Mr. D and Mrs. M

After pondering on what to write about this month, I decided to share a little something about our religious beliefs. As most of you (hopefully) know, Mr. D and I are Mormons (members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). I could sit down with you and chat for hours about what this means to me, but in the interest of only chatting about the most important things, this means that I believe I can receive personal revelation from God. This week our ward at church started a 40 day fast. Each family in our ward signed up for a different day, and each family is going without food for a 24 hour period. The purpose of this fast is to pray for missionary experiences. (The missionaries are always looking for people to teach!) As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we make the bold claim that our church is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ on the Earth today; we believe that this knowledge brings happiness and that everyone can gain from it, so we ...

To take advantage of the Memorial Day holiday, Mr. D and I visited California. Our vacation consisted of three parts: LA with old friends, Disneyland with each other, and San Diego with David's sister and her family. Saturday morning at 4:30 am our alarms went off and by late morning we arrived at the LA airport where Brendan and Alee picked us up. To say they were awesome hosts would be an understatement! The three days we spent with them included plenty of beach volleyball, playing in the ocean, bike riding, eating great food, hanging out, hiking, and all the touristy things. One night we decided we all wanted to watch a movie together and spent a good hour narrowing down our options. We narrowed them down to 'Endless Love', which ended up being way worse than we could have imagined. The movie was one awful scene after another, and by the end of the movie we felt ourselves empathizing more with the antagonist more than the protagonist of the film. When th...

For our  first anniversary , David and I decided to take a trip up to Canada.  This was our  first time to Vancouver  so we weren't quite sure what to expect. We figured our trip would be pretty similar to visiting Portland for a weekend, but were surprised to find  our first time driving in Canada  was a bit more of an adventure than we anticipated. In Vancouver B.C., the closest to a freeway you'll find is a six-lane road (three lanes each direction). You would think this would be plenty of space, but what you have to remember is that the far right lane is normally used for street parking and the left lane doubles as a turn lane. When you're driving along you might be surprised to see that you're lane just got taken over by parked cars or that the guy in front of you had decided he wants to turn left. You're really only safe if you drive in the middle lane. Thankfully Canadian drivers are used to the chaos and will normally let you back...

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the beautiful wedding ceremony of one of my best college roommies. Christine is beautiful inside and out, so I have always wanted her to find someone as wonderful as she is. We first got to meet Joey when David and I took time off for Christmas. Driving through Provo on our way back to Seattle, we stopped to have lunch with them. The moment I knew Joey could be the right one for Christine was when I saw them disagree together. They were telling the story of how they met, and they each felt portions of the story were a bit different. Christine has strong opinions she loves to confidently share so I believe she really needs someone who won't just be pushed around. Joey was firm, holding his ground, without being disrespectful or rude in any way. While discussing their differing opinions, Joey said, "No, that's not how it happened, I'm not giving you this one." and I felt Christine had finally found her match. Y...

Pariveda sent me to Dallas for a week for work. As someone who still considers herself a newlywed, normally I wouldn't be too excited to spend a week apart from my husband, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much fun I was able to have even though David and I were apart. The best part about traveling is that it gives me the opportunity to see old friends from college for free! (You know, the friends you love but you just don’t get to see because you live too far apart.) Most of my week was spent hanging out with a coworker who was ramping me up on the project at the client site so that he could roll off the project and try something new. We got along super well and had a lot of fun, but it wasn’t until I was hanging out with an old friend from college, Greta, that I realized that he didn’t really ask me questions. Mostly I would ask him questions and then we could talk for a while, but if I wanted to say something, I just had to say it. Greta asked me a few quest...

As many of you already know, I have a bit of a cardigan problem. (Yes, this is a picture of most of them) I also seem to be developing a bit of a flats problem. Anyway. Why the recent flats problem? You've probably already noticed-- David and I are about the same height. I used to love wearing heels to church every Sunday but when I met David it wasn't long before we realized how incredibly awkward it was holding hands with me towering over him. He says he doesn't mind, but I'll admit, I kind of do. Since we met, I've been slowly building up my collection of flats. They're perfect for work, and let's face it, now they're perfect for church too. David is perfectly balanced when it comes to clothes, so we have nothing interesting to say about him. If he were to have a problem, it would be that he just likes nice things. -Mr. D. and Mrs. M.

For Thanksgiving this year David, my parents, my little sister and I all went to Oregon to visit our cousins. We haven't been down to Salem since I was in high school, but we tricked them into inviting us over by first inviting them to come to Seattle, knowing they'd invite us to visit their place. We had a wonderful time and are so thankful for our family. Here are some highlights: They have a son who returned from his 2 year Mormon mission in Brazil a couple months ago. Connor goes to USC and he showed us a YouTube video he made on campus before his mission as a sexy saxophone player. We all got a pretty good laugh. We also loved a story his aunt shared about a conversation between a couple she overheard at Walmart: Guy: What do you need in this aisle? Girl: A toothbrush. Guy: Why, we have one at home. Girl: I want my own. Guy: Why, I don't use it. Girl: I just want a new one. Guy: I don't understand why you won't use the one we have just because it i...