Christmas, School, Snow...

   Well life has gotten pretty crazy with a new semester and stuff, so I haven't updated this in a while (this might be a long post).  We went to my mom's house for Christmas! It was great, California was sunny and warm which was way better than the 20 inches of snow we left behind here.  We got to spend time with friends and family and my mom is back in my old ward thanks to another ward boundary change so I actually knew most of the people there and didn't feel like a visitor. Dallin took the patent bar while we were there and passed!  He can now file patents, hooray! Hopefully that will help him find a paying job for the summer.  The down side to this was that Dallin had to study while we were in CA, but the upside was that my mom and I got to go shopping and not feel bad about leaving Dallin at home so he could study (he doesn't really like shopping anyways).  We also went to San Francisco over Christmas.  We went up there for my great aunt's funeral but we were able to spend a few days and sight see.  Jessi and Natachia came over for an afternoon and had dinner with us, it was fun!  We got some great Christmas presents and decided to try and put most of them in our carry on bags so that we didn't have to pay for another checked bag.  This led to some interesting conversations at the security checkpoint... Needless to say when you try and walk on an airplane with several board games, some kitchen utensils (including a few whisks), and some other random things, they search your bags.  It took the security guy a few minutes to get my bag closed again because it was so full, I did warn him!  We also found out that the Milwaukee airport doesn't have any good food places, so if you have a layover there, pack a lunch.
   When we got back we started school again.  Dallin had to wait a few weeks to get his grades from last semester and he was pretty nervous.  He ended up doing really well and was in the top 17% of his class!! So now he's still working hard to try and keep it up.  He is really liking his founders constitution class this semester.
I got back and started my research. I finally know how to use most of the equipment and have started taking data.  It's kind of tedious but I'm doing well I think.  Hopefully we will be able to find some useful things from all the images I'm taking.  I have two pretty fun classes this semester, energy engineering and biomechanical engineering.
   Also, Dallin and I are moving at the end of February, YAY.  We decided that we really needed to try and find a new place because our upstairs neighbors are super loud and the apartment we're in is not worth listening to them (and our rent would go up in March).  So we're moving into an apartment a couple miles down the road, we'll still be in the same ward so we at least don't have to try and meet all new people.  Our new apartment will be a little smaller, but it's cheaper and the floors don't squeak when you walk, we checked!  I'm excited to move but not excited to pack.  It should be better than the last move because it's only like 3 miles instead of 3000 miles.  Hopefully all goes well with that.
   Now for the last item of business, we got a TON of snow again!  Whoever told us that it didn't snow that much out here (David and Nic) were totally lying.  We had a huge storm this weekend and got about 27 inches of snow!  The tree behind our apartment lost a bunch of branches and is now leaning at a weird angle. We heard about the storm on Tuesday and decided to buy a snow shovel so that we didn't have to try and dig our car out with a cookie sheet again.   Dallin spent yesterday afternoon digging our car out (I helped a little bit) and then finished it off this morning.  Church was cancelled again, so he also spent a few hours this morning helping people dig out.  We even met a few of our neighbors, apparently when you have a snow shovel everyone wants to be your friend.  Some good things did come from the snow though, I got my first snow day ever! Actually two snow days!  School was cancelled Friday and will be closed Monday too due to the snow!

This is Dallin shoveling off our car, yes there was so much snow on top of our car 

we needed a shovel, not a snow scraper.

Our car is the one in the center

If you can't see it, it's around 26.5 inches!

We also learned the importance of food storage.  While almost everyone else was storming the grocery stores on Thursday and Friday to stock up for the weekend, Dallin and I were home in our warm, dry, mob free house!  This is proof that following the prophet only brings joy!! :)

O SNOW!

Well we did lots of exciting things lately like finals (I got an A- in my math class!!!), went to the museum, and made cookies. But they were all eclipsed by two events, both happened yesterday.

First, we opened our presents from the Glenn family since we can't take them with us to California. We got lots of nice things and love them and had a good time opening presents while on the phone.

Second, we got a TON of snow. Like 18 - 20 inches in one day! It was crazy. We got so much snow everything shut down, schools, public transportation, stores, the government, airports, everything! Church was even cancelled today because it was too hard and dangerous to drive there. So Dallin and a few of the men from our ward spent most of the morning/afternoon helping people dig their cars out and pushing people out when they got stuck. We are glad we didn't have a flight scheduled for this weekend!! We did make some pretty awesome snow angels though, they are about a foot deep. Dallin had to help me move my arms cuz there was too much snow and it was really hard.

Here's some pictures, enjoy.

Me trying to walk through the snow... it was very hard!

Dallin making a snow angel

yes that's our car... poor dallin had to dig it out

Go Cougs!

O yeah... and BYU beat Utah :)

Turkey Day!

We had a great Thanksgiving. We had dinner with one of Dallin's mission companions and his wife it was lots of fun and really yummy! We also made our own turkey and pie, and stuffing. So we have a lot of leftovers! If anyone has any ideas for the 5 pounds of Turkey we have left I'm open to suggestions. I've already made turkey soup and turkey noodle soup...

Then on Friday we got up kind of early and went shopping for Christmas gifts. We tried out Aunt Shawn's shopping formula (two for me, one for you) and it worked out wonderfully. Thank you Shawn for the advice. Unfortunately we only bought one actual gift following this strategy so we still have quite a bit of shopping to do. But on the bright side we have some cool new phones and we get to sell our GPS now because our cool new phones have GPS in them and with the cool new phone plan that Landon and Jaron helped us get we can use it!

Dallin is turning in his final paper for his writing class today and has his first final on Saturday, so he's a little nervous but I think he'll do really good! And I have 3 more classes, 1 homework assignment, and then 2 finals before I'm free for Christmas break! I can't wait.

Happy Halloween... a bit late

Well I finally have a few free seconds so I decided to update our blog. Our Halloween was super exciting!! Not really. Dallin had a paper due the Monday after Halloween and I had a midterm that Tuesday plus homework to do, so we stayed home and studied. We got about 5 trick-or-treaters (I think 3 of them were in costumes). But we did share some amazing pizza with our friends Adam and Eve (not joking) that live a few buildings over. Dallin's parents sent the pizza!! and it was great. Thanks a ton :)

Dallin volunteered to bring a carved pumpkin to the ward Halloween party the week before Halloween so he made this bat-signal pumpkin. He really liked it for a few days until it started growing mold! Apparently pumpkins mold really fast in this much humidity. The ward Halloween party was fun, even though they said we were too old to do the trunk-or-treating.

I just finished with midterms... and they were kinda stressful! No one told me grad school would be hard! But I survived, I actually did ok on my math midterm and should find out about the fluids one today or next week. I'm just happy I am still alive. Dallin turned in his paper but hasn't heard anything back about it yet. We are both starting to gear up for finals, classes end in a little less than a month. So keep us in your prayers!

Pizza and the Zoo

So we decided to wait to go and see the leaves until this Saturday because not very many had changed by last weekend. But since it has suddenly become cold, we have high hopes for next weekend, homework is threatening to get in the way, but hopefully we'll be able to go look at some pretty leaves next weekend. But anyways, Dallin and I have kept very busy the last few weeks with school and homework. I'm getting close to midterms now, so I'm getting a little stressed but it's not too bad... yet. We have been finding some time for fun though. A few nights ago we made pizza for dinner and it was very hard to roll the crust out into a circle, so we decided to try throwing it like the real pizza maker people do! It was pretty fun and it mostly worked too! It turned out really tastey!

Then since we had Monday off school, we decided to spend the morning at the national zoo, it's FREE!!! Thank you all for paying your taxes so we could enjoy an enternaining day!We saw flamingos, they are really weird!! I mean look at their necks!
We learned that poop saves trees. They actually have paper and journals made from elephant poop in the gift shop so let us know if you want some. Dallin smelt it and said it doesn't smell bad. And we met a really friendly sloth bear... look at his claws!

Yay for fall!!

Well we made it back from Landon and Kendra's wedding. We had a lot of fun there with the family and were incredibly exhausted when we got home (we only got like 1.5 hours of sleep on Saturday night, well it was technically Sunday morning but anyways...). We went to bed as soon as we got home and then both set off to school the next morning.
Dallin is doing really well at law school. He is enjoying it, although he has to study ALL the time! It's been paying off though, he has so far been able to answer most of the questions professors have randomly shot at him during class.
I started my masters classes and they are pretty hard. I learned my applied science class is really a math class in disguise, and was a little upset about it, but it's a required class so I just have to suffer through it. I got to start learning how to use the equipment I'll be using to do my research, it involves a laser which is fun now that we have protective goggles, it was REALLY bright before that!! Apparently it can blind you, but luckily I can still see :) A few days ago there was a bomb scare at the metro stop near my school for a "suspicious package". It was pretty exciting, I had never seen a hazmat crew before! It turned out to be nothing, just a bag someone had left lying around, but it was still fun to watch.
In other exciting news, we got furniture for our apartment!! It was pretty empty up until a few weeks ago. We got desk and couch for free!! (yay craigslist) and after some paint, the desk looked nice enough to stay in the house, I was a little skeptical before. The dining room table also required a bit of love, just a little varnish. And best of all we found out that Ikea has an "as is" section! We found a bookshelf that only had a few scratches on it for half off... it was great!
We also finally caved in and got a GPS! It happened one night when we went to buy our dining room table. We got it just fine and were coming home when all of a sudden the street we were on turned into a freeway! And then the lane we were in somehow got off the freeway and there wasn't a way back on. So we wandered around for about 35 minutes somehow ending up by Dallin's school and were able to find our way back home from there. So now we have a tom tom and we love it. We don't get lost any more and it even found taco bell for us when we were really hungry!!
It is finally starting to feel like fall here which is great because that means that it is not so humid anymore. We are looking forward to the leaves changing and are planning a trip to see the leaves and pick apples and pumpkins next weekend!! Hopefully the leaves change by then!