"Tim slid one past the goalie" -Mike G.

All good stories start with "In the beginning," so being fans of plagiarism, this is where we begin. Not necessarily "THE" beginning, because that would just be a giant advertisement of which birth control NOT to use. This beginning is a re-creation of the day our lives changed forever, for the second time in two months.

The two of us had been in Salt Lake the weekend of November 11th and were heading back on Sunday the 12th when we ended up stalled in the Lehi area waiting to meet up with our wedding photographer to pick up our long awaited pictures from the big day. Trying to kill some time, no pun intended, at the local Cabela's - a place Brandi had NEVER experienced (Tim had discovered one in North Dakota of all places), and quite frankly never wants to visit again. The centerpieced mountain of dead animals contained enough glassy eyed animal stares to officially creep us out for the rest of our lives. Like Halloween haunted houses, we gleefully horrified ourselves for about 45 minutes, only to leave and experience a different but similar experience along the side streets of Utah county. We fully acknowledge our bias.

With wedding pictures in hand, we hit I-15 and cruise control. The tangent added to our return to Las Vegas and we were late. In a few ways. Being new to this 6 hour commute, we had lessons in planning to learn since we always seem to get hungry at the Cedar City mark, which given the towns culinary choices, hasn't treated us well. We had already done Taco Bell, the gas station Iceberg, and IHOP. We're not actually sure exactly how we ended up at Applebee's but there's a good chance that it was a double dog dare affair. It's no secret that the place isn't our favorite but we felt confident that we could find SOMETHING on the menu that wouldn't disgust us. We're big Chili's fans and even though the two places are identical, we just don't like Applebee's, maybe it's their commercials. In the end, we probably were only able to tolerate the "food" and the ten gallon hats due to our distraction. We were "late" and had been all weekend. Going on 5 days and it was the undertone of every conversation. We'd been married for a full 60 days. We had just gotten the pictures from the wedding and now we were late! For 45 minutes we talked about subjects like cycles, birth control, and urine chemicals. Tim was officially over his head. As we left dinner, we looked across the parking lot, saw the glowing Walmart sign, looked at each other and knew that we needed to know. Our feelings about Walmart are much stronger than Applebee's and as tragic, disgusting, and utterly hilarious as the idea seemed, it would set the stage for the perfect ending for a not so perfect day. It's important to be consistent. In a matter of minutes we found the EPT isle and, like scared "after school special" teenage crushes, made the purchase. Unlike the special, we had the benefit of self check out. Brandi disappeared into the restroom while Tim browsed the Christmas DVD specials. A little aim and 3 minutes of our time changed our changing lives.

Brandi emerged from the restroom expressionless, which is expression enough, took my arm and said, "Let's go. I'm not going to tell you inside a Walmart." We made it back to the security of the car, and under the soft glow of the dome light cataloged our future. One line=situation normal; two lines=grow up time. The below is the actual cell phone documentation of that moment. The blur could be a fair representation of our truth fog. In our experience, if you stare at it long enough, it becomes an obvious two lines. It's appropriate that something that looks like a Lik-M-Aid stick is still causing so much indigestion. We realize that after reading all of the above confessions, it would be easy to think less of us and even consider us a little white trash. We don't blame you. We've gotten mileage out of making fun of honeymoon baby couples. Now we're the joke. Go ahead and laugh BUT it's important to also know that Brandi swears that as she went to discard the EPT wrapper into the stall trash can, there in the bottom, was another EPT wrapper from earlier that day. It could have been the one piece of comfort we had all day. We're not alone in this.