Mr. D and Mrs. M

We are so excited to be homeowners of a lovely 2-bdrm townhome in Issaquah! We started searching in June and found a place in September through my mom, our real estate agent. Highlights updating the place: • Painted the walls “greige” • Switched the hardware from brass to brushed nickel • Purchased a bedroom set • Added a shag rug, pictures, pillows, end table, etc. to the living area • Added additional shelving in the master closet (our first Home Depot project) Pictures of our new place: We are the second one in from the left Living Area Living Area Kitchen Master Bedroom Come visit us! -Mr. D. and Mrs. M.

For the past couple weeks we've been client-side in Bellevue, which has allowed us to carpool together in the mornings. Lately we've been listening to podcasts together on the drive as well as sometimes at home. Here are a few we've listened to that we've enjoyed: TED Talk - Bill and Melinda Gates: Why giving away our wealth has been the most satisfying thing we've done TED Talk - Larry Page: Where's Google going next? NPR Planet Money - When Women Stopped Coding This American Life - Switched At Birth TED Radio Hour - The Source of Creativity What are your favorite podcast stations, episodes, and TED talks? We’d love recommendations. -Mr. D. and Mrs. M.    

We’ve all had one of “those” days: A day when some irrevocably terrible thing has happened and we want to write the day off as a disaster. Sometimes, we do just have to sleep on it and hope for a better tomorrow, but this post is about how those days, and even just some the ordinary ones, are transformed into something special. This post is a special thanks to ordinary people. We were faced with our first disaster when we were picking my parents and sister up at the airport. David and I had arrived at the airport and were waiting in the cell lot in my parent’s car, which was going to be big enough to fit all of their luggage. My parents called us to let us know their plane had landed and that they were still waiting on the runway. As David and I waited in the car listening to music, we heard our car go quiet and realized we had killed the battery. Sheepishly we knocked on car doors in the cell lot until we found a kind lady with jumper cables to start our car. We were thankful to hav...

Us at Xel Ha So, last July when we went on our Honeymoon Marissa made me promise that if she wrote Part 1 of the Honeymoon blog post covering the tour of the Mayan ruins, I would write Part 2 covering everything else, I agreed and here is me fulfilling my promise…a year later Marissa and I stayed at a wonderful resort called the Barcelo Maya, located on the Riviera Maya about 50 miles south of Cancun, at first we didn’t know if being that far from the city was going to be good idea or not, but it was a fantastic decision. The resort complex was absolutely massive, made of 5 different hotels, each with their own pools, entertainment, and restaurants. One of my favorite features of the resort was that it was built right in the jungle, the walkways from each building gave you the feeling that you are walking in a wild jungle with Birds, Iguanas, and other animals all around you.   Then right on the edge of the Resort was about a mile of private beaches. The entire resort wa...

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...