The case of the missing wedding gift

Let me tell you a story that begins last week.

So at our reception in Boise, which was Jan. 21st, someone told me they had sent something to us online. I thought that was great and didn't think much else about it because I had to talk to the next person in the line of course.

Fast forward a week or so and I start thinking about this gift. This person is quite a reputable lady and we still hadn't received our gift, so I started to get curious. I went online to our registry and found an item that we didn't have yet. Using my powers of deductive reasoning, I figured that must be the one.

Then I started to get excited about it as I visualized it in our house. I waited for it to be sitting on our doorstep every day when I came home, but guess what. It never came.

After about 3 weeks post reception, I started to feel like this package was never going to arrive. I proceeded to call Bed Bath and Beyond who, much to our surprise, said that the package was indeed purchased by this person, and was delivered to us January 25th! (it was now Feb. 15th). This was news to me as I had never received the package. Confused, I called UPS with the tracking number they gave me. Sure enough, the package had been delivered. The conversation went something like this:

me: Hi, I was sent a package but we never received it. The tracking number is _____________
UPS lady: yes, i see that that package was delivered on Jan. 25th and Moran signed for it.
me: I'm sorry, who?
UPS lady: Moran or Moran maybe?
me: who's Moran??
UPS lady: yes Moran, in #**9
me: wait... what? we're in **8
UPS lady: oh well we just had your neighbor sign for it because you weren't home...

What?! Is this just a Provo thing? Apparently UPS, if you're not home, will knock on your random neighbor's door who you've never seen/met before and deliver your large expensive packages to them and not tell you. Because everyone has neighbors who are honest and will actually deliver the stuff to them. Hmmm. That led to a very awkward encounter with my neighbor, when I had to go over there and ask her if she had my package. I hate confrontation, and like I said, we've had no contact with this neighbor whatsoever. It went down about as well as me asking my roommate last year if she had stolen my clothes.

I knocked on "Moran's" door and she literally opened her door just far enough to slip her head through, nothing else.

Me (a little unnerved and alarmed by how weird she was being): uh.. hey... have you seen any packages of ours?

Her: no.

Me: Oh, because I just got off the phone with UPS and they said you signed for one of our packages

Her: blank stare

Me: Like a few weeks ago?

Her: Oh... yeah. Well I asked the guy if we should take it in our place or leave it outside the door and he said we could leave it outside your door, so we left it outside the door (isn't that the reason they have people sign for the package in the first place? to keep if off the doorstep?). You never got it?

Me: No, we never did. (Thanks a lot).

Her: Oh, that's too bad. Well, bye.

Fighting back the urge to push open her door and see if the clock was hanging in her living room, I went back to my apartment, defeated. I called UPS though and I guess they are launching/have launched an "investigation", whatever that means.

All I know is it's awkward as heck to see them now, especially if UPS is investigating them!

So in summary, what happened to our package??! I still have no idea. A. our neighbors are dirty thieves and stole it. B. someone else in our complex/in the surrounding area is a dirty thief and took it. Since the package looked like this:
(half the size of the door), I wouldn't be all that surprised if someone else saw it and took it off the doorstep. However, due to the weird and shady nature of our neighbors, I wouldn't be surprised if that clock was in their living room either.

Lucky for us, BB&B sent us another clock no questions asked. I now have a semi-threatening note on our door saying "please leave our packages in the office if we're not home" so I picked up our replacement clock in the office today. Problem solved.

Lessons learned:
-Bring treats to your neighbors when you move in so they don't steal your packages
-Have your packages sent to a safe place, not a sketchy Provo apartment complex
-If you aren't very honest, you could probably get a lot of free stuff from Bed Bath and Beyond

Although it had quite the journey, I'm glad we finally got our last wedding gift!

Valentine's day

This year, my husband and I got to celebrate our first Valentine's day together. This made me really happy for several reasons. First of all, for the past few years I have been excited about finally being married on Valentine's day and spending it with someone I love (aww). That's really the main reason. Another reason, though, is because until now I had a tendency to start dating someone right before Valentine's day and break up with them shortly after. My family noticed this pattern I guess and always gives me a hard time about it. They have reason to make fun of me for this as it happened probably 4 out of the last 6 years (I didn't do it on purpose, it just happened that way!). Sorry family, that pattern is over!

For the special day we decided to go out to dinner and go ice skating! I really wanted to go outside (you know, like in the movie Serendipity? it's so romantic, right?) so we looked up outdoor ice skating rinks and there are some here in the Utah valley! Who knew?

This is what the place looked like:

We got there and thought it was closed because noone was on it. Nope, it was open! So Richard and I got to skate around it by ourselves for like 30 mins until some 13-year-old's birthday party came to join us. One of the girls said, "Sorry for ruining your Valentine's day". haha. It was actually nice to have them with us because a. it made us feel better about not being able to skate very well on the ice and b. it gave us someone to take pictures for us!

The best part about it was that it was only $1.50 for the skate rental each and free to skate! Can't beat it. The worst part would definitely be the cracks in the ice... it was pretty hard to skate on because the ice had mountain range-type bumps in it and cracks, etc. I guess when you're not charging admission it's hard to want to use a lot of money to maintain the ice. It was still really fun though! Here are some pics captured by our 13 year-old photographer.


Don't feel bad for her, she really only took that top picture, we took the rest ourselves.

I also came home to these beauties
Thanks babe! I love flowers.

It was great to be able to spend Valentine's day with the one I love! Looking forward to many more. It was great to spend the day with our fish, Sunny and Erwin too. I helped them celebrate the occasion by eating an extra piece of cake for them. You're welcome, guys!

We also have a new addition to the family that I forgot to mention...

a basil plant!!! It was an early Valentine's day gift for myself. I literally jumped up and down when I saw this thing for sale at Winco. I think I was more excited about this than the fish. As an avid watcher of the Food Network, I see them cook with this beautiful, fresh basil that they somehow have growing in their home in cute little mugs. Well you better believe I wasn't gonna pass this opportunity up to become more like Ina or Rachel Ray. So here she is! Apparently these plants are really hard to keep alive... mine is really wilted. Apparently they need like 8 hours of sunlight a day (we live in Utah and it's winter..?). For that reason, the thing is in our bedroom next to the South-facing window, to which we now have to leave the blinds open every day. If it dies I hope I can at least make some pasta sauce first. Nothing like fresh basil, mmmm.

Any advice on how to keep the thing alive would be appreciated! Seems to be hanging in there so far, but I have my doubts on how long it will be around...

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day!

Our wedding in pictures

As I ran in the door from turning off my car alarm just now (which goes off at random at all hours of the day and night), it occurred to me. I haven't posted my wedding pictures!

I've been meaning to do it since I received them on Wednesday (I was promised them "2-3 weeks" after we got married... but 6 weeks later here we are..), but we had some difficulties retrieving them which involved such things as me wandering around Provo looking for the photographer's house, finding out that she had in fact not put my pictures on the porch like she said she would, and meeting her husband several hours later outside of our complex to finally get them. Then we couldn't view them on our computer. To say I was a little frustrated that night would be an understatement. After 6 weeks of waiting patiently (more or less), I just wanted to see my wedding pictures, ya know?

Aaaanyways, here are some of our favorites from the temple.











These are from the reception!

My nephew Carson decided that my brother Ryan, who is in Hungary right now on a mission and unable to attend the wedding, needed to be in on the action.
I wasn't sure what to do with the cake...

So I made a last minute decision to shove it up his nose

It's okay, I cleaned it up :)


My cute grandparents.. this is my goal! Happily married after 60 years


Me with all of my nieces.. anyone else notice the weird lighting in these reception pictures? Not sure if these were edited or not. Hmm
Richard and the boyz from both sides
Girls from both sides
These girls, Richard's nieces, assigned themselves to be my personal assistants throughout the night. They were so cute holding my dress while I walked around.


My beautiful mom and sisters

Meet Richard's twin, Jeremy and his wife Katie!
Speaking of twins... from left to right you have my twin cousins Kristina and Elise, my mom and her twin Julie, and husband and his twin Jeremy. Lots of twins in our family!




This is one of my personal faves of Richard's niece Camden breakin it down! You go girl.







Just married car... Luckily my sisters were able to keep my brothers-in-law from doing anything to the car (when they were hatching their plot I distinctly heard the word "shovel" and got a little nervous). However, Richard's buddies from freshman year still got us! We were finding hot dogs in the most creative places for a while. First time getting gas again- Hot dog inside that little door you open up. Pulling down the visors when it gets sunny- hot dog. Using the windshield wipers- hot dog. haha. Actually hot dogs that time. But you get the idea.

Then we rode off into the sunset!We appreciate everyone who was able to come share in the day with us and who helped us make everything work! We love being married.

Presenting... Dicky V and the gang!

Meet the newest member of our family!


We've had some pretty great date nights lately, but tonight was definitely the most interesting. Richard texted me yesterday and said "do you think we should get a fish?". Naturally, I thought this was a great idea so tonight (after trying for 30 minutes to convince the husband that they sold fish) we went to wally world to pick one out.

We decided on this crab. His/her name is Dicky V, which came about from a nickname that my brothers in law have already given to our first-born son (because he'll be Richard Clover V), whose due date they predicted to be exactly 9 months from the day we got married hah. Apparently he's a sports announcer or something? All I know is that name is all I heard from them during Christmas break before I got married! So it was only natural that our first pet would have the same name.

We also have 2 fish that inhabit the tank with Mr-or-Ms. V. They were attacking each other so it was hard to get a good picture of them.. they're not the best-looking guys around anyway. They looked better in Walmart, I think.

Here is their aquatic habitat (plus a little bonus footage of richard senior's face). The fish names are TBA (mostly we're not sure they'll both still be here in the morning).


I think he's been staring at the tank for the last hour. Look at this proud daddy:


I see who's going to be getting all the attention now.

They are adding quite a new dynamic to our home. We are faced with questions like "how much are we supposed to feed these things", "how can you tell if it's a boy or a girl?", and "is it dead?". Richard is also curious if fish sleep. My biggest question on our way home was "can this crab punch through the bag and get me?". Holding fish in those bags made me a little bit on the verge of freaking out (did you see that crab?!) but I got over it by the time we got home, as shown in this photo.

"Well, if these make it through the week, I guess we're ready to be parents"- Richard

Well said honey.

Stay tuned for health updates and/or obituaries for our 3 newest friends!