sweet music playing at the reception, too, by the way. (not to our credit.)

i hope you all enjoyed yourselves. (i think it's evident from some of the pics on other blogs that the hsbc crowd had quite a time. i will not tell your pastors about your crazy dance moves.)

thanks so much to all who helped to make this day better than a dream come true!