New happenings

I know this is super late, but I had to mention the happenings of our Valentine's Weekend.

First I had to add a few more decorations to our home....

Yes, it's made out of cardboard.

Then the festivities began. On Friday night, we had 3 couples over for a Valentine's dinner. We made the entree (chicken alfredo) and everyone else brought something to add to dinner.

Dallin bought these beautiful flowers to "decorate the table." I know it's really because he just wanted to buy me flowers. ;)

We also bought a bunch of candy to decorate the table as is Hague tradition. We will definitely keep that one going! Sorry we didn't get any pictures of the actual table/meal. It was delicious and beautiful. :)

Our Valentine's weekend continued on Saturday when we went to the Stake Valentine's Dance; complete with chocolate fountain and lots of delicious treats to dip. MAJOR FLASHBACK TO HIGH SCHOOL STAKE DANCES! We had SO much fun singing, goofin' off and dancing, especially to Cotten-Eye Joe.

Sunday was one year since this....


We had a great day lounging around, re-reading The Blog (Feb 13th 2010) that started it all, eating a great meal (and candy) and enjoying time together.

Finally came the actual Valentine's Day. Dallin and I celebrated by using his free birthday meal to Tucano's. They had silk tableclothes on all the tables with flowers, ginormous chocolate covered strawberries, a rose to bring home, and a few extra delicious meats to celebrate the day of love. We ate too much, as always. But loved every minute of it!

That brings me to our "new lifestyle." (the term used by my professors.) I have quite a few fun projects in my classes this semester including going on a vegetarian diet, going on a weight-loss program each for about 6 weeks, and getting someone to do them with me (guess who the lucky individual is!!). So I'm killing two birds with one stone and getting both projects done at the same time.

The day after Tucanos was the start of all this madness. For the diet, we are supposed to eat mainly fruit, vegetables, whole wheat and occasional dairy and poultry/eggs. NO red meat, and hardly any sugar. After one day we realized there is not nearly enough food in our pantry that fits the diet so we did some shopping. Now we've got tons of deliciously nutritious foods around our home. YAY! For the weight loss program, we're supposed to do our best to balance how much food we are eating and how much we are exercising. It's started out a little bumpy as both Dallin and I have been sick the last week... but we'll get the hang of it! :)

With the new "lifestyle" I have been doing a lot more cooking. Which I have decided is my new favorite past time... as well as stress management. lol! I have tried lots of new recipes... here's a few of the things we've tried.

-breadsticks

-whole wheat muffins










-baked orange chicken

-breakfast taquitos with homemade whole wheat tortillas










-cilantro lime dressing with bbq chicken salad

-copper carrots

Sorry I didn't get pictures of most things... they were all so delicious that we just couldn't wait long enough to take a picture. ;)

One last bit of news.
Dallin got an internship with this fantastic company


and we will be spending our summer in this beautiful city/state.


Portland, Oregon!

We are so excited and can't wait to get out of Provo for a little while and to be closer to family.

Season of Love

I decided that since Valentine's Day is

a week from today,
our home needed a little lovin'

After doing some much needed cleaning,
I gathered these items...

and got to work.

This was the final product.

It adds a lovely touch.
I think more is still needed but that will have to wait as I have a test to study for.

Thanks to oneprettything.com for the idea! :)

xīn nián kuài lè

Okay so I don't actually speak Mandarin (surprise surprise)... I cheated and looked it up... and that's how you say Happy New Year!!!

In case you didn't know... today is the Chinese New Year. I thought it would be very appropriate to celebrate by eating Chinese food (with chopsticks) while listening to traditional Chinese music and finishing our meal with fortune cookies.

I must say it turned out to be quite a hit, and Dallin was pleasantly surprised. :) Although he was pretty hungry and had to switch to eating with regular utensils after the first 5 minutes.

Oh and I had to put these pictures up in honor of Dallin and his amazing sundae-making abilities.

Vanilla icecream ($3.99)
Toppings ($6)
Sundae glasses ($1 at DI)

Enjoying delicious sundae, with my best friend, while losing the game of Sequence (priceless)

Go BYU!!!

Cassie and I had one of the most amazing basketball experiences of our lives this week. Let me tell you how it all played out...

#4 SDSU was to play #9 BYU in the Marriott Center

They had announced to everyone that only 5000 students were going to be allowed into the game and 1000 tickets (wristbands actually) would be handed out the day before starting at 11 am, first come first serve. Those with wristbands were guaranteed a seat, and then on game day it would just be first come first serve. Knowing this, Cassie and I had given up on being able to go to the game because we both worked all day the day before and Cassie had classes until pretty late on game day, so from pretty early we were trying to find someone who would be getting the game (why the heck was it even broadcast on CBS College, nobody gets that channel!) Well, around 6 pm the day they handed out the wristbands I got an email informing everyone that they were handing out 5000 wristbands and there were still about half available, so I grabbed Cassie and we got over to the Marriott Center as fast as possible to get our own wristbands... and we did!!!!
We just happened to get our wristbands at the exact same time as Mitch and Elayna, so we all ended being in line together on game day, and then sitting next to each other in the stands. We didn't have the best seats (nosebleed) but for this game that didn't really matter. The excitement and atmosphere was amazing no matter where you were sitting. they had everyone with wristbands show up 3-4 hours before the game started, and then only let us all in 2 hours before the game started, so we were all outside freezing, but it was worth it!!!
The game was awesome to watch and the place was so loud we thought we were going to go deaf!!! It was great! I almost lost my voice (probably a good thing I didn't or I wouldn't have been able to work today). You all know the rest of the story.

BYU 71 - SDSU 58.

Go Jimmer! Go Cougs!!!

Tomorrow Life is too Late; Live Today

Inspirational huh? I'm wondering if I should try and be like all of those cool blogs who have those deep conversations with themselves trying to inspire themselves and the entire world with their ground breaking views on life... Meh.... not for me. I'll just stick with the "Here's what we did and here's how we did it." Heck, I think half of the people who looked at this blog initially deleted the blog after me not having posted anything for such a long time. But whatever, for those of you who may be reading this (is there even anyone still?), thank you for being faithful and patience with my lack of being on top of the wide world of blogging :)

So now that a month has gone by I figured it was about good time to post about our wonderful break. So what's new? (as in what happened within the last month?) Well, Cassie and I survived last semester. Cassie did great! She got a 4.0 and will continue to help us save money :) Me? Well, as many of you know, I've decided to go into Patent Law after I finish up school, and I continue to search for other ways to spend all of our money. I'm thinking a Mustang would be a nice addition to the family... Or maybe a boat... What do you think? Anyway, it was great to be able to go home for a couple of weeks and not have to worry about classes or homework or anything of the sort. The trip was good (ironically the weather over Christmas break was much more pleasant than Thanksgiving) and we made it home in good time.

Unfortunately the travel day started out on a bad note. The morning we left was also the morning the Provo Tabernacle caught on fire. We went to take a look and then headed for home. Once home there was no stopping!! Between the two families there was plenty to do. We celebrated Elayna's birthday, had a Christmas tree and Gingerbread house decorating party with the families (which by the way, the girls won the competition, but I swear they cheated ;) )

We went rollerblading with the whole Miskho family and had a blast! This was the best (only) picture I found of us. We may not be the most graceful couple in the rink but at least we were having fun!!!

We also hit up Leavenworth - always a highlight of the Christmas break! It was a lot of fun up there. We had plenty of time to go sledding, shopping, eating, and even watch the live Nativity!



We also had a grand time at the cabin sledding, playing games, stuffing our face and walking on water!!!! The snow was awesome and we made one of the coolest runs ever!! It's not every day that you can just walk out of the house and take a nice little ride down the hill on your sled. The only bad thing was the walk back up...






Since we've been back it's just been work, school, studies, and an occasional free meal from Sizzler's because they forgot about our order. Yay for free food!!

Take Your Pick!

So every year as a part of the Heath family Christmas tradition there is an annual Gingerbread house competition. This year things got a little intense. I don't know if it was due simply to the fact that I was involved, or because the level of competitiveness between family members has just naturally increased over the years, but this time the gingerbread houses took a solid 6 hours to create. You read that right. 6... SIX hours. A lot of work for such a ridiculous thing right? Wrong! It is was worth it, and it's so worth the bragging rights that will come from winning the competition. That's where each one of you comes in. We need your votes!!!! Let us know which gingerbread house you enjoy and which team you think should have bragging rights for the next 365 days. Merry Christmas to all!! And if I might suggest, pick the right one ;)... Or else...

SANTA'S PARADISE

SANTA'S NIGHTMARE

Spicing up life!

Look! Look! Another post and it hasn't even been a month! That's got to be a record :)

The last few weeks have fallen in step with the rest of this semester and been completely INSANE, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves! It all started off with Cassie's coming of age... That is, she's legal now! (My oh my, they do grow up fast don't they?) So, to celebrate Cassie's birthday we ended up doing a lot of activities in which people can drink, except there was no drinking involved!!! The funny thing was that it wasn't all planned to go that way. It started with dinner at the Olive Garden (a must for Cassie's birthday). The place was packed, so we decided to sit in the bar/cafe area. The funny thing is, being in Provo the waiters didn't think anything of it, and I'm pretty sure they didn't even offer us an alcoholic drink (maybe they thought Cassie still wasn't old enough...). So we stuffed ourselves silly with salad, breadsticks, and pasta, and then rolled ourselves out to the parking lot to head home.
Little did Cassie know that there was a little surprise waiting for her at home that I had been putting together all week right under her nose!!! While we were gone I had some of our good friends come over, decorate the place, and get it all spiffed up for the after-dinner party. I like to think that the Birthday Princess had a great time seeing all her friends and playing games with them late into the night. It was a lot of fun!

The next weekend was our ward Halloween party, which was SO much fun! Earlier in the month Cassie had mentioned the idea of us dressing up as Salt and Pepper shakers, but nothing ever came from it... that is, until the day of the party when it was about two hours before it started and we realized we still didn't have any costume put together! So, the Salt and Pepper shaker idea stuck, and 96 cents later we were all rolled up in our construction paper with a large 'S' and 'P' plastered onto our chests. Of course, we were the hit of the party (or was everyone just laughing at our ridiculous costumes?). Anyways, we were put into a group of star couples and the dream team group #5 battled their way through the competition and ended up taking first place in the Halloween games by a land slide. This was due to the fact that we were amazing in charades, and maybe a little bit because (seeing that I have an awkwardly large mouth), I was volunteered for, and completely dominated, the donut on a string game. Award? Heck yes. Can you say free ice cream at Cold Stone?!?! It was great going out and chilling with the rest of the group enjoying our wonderful, flavorful, creamy victory ice cream. That's right. Be jealous :)

Now we are just battling to get through the next few weeks of school until we get to head home for Thanksgiving and take a quick breather. Good thing it's soon, because we're running out of air!!!!!!

Isn't it about... time.

For some of you reading this blog, you're probably thinking yes... Yes Dallin, it is about time considering you said you were going to post a blog in April! And it is now October. Then there's others who just happen to be passing through the blogging world and chanced upon this and don't really care. And that leaves the majority of you who don't even realize that I'm referring to you and could care less about what is said in this post.
But, for those of you who really do care about what's going on in our newly-wed, college going, hard-working lives, here's a little update:
As always, time is of the essence, and Cassie and I have very little of it. I find myself getting out of bed before 3 am, 3 days week to be able to get to work on time. This wouldn't be so bad if I could rest after working, but school has it's demands, and typically we're up late the nights I don't have to work early, so often I'm up for close to 24 hours. It can often turn out to be quite an adventure. Cassie isn't far behind. She wakes up around 5 on the same days and doesn't exactly get a break during the day either. It's a tough schedule, but we're glad to have steady jobs and we make due with what we have.
So as for a super huge review of the past 6 months or so....
June 26, 2010 was the big day. It's was wonderful to share our wedding day with friends and family. We couldn't have been happier to see everyone who made it and we missed all of you who couldn't. Just as most couples feel, the whole day was kind of a blur for us, but we do remember those key moments like being in the temple with our family and friends, etc. We had to put this picture in of Grandpa for all the family. Is that not the best picture you've seen of Grandpa smiling? I think all the family would appreciate this picture. We love it!
After the big day we enjoyed an awesome week at Disney World. It was Cassie's first time, so I had the pleasure of showing her the ropes :) I made sure that we went on Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, and of course the Country Bears. We hit up plenty of other rides like Rockin' Roller Coaster and Tower of Terror, so we got the excitement along with the classic Disney. We were even able to have dinner in Cinderella's castle!! Cassie was in heaven with all the princesses walking around greeting everyone. She got a picture with each one, and even though I didn't let her wear a crown, she did get a princess wand during dinner, and I got a sword! Woohoo!
We enjoyed the rest of the summer working here in Provo, except for week break to hit up the Hague family reunion in Idaho. That was a great, relaxing week that we had with the family and we want to go back so bad!!! A fall break would hit the spot about now.

We've been doing the whole school thing lately, which isn't all that exciting, but I guess it's necessary. We're enjoying most of our classes, but also looking forward to having a break from them. We get the occasional break from school by hanging out with friends, going to football games (though those aren't always the most fun considering how we're doing this year), and just sitting at home and relaxing for a little while.

And.... I think it's probably pretty obvious that I've kind of lost interest by now, and I'm guessing so have you, so I'm going to wrap things up now. Hopefully the next post will be sometime sooner than six months from now!

*Sigh*... We love this place...

Slacker

Well, an awful lot has happened since the last time we posted something, but no worries! Posts and pictures will soon be up to all those who have the desire to read about our various activities for the last little while. I'm bored at work, so it looks like I might have some time to do stuff in the next few days. Keep an eye out!

Weekend full of fun in the s.....snow

Cassie and I were able to enjoy ourselves this weekend with all the excitement of General Conference. As is custom, everyone and his dog here in Provo was having a mission reunion over the weekend. Early I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my mission president was going to be in Salt Lake, and the a mission reunion was being planned for Friday! Well, the time came and everything worked out so that Cassie and I were able to go. I obviously was super excited to see all of my old companions and friends, and especially see the president again. Cassie wasn't so excited just because she figured she wasn't going to be able to understand anything (which was true to a certain extent, but not completely). She was a good sport though, and let me drag her along :D
We also had the chance to attend General Conference at the conference center on Sunday morning thanks to my wonderful roommate Jeff. Thanks again for the tickets Jeff! The session was great! And it was really cool too because we went early enough to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform the 4,203 broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word. It was awesome! They closed with Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, which is such a powerful number, especially when MoTab sings it, so the whole experience was pretty much amazing. It was great listening to the prophet and leaders of the church this weekend, and both of us walked away feeling uplifted and wanting to be better people. After watching conference we decided to take some pictures in temple square and happened to run into Elayna and some of her friends as we were taking pictures.
Later that night we were invited over for dinner at the cousins. It was great food and great company! Thank you Daryl and Annie for letting us come over and helping out us poor college students. We appreciate it so much!
Other than that Cassie and I are just trying to survive these last couple of weeks of classes and finals, along with planning the wedding. We're busy, but it's great because it's helping time go by a lot quicker!

HKN - Eta Kappa Nu

I was recently invited to become a part of the BYU chapter of the Eta Kappa Nu Engineering Society. This is a group of "outstanding" electrical and computer engineers who have met the requirements of the group (specifically GPA... which wouldn't have been anywhere close if it weren't for the wonderful 16 credit portuguese test I took last semester!). It was kind of a surprise that I was invited considering I really am just barely starting the program... Anyways, I was inducted into this group and Cassie and I had the chance to attend the induction ceremony/banquet. It was quite the experience. Cassie has been giving me kind of a hard time about the whole thing... and I though I've tried to disagree with Cassie about it, I guess I am an electrical engineer... which makes me an official geek :P Well the banquet proved that a little bit... Especially when the keynote speaker said "You can't spell geek without an EE." Great... Well... He also said that double E's make great husbands, so that's a plus... (except his reasoning was that possibly they didn't have much of a social life, so they do their best when they finally find one...) So, after being inducted and making fun of the whole thing a little bit, I decided to be kind of involved, and so I attended the election meetings for the leadership for next year... And I've now put my foot in my mouth because I left that meeting President of the Eta Kappa Nu BYU chapter. But it didn't really work out how one might expect. Besides some of the leadership from this year, I was 1 of 2 people who were there to participate. Not exactly the biggest showing. So the two of us tried to be extremely passive trying to push the Presidency off to the other one at the meeting. After about ten minutes of this, I was tired and finally just turned to the others there and told them to "just put my name down." Not exactly an election. But... Oh well... It'll look great on my resume, right? Ok, I'm not going to lie, I am kind of excited to do this, because it's finally a chance I have to get involved at BYU. I really haven't done much. So it should be good :) Wish me luck!